That might have been misinterpreted. DARPA was probably looking for an surface-to-surface ballistic anti-ship missile. Blue Origin misunderstood the RFP to mean "soft-landing" on a ship, not "guaranteed kill".
Which devolves into everyone engaging in free-for-all patent blackmail, patenting everyone else's portfolios just to obscure the landscape. Oh, just like it actually is right now.
Here's a hint: the phrase "defensive patent" is best understood in the context of the old rubric, "The best defense is a strong offense."
It has a similar effect as buying an existing patent for "defensive purposes": make it impossible to use that patent against you. In the defensive patent strategy, you're buying up the sword; in this special strategy, you're preventing the sword from even being made.
(For those of you who are a bit metaphor-challenged: the idea being researched is not the sword. The legal threat implicit in patent ownership and defense is the sword.)
Also interesting: the idea that a market player wants, on some level, to compete on technological and marketing merit. "Here, World... here's a brilliant idea from the University of Somewhere. I'm betting we can implement and market this better than any of you guys (I'm looking at you, AMD). We don't need a patent to beat you."
Big brass ones.
This obviously isn't their only play; their own R&D and their current IP warchest aren't being thrown open to the world. But it still takes some kind of crazy to walk away from even a small advantage.
Did you mean "posting REALLY anonymously", or did you just check the "Post Anonymously" checkbox while remaining logged in? Cuz if you did the latter, Slashdot isn't fooled, and you won't be able to moderate. OTOH, if you logged out to post that, good job. I hope it was worth the effort. (And, yeah, it's not much effort. Whether it's even worth that is open to debate.)
We already have insurance case evaluators overriding a practitioner's medical judgments. Now, we'll have evaluators PLUS a very expensive rules engine* versus the overworked GP.
*And what, prithee, does the price of the system have to do with its credibility? Everything. If you sink a lot of money into something like this, you've already bet your money on whether it's right or not. No one is installing a Watson rig with an expensive data warehouse just for lulz, and no one's going to be able to casually second-guess this thing without massive evidence. It's going to be right all the time or BC-BS will look like a dope for spending so much.
And, if your imagination is sufficiently paranoid, you'd argue that the "let them burn and mine the ashes" approach would fit Oracle's approach to intellectual property just fine.
Allowing bankruptcy to launder the obligations without disgorging the property would have been a fine way for Oracle to get out of the Java community burden. Just imagine the rich per-CPU license fees they could have been sucking down if it weren't for those pesky Open Source kids.
Yes, you're right. That's wildly paranoid. Still, the phrase "perverse incentive" comes to mind over and over with this idea. You no longer encourage white knights to save companies like Sun; you draw vultures. You make companies worth more dead than alive.
TBH, I'm waiting for a directive to come down from our Green Compliance Weasel Team to font switch colors in that boilerplate "sustainability" blurb because we're exhausting the world's supply of green photons or something.
Yes, BCC is another reason why the original comparison (from 'bmo') to post vs email is not a fair comparison; and why the laws (that really do exist in the UK) shouldn't apply to email.
Of course it can apply to email. Trivial technical differences can be swept away with cracking good courtroom theatrics and a friendly judge. I'm sure Crown Prosecution considers it merely a brisk challenge, not some kind of crippling and disqualifying shortcoming in the law.
Any law is applicable to any act if you're willing to squint enough.
It's not attitude. I can deal with one, maybe two, sliding into the gap. But eventually, you'll have no choice but to drive approximately 1/2 the speed of surrounding traffic, in order to continually preserve the cushion in front of you from every damn car on the road that cuts into it. And then, you'll just have intermittent cushion, since every car that cuts in front of you won't do so with good following distance in mind, so until the speed differential between him and you opens the gap back up, you're too close.
So, what you are proposing is... drive massively slower than traffic around you, creating a far greater hazard than following at less than optimal distance, while with the concordant risk of getting road-raged, rear-ended, or side-swiped.
And, No, it is not arguable more dangerous than flying down the road at 50mph with 8 feet off someone's bumper. Don't even go there.
Sorry, I don't take orders from random slashbots, even if they really really don't want me to tell them how horribly mistaken they are. Nice try.
And, that, my lobsterback friend, is at the heart of the Great American Revolution: the freedom to behave in as dangerous and irresponsible fashion as we free red-blooded Americans damn well please.
"Pay your taxes. Drink your tea. Observe your two-second following distance."
SCREW YOU, "YOUR MAJESTY!". We'll shoot our Constitutionally-protected guns in the air (and at each other) as we mess up your language and drive bumper-to-bumper for miles (not kilometers) at highway (not motorway) speeds.
(I wonder how many humorless slashbots will fail to recognize one joke in this? Even if it somewhat accurately reflects the uglier facets of the American Spirit.)
I played around with a friend's H89 back in the day. (I sort-of had access to another friend's H8/H9 combo, but he was a bit less laid back; he really didn't like it when I opened the case of the H8. So I stopped bothering him.)
The H89 was a fairly schweet machine; a standard Z19/H19 terminal complete with its own Z-80, and then a second single-board computer embedded in it with a second Z-80. Booted CPM/80 off the internal floppy. Very cool.
Actually, after I made my big decision in life at the age of 15 ("programming or electronics?"*), I lusted after a H-11. The idea of my very own teensy tiny PDP-11 was intriguing. It was technically a Heathkit, but the "kit" part was mostly gross assembly (if I recall), not so much soldering and stuffing sockets. But it could run most PDP software, which was becoming my speciality. (DECSystem-10, anyone?)
*I chose software. The choice came down to "$600 for a pre-assembled TRS-80 that I can immediately begin programming, or $1000 for an IMSAI 8080 kit that I can toggle switches and make lights blink." I was cheap and impatient. I still kind of am.)
You're right. Stupid people clearly belong in the iPhone market where they can be protected from their stupidity.
Oh, that's interesting. Reading TFA (yes, this is Slashdot, but go with it) and following a few links indicates that "AcneApp" was an iPhone Market app. Never mind. Stupid people belong in the iPhone market, but they won't be any better protected. Just less free. That's OK, I guess; non-stupids don't much need them around anyway.
I suspect a 600-degree (Fahrenheit) soldering iron tip would do a spectacular job of killing p-acne bacteria. Just apply directly to forehead. And nose. And cheeks.
Because, you know, no one would every buy an AMD video card for one machine but install the game on another machine, one with an nVidia card.
Unless, of course, there's some secret codicil to the license of the "free" version of the game restricting it to use with an AMD product... which would be so blatantly improper product tying that even Microsoft would facepalm.
I dunno. Unless you have some historical citations, I've never seen intellectual property specifically excluded from the category of "means of production". Since all ownership is a legal fiction, the statement "intellectual property rights are anti-capitalistic" seems pretty much just dogma (i.e., espousing philosophy as objective fact when not supported by reality).
Slashdot Mirror
N/T
Oh, I don't know. Even infinity can be a countable set.
I just think GPP has poor counting skills.
That might have been misinterpreted. DARPA was probably looking for an surface-to-surface ballistic anti-ship missile. Blue Origin misunderstood the RFP to mean "soft-landing" on a ship, not "guaranteed kill".
Agreed. Why wasn't this done as a Perl golf contest?
Which devolves into everyone engaging in free-for-all patent blackmail, patenting everyone else's portfolios just to obscure the landscape. Oh, just like it actually is right now.
Here's a hint: the phrase "defensive patent" is best understood in the context of the old rubric, "The best defense is a strong offense."
It's actually an interesting play.
It has a similar effect as buying an existing patent for "defensive purposes": make it impossible to use that patent against you. In the defensive patent strategy, you're buying up the sword; in this special strategy, you're preventing the sword from even being made.
(For those of you who are a bit metaphor-challenged: the idea being researched is not the sword. The legal threat implicit in patent ownership and defense is the sword.)
Also interesting: the idea that a market player wants, on some level, to compete on technological and marketing merit. "Here, World... here's a brilliant idea from the University of Somewhere. I'm betting we can implement and market this better than any of you guys (I'm looking at you, AMD). We don't need a patent to beat you."
Big brass ones.
This obviously isn't their only play; their own R&D and their current IP warchest aren't being thrown open to the world. But it still takes some kind of crazy to walk away from even a small advantage.
We can't ecscape CrackedButter, our little walking libary!
Did you mean "posting REALLY anonymously", or did you just check the "Post Anonymously" checkbox while remaining logged in? Cuz if you did the latter, Slashdot isn't fooled, and you won't be able to moderate. OTOH, if you logged out to post that, good job. I hope it was worth the effort. (And, yeah, it's not much effort. Whether it's even worth that is open to debate.)
We already have insurance case evaluators overriding a practitioner's medical judgments. Now, we'll have evaluators PLUS a very expensive rules engine* versus the overworked GP.
*And what, prithee, does the price of the system have to do with its credibility? Everything. If you sink a lot of money into something like this, you've already bet your money on whether it's right or not. No one is installing a Watson rig with an expensive data warehouse just for lulz, and no one's going to be able to casually second-guess this thing without massive evidence. It's going to be right all the time or BC-BS will look like a dope for spending so much.
Beside, it won Jeopardy! It must be right!
And, if your imagination is sufficiently paranoid, you'd argue that the "let them burn and mine the ashes" approach would fit Oracle's approach to intellectual property just fine.
Allowing bankruptcy to launder the obligations without disgorging the property would have been a fine way for Oracle to get out of the Java community burden. Just imagine the rich per-CPU license fees they could have been sucking down if it weren't for those pesky Open Source kids.
Yes, you're right. That's wildly paranoid. Still, the phrase "perverse incentive" comes to mind over and over with this idea. You no longer encourage white knights to save companies like Sun; you draw vultures. You make companies worth more dead than alive.
Android won't be relevant forever, just like WM wasn't,
Just you wait. Next year will be the Year of the Android Desktop.
Did he just claim that every tablet in the world, his own included, is "a rip-off product", to quote the quote?
Has Apple so completely won the mind-share fight that every tablet product, no matter how technically distinctive, is an iPad clone?
The RDF is strong with this one.
Hey! You must work for my company!
TBH, I'm waiting for a directive to come down from our Green Compliance Weasel Team to font switch colors in that boilerplate "sustainability" blurb because we're exhausting the world's supply of green photons or something.
Yes, BCC is another reason why the original comparison (from 'bmo') to post vs email is not a fair comparison; and why the laws (that really do exist in the UK) shouldn't apply to email.
Of course it can apply to email. Trivial technical differences can be swept away with cracking good courtroom theatrics and a friendly judge. I'm sure Crown Prosecution considers it merely a brisk challenge, not some kind of crippling and disqualifying shortcoming in the law.
Any law is applicable to any act if you're willing to squint enough.
Damn those pesky facts, they always get in the way of a good argument!
That's OK, at least German court has a proper lack of respect for facts. They don't let facts push them around, no siree.
I was going to mod you, but I think I'll be slightly more polite and just post.
Righthaven's so-called business model is entirely about copyright. The only resemblance between this story and patent trolling is the word "troll".
You didn't get "-1 Offtopic"d and I saved a mod point. Win-win.
It's not attitude. I can deal with one, maybe two, sliding into the gap. But eventually, you'll have no choice but to drive approximately 1/2 the speed of surrounding traffic, in order to continually preserve the cushion in front of you from every damn car on the road that cuts into it. And then, you'll just have intermittent cushion, since every car that cuts in front of you won't do so with good following distance in mind, so until the speed differential between him and you opens the gap back up, you're too close.
So, what you are proposing is... drive massively slower than traffic around you, creating a far greater hazard than following at less than optimal distance, while with the concordant risk of getting road-raged, rear-ended, or side-swiped.
And, No, it is not arguable more dangerous than flying down the road at 50mph with 8 feet off someone's bumper. Don't even go there.
Sorry, I don't take orders from random slashbots, even if they really really don't want me to tell them how horribly mistaken they are. Nice try.
And, that, my lobsterback friend, is at the heart of the Great American Revolution: the freedom to behave in as dangerous and irresponsible fashion as we free red-blooded Americans damn well please.
"Pay your taxes. Drink your tea. Observe your two-second following distance."
SCREW YOU, "YOUR MAJESTY!". We'll shoot our Constitutionally-protected guns in the air (and at each other) as we mess up your language and drive bumper-to-bumper for miles (not kilometers) at highway (not motorway) speeds.
(I wonder how many humorless slashbots will fail to recognize one joke in this? Even if it somewhat accurately reflects the uglier facets of the American Spirit.)
I played around with a friend's H89 back in the day. (I sort-of had access to another friend's H8/H9 combo, but he was a bit less laid back; he really didn't like it when I opened the case of the H8. So I stopped bothering him.)
The H89 was a fairly schweet machine; a standard Z19/H19 terminal complete with its own Z-80, and then a second single-board computer embedded in it with a second Z-80. Booted CPM/80 off the internal floppy. Very cool.
Actually, after I made my big decision in life at the age of 15 ("programming or electronics?"*), I lusted after a H-11. The idea of my very own teensy tiny PDP-11 was intriguing. It was technically a Heathkit, but the "kit" part was mostly gross assembly (if I recall), not so much soldering and stuffing sockets. But it could run most PDP software, which was becoming my speciality. (DECSystem-10, anyone?)
*I chose software. The choice came down to "$600 for a pre-assembled TRS-80 that I can immediately begin programming, or $1000 for an IMSAI 8080 kit that I can toggle switches and make lights blink." I was cheap and impatient. I still kind of am.)
You're right. Stupid people clearly belong in the iPhone market where they can be protected from their stupidity.
Oh, that's interesting. Reading TFA (yes, this is Slashdot, but go with it) and following a few links indicates that "AcneApp" was an iPhone Market app. Never mind. Stupid people belong in the iPhone market, but they won't be any better protected. Just less free. That's OK, I guess; non-stupids don't much need them around anyway.
I suspect a 600-degree (Fahrenheit) soldering iron tip would do a spectacular job of killing p-acne bacteria. Just apply directly to forehead. And nose. And cheeks.
So, if they ban everyone who entered one of the leaked key, they'll ban inncocent, naÃve people.
Which, of course, Valve won't care the slightest about, unless there's some serious PR blowback. All of which will happen well after the fact.
Bans of mass destruction in 5... 4... 3...
Because, you know, no one would every buy an AMD video card for one machine but install the game on another machine, one with an nVidia card.
Unless, of course, there's some secret codicil to the license of the "free" version of the game restricting it to use with an AMD product... which would be so blatantly improper product tying that even Microsoft would facepalm.
But.. but...I LIKE reading Slashdot!
I dunno. Unless you have some historical citations, I've never seen intellectual property specifically excluded from the category of "means of production". Since all ownership is a legal fiction, the statement "intellectual property rights are anti-capitalistic" seems pretty much just dogma (i.e., espousing philosophy as objective fact when not supported by reality).