The process is only as public as the published information, and it can be damn difficult to reverse-engineer something like a zeolite catalyst (which is one of the typical ones used). So it loses its patentability, but remains a trade secret (so the companies that make it continue to generate revenue).
Plus, it's hard to stay in business using 17 year old technology, especially when it comes to something like catalysts. Every few years someone develops a catalyst that increases the reaction rate by x amount, which saves a ton of money by generating product faster. Zeolites are some of the more benign catalysts, and cheapest. Other catalysts are rare metals like gold, platinum, ruthenium, etc. and are all expensive. And those costly metal catalysts could get poisoned by contaminants (lead, nickel, sulfur) in the crude oil. The refineries have to pay a premium for the best catalysts, but they wouldn't do it if they didn't save money overall.
Longer carbon chains, such as waxes and tar, are the "heavies" in Petroleum-Engineer-speak. The shorter carbon chains are "lights." The best gasoline is isooctane* (eight carbons) but most of the stuff in crude oil is heavier. So these distillation towers are actually catalytic crackers, splitting up the carbon chains into smaller (more valuable) gasoline while separating the reaction products via distillation. The "catalytic" part is where patents come in, and there are a few companies that own most of the useful ones regarding catalysts and operating conditions. UOP comes to mind.
Ideally, I think there should be no software patents at all, since copyright would be a perfectly adequate protection. But given that the US patent office is handing out software patents left and right, I think it's possible for someone to obtain a software patent and not do something evil with it.
In this case, I agree with you that Apple is just stocking its arsenal so they can countersue in future attacks by Micro$oft/SCO/whoever.
So, which is it?
Software patents are EVIL EVIL EVIL
or
Software patents are great for market advantage.
Can you really have it both ways?
Sure!
It's the way the patents are used that can be EVIL EVIL EVIL, as you say. Patents are rights to exclude, so if WINE has a patent, they can easily exclude proprietary software from using it. But they can also allow open source projects to use the patent. I just read a second ago that Apple is trying to patent translucent windows. If they try to enforce their patent to prevent translucent windows in Linux, that would be bad. But if they just use the patent as leverage against Micro$oft, it doesn't bother me any. Microsoft can afford to license a patent or two.
Sodium will ignite when exposed to air or water. Chlorine is an incredibly corrosive and toxic gas. Salt is harmless (in reasonable doses).
The properties of an element contribute to the properties of the compound (e.g., fluorine sucks up electrons, which is why trifluoroacetic acid is so much more acidic than acetic acid / vinegar), but like so much else in life, it's very context-specific.
showing for the first time an unambiguous link between microwave radiation emitted by GSM mobile phones (the most common type worldwide) and brain damage in rats.
That's a bit less dodgy than saying "it's inconclusive" in order to procure more research grants.
I concur. If I don't want someone to get in touch with me, I can go fishing. Not that I ever go fishing, but I could. I used to have a pager, because I could take my sweet time getting back to someone. If I ever do get a cell phone, it'll prolly be off most of the time, then I can check voice mails and get back to people.
Re. cell phone safety--I read a recent study (New Scientist, perhaps?) that showed cell phones cause extreme damage to rat brains. But our skulls are thicker, so it may not matter for humans. Regardless, people who drive and talk on cell phones will die much quicker deaths than if they were to develop brain cancer.
This article is quite typical of the conceptual problem that many people still have with breeding versus genetic "manipulation". Both methods are means to the same end, ergo the introduction of desired genes or variations thereof into an organism.
What you're saying is true--that both breeding and inserting genes into an organism other ways both modify the genome, but that doesn't mean they have "the same end." We don't know nearly enough about genetics to say that. Look at the differences between cloned sheep and naturally-born sheep. They are genetically identical, yet the clones end up having all sorts of health problems. Now the health of the modified plant is unimportant with respect to human health, but it could be the tip of the iceberg. What if some of these modified foods produce poison, but only under stress? We wouldn't find out until there was a drought/freeze and suddenly a whole field of poisonous corn makes its way into the food supply.
Breeding takes longer and cannot be controlled to the same extent.
True. And all other concerns aside, this is a very good argument for genetically modified organisms.
And don't start about the dangers of vectors, unwanted integration and crap like that. Nature does that every single minute (ever heard of transposons?) and nobody is complaining about that. So, "Frankenfood"? I think not.
All right, I'm sorry, but this last part is utter bullshit. No one is complaining about vectors or unwanted integration? What about all those antibiotic-resistant bacteria that spread around their genes for beta-lactamases? Ever heard of methicillin-resistant-S.-aureus (MRSA)? It's fast becoming the major pathogen people get while in the hospital, and it's a bitch to cure. This is the "flesh-eating bacteria" you see on tv. And the dangers of vectors? There is a slim (but not nil) chance of vectors sticking around, and later integrating into the human genome. In the future that might be beneficial, but right now human gene therapy has had no successes. One prominent failure was the gene therapy for immunodeficient children who ended up
contracting leukemia. I'd sure complain if my food gave me cancer.
I personally think Monsanto is one of the most evil corporations on the planet. Besides their foray into genetically modified food (I have a problem with their patents more than the final products), they are the ones who invented Nutra Sweet (a.k.a aspartame, a tripeptide with who knows what kind of long-term effects). Of course there are many devoted and ethical scientists working there, too, but the corporation as a whole has an atrocious track record.
The worst thing about the cross pollinated crops in this Canadian farmer's field was that he never had any intention of growing Monsanto's corn, but the wind blew pollen into his field, and somehow the courts decided he was responsible. How asinine.
Someone pointed out that it could go much further, depending on how the energy was stored. But if the car were to go, say, ten times further than it was wound up, you'd have to put in ten times as much energy as it would take to push it. I'm ignoring hills, for the sake of simplicity.
At any rate, the bottom line is that what this guy said,
"It was - or is - the world's first self-propelled vehicle," said Paolo Galluzzi, director of the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence, who oversaw the project.
is total BS. It isn't self-propelled anymore than one of those wind-up toy cars. It's propelled by whoever winds it. I can't think of any practical uses for such a car, either. Maybe you could roll down a hill backwards, then turn the car around at the bottom and take off. But how would you ever get back up the hill?
You're naive if you think a TCP vulnerability and Windows security problems have nothing to do with each other. There are people who use Windows boxes as routers or servers. And I think the point was that admins are already swamped fixing the existing Windows exploits, thereby making this new flaw an even bigger deal.
Trolls like to play the martyr--"You're trying to cover up what I'm saying because it's true; reply to my posts instead of modding me down." Well here's your reply, bitch. When Micro$oft's crappy software allows vulnerable machines to act as spam relays, or spread worms around the internet, everyone suffers. No matter what OS they use.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who remembers reading in The Register about the
crap the British government tried to pull last year,
regarding the public's opinion on national ID cards. Most of the response was negative, so Blair et. al. decided that the emails (which were more negative than the snail mails, I suppose) did not count. So email at your own risk.
As a disclaimer, the main bureaucrat behind this email scandal was
David Blunkett, who is arguably the Ashcroft of the UK.
For a corporation, income is defined (more or less) as profit. In other words, company expenses are deducted from taxes. This is how multi-national corporations set up triangle trading schemes.
In case you aren't familiar with this tax-evasion technique, a corporation sets up a shell subsidiary (in name, an independent entity) is some place like the bahamas. The third part of the triangle is in the country that supplies the raw materials. Say I'm making shoes, and sell them for $100 a pair. Ordinarily that would mean a lot of profit for me, so to lower my apparent profit, I buy the raw materials for $90 from myself (the bahamas subsidiary). The bahamas subsidiary, however, bought the raw materials for $9, not $90, from somewhere in argentina. The US-registered corporation in fact makes a profit of $91 per pair of shoes (less labor and other expenses), but appears to have only made $10 profit per pair. The actual income is in the bahama shell, which has no obligation to pay US taxes.
How does this tie into income taxes? Well, ordinary people don't pay income taxes; they pay wage taxes, which are not the same. If I am allowed to deduct the cost of groceries, rent, gas, tuition, and healthcare, then I'll glad pay 30% tax on whatever's leftover.
Apple has done everything in their power to make developing software for OS X as easy as possible. There's the tutorial for the "Currency Exchanger" program, to get started with Project Builder, and there is always to option to throw together a shell script if the whole build process is too scary.
I don't know shit about programming, but I'm learning. And having a bash shell, with actually useful commands, is really helpful to that goal. So many people don't understand the appeal of a command line, or think that you have to pick a nice GUI or a nice CLI, but that's bullshit. Someone actually asked why I would care about the GUI if I spend so much time with the command line. It seems obvious to me--I can carry on everyday operations with apps familiar to me, but can craft more and more complex helper apps/scripts in my free time. Much simpler than rebooting into Linux when I feel like experimenting, then getting frustrated that I can't burn a CD because the procedure is too complex and having to reboot into a more idiot-proof OS. I welcome any enhancement that makes development easier for the ignorant (like me), and avoids rebooting.
Oh, and I don't want to hear anyone try to compare Windows' cmd.exe with a bash shell. I do use the Windows command line, but it's a total cripple compared to any UNIX shell. Sure there's Cygwin and Mingwin (or something like that), but they aren't very integrated.
This is similar to the argument that the EU tried recently . ..
That argument is pure rubbish. If a device is mostly software, then Copyright already provides more than enough protection for your "invention". Your competitors must either license from you or do the hard work themselves from scratch.
So do you think what I said is rubbish, too? I'm not arguing for software patents--just process patents for stuff not protected by copyright (or copyleft). Should a process be copyrighted, when it's the algorithm that is important (rather than syntax)?
You are completely right, in some cases. Like DNA/genes. Should a sequence be patentable? People have already patented a breast cancer gene, which has prevented valuable research due to someone's greed. But what if someone mutated a naturally-occurring gene to produce a protein with extraordinary properties? Do the "rules" apply here? What if it's a completely invented DNA sequence that encodes the protein? Should the work done to create that protein be unrewarded? Or would it be better for the discoverers/inventors to keep the sequence under lock and key, like the Coca-Cola recipe, so no one will be able to benefit from it for free, ever?
And the logical extension of your claim is that circuits can't be patentable since they are composed of capacitors, resistors and inductors, all of which "behave" according to mother nature's rules. Or is there some obvious boundary that I've overlooked?
The existing rules we have about patents are not so bad, but they certainly aren't applied well. A patent cannot be obvious (check). A patent must be new, and of value (check). But how are these criteria to be interpreted? The only simple answer--to bar all intellectual property--doesn't apply to most of the world, because we are not communists. We agree intellectual property exists, in general, but we disagree about how it is to be managed.
I don't see a clear distinction between the process and the machine, as stated by you. If the "machine" is actually an entire chemical plant, then is it patentable? If every step of the way uses parts that have been around forever (heat exchangers, pumps, stirrers, flash drums, etc.) then is it patentable? What if the sequence of several well-known steps, is the crucial element, because an intermediate material is destoyed/never produced when the sequence is different?
I agree, the line is shady, but perhaps a better solution than not allowing such patents is to have different time periods for different types of patents. Like 2-3 years for software patents, 10 years for biological patents, and different amounts of time for other types. It's pretty arbitrary, but I do think some sort of patent system should exist, if for no reason but to protect small inventors/businesses (who would otherwise have no leverage to keep established businesses from taking the idea and running with it).
People refuse to allow our governments to pay competitive salaries and then are upset when they have to stand in line because some clerk is completely incompetent. You get what you pay for!
I would love to pay government employees competitive salaries (though not exorbitant), but you're assuming "people refuse" to allow the government to do that. How so? If you mean people don't like tax hikes, you're right. But the reason is not necessarily because people are stingy or don't want to pay government employees fairly--it's because governments are notorious for wasting money. Do you really think allocating more money to the patent office will result in higher salaries? It may not even bring more jobs! What if all the extra money is used exclusively for decrepit equipment? And that's an example of a wise use of funds. It could very well go to landscaping of the executive bathroom, for all we know.
Let me vote on an itemized budget, and I'll gladly put money where I think it's deserved. I guarantee it won't go to corporate subsidies, or offense spending, or tax breaks for those who make over $1 million a year.
If the patent office is still run the same way as it is now (with the quantity of approvals vs. quality), this will be worthless. Only with true reforms of the patent system (non-obvious patents, abolishment of software patents, protection of inventions, not algorithms) will the patent office really be reformed.
(emphasis mine)
I get your gist, but have to disagree on a slight technicality: you mean software algorithms, I assume, because the word "algorithm" can constitute all sorts of processes that I believe should be protected by patents. If I come up with a process to cheaply digest organic matter into hydrocarbon chains (i.e., oil), and the temperature, pressure, composition etc. are all crucial to this process, how are those parameters and that sequence of reactions different from an algorithm? But when the algorithms involve manipulating numbers, rather than molecules, I certainly agree with you.
Multi-button mice were not new to OS X, I agree--they were just one of the problems I had with Macs that eventually go fixed. But there's still no multi-button trackpad. My complaint, that Macs used to not have multi-button mice, is completely accurate, so sod off yourself.
I think I'm part of a new subcategory of Mac owners--I didn't get one until OS X 10.1, and so have no desire to run OS 9 or Classic apps. There were three factors that made me get my Powerbook:
1 -- Finally can have a multi-button mouse (though it is a Logitech, and the trackpad still only has one button)
2 -- Protected memory. I was so freaking sick of ol' Crashy McGee, as I nicknamed my Windows 2000 box (and that was WAY better than 98). I took care of that machine, too, but every so often the kernel seemed to spontaneously get corrupted. That's a hell of a lot worse than the proverbial BSOD. I'd have to boot into Linux just to fix Windows! But before OS X, Macs didn't have such great stability, either.
3 -- Built-in command-line-interface. There's nothing I hate more than being slave to my mouse. If your Windows mouse doesn't work, you're screwed. Try navigating and performing normal tasks with only the keyboard. Unless you have the foresight to enable all that handicapped-access stuff, which most people don't. And I can ssh into my shell account, where I still check my mail with pine. Not that I'm some spectacular programmer (I tinker with stuff for fun, but no formal experience), but pine works just fine for email. Why does everything need to be in HTML? Why do I need stupid pictures or e-cards?
Anyway, not all Mac users are nostalgic for the old OSes; some of us just want a Unix box with a consistent and functional GUI. Not that the history wouldn't be of interest to any long-time Mac user, but it isn't interesting to me except as a curiosity.
What a perfect example of where government REGULATION would have been helpful.
Just a few examples of how the California Enron crisis could have been avoided:
1) Campaign finance reform. After all, do you think Enron would have been able to engineer deregulation legislation in California without plenty of campaign donations?
2) Death penalty for corporations. After all, they are "persons," right? Why should they have all the advantages of being "persons" but none of the disadvantages? If Enron were "executed," dissolved completely and its board of directors never allowed to serve on another board again, I do believe that would serve as a deterrent. As for the regular old death penalty, well, that's a different story. Corporate bigwigs are generally more cautious than common violent criminals (which is why white collar crooks are harder to catch), so would probably be less likely to participate in a scandal that had REAL repercussions, not a slap on the wrist.
3) Tax refunds for energy corporations that invest in renewable energy like wind, solar, thermal depolymerization (if it really works), etc. I know this is sort of like subsidization, but considering how little corporations pay in taxes, the health benefits alone of cleaner air should compensate the taxpayers.
4) Price caps, like California used to have.
I'm not saying public utilities don't work, just that your argument doesn't really hold water. An analogus argument: there exist some private schools that are worse than some public schools, so public schools are always better. Or, the mob-controlled private waste management companies would be better run by the government, so the government should run all waste management companies. Citing an incompetent private industry, like the California energy producers, is just setting up a straw man. I'm sure there are private energy companies that could do a much better job than your public utility, if they weren't given free reign to rip-off the consumers.
Re. your question--I think it's simple. ICANN is the lesser of two evils. Being swayed by corporate interests is bad, but not as bad as when the corporate interest is yourself (as is the case with Verisign).
Having said that, I don't think making it a gov't institution would solve anything. There have been many situations where gov't regulation has helped us, but when has the gov't taken over a previously private role and done a better job?
Although the free market can't solve every problem, this seems like a case where elegant legislation might make the difference. Now, Verisign has a monopoly on.com domain registration. But why should they? Shouldn't that position be open for bidding? Or have term limits? If a company only has a short window of time in which it controls domain registration, or if there are repercussions for abusing its power, that company will likely be cautious about enacting drastic infrastructure changes of the type Verisign is implementing.
(By the way, people often use the $ as a derogatory marker for an entity they don't like, such as Micro$oft or the Church of $cientology, so why not Veri$ign as well?)
Slashdot Mirror
Plus, it's hard to stay in business using 17 year old technology, especially when it comes to something like catalysts. Every few years someone develops a catalyst that increases the reaction rate by x amount, which saves a ton of money by generating product faster. Zeolites are some of the more benign catalysts, and cheapest. Other catalysts are rare metals like gold, platinum, ruthenium, etc. and are all expensive. And those costly metal catalysts could get poisoned by contaminants (lead, nickel, sulfur) in the crude oil. The refineries have to pay a premium for the best catalysts, but they wouldn't do it if they didn't save money overall.
Longer carbon chains, such as waxes and tar, are the "heavies" in Petroleum-Engineer-speak. The shorter carbon chains are "lights." The best gasoline is isooctane* (eight carbons) but most of the stuff in crude oil is heavier. So these distillation towers are actually catalytic crackers, splitting up the carbon chains into smaller (more valuable) gasoline while separating the reaction products via distillation. The "catalytic" part is where patents come in, and there are a few companies that own most of the useful ones regarding catalysts and operating conditions. UOP comes to mind.
In this case, I agree with you that Apple is just stocking its arsenal so they can countersue in future attacks by Micro$oft/SCO/whoever.
Software patents are EVIL EVIL EVIL
or
Software patents are great for market advantage.
Can you really have it both ways?
Sure!
It's the way the patents are used that can be EVIL EVIL EVIL, as you say. Patents are rights to exclude, so if WINE has a patent, they can easily exclude proprietary software from using it. But they can also allow open source projects to use the patent. I just read a second ago that Apple is trying to patent translucent windows. If they try to enforce their patent to prevent translucent windows in Linux, that would be bad. But if they just use the patent as leverage against Micro$oft, it doesn't bother me any. Microsoft can afford to license a patent or two.
The properties of an element contribute to the properties of the compound (e.g., fluorine sucks up electrons, which is why trifluoroacetic acid is so much more acidic than acetic acid / vinegar), but like so much else in life, it's very context-specific.
Yes, it's in rats, but this study is
That's a bit less dodgy than saying "it's inconclusive" in order to procure more research grants.Re. cell phone safety--I read a recent study (New Scientist, perhaps?) that showed cell phones cause extreme damage to rat brains. But our skulls are thicker, so it may not matter for humans. Regardless, people who drive and talk on cell phones will die much quicker deaths than if they were to develop brain cancer.
Linux is free and, depending on the outcome of the SCO lawsuit, is likely to stay that way.
WTF?! Do they have to say that now, in the press?
Is this going to be like OJ and "allegedly?"
I wish SCO would go ahead and lose its lawsuits and die.
Wired got scooped on this by a couple days by The New Scientist, if you want to read about it there.
What you're saying is true--that both breeding and inserting genes into an organism other ways both modify the genome, but that doesn't mean they have "the same end." We don't know nearly enough about genetics to say that. Look at the differences between cloned sheep and naturally-born sheep. They are genetically identical, yet the clones end up having all sorts of health problems. Now the health of the modified plant is unimportant with respect to human health, but it could be the tip of the iceberg. What if some of these modified foods produce poison, but only under stress? We wouldn't find out until there was a drought/freeze and suddenly a whole field of poisonous corn makes its way into the food supply.
Breeding takes longer and cannot be controlled to the same extent.
True. And all other concerns aside, this is a very good argument for genetically modified organisms.
And don't start about the dangers of vectors, unwanted integration and crap like that. Nature does that every single minute (ever heard of transposons?) and nobody is complaining about that. So, "Frankenfood"? I think not.
All right, I'm sorry, but this last part is utter bullshit. No one is complaining about vectors or unwanted integration? What about all those antibiotic-resistant bacteria that spread around their genes for beta-lactamases? Ever heard of methicillin-resistant-S.-aureus (MRSA)? It's fast becoming the major pathogen people get while in the hospital, and it's a bitch to cure. This is the "flesh-eating bacteria" you see on tv. And the dangers of vectors? There is a slim (but not nil) chance of vectors sticking around, and later integrating into the human genome. In the future that might be beneficial, but right now human gene therapy has had no successes. One prominent failure was the gene therapy for immunodeficient children who ended up contracting leukemia. I'd sure complain if my food gave me cancer.
I personally think Monsanto is one of the most evil corporations on the planet. Besides their foray into genetically modified food (I have a problem with their patents more than the final products), they are the ones who invented Nutra Sweet (a.k.a aspartame, a tripeptide with who knows what kind of long-term effects). Of course there are many devoted and ethical scientists working there, too, but the corporation as a whole has an atrocious track record.
The worst thing about the cross pollinated crops in this Canadian farmer's field was that he never had any intention of growing Monsanto's corn, but the wind blew pollen into his field, and somehow the courts decided he was responsible. How asinine.
At any rate, the bottom line is that what this guy said,
"It was - or is - the world's first self-propelled vehicle," said Paolo Galluzzi, director of the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence, who oversaw the project.
is total BS. It isn't self-propelled anymore than one of those wind-up toy cars. It's propelled by whoever winds it. I can't think of any practical uses for such a car, either. Maybe you could roll down a hill backwards, then turn the car around at the bottom and take off. But how would you ever get back up the hill?
Trolls like to play the martyr--"You're trying to cover up what I'm saying because it's true; reply to my posts instead of modding me down." Well here's your reply, bitch. When Micro$oft's crappy software allows vulnerable machines to act as spam relays, or spread worms around the internet, everyone suffers. No matter what OS they use.
As a disclaimer, the main bureaucrat behind this email scandal was David Blunkett, who is arguably the Ashcroft of the UK.
In case you aren't familiar with this tax-evasion technique, a corporation sets up a shell subsidiary (in name, an independent entity) is some place like the bahamas. The third part of the triangle is in the country that supplies the raw materials. Say I'm making shoes, and sell them for $100 a pair. Ordinarily that would mean a lot of profit for me, so to lower my apparent profit, I buy the raw materials for $90 from myself (the bahamas subsidiary). The bahamas subsidiary, however, bought the raw materials for $9, not $90, from somewhere in argentina. The US-registered corporation in fact makes a profit of $91 per pair of shoes (less labor and other expenses), but appears to have only made $10 profit per pair. The actual income is in the bahama shell, which has no obligation to pay US taxes.
How does this tie into income taxes? Well, ordinary people don't pay income taxes; they pay wage taxes, which are not the same. If I am allowed to deduct the cost of groceries, rent, gas, tuition, and healthcare, then I'll glad pay 30% tax on whatever's leftover.
I don't know shit about programming, but I'm learning. And having a bash shell, with actually useful commands, is really helpful to that goal. So many people don't understand the appeal of a command line, or think that you have to pick a nice GUI or a nice CLI, but that's bullshit. Someone actually asked why I would care about the GUI if I spend so much time with the command line. It seems obvious to me--I can carry on everyday operations with apps familiar to me, but can craft more and more complex helper apps/scripts in my free time. Much simpler than rebooting into Linux when I feel like experimenting, then getting frustrated that I can't burn a CD because the procedure is too complex and having to reboot into a more idiot-proof OS. I welcome any enhancement that makes development easier for the ignorant (like me), and avoids rebooting.
Oh, and I don't want to hear anyone try to compare Windows' cmd.exe with a bash shell. I do use the Windows command line, but it's a total cripple compared to any UNIX shell. Sure there's Cygwin and Mingwin (or something like that), but they aren't very integrated.
That argument is pure rubbish. If a device is mostly software, then Copyright already provides more than enough protection for your "invention". Your competitors must either license from you or do the hard work themselves from scratch.
So do you think what I said is rubbish, too? I'm not arguing for software patents--just process patents for stuff not protected by copyright (or copyleft). Should a process be copyrighted, when it's the algorithm that is important (rather than syntax)?
And the logical extension of your claim is that circuits can't be patentable since they are composed of capacitors, resistors and inductors, all of which "behave" according to mother nature's rules. Or is there some obvious boundary that I've overlooked?
The existing rules we have about patents are not so bad, but they certainly aren't applied well. A patent cannot be obvious (check). A patent must be new, and of value (check). But how are these criteria to be interpreted? The only simple answer--to bar all intellectual property--doesn't apply to most of the world, because we are not communists. We agree intellectual property exists, in general, but we disagree about how it is to be managed.
I agree, the line is shady, but perhaps a better solution than not allowing such patents is to have different time periods for different types of patents. Like 2-3 years for software patents, 10 years for biological patents, and different amounts of time for other types. It's pretty arbitrary, but I do think some sort of patent system should exist, if for no reason but to protect small inventors/businesses (who would otherwise have no leverage to keep established businesses from taking the idea and running with it).
I would love to pay government employees competitive salaries (though not exorbitant), but you're assuming "people refuse" to allow the government to do that. How so? If you mean people don't like tax hikes, you're right. But the reason is not necessarily because people are stingy or don't want to pay government employees fairly--it's because governments are notorious for wasting money. Do you really think allocating more money to the patent office will result in higher salaries? It may not even bring more jobs! What if all the extra money is used exclusively for decrepit equipment? And that's an example of a wise use of funds. It could very well go to landscaping of the executive bathroom, for all we know.
Let me vote on an itemized budget, and I'll gladly put money where I think it's deserved. I guarantee it won't go to corporate subsidies, or offense spending, or tax breaks for those who make over $1 million a year.
(emphasis mine)
I get your gist, but have to disagree on a slight technicality: you mean software algorithms, I assume, because the word "algorithm" can constitute all sorts of processes that I believe should be protected by patents. If I come up with a process to cheaply digest organic matter into hydrocarbon chains (i.e., oil), and the temperature, pressure, composition etc. are all crucial to this process, how are those parameters and that sequence of reactions different from an algorithm? But when the algorithms involve manipulating numbers, rather than molecules, I certainly agree with you.
Multi-button mice were not new to OS X, I agree--they were just one of the problems I had with Macs that eventually go fixed. But there's still no multi-button trackpad. My complaint, that Macs used to not have multi-button mice, is completely accurate, so sod off yourself.
1 -- Finally can have a multi-button mouse (though it is a Logitech, and the trackpad still only has one button)
2 -- Protected memory. I was so freaking sick of ol' Crashy McGee, as I nicknamed my Windows 2000 box (and that was WAY better than 98). I took care of that machine, too, but every so often the kernel seemed to spontaneously get corrupted. That's a hell of a lot worse than the proverbial BSOD. I'd have to boot into Linux just to fix Windows! But before OS X, Macs didn't have such great stability, either.
3 -- Built-in command-line-interface. There's nothing I hate more than being slave to my mouse. If your Windows mouse doesn't work, you're screwed. Try navigating and performing normal tasks with only the keyboard. Unless you have the foresight to enable all that handicapped-access stuff, which most people don't. And I can ssh into my shell account, where I still check my mail with pine. Not that I'm some spectacular programmer (I tinker with stuff for fun, but no formal experience), but pine works just fine for email. Why does everything need to be in HTML? Why do I need stupid pictures or e-cards?
Anyway, not all Mac users are nostalgic for the old OSes; some of us just want a Unix box with a consistent and functional GUI. Not that the history wouldn't be of interest to any long-time Mac user, but it isn't interesting to me except as a curiosity.
Just a few examples of how the California Enron crisis could have been avoided:
1) Campaign finance reform. After all, do you think Enron would have been able to engineer deregulation legislation in California without plenty of campaign donations?
2) Death penalty for corporations. After all, they are "persons," right? Why should they have all the advantages of being "persons" but none of the disadvantages? If Enron were "executed," dissolved completely and its board of directors never allowed to serve on another board again, I do believe that would serve as a deterrent. As for the regular old death penalty, well, that's a different story. Corporate bigwigs are generally more cautious than common violent criminals (which is why white collar crooks are harder to catch), so would probably be less likely to participate in a scandal that had REAL repercussions, not a slap on the wrist.
3) Tax refunds for energy corporations that invest in renewable energy like wind, solar, thermal depolymerization (if it really works), etc. I know this is sort of like subsidization, but considering how little corporations pay in taxes, the health benefits alone of cleaner air should compensate the taxpayers.
4) Price caps, like California used to have.
I'm not saying public utilities don't work, just that your argument doesn't really hold water. An analogus argument: there exist some private schools that are worse than some public schools, so public schools are always better. Or, the mob-controlled private waste management companies would be better run by the government, so the government should run all waste management companies. Citing an incompetent private industry, like the California energy producers, is just setting up a straw man. I'm sure there are private energy companies that could do a much better job than your public utility, if they weren't given free reign to rip-off the consumers.
Having said that, I don't think making it a gov't institution would solve anything. There have been many situations where gov't regulation has helped us, but when has the gov't taken over a previously private role and done a better job?
Although the free market can't solve every problem, this seems like a case where elegant legislation might make the difference. Now, Verisign has a monopoly on .com domain registration. But why should they? Shouldn't that position be open for bidding? Or have term limits? If a company only has a short window of time in which it controls domain registration, or if there are repercussions for abusing its power, that company will likely be cautious about enacting drastic infrastructure changes of the type Verisign is implementing.
(By the way, people often use the $ as a derogatory marker for an entity they don't like, such as Micro$oft or the Church of $cientology, so why not Veri$ign as well?)