Technology has made it trivial to reproduce and distribute the works of others, requiring artificial protections to compensate.
That same technology has made it trivial for creators to create, distribute and sell to the world in seconds at close to zero cost. The fact that many incumbents choose not to use this technology is telling.
Technology is a tool that can be used by all parties. No artificial protections for vested interests required.
---
The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".
This isn't a browser's responsibility, this is the design package's responsibility.
No, just because the development tools can and should be responsible has no bearing on whether the browser should be responsible also. In both cases it is broken code if they silently ignore or create errors.
I think we all should put more pressure on site development tools and hosting sites that use really crappy standards, rather than complain about something that should be for end users, the browser.
If it's not visible in the browser how on earth is the end user going to be able to give feedback to the developer that their website is broken? Warnings, with the ability to disable them where needed, are a good way of closing the loop; making sure that the developer hears about any bugs they field so that they are fixed.
I repeat, silently ignoring broken code, HTML or otherwise, is broken behavior where ever it occurs. Cowboys will try to ignore that fundamental but that's why they're cowboys.
There's a big difference between silently rendering bad HTML and rendering it with a warning.
Until a browser gives informative warnings by default and that can be switched off if needed, preferably by site, browsers that render broken sites are just that. Broken. Silently acquiescing to broken code is broken behavior. It needs to be visible to be fixed.
---
Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion.
Qdq has been doing it in Spain for a while. For example, search for "Paseo del Prado, 11" in Madrid to see the Prado Museum. Select "Toma ?" to see different views. They appear to have every street address photographed.
You can "walk" through some of the larger cities in Spain with this by clicking the direction arrows below the photographs.
It shows that there is still some actual talent at MS,
Why do you automatically assume this was developed at M$?
The earliest direct reference I can find on the net is PaX but there are many variations on the general technique of address space layout randomization both before (on networks) and after.
As an embedded developer I'm not actually particularly interested in what Linux flavor you support/test. They're all wrong. As long as you have a lowest-common-denominator tar.gz package with well documented dependencies that's all I want.
I've tweaked my environment to support all the different jobs I do, including running your package. It's configured for my tastes and needs. I want to adapt my process the absolute minimum necessary to run your process. I'd like to install your tar with installwatch and be done with it.
Depending on the complexity of your SDK you probably do not want to vmware it; vmware is a hack that makes it difficult for any program running in it to interact with anything else on the system.
If I were in your shoes I'd set up 3-4 environments (e.g. recent, stable debian/ubuntu, redhat, bsd, solaris), tar an SDK and try it on each platform. If there's anything missing on each platform see if it's in the standard repositories. If it's not add it to your tar and try again. Document as you go.
Incidentally, avoid binary SDK's if you can; source means your customers can solve their own problems if they need to and not waste your time. I've use a lot of different SDK's on Linux/Unix/Windows over the years and the number one problem was old, buggy binaries that were not compatible with my up-to-date development environment. I avoid vendors that make it difficult for me to solve my problems.
---
WGA. Guilty until proven innocent. For millions. Again and again.
Well, try and train some normal everyday office people and see for yourself how quickly people learn when they are already used to something else, and not even 100% comfortable with it either
You're hand waving. I've seen numerous non-computer people do standard office tasks in both Linux and M$Windows. Most hardly even notice the difference. Switching between the Linux and M$Windows is as easy as switching between many web interfaces.
---
Don't be a programmer-bureaucrat; someone who substitutes marketing buzzwords and software bloat for verifiable improvements.
I still find it a little surprising that any large non-US organization, particularly governments, run non-open software. It's basically just baring their throat to Uncle Sam and M$. A stupid thing to do, particularly when national security is involved.
Those billions that non-US organization might spend on military hardware and/or competing commercially could easily be hobbled if the US government or M$ decided to sniff, corrupt or shutdown the computers that the non-US organization thought they controlled. With history like ECHELON and SIGINT in general, and the US' general "we are powerful, therefore we must be right" attitude, it's not a leap to assume the US has covert operations going on. This is just too easy and too cheap.
Even if the M$ didn't want to cooperate the US government could force them secretly to do so. M$ being a good US corporate citizen they'd probably be happy to cooperate though.
It would not surprise me if this is one of the drivers for TC, making sure the "owner" of the PC doesn't actually have control, even theoretically. The proliferation of botnets and viruses would be convenient cover too.
You can be damn sure that in the name of anti-terrorism and/or anti-pedophilia the US government and M$ have a deniable backdoor in every network connected M$Windows computer on earth. Possibly in the common Linux distributions that are not third party audited too.
They probably don't use the back door much because of the danger of being network sniffed but encrypted and embedded in Microsoft Update on selected PC's there'd be no problem. How sure are you that your computer isn't phoning home with everything you type?
---
Open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.
Why waste our resources on someone when their choice of email makes it obvious that they have no intention of becoming a participating member?
You probably wasted far more resources blocking them than they will ever cost you. People use throwaway email addresses with good reason. Not trusting some anonymous website on the net not to spam until they've proven themselves is one.
---
Don't be a programmer-bureaucrat; someone who substitutes marketing buzzwords and software bloat for verifiable improvements.
If that was the case, though, why hadn't anyone created them yet? Clearly, it wasn't an obvious invention.
For the millionth time; being new is a necessary but not sufficient condition for something being obvious.
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
Gosh, you mean the patent office doesn't make sure that the abstract represents an actual, I don't know, abstract of the significant points of the patent? Their incompetence knows no bounds.
This is getting so bad that I'm starting to think that it's not incompetence but corruption. With the amount of money involved, the ambiguity and the lack of accountability it would not be at all surprising.
But, after all, this is Slashdot, so why be burdened by any actual facts?
Don't let the facts get in the way of trollish over-generalization. Most slashdot readers are well aware of the importance of the claims.
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
Of course, if you don't like the theme as it stands, search your repos for things like "blubuntu" or "tropic".
Yep, both blubuntu-look and tropic-look are there. However, there are multiple themes already installed; just select menu item System/Preferences/Theme. Easy. I prefer the default "Human" theme myself.
---
Don't be a programmer-bureaucrat; someone who substitutes marketing buzzwords and software bloat for verifiable improvements.
The point is that without patents, big companies like Microsoft can easily out muscle and out market little guys with good ideas. With patents, the little guys can win more.
That's the theory. The reality is that until patents deal with multiple, independent simultaneous invention, inventions whose time has come and the complete obviousness that is the average software patent, you're simply wrong.
Patents are a tool that can be used both by big and by small players. And since big players have more financial resources, i.e. lawyers, they can use the tool more and will continue to dominate.
Not to mention the idiocy of thinking that a small government department is capable of acting as a gatekeeper on all of technology, and of trying to legally define "innovative" and "new" on all of technology.
---
Patent proponents: When all they've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
If I get a free game from Gamestop that would otherwise cost me $20 to buy, then the value to the customer is obvious, regardless of how much they paid the schlub who traded/sold it to the store.
No, it is not obvious. If the customer had not intended to purchase it the value to them is zero. In theory they could on-sell it to recover the dollar equivalent but the overhead in time means it really could be valueless to that customer.
That's the problem with "intellectual property" in general. "Value" is on very shaky ground and as a result most reasoning about "intellectual property" is bogus. The value of the second copy, opportunity costs, unrealized losses, network effects, piracy by non-potential-customers diluting value, it's all ill-defined. A mess.
Incidentally, your attempt to equate "value loss to supplier" with "value gain to customer" is also disengenuous. A customer could easily say that a supplier is being cheap if they supply something that is cheap for the supplier to produce, regardless of the potential value to the customer.
---
Like software, intellectual property law is a product of the mind, and can be anything we want it to be. Let's get it right.
It gets to a much wider audience. That in itself is a plus for society. You did say any...
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
... by part of I mean being paid by them to post about them...
Worth emphasizing that means being paid in any way. Meaning money, employment, sub-contract, freebies, early access, media access, future access, anything of value.
Too many weasels claim that being paid in kind is somehow different from being paid directly and doesn't require disclosure.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it can have negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
Don't be so sure.. This is anonymous so it's only indicative but it does show how corruption could happen. And for one of the most important patents ever:
It's widely known that Alexander Graham Bell beat Elisha Gray to the patent office by a mere two hours with his application to patent the telephone. However, ten years after Bell's patent was issued, patent examiner Zenas Wilber admitted in a sworn affadavit that he had taken a $100 bribe from Bell, had taken a loan from Bell's patent attorney, and had given Bell the complete details of Gray's caveat. Hmmmm.... Source: Inventor's Digest, July/August 1998, pages 26-28.
As I said, it's just too easy, there's no checks and balances and there's too much money (i.e. incentive) and anonymity/ambiguity (i.e. no risk) involved.
Good luck writing to your representative.
Thanks.
In the mean time I think the review process is a major step forward.
Well, it's better than nothing but I think it's going to have only a minor effect because it doesn't address a root cause of the problem, that it's far easier to have a bad patent issued than it is to stop one. We'll see.
---
The USA and Europe should harmonize their software patent laws with China and India.
and with WGA/MGA/TC the entire OS and major applications. Plus with automatic update they can change the rules after the sale any time they like. And please, no nonsense about WGA/MGA/TC not being DRM.
---
Unregulated DRM = Total Customer Control = Ultimate Customer Lockin = Death of the free market.
d) A convenient reminder that M$ is still taxing the world $40,000,000,000+ per year for a dozen programs mostly written more than a decade ago with the most difficult bits, the device drivers, being written by third parties. M$ marketing and their astroturfers really wish that people would forget that.
Until they remove their marketing keys from general purpose PC keyboards and stop propaganda like Get the facts the use of "M$" is a very minor response.
People can say what they want about windows but for managing an enterprise network where there are novice users? It's the only way to go.
You give some good advice but this is simply not true. Unix/linux remote management for novice users is different but is every bit as easy/hard as M$Windows remote management. In some ways easier because of better file system semantics and much less need for update reboots. I've done both and as always it depends on the competence of the administrator.
---
I love the free market zealots who think monopoly is a good thing.
To fairly grant a patent, the patent office must be able to understand a) what has already been done b) what is just plain obvious.
True. The legal fiction that a minor government bureacrat would be able to assess all of human knowledge and arbitrarily decide whether something is original is just mind blowing. Scientists spend their entire working lives in very narrow fields and even they sometimes make mistakes. Not to mention the idiocy of allowing a minor, empire building government department to act as gatekeeper on all of technology.
To achieve either you have to be skilled in the art of the subject at hand and that is just not something one could reasonably expect of a patent examiner who must be a generalist.
True.
A community skilled in the art must get involved and I really think this a good thing and could turn the patent system around.
Not a chance. Have you seen how many software patents are being issued? There is absolutely no chance of a comprehensive review of a significant fraction of them. Particularly since the ones who should do the review, the people who do the actual work, quite rightly regard it as legal fiction make work.
No matter how evil you think patents are, they are not going away anytime soon.
So the patent mafia like to claim. The US is only 5% of the world's population. The software patent situation in 95% of the world's population is in flux. With only a bit of luck the USPTO might find itself out in the cold, to the benefit of everybody. Including the US at large.
The best we can do is to better the current situation by supporting efforts such as this.
No, the best we can do is to get our congressional representatives to fix the law so that it actually implements the objectives laid out in the constitution, to also make sure this massive interference in the citizen's business has a scientific basis and maybe send some of the bribed examiners at the USPTO to jail (with the amount of anonymity, ambiguity and money involved it's a certainty there's a lot of corruption going on). These are all unlikely but not impossible.
---
Scientific, evidence based IP law. Now there's a thought.
You are literally arguing from a perspective of self-acknowledged ignorance.
That's it, ignore the points I've made and keep on trying to imply patents are beneficial without evidence.
In smaller words, you start by insulting all knowledge of the topic, and finish with your enlightened opinion.
Here's a hint: Knowledge of patent law has damn all to do with creativity and whether patents do any good or harm. Nobody can know everything and you've just shown a profund ignorance of creativity. I'd be happy to ignore patent lawyers if they stayed out of my business. Now, how about you and other patent boosters stay out of my business? We were getting along just fine until you came along.
There can be no greater demonstration of verbal diarrhea.
That's rich coming from you.
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
My question to everyone is, why is everyone so upset about how long it's taking for Windows Vista to come out?
Easy. M$'s marketers have spent many millions of dollars for years trying to raise expectations and a "need" for Vista. No surprise that some people start complaining when those expectations are delayed and/or unfulfilled.
---
Vista: Billions of marketing words and no delivered product.
Ah, the usual patent booster's response; try to baffle people with voluminous bullshit and then act all surprised when people tell them the fundamentals that bullshit is based on is flawed. Try to understand; the detailed minutiae of how the patent system works is almost completely irrelevant.
Fundamental flaws, including amongst many the problems completely ignoring simultaneous independent invention, inventions whose "time has come", the joke that is the patent mafia's definition of obviousness, the lack of any scientific evidence that patents do any good in any field, the extremely low barrier to entry of software inventions (and thus the almost complete lack of any need of protection), the hundreds of millions of dollars patents cost innocent companies every year and the uncertainty, anger and chilling effect that patents create in innocent parties. The list just goes on and on.
You, like a lot of the patent proponents, appear to have so much invested in the patent system that you can't afford to acknowledge you might be wrong. Sorry, but you are wrong and no amount of logical argument based on false premises is going to change that fact. Try to think in a more sophisticated way about what patents are trying to achieve, what all the costs and benefits are, what the unjustified assumptions are, and don't get lost in the details of patent law.
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
If the patents were vague and ambigous, they would be challenged in a courtroom by the alleged infringer's attorneys under 35 USC 112 and would be found invalid. If they were overbroad, they would be challenged in a courtroom by the alleged infringer's attorneys under 35 USC 102 and 103 and found invalid. We're not talking about PhD thesis caliber concepts here. If the patent is invalid, it will be invalidated by a clever, highly paid infringement defense attorney.
Nonsense. That's just the rare, best case. That is, best case for the patent mafia. Everybody else loses.
---
The patent mafia: When all they've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Slashdot Mirror
Technology has made it trivial to reproduce and distribute the works of others, requiring artificial protections to compensate.
That same technology has made it trivial for creators to create, distribute and sell to the world in seconds at close to zero cost. The fact that many incumbents choose not to use this technology is telling.
Technology is a tool that can be used by all parties. No artificial protections for vested interests required.
---
The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".
This isn't a browser's responsibility, this is the design package's responsibility.
No, just because the development tools can and should be responsible has no bearing on whether the browser should be responsible also. In both cases it is broken code if they silently ignore or create errors.
I think we all should put more pressure on site development tools and hosting sites that use really crappy standards, rather than complain about something that should be for end users, the browser.
If it's not visible in the browser how on earth is the end user going to be able to give feedback to the developer that their website is broken? Warnings, with the ability to disable them where needed, are a good way of closing the loop; making sure that the developer hears about any bugs they field so that they are fixed.
I repeat, silently ignoring broken code, HTML or otherwise, is broken behavior where ever it occurs. Cowboys will try to ignore that fundamental but that's why they're cowboys.
---
Beware deceptive astroturfers.
There's a big difference between silently rendering bad HTML and rendering it with a warning.
Until a browser gives informative warnings by default and that can be switched off if needed, preferably by site, browsers that render broken sites are just that. Broken. Silently acquiescing to broken code is broken behavior. It needs to be visible to be fixed.
---
Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion.
Qdq has been doing it in Spain for a while. For example, search for "Paseo del Prado, 11" in Madrid to see the Prado Museum. Select "Toma ?" to see different views. They appear to have every street address photographed.
You can "walk" through some of the larger cities in Spain with this by clicking the direction arrows below the photographs.
---
Beware deceptive astroturfers.
It shows that there is still some actual talent at MS,
Why do you automatically assume this was developed at M$?
The earliest direct reference I can find on the net is PaX but there are many variations on the general technique of address space layout randomization both before (on networks) and after.
As an embedded developer I'm not actually particularly interested in what Linux flavor you support/test. They're all wrong. As long as you have a lowest-common-denominator tar.gz package with well documented dependencies that's all I want.
I've tweaked my environment to support all the different jobs I do, including running your package. It's configured for my tastes and needs. I want to adapt my process the absolute minimum necessary to run your process. I'd like to install your tar with installwatch and be done with it.
Depending on the complexity of your SDK you probably do not want to vmware it; vmware is a hack that makes it difficult for any program running in it to interact with anything else on the system.
If I were in your shoes I'd set up 3-4 environments (e.g. recent, stable debian/ubuntu, redhat, bsd, solaris), tar an SDK and try it on each platform. If there's anything missing on each platform see if it's in the standard repositories. If it's not add it to your tar and try again. Document as you go.
Incidentally, avoid binary SDK's if you can; source means your customers can solve their own problems if they need to and not waste your time. I've use a lot of different SDK's on Linux/Unix/Windows over the years and the number one problem was old, buggy binaries that were not compatible with my up-to-date development environment. I avoid vendors that make it difficult for me to solve my problems.
---
WGA. Guilty until proven innocent. For millions. Again and again.
Well, try and train some normal everyday office people and see for yourself how quickly people learn when they are already used to something else, and not even 100% comfortable with it either
You're hand waving. I've seen numerous non-computer people do standard office tasks in both Linux and M$Windows. Most hardly even notice the difference. Switching between the Linux and M$Windows is as easy as switching between many web interfaces.
---
Don't be a programmer-bureaucrat; someone who substitutes marketing buzzwords and software bloat for verifiable improvements.
and security.
I still find it a little surprising that any large non-US organization, particularly governments, run non-open software. It's basically just baring their throat to Uncle Sam and M$. A stupid thing to do, particularly when national security is involved.
Those billions that non-US organization might spend on military hardware and/or competing commercially could easily be hobbled if the US government or M$ decided to sniff, corrupt or shutdown the computers that the non-US organization thought they controlled. With history like ECHELON and SIGINT in general, and the US' general "we are powerful, therefore we must be right" attitude, it's not a leap to assume the US has covert operations going on. This is just too easy and too cheap.
Even if the M$ didn't want to cooperate the US government could force them secretly to do so. M$ being a good US corporate citizen they'd probably be happy to cooperate though.
It would not surprise me if this is one of the drivers for TC, making sure the "owner" of the PC doesn't actually have control, even theoretically. The proliferation of botnets and viruses would be convenient cover too.
You can be damn sure that in the name of anti-terrorism and/or anti-pedophilia the US government and M$ have a deniable backdoor in every network connected M$Windows computer on earth. Possibly in the common Linux distributions that are not third party audited too.
They probably don't use the back door much because of the danger of being network sniffed but encrypted and embedded in Microsoft Update on selected PC's there'd be no problem. How sure are you that your computer isn't phoning home with everything you type?
---
Open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.
Why waste our resources on someone when their choice of email makes it obvious that they have no intention of becoming a participating member?
You probably wasted far more resources blocking them than they will ever cost you. People use throwaway email addresses with good reason. Not trusting some anonymous website on the net not to spam until they've proven themselves is one.
---
Don't be a programmer-bureaucrat; someone who substitutes marketing buzzwords and software bloat for verifiable improvements.
If that was the case, though, why hadn't anyone created them yet? Clearly, it wasn't an obvious invention.
For the millionth time; being new is a necessary but not sufficient condition for something being obvious.
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
The abstract means NOTHING.
Gosh, you mean the patent office doesn't make sure that the abstract represents an actual, I don't know, abstract of the significant points of the patent? Their incompetence knows no bounds.
This is getting so bad that I'm starting to think that it's not incompetence but corruption. With the amount of money involved, the ambiguity and the lack of accountability it would not be at all surprising.
But, after all, this is Slashdot, so why be burdened by any actual facts?
Don't let the facts get in the way of trollish over-generalization. Most slashdot readers are well aware of the importance of the claims.
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
Of course, if you don't like the theme as it stands, search your repos for things like "blubuntu" or "tropic".
Yep, both blubuntu-look and tropic-look are there. However, there are multiple themes already installed; just select menu item System/Preferences/Theme. Easy. I prefer the default "Human" theme myself.
---
Don't be a programmer-bureaucrat; someone who substitutes marketing buzzwords and software bloat for verifiable improvements.
The point is that without patents, big companies like Microsoft can easily out muscle and out market little guys with good ideas. With patents, the little guys can win more.
That's the theory. The reality is that until patents deal with multiple, independent simultaneous invention, inventions whose time has come and the complete obviousness that is the average software patent, you're simply wrong.
Patents are a tool that can be used both by big and by small players. And since big players have more financial resources, i.e. lawyers, they can use the tool more and will continue to dominate.
Not to mention the idiocy of thinking that a small government department is capable of acting as a gatekeeper on all of technology, and of trying to legally define "innovative" and "new" on all of technology.
---
Patent proponents: When all they've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
If I get a free game from Gamestop that would otherwise cost me $20 to buy, then the value to the customer is obvious, regardless of how much they paid the schlub who traded/sold it to the store.
No, it is not obvious. If the customer had not intended to purchase it the value to them is zero. In theory they could on-sell it to recover the dollar equivalent but the overhead in time means it really could be valueless to that customer.
That's the problem with "intellectual property" in general. "Value" is on very shaky ground and as a result most reasoning about "intellectual property" is bogus. The value of the second copy, opportunity costs, unrealized losses, network effects, piracy by non-potential-customers diluting value, it's all ill-defined. A mess.
Incidentally, your attempt to equate "value loss to supplier" with "value gain to customer" is also disengenuous. A customer could easily say that a supplier is being cheap if they supply something that is cheap for the supplier to produce, regardless of the potential value to the customer.
---
Like software, intellectual property law is a product of the mind, and can be anything we want it to be. Let's get it right.
It gets to a much wider audience. That in itself is a plus for society. You did say any...
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
Worth emphasizing that means being paid in any way. Meaning money, employment, sub-contract, freebies, early access, media access, future access, anything of value.
Too many weasels claim that being paid in kind is somehow different from being paid directly and doesn't require disclosure.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it can have negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
Bribed examiners?
Give me a break.
Don't be so sure.. This is anonymous so it's only indicative but it does show how corruption could happen. And for one of the most important patents ever:
As I said, it's just too easy, there's no checks and balances and there's too much money (i.e. incentive) and anonymity/ambiguity (i.e. no risk) involved.
Good luck writing to your representative.
Thanks.
In the mean time I think the review process is a major step forward.
Well, it's better than nothing but I think it's going to have only a minor effect because it doesn't address a root cause of the problem, that it's far easier to have a bad patent issued than it is to stop one. We'll see.
---
The USA and Europe should harmonize their software patent laws with China and India.
The DRM is relevant only to media playback,
and with WGA/MGA/TC the entire OS and major applications. Plus with automatic update they can change the rules after the sale any time they like. And please, no nonsense about WGA/MGA/TC not being DRM.
---
Unregulated DRM = Total Customer Control = Ultimate Customer Lockin = Death of the free market.
...
d) A convenient reminder that M$ is still taxing the world $40,000,000,000+ per year for a dozen programs mostly written more than a decade ago with the most difficult bits, the device drivers, being written by third parties. M$ marketing and their astroturfers really wish that people would forget that.
Until they remove their marketing keys from general purpose PC keyboards and stop propaganda like Get the facts the use of "M$" is a very minor response.
---
New game: Spot the lying astroturfer on /.!
People can say what they want about windows but for managing an enterprise network where there are novice users? It's the only way to go.
You give some good advice but this is simply not true. Unix/linux remote management for novice users is different but is every bit as easy/hard as M$Windows remote management. In some ways easier because of better file system semantics and much less need for update reboots. I've done both and as always it depends on the competence of the administrator.
---
I love the free market zealots who think monopoly is a good thing.
To fairly grant a patent, the patent office must be able to understand a) what has already been done b) what is just plain obvious.
True. The legal fiction that a minor government bureacrat would be able to assess all of human knowledge and arbitrarily decide whether something is original is just mind blowing. Scientists spend their entire working lives in very narrow fields and even they sometimes make mistakes. Not to mention the idiocy of allowing a minor, empire building government department to act as gatekeeper on all of technology.
To achieve either you have to be skilled in the art of the subject at hand and that is just not something one could reasonably expect of a patent examiner who must be a generalist.
True.
A community skilled in the art must get involved and I really think this a good thing and could turn the patent system around.
Not a chance. Have you seen how many software patents are being issued? There is absolutely no chance of a comprehensive review of a significant fraction of them. Particularly since the ones who should do the review, the people who do the actual work, quite rightly regard it as legal fiction make work.
No matter how evil you think patents are, they are not going away anytime soon.
So the patent mafia like to claim. The US is only 5% of the world's population. The software patent situation in 95% of the world's population is in flux. With only a bit of luck the USPTO might find itself out in the cold, to the benefit of everybody. Including the US at large.
The best we can do is to better the current situation by supporting efforts such as this.
No, the best we can do is to get our congressional representatives to fix the law so that it actually implements the objectives laid out in the constitution, to also make sure this massive interference in the citizen's business has a scientific basis and maybe send some of the bribed examiners at the USPTO to jail (with the amount of anonymity, ambiguity and money involved it's a certainty there's a lot of corruption going on). These are all unlikely but not impossible.
---
Scientific, evidence based IP law. Now there's a thought.
You are literally arguing from a perspective of self-acknowledged ignorance.
That's it, ignore the points I've made and keep on trying to imply patents are beneficial without evidence.
In smaller words, you start by insulting all knowledge of the topic, and finish with your enlightened opinion.
Here's a hint: Knowledge of patent law has damn all to do with creativity and whether patents do any good or harm. Nobody can know everything and you've just shown a profund ignorance of creativity. I'd be happy to ignore patent lawyers if they stayed out of my business. Now, how about you and other patent boosters stay out of my business? We were getting along just fine until you came along.
There can be no greater demonstration of verbal diarrhea.
That's rich coming from you.
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Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
My question to everyone is, why is everyone so upset about how long it's taking for Windows Vista to come out?
Easy. M$'s marketers have spent many millions of dollars for years trying to raise expectations and a "need" for Vista. No surprise that some people start complaining when those expectations are delayed and/or unfulfilled.
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Vista: Billions of marketing words and no delivered product.
Ah, the usual patent booster's response; try to baffle people with voluminous bullshit and then act all surprised when people tell them the fundamentals that bullshit is based on is flawed. Try to understand; the detailed minutiae of how the patent system works is almost completely irrelevant.
Fundamental flaws, including amongst many the problems completely ignoring simultaneous independent invention, inventions whose "time has come", the joke that is the patent mafia's definition of obviousness, the lack of any scientific evidence that patents do any good in any field, the extremely low barrier to entry of software inventions (and thus the almost complete lack of any need of protection), the hundreds of millions of dollars patents cost innocent companies every year and the uncertainty, anger and chilling effect that patents create in innocent parties. The list just goes on and on.
You, like a lot of the patent proponents, appear to have so much invested in the patent system that you can't afford to acknowledge you might be wrong. Sorry, but you are wrong and no amount of logical argument based on false premises is going to change that fact. Try to think in a more sophisticated way about what patents are trying to achieve, what all the costs and benefits are, what the unjustified assumptions are, and don't get lost in the details of patent law.
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Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
If the patents were vague and ambigous, they would be challenged in a courtroom by the alleged infringer's attorneys under 35 USC 112 and would be found invalid. If they were overbroad, they would be challenged in a courtroom by the alleged infringer's attorneys under 35 USC 102 and 103 and found invalid. We're not talking about PhD thesis caliber concepts here. If the patent is invalid, it will be invalidated by a clever, highly paid infringement defense attorney.
Nonsense. That's just the rare, best case. That is, best case for the patent mafia. Everybody else loses.
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The patent mafia: When all they've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.