Wouldn't it be expensive to re-make all the street signs? Instead of 123 Anywhere Drive there'd be 12AR13 coded blocks and that only really makes sense if everything is layed out in a grid... who wants to have a GPS map *required* just to find out how to get from point A to point B?
I don't think frivolous patents are the whole problem. I think an unspoken problem is that nobody has a good method of determining if something is patented at all, not even the patent offices. A big boost for patent use would be a way to quickly determine if something was patented, and if so, who by. Requesting a patent search does not guarantee that a patent does not exist for what you're looking for. It only tells you that it probably does not. Not very comforting given the high litigation rate for violated patents. It's hard to base a company on something so shaky as a patent that can't be guaranteed is valid.
What's more, once a patent has expired what happens to it? Arguably it is supposed to have been replaced with a new and better patent making the old one obsolete. If these expired patented inventions fall into the public domain, where are they listed? Where can I obtain a list of expired patents and the inventions they corrsepond to? If such a list has been compiled (or can be), would it be relevent? If patents are to provide a benefit to society (why else would we grant them?) but don't expire until they are completely worthless, what's the point?
What if the system were to log the last update for all packages to a central file that could be polled by the admin? Or email the admin once the software reaches a certain age? I doubt many security patches are deliberatly not applied, but most admins are probably overworked as-is and would appreciate a gentle nudge to check for security updates on a piece of code that they normally don't look at too often because it just works.
There are several posts that are wondering if this is overkill, so I'll respond to all. It's not since they already had the hardware and only added a single CPU to their existing mainframe. They got the whole nine yards for $26K, but they don't have to add a new server, license Exchange, hire a Windows admin if they don't already have one and, as the exec said, they don't want to use Intel hardware.
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Verisign, Thawte, et al support the notion of a certificate that says you are indeed who you say you are. Why not just use that?
Wouldn't it be expensive to re-make all the street signs? Instead of 123 Anywhere Drive there'd be 12AR13 coded blocks and that only really makes sense if everything is layed out in a grid... who wants to have a GPS map *required* just to find out how to get from point A to point B?
I don't think frivolous patents are the whole problem. I think an unspoken problem is that nobody has a good method of determining if something is patented at all, not even the patent offices. A big boost for patent use would be a way to quickly determine if something was patented, and if so, who by. Requesting a patent search does not guarantee that a patent does not exist for what you're looking for. It only tells you that it probably does not. Not very comforting given the high litigation rate for violated patents. It's hard to base a company on something so shaky as a patent that can't be guaranteed is valid.
What's more, once a patent has expired what happens to it? Arguably it is supposed to have been replaced with a new and better patent making the old one obsolete. If these expired patented inventions fall into the public domain, where are they listed? Where can I obtain a list of expired patents and the inventions they corrsepond to? If such a list has been compiled (or can be), would it be relevent? If patents are to provide a benefit to society (why else would we grant them?) but don't expire until they are completely worthless, what's the point?
What if the system were to log the last update for all packages to a central file that could be polled by the admin? Or email the admin once the software reaches a certain age? I doubt many security patches are deliberatly not applied, but most admins are probably overworked as-is and would appreciate a gentle nudge to check for security updates on a piece of code that they normally don't look at too often because it just works.
There are several posts that are wondering if this is overkill, so I'll respond to all. It's not since they already had the hardware and only added a single CPU to their existing mainframe. They got the whole nine yards for $26K, but they don't have to add a new server, license Exchange, hire a Windows admin if they don't already have one and, as the exec said, they don't want to use Intel hardware.