Well, websites are used as a collaborative medium. Creating a website makes it easier to communicate with others, share documents, attract new developers, etc...
What's the long-term plan on the Linux side? Is KDE going to incorporate some of the features of Longhorn (like true 3D desktops)? Is Linux going to stick with its hierarchial filename system or is it going to use a database-type system?
Does anyone know of the 5-year plan for GNU/Linux and KDE in particular?
Actually, these product annoucements DO affect many companies. What you are saying about changes is true, but I'm sure software companies (like ISVs) plan around these things. These things may not impact day to day operations, but it wouldn't surprise me if the long term plans (assuming companies have them:) ) will be based on these product annoucements.
Tell me about it:( I'm unemployed so I read a lot of job postings. It is funny, or rather sad, how many jobs ask for stuff which has absolutely nothing to do with the job. Already, I see jobs asking for 2-3 years C# experience (where am I supposed to get the experience when hardly anyone has rolled out any thing major with C#)? The worst thing is that the people sorting through resumes (typically HR or managers) have no idea what these things are. I ask how a particular technology (that is required in the job description) is used, and they have no idea...
I don't think many people upgraded to Windows 2000 instead of ME. I'm not an expert on this stuff but most people just didn't upgrade to ME. The features in ME vs 98SE was very small.
The people who bought 2000 were mostly offices who were in the process of migrating. All the offices jumped to 2000 (they had to; win NT was very old).
The customer base for 2000 is different from ME/98. One is the office/business customers who upgrade for server-oriented features, while the home users and the rest (eg. small businesses) upgrade for new features.
ME, quite simply, was a complete waste of time for everyone--including the home users who it is targetted at. There was like ZERO reasons (I'm exaggerating) to upgrade to that.
There are a couple of reasons your example is poor. First of all, what you are saying will make no sense if EVERYONE (or a large number of people) own guns. In such a case, the criminal will choose anyone. Your example presupposes that one person is not armed. Unless your idea of deterrence is for a FEW people to be armed while the rest aren't, it won't work.
Secondly, the person has to "advertise" the fact that they are armed. If you don't have a sign saying "protected by armed residents" it won't work. This may or may not work. How many criminals break into houses with stickers saying "protected by Alarm Force (or whatever)?"
Lastly...this is the main reason actually... a criminal that wants to harm you, they will. You can't stop it. Arming yourself just gives you a fake sense of safety. A criminal will simply use smarter techniques to defeat those that are armed. This is just like defeating a car alarm. Car protection has increased a hundread fold (if not more) over the decades. Yet cars are stolen as much as they always were.
If you want to own guns, fine; but it's not going to protect you...
---OFF-TOPIC---
BTW, your website sucks... it is IMPOSSIBLE to read the text on your site. Either lighten the background colour or lighten the foreground colour...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Re:moving towards bloatware or are these important
on
C# 2.0 Spec Released
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Removing something is very difficult. In fact, it is not recommended (unless it is a serious flaw or bug). There may be millions of developers using a particular feature or programming technique that is "bad". If you go and remove it, it could adversely affect all these programmers and their existing code. This is one reason why companies don't really remove features. Backward compatibility in software is absolutely crucial (especially when you force developers to upgrade to new versions all the time).
The best thing to do is to "phase" out the undesired feature by not recommending it, not featuring it prominently in books, shifting features into optional components that must be installed, etc.
I know this isn't exactly the ideal way to do things but I see no other way. I mean, if I was responsible for Visual Studio (or C# specifications), I would not remove features. Who knows who is using a particlar feature?
Certainly, bitching about it on Slashdot won't do a damned thing.
Well, it DOES have an impact. This is a message board and people exchange ideas. In general, people improve their knowledge or refine their thoughts. This will impact the person whether they are conscious of it or not. For instance, the opinions and justifications by the pro gun-rights people may impact a person's thought one way or another. And when these people go to vote or attempt to excercise their power to vote (quite frankly, I think the electoral system is a bogus system to satisfy the masses and keep the elites in power--but that's another story) then they will impact things.
On top of all that, don't forget that there may be "influential" people reading these boards, as well as people will become "influential" in the future. A future Bill Gates might be reading these boards; or maybe a future Karl Marx; or a George Orwell; or Ayn Rand; or Stephen Hawking; or George "I'm addicted to oil" Bush;)
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OFF-TOPIC
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I checked out your homepage. Nice photographs:) Some thoughts...
Are they all real or did you modify some of them?
You should include a much larger picture so that people can use it as a background (although, I don't know if you want your stuff used as a background).
You should also, perhaps, include a brief description (a few sentences to a paragraph). You could either describe the location or what compelled you to take the picture:)
I like the 'Ethereality' work. Is that a real picture? It looks so SURREAL. The pinkish haze makes it look like an alternate world:)
Escape from LA? Man, I'm sure there are other movies--which don't suck--that describe the phenomenon better... Escape from LA: one of the worst movies I have seen:(
That might be a wise decision for a business but how about home? I imagine that the premium paid for SCSI (for home users) is not worth it. After all, a CD-ROM drive from 10 years ago is pretty much obsolete.
After you 'went and checked your car' comment, I don't know if that was a sarcastic remark or a hypocritical one but anyway...
I'm not saying it should be mandated that these be installed in every single vehicle manufactured, but I see no reason why they shouldn't be admitted as evidence in a trial. Perhaps it will make people think twice before speeding like maniacs.
The problem is that this will never work. Those that want to carry out the crime, will. You'll end up with the vulnerable (usually the poor and uneducated) being jailed while many others get away with it. For instance, how much do you want to bet that rich people, criminals, etc will mod their cars or hamper the device in some manner? As a matter of fact, the original poster even alluded to this. It will not surprise me if the high end cars (only affordable by the rich) won't have this feature (in 10 years) while all the low-end ones will.
Attempting to stop speeding by using black boxes is like trying to stop terrorism by invading Iraq... we all know who ends up paying the price--and it isn't the criminals.
Guns are tools which are used for deterrence, among other things.
Would you care to explain how a gun is used for DETERRENCE? I can see you saying it is used for "defense" but not deterrence. If it were really deterrence then everyone would own a gun and no one would be attacked.
I find it funny that your France is Occupied Germany page has no new postings after the war. Is it because everything that you believed (from the Bush adiministration) is a bunch of lies? Are you still having trouble getting over the lies? Reading some of your posts, it seems 90% of your opinions are false...unless, of course, you still believe...
Why do you say that? What does going public have to do with anything? The stuff you said happens when the company is private as well--except the details are kept behind closed doors. Do you think the private investors don't worry about "numbers" and "growth".
Besides, if what you are saying is true, why are nearly all the largest companies public? How many of the top 500 companies are private? Very few. If private companies are truly more innovative, they will crush these large public companies (as capitalist theory claims). It hasn't happened so far.
I think you are mistaking SIZE of a company with going public. Perhaps smaller (and medium sized) comapnies are innovative but that's all.
One of the reasons--if not the most important reason--a company goes public is to raise capital. Often, firms can't raise enough money by staying private. Capital, under capitalism, is THE most important thing (Karl Marx didn't call his book Das Kapital without a reason:) ). If Google, or similar company, did not go public, I highly doubt it will grow into a large corporation. You are never going to get the billions necessary to monopolize your markets and take on large scale projects.
Presumably the auction will set a price very close to what it will be trading at when shares become available through traditional channels, so why bother?
The price of a "normal" IPO is set at what is believed to be the true value of the firm. According to finance theory, the "final" IPO price should end up at a similar value to that of the inital offering. Finance experts and economists don't really know very well why the price shoots up so high. Some say it is based on speculation, hope, etc. I personally believe that the price shoots up because of pump&dump "scams" and hype brought on by investment bankers. You'll find that most stocks end up close to or below the IPO price.
So, when you say that people can't make money off pumping up the IPO price (as they usually do), it doesn't mean much. The price increase is not "justifiable". In that respect, I don't think there is any difference between an auction IPO and the "traditional" IPO.
According to capitalist theory (i.e. finance portion) it doesn't matter what companies do--as long as it is not something illegal (like fraud). The market will sort it out. If people think a company is not worth it, why would they buy it? (don't answer that question please:) ).
Of course, being the anti-capitalist that I am, stock markets are the biggest "scam" since kings/queens started printing money and taxing the peasents.
The worst thing about OOo is not features but something else: COMPATIBILITY with MS Office. Linux is my main operating system (home) and have never had to reboot to Windows (I am a heavy user of my PC so this says something), except when you need to send out a DOC format document (eg. applying for jobs; resumes). OOo still isn't perfect so I need to at least check the DOC file to make sure it opens up properly in Office:(
Of course, the ideal situation would be when employers start accepting PDF, HTML, or something like that. Right now they accept TXT and RTF (usually) but I don't want to take a chance with HR types (who may be influenced by formatting and fonts more than what's on the document:( ) so text formats are out. The fact that I have been unemployed for so long;( means that this is SO CRUCIAL.
Other than the situation I mentioned above, OOo is great (for average/moderate user). I haven't used many of the key features (as I would in a work envrionment) but things look fine. Things I haven't tested include mail merge (or any interaction with external data sources), and scripts (not sure how the JavaScript thingie is).
I think the best thing that can be done to OOo (on top of the problem I mentioned), is to simplify the software a bit more and add better help (help is seriously weak and I don't know how many newbies will be lost, not for anything major but for the little things that differ from MS Office).
That's the thinking of ALL for-profit companies so what's your point? Executives at Apple are probably thinking the same; execs at even Red Hat probably think the same way...
Pulled it out of my arse. It's estimated, but real. A company that doesn't have to spend $$$ on R&D will be able to sell for less.
I wasn't questioning your number (I knew you were just estimating). Instead, I was questioning what the number was for (I guess it turns out to be R&D, which I thought it was). I have no problems with your numbers--that's cool for the sake of argument:)
Because they had 17(?) years to capitalize on monopolizing it. That's enough, and IMHO too long. Seems like patent time should be 10 years MAX, especially in fast moving industries like I.T.
What's your criteria for the length of time? I was speaking in general but I guess you are talking about the tech industry only. What would you say is a good time period for say biology or medicine?
How does patents or intellectual property laws change anything? One can STILL carry out the same things as your argument puts forth. For example, even if IP laws were granted, what's to stop someone from knocking off a "cheap-copy" of that? Nothing! Even things that are heavily protected by IP laws (such as semiconductor technology eg. microprocessors) can be copied (eg. many companies spend millions of dollars studying, reverse engineering, etc their competitor products).
The only way your arguments may mean anything is if...IP laws protect something for "infinite" period of time (or something really high) AND/OR IP laws protect not only a particular product but also its derivatives. I'm not sure if you support such proposals...
I predict that the future will entail companies simply registering or applying for a endless amount of patents and then farm it off. This will be similar to the dot-com rush where companies registered an endless amount of '.com' web domains simply to sell it off...Let's see if I'm right...
I'm not a capitalist so I don't even know if I should be commenting on IP issues which are a manifestation of capitalism...but anyway...
Original poster:Of course, the advantages of being first to market would be worth a lot more in the absence of IP law.
I don't know what the original poster meant by that. I would imagine that the advantages will be the same as with IP law. IP law should not impact that. Anyway...
If you're first to market, and someone else can offer the same service for 25% cheaper in two months, in a capitalistic society people will buy from the latter.
I don't know where you get the 25% figure from. Is that the cost needed by the original company to recoup investment? In any case, the first company to sell the product will have an advantage. I guess the two main ones are: knowledge, and economies of scale. The economies of scale argument is obvious: if you managed to produce say 10,000 units when your competitor is starting off with 0, your costs should be lower. The second reason is knowledge. What I mean here is that company that invented the product SHOULD know more about the technology and science behind it.
And yeah, that even could potentially include software stuff. Much as it sucked, RSA was probably a valid patent. Thank goodness it's expired though.:)
You are being hypocritical there. If RSA patent is valid then why are you happy that it expired? I don't think RSA is a big mega corporation with tons of profits. One can argue that, if you believe in patents, RSA should own the patent for say the next 50 years.
Ultimately, IP law basicaly boils down to the classic conflict in capitalism. Namely, the conflict between consumers and businesses. Consumers want perfect competition while businesses want to create a monopoly. Businesses like IP law because it is used to create a monopoly (businesses call it "barrier to entry") while consumers don't like it.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, websites are used as a collaborative medium. Creating a website makes it easier to communicate with others, share documents, attract new developers, etc...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
---OFF-TOPIC---
Are you a fascist or is it a joke? Your name that is...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
What's the long-term plan on the Linux side? Is KDE going to incorporate some of the features of Longhorn (like true 3D desktops)? Is Linux going to stick with its hierarchial filename system or is it going to use a database-type system?
Does anyone know of the 5-year plan for GNU/Linux and KDE in particular?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Actually, these product annoucements DO affect many companies. What you are saying about changes is true, but I'm sure software companies (like ISVs) plan around these things. These things may not impact day to day operations, but it wouldn't surprise me if the long term plans (assuming companies have them :) ) will be based on these product annoucements.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Tell me about it :( I'm unemployed so I read a lot of job postings. It is funny, or rather sad, how many jobs ask for stuff which has absolutely nothing to do with the job. Already, I see jobs asking for 2-3 years C# experience (where am I supposed to get the experience when hardly anyone has rolled out any thing major with C#)? The worst thing is that the people sorting through resumes (typically HR or managers) have no idea what these things are. I ask how a particular technology (that is required in the job description) is used, and they have no idea...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I don't think many people upgraded to Windows 2000 instead of ME. I'm not an expert on this stuff but most people just didn't upgrade to ME. The features in ME vs 98SE was very small.
The people who bought 2000 were mostly offices who were in the process of migrating. All the offices jumped to 2000 (they had to; win NT was very old).
The customer base for 2000 is different from ME/98. One is the office/business customers who upgrade for server-oriented features, while the home users and the rest (eg. small businesses) upgrade for new features.
ME, quite simply, was a complete waste of time for everyone--including the home users who it is targetted at. There was like ZERO reasons (I'm exaggerating) to upgrade to that.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
There are a couple of reasons your example is poor. First of all, what you are saying will make no sense if EVERYONE (or a large number of people) own guns. In such a case, the criminal will choose anyone. Your example presupposes that one person is not armed. Unless your idea of deterrence is for a FEW people to be armed while the rest aren't, it won't work.
Secondly, the person has to "advertise" the fact that they are armed. If you don't have a sign saying "protected by armed residents" it won't work. This may or may not work. How many criminals break into houses with stickers saying "protected by Alarm Force (or whatever)?"
Lastly...this is the main reason actually... a criminal that wants to harm you, they will. You can't stop it. Arming yourself just gives you a fake sense of safety. A criminal will simply use smarter techniques to defeat those that are armed. This is just like defeating a car alarm. Car protection has increased a hundread fold (if not more) over the decades. Yet cars are stolen as much as they always were.
If you want to own guns, fine; but it's not going to protect you...
---OFF-TOPIC---
BTW, your website sucks... it is IMPOSSIBLE to read the text on your site. Either lighten the background colour or lighten the foreground colour...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Removing something is very difficult. In fact, it is not recommended (unless it is a serious flaw or bug). There may be millions of developers using a particular feature or programming technique that is "bad". If you go and remove it, it could adversely affect all these programmers and their existing code. This is one reason why companies don't really remove features. Backward compatibility in software is absolutely crucial (especially when you force developers to upgrade to new versions all the time).
The best thing to do is to "phase" out the undesired feature by not recommending it, not featuring it prominently in books, shifting features into optional components that must be installed, etc.
I know this isn't exactly the ideal way to do things but I see no other way. I mean, if I was responsible for Visual Studio (or C# specifications), I would not remove features. Who knows who is using a particlar feature?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Certainly, bitching about it on Slashdot won't do a damned thing.
;)
:) Some thoughts...
:)
:)
Well, it DOES have an impact. This is a message board and people exchange ideas. In general, people improve their knowledge or refine their thoughts. This will impact the person whether they are conscious of it or not. For instance, the opinions and justifications by the pro gun-rights people may impact a person's thought one way or another. And when these people go to vote or attempt to excercise their power to vote (quite frankly, I think the electoral system is a bogus system to satisfy the masses and keep the elites in power--but that's another story) then they will impact things.
On top of all that, don't forget that there may be "influential" people reading these boards, as well as people will become "influential" in the future. A future Bill Gates might be reading these boards; or maybe a future Karl Marx; or a George Orwell; or Ayn Rand; or Stephen Hawking; or George "I'm addicted to oil" Bush
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OFF-TOPIC
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I checked out your homepage. Nice photographs
Are they all real or did you modify some of them?
You should include a much larger picture so that people can use it as a background (although, I don't know if you want your stuff used as a background).
You should also, perhaps, include a brief description (a few sentences to a paragraph). You could either describe the location or what compelled you to take the picture
I like the 'Ethereality' work. Is that a real picture? It looks so SURREAL. The pinkish haze makes it look like an alternate world
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Escape from LA? Man, I'm sure there are other movies--which don't suck--that describe the phenomenon better... Escape from LA: one of the worst movies I have seen :(
Sivaram Velauthapillai
That might be a wise decision for a business but how about home? I imagine that the premium paid for SCSI (for home users) is not worth it. After all, a CD-ROM drive from 10 years ago is pretty much obsolete.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
After you 'went and checked your car' comment, I don't know if that was a sarcastic remark or a hypocritical one but anyway...
I'm not saying it should be mandated that these be installed in every single vehicle manufactured, but I see no reason why they shouldn't be admitted as evidence in a trial. Perhaps it will make people think twice before speeding like maniacs.
The problem is that this will never work. Those that want to carry out the crime, will. You'll end up with the vulnerable (usually the poor and uneducated) being jailed while many others get away with it. For instance, how much do you want to bet that rich people, criminals, etc will mod their cars or hamper the device in some manner? As a matter of fact, the original poster even alluded to this. It will not surprise me if the high end cars (only affordable by the rich) won't have this feature (in 10 years) while all the low-end ones will.
Attempting to stop speeding by using black boxes is like trying to stop terrorism by invading Iraq... we all know who ends up paying the price--and it isn't the criminals.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Don't stereotype all leftists as "anti-gun" :)
Guns are tools which are used for deterrence, among other things.
Would you care to explain how a gun is used for DETERRENCE? I can see you saying it is used for "defense" but not deterrence. If it were really deterrence then everyone would own a gun and no one would be attacked.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
OFF TOPIC
I find it funny that your France is Occupied Germany page has no new postings after the war. Is it because everything that you believed (from the Bush adiministration) is a bunch of lies? Are you still having trouble getting over the lies? Reading some of your posts, it seems 90% of your opinions are false...unless, of course, you still believe...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Why do you say that? What does going public have to do with anything? The stuff you said happens when the company is private as well--except the details are kept behind closed doors. Do you think the private investors don't worry about "numbers" and "growth".
:) ). If Google, or similar company, did not go public, I highly doubt it will grow into a large corporation. You are never going to get the billions necessary to monopolize your markets and take on large scale projects.
Besides, if what you are saying is true, why are nearly all the largest companies public? How many of the top 500 companies are private? Very few. If private companies are truly more innovative, they will crush these large public companies (as capitalist theory claims). It hasn't happened so far.
I think you are mistaking SIZE of a company with going public. Perhaps smaller (and medium sized) comapnies are innovative but that's all.
One of the reasons--if not the most important reason--a company goes public is to raise capital. Often, firms can't raise enough money by staying private. Capital, under capitalism, is THE most important thing (Karl Marx didn't call his book Das Kapital without a reason
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Presumably the auction will set a price very close to what it will be trading at when shares become available through traditional channels, so why bother?
The price of a "normal" IPO is set at what is believed to be the true value of the firm. According to finance theory, the "final" IPO price should end up at a similar value to that of the inital offering. Finance experts and economists don't really know very well why the price shoots up so high. Some say it is based on speculation, hope, etc. I personally believe that the price shoots up because of pump&dump "scams" and hype brought on by investment bankers. You'll find that most stocks end up close to or below the IPO price.
So, when you say that people can't make money off pumping up the IPO price (as they usually do), it doesn't mean much. The price increase is not "justifiable". In that respect, I don't think there is any difference between an auction IPO and the "traditional" IPO.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
According to capitalist theory (i.e. finance portion) it doesn't matter what companies do--as long as it is not something illegal (like fraud). The market will sort it out. If people think a company is not worth it, why would they buy it? (don't answer that question please :) ).
Of course, being the anti-capitalist that I am, stock markets are the biggest "scam" since kings/queens started printing money and taxing the peasents.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Oh yeah? Well, I'm going to patent the 4-click, 5-click, 6-click, and BEST OF ALL the n-click (where n>3) system.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
wow... that's an interesting story :) Quite ingenious I think...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
The worst thing about OOo is not features but something else: COMPATIBILITY with MS Office. Linux is my main operating system (home) and have never had to reboot to Windows (I am a heavy user of my PC so this says something), except when you need to send out a DOC format document (eg. applying for jobs; resumes). OOo still isn't perfect so I need to at least check the DOC file to make sure it opens up properly in Office :(
:( ) so text formats are out. The fact that I have been unemployed for so long ;( means that this is SO CRUCIAL.
Of course, the ideal situation would be when employers start accepting PDF, HTML, or something like that. Right now they accept TXT and RTF (usually) but I don't want to take a chance with HR types (who may be influenced by formatting and fonts more than what's on the document
Other than the situation I mentioned above, OOo is great (for average/moderate user). I haven't used many of the key features (as I would in a work envrionment) but things look fine. Things I haven't tested include mail merge (or any interaction with external data sources), and scripts (not sure how the JavaScript thingie is).
I think the best thing that can be done to OOo (on top of the problem I mentioned), is to simplify the software a bit more and add better help (help is seriously weak and I don't know how many newbies will be lost, not for anything major but for the little things that differ from MS Office).
Sivaram Velauthapillai
That's the thinking of ALL for-profit companies so what's your point? Executives at Apple are probably thinking the same; execs at even Red Hat probably think the same way...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Pulled it out of my arse. It's estimated, but real. A company that doesn't have to spend $$$ on R&D will be able to sell for less.
:)
I wasn't questioning your number (I knew you were just estimating). Instead, I was questioning what the number was for (I guess it turns out to be R&D, which I thought it was). I have no problems with your numbers--that's cool for the sake of argument
Because they had 17(?) years to capitalize on monopolizing it. That's enough, and IMHO too long. Seems like patent time should be 10 years MAX, especially in fast moving industries like I.T.
What's your criteria for the length of time? I was speaking in general but I guess you are talking about the tech industry only. What would you say is a good time period for say biology or medicine?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
How does patents or intellectual property laws change anything? One can STILL carry out the same things as your argument puts forth. For example, even if IP laws were granted, what's to stop someone from knocking off a "cheap-copy" of that? Nothing! Even things that are heavily protected by IP laws (such as semiconductor technology eg. microprocessors) can be copied (eg. many companies spend millions of dollars studying, reverse engineering, etc their competitor products).
The only way your arguments may mean anything is if...IP laws protect something for "infinite" period of time (or something really high) AND/OR IP laws protect not only a particular product but also its derivatives. I'm not sure if you support such proposals...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I predict that the future will entail companies simply registering or applying for a endless amount of patents and then farm it off. This will be similar to the dot-com rush where companies registered an endless amount of '.com' web domains simply to sell it off...Let's see if I'm right...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I'm not a capitalist so I don't even know if I should be commenting on IP issues which are a manifestation of capitalism...but anyway...
:)
Original poster: Of course, the advantages of being first to market would be worth a lot more in the absence of IP law.
I don't know what the original poster meant by that. I would imagine that the advantages will be the same as with IP law. IP law should not impact that. Anyway...
If you're first to market, and someone else can offer the same service for 25% cheaper in two months, in a capitalistic society people will buy from the latter.
I don't know where you get the 25% figure from. Is that the cost needed by the original company to recoup investment? In any case, the first company to sell the product will have an advantage. I guess the two main ones are: knowledge, and economies of scale. The economies of scale argument is obvious: if you managed to produce say 10,000 units when your competitor is starting off with 0, your costs should be lower. The second reason is knowledge. What I mean here is that company that invented the product SHOULD know more about the technology and science behind it.
And yeah, that even could potentially include software stuff. Much as it sucked, RSA was probably a valid patent. Thank goodness it's expired though.
You are being hypocritical there. If RSA patent is valid then why are you happy that it expired? I don't think RSA is a big mega corporation with tons of profits. One can argue that, if you believe in patents, RSA should own the patent for say the next 50 years.
Ultimately, IP law basicaly boils down to the classic conflict in capitalism. Namely, the conflict between consumers and businesses. Consumers want perfect competition while businesses want to create a monopoly. Businesses like IP law because it is used to create a monopoly (businesses call it "barrier to entry") while consumers don't like it.
Sivaram Velauthapillai