Exactly!!! A person should be able to collect some money recycling. Growing up I used to go around collecting glasses and cans which I'd then take to a recycling station and get a little extra spending money. The way things are now though, is if your area collects recyclables you have to pay extra. At least I know of no place that collects recyclables curbside that don't include a recycle fee in property or other tax.
Actually, my municipality has electronics recycling, and they are really good about it. Just bring it over to the landfill, pay them $7.00, and they'll throw it away for you!
I'm not kidding... somehow you can throw it away for free (well, it's considered part of your waste removal fee), but if you want to recycle it you either have to pay for it, or hold-on to it for the free recycle day event that happens every 6 months. They're so good at advertizing these events too, signs up all over the place, if you consider all over the place to mean less than 2 miles from the landfill.
We have the same thing where I live but we only have one free recycle event a year.
Get your facts straight first if you want convince people you actually know what you're talking about.
I did not provide any facts I didn't include a link to where I got the data.
The population of Taiwan IS about 23 million at the moment, minus 2 million mainland immigrants - that's 1 million. Are you saying after 60 some years since Japan handed back Taiwan to Chiang's government after WWII, the net population growth is only 1 million?
Secondly, nowhere did I give any numbers other than "thousands" or "28 February 1947", so you're wrong if you think I said anything about Taiwan's net population growth. Can you please point out where you get the impression I did say it?
If the KMT government was so bad as to cause the population stop growing, how come its economy took off and became one of the Asian Dragons, together with Hong Kong, Korea and Singapore, since the 80s?
Notice the respective dates: 28 Febuary 1947 and 1980s. The first is more than 30 year before the second. A lot can happen in 30 years.
I'm not trying to explain the whole thing here. It's so much more than what can be explained in a post. What I'm trying to do is to ask you to refrain from making moral judgement based on one-sided statements. History has much more than that.
The only tyme I made a moral judgement was when I said "Both sides in China have a bloody history." Saying both sides were bloody IS NOT one sided. Can you point out where anywhere else I made a moral judgement?
The other thing I'd like to point out here is that Mao and Chiang are not related by marriage. Mao is married to Jiang Qing. Chiang's wife was Soong May-ling. Sun Yat-sen, on the other hand, did marry Soong May-ling's big sister Soong Ching-ling.
You may have me here, I thought I read somewhere where Mao had married a Soong daughter. But after reading your post I googled and didn't find anything about him marrying a Soong as well, only that he had 4 wives, Yang Kaihui, He Zizhen, and Jiang Qing being the fourth. So in this at least, thanks for the correction.
I knew which they were referring to without reading the summary, let alone the article.
Having a narrow field of interest, such as in electronics, one may readily conclude "PCBs" mean "printed circuit boards". However if some knows or has a wider field of interest then no, it isn't really possible to know what they mean by "PCBs". For instance I have an interest in the Inuits of northern Canada, and PCBs are building up in the blood of Inuits causing health issues. The Monodon monoceros or norwhale which the Inuit hunt for sustenance bioaccumulates PCBs from the prey they consume. PCBs end up it mother's milk thus in babies when they drink the milk. Polar bears are also showing high levels of PCBs in them. Another whale showing high levels are the Orca or Killer Whales of Pugot Sound.
So it's not really easy to know what is meant by the use of "PCB" without at least a summary. Now maybe not everyone knows this, but some do. I've learned of it, PCBs in whales, from my interest interest in marine biology. In high school, it was a hard decision what career field to go into, after taking both a programming and a marine biology class it was either marine science or computer engineering.
Me too, but most with regard to all of the barely used nuclear fuel rods languishing at reactors all over the country. There's a ton of energy left in them, and by burning up the actinides you're left with waste that's 'hot' for a faction of the time.
IEEE's magazine "Spectrum" has a good article on this, dealing with France's Nuclear Wasteland. The article also points out the problems with reprocessing.
People who dislike China tend to mention Tiananmen Square a lot, but they always forget the Tank Man is also a Chinese.
Some who like China also talk of Tiananmen Square, as well as how 2 million Nationists Chinese led by Chiang Kai-shek invaded and subjegated 20 million on the island called Formosa, meaning "beautiful island", by the Portuguese but now called Taiwan. After the invasion Formosans had their own version of the Holocaust, 28 February 1947, which led to the massive slaughter of thousands of Taiwanese at the hands of Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese troops. Both sides in China have a bloody history.
Also, did you know Mao and Chiang and got started in the same political party? They both were members of Sun Yat-sen's Nationalist Party. They were also related by marriage to each other. Both married daughters of the Soong family.
Large quantities are being shipped to China for stripping of components and recovery of the copper. Especially now the copper price is so high. So I don't believe just a small number is being recycled - in the USA maybe, but not world wide!
Another thing that needs to be recycled more are cellphones. Many electronics gadgets, especially cellphones, use coltan, and mining of coltan is fueling the conflict or fighting and war along with the dissemination of gorillas in the Congo. That new movie out about conflict diamonds can easily be applied to coltan mining in the Congo. Allafrica.com has had some good coverage of this.
Really, good luck getting things turned around and breaking into the photography business - my sense is that it's a rewarding one.
I've always been interested in photography. I took it in high school, then while I was in the army I was my unit's unofficial photographer. Whenever we went out for training and in other circumstances my CO, Cammanding Officer, wanted photos taken he'd go to an office on post to pick up film for me to shoot. After I got out and started college though my major then, before my accident, was Computer Engineering I kept my interest in photography. Now, it may be the one thing I can do for work.
They don't need patents.. they have trade secret and contract law.
Trade secrets aren't useful for protecting an invention, all they are for is to protect what is to be kept secret. A trade secret is any information that allows you to make money because it is not generally known. Which is the opposite of what patents are for, which is to publish or make available to the public how something is made. Contract laws can't prevent someone from dimantling something to see how it is made so they can then turn around and make one themself. Contract law may prevent the buyer of said object from doing so, or at least can be sued for breach of contract, but it can't stop someone else from copying it.
The purpose of patents is to make information on technique public instead of confidential.. a purpose that it largely fails because the patent office doesn't accept complaints on the quality of patent descriptions.
Ah but because an item patented is published it is public. The patent provides a description of how something is made so someone using the info in the patent can make one themself, provided they have the skills. Not accepting complaints doesn't affect the ability to make the patent public, it only prevents said complaints. Having said that, I believe a workign prototype should be available like it used to be, instead iof just papers. The problem with prototypes though is where are all of them going to be stored?
Instead of trying to fix it in the patent office (which would be near impossible, although it would certainly help) I think the system would be better fixed in the courts. Just pass legislation that says "If a patent holder sues an alleged infringer for $X and loses, the winner is entitled to an award of $X from the loser."
This would automatically place a reality check on the award amounts, and even reduce the number of patent cases brought into court in the first place. It'd be like betting on your odds of success in the courtroom, balancing out the risk/reward ratio for patent trolls.
It would also prevent deserving lawsuits from being filed. I personally know this to be true. A little over ten years ago I was riding my bike after class in college when I was hit. While I was in a coma my family hired a lawyer on contingency. When all was said and done the driver's insurance, decided to settle however if they decided not to and if we had lost not only would my family have been left with a hugh legal bill but also with a hospital bill that was more than $125,000 under your system.
Patents are government issued monopolies... that's more than "broken", that's wrong.
Patents give the inventor the possibility of making a profit therefore they encourage progress. Which is what patents are for. How many people or businesses spend millions of dollars to invent something if they couldn't potentially make a profit?
Yes, but ActiveX was repurposed for the task of making a mess of the Netscape plugin system:
To creat a mess of Netscape plugins yes, but not to kill ActiveX.
Ever try creating an ActiveX component and plugging it into these architectures? I have, and I still have mental scars from the experience.
Fortunately NO! Actually I've been wondering what OS platform would be best for me to try to learn, AJAX, Python, Ruby on Rails, or what. I'll work on Java and PERL, I'd been working on a web programming degree and they both were required but not the others, but I have no idea which ones. This degree was only an AAAS or two year degree but was a stepping stone for a multidisiplinary BE/S degree based on EE or IT. Unfortunately that was a couple of years ago when I had to drop out of college for financial reasons. I'm on disability, don't work, and don't get financial aid. Now I am hoping I can break into photography and developing websites for other pro photographers.
So in order to definitely maximize profits, another patent application goes out a few years after FDA approval for a major improvement. It just happens to be that that improvement was old news in the company. This is bad for patients but reflects reasonable actions by the company. I'm not sure how to fix this. Maybe drug patents should only be granted and the clock start ticking once the drug is approved by the FDA.
Starting the clock when a drug is FDA approved may help but I've got what I think may be a better course of action. Let the National Institutes of Health, NIH, do more R&D, Research and Development. Then the NIH can license the drugs created out to manufacturers. The NIH already develops some drugs. For instance the NCI, National Cancer Institute, spent $183,000,000 the develop Taxol, a drug used in chemotherapy for some cancers. Unfortunately however the NCI "sold" the rights to all of the data the NCI generated for FDA approval to Bristol-Myers Squibb for only $43,000,000. With such a low price BMS spent, they made almost $1,000,0000,000 in 2000 alone. Imagine the R&D the NCI, NIH, could do with that type of money.
After the patent on a useful and effective drug expires, it is quickly manufactured as a generic and profitability drops (which is exactly what the point of a patent is in the first place). Great.
No, profits aren't the point of patents, the purpose of patents are to encourage progress and giving a limited monopoly on an invention is that encouragement, if someone/thing might be able to make a profit they are more likely to invent something. And notice they don't have the right to make a profit but they do have the right to try to make a profit.
I'll give you a counterexample, though. In fact, the very term "embrace, extend, and extinguish" was invented to describe MS's tactic of destroying the ActiveX platform in order to throttle one of Netscape's best features. Worked very well, too - ActiveX is a swamp of crappy technology that no one really wants to touch.
ActiveX is by Microsoft, MS didn't try to extend and kill it, MS originated ActiveX:
ActiveX is a series of high-level, Internet/Intranet technologies Microsoft introduced in mid-1990. The term ActiveX itself is seldom used today, and many of the technologies were rendered defunct or renamed, but some are still in wide use.
Once convinced Jefferson sat down with an actuary table and calculated a patent term of 14 year with one 14 year extension possible was the optimum length they should last.
I'm pretty sure you're confusing patents and copyright. They're different.
Perhaps, it does have a lot of ammendments. Plus, things Bush has done, and legislated into existence, violate the spirit and wording of the Constitution. Yet most Americans support Bush, right;-)
The last poll results I saw, last night on CNN, was that 55% of Americans disapproved of Bush's policies. I used to feel lonely, but now more are waking up to what they elected.
Here's a third: to protect an open technology standard:
Patents aren't needed to protect open tech standards. Two examples are Linux and Apache. That is that I know of, I don't know that either has patents, copyrights but not patents. And MS's Embrace, extend and extinguish hasn't been able to get rid of them. I'm not sure about Apache but Linux is actually growing not being extinguished, no matter how much MS tried to use FUD or pay others (SCO) to get rid of Linux.
Why does my sweetheart's diabetes injection (not insulin) cost $200+ for a month's dose? Because first to (whatever) holds ALL the rights to the drug, that's why. So for 20 years, we'll be paying huge $$$ for a drug that is trivially easy to make.
Do you know how much money it took for the pharm co to bring that drug to market? Research on new drugs can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to bring to market. If Company A couldn't have a "limited" monopoly on said drug then it wouldn't spend those $100,000,000s. Especially when there's a good possibility that money will never result in a marketable drug.
So patents on JPEG, GIF, compression methods (like LZW) or anything in this general area are a minefield for me;
Patents for these are either patents on algorithms or on software, maybe both, however patents should never be issued for either. A patent should only be issued for a specific implimentation. So I agree with you at least some it looks like here.
Charles Duell, then USPO Commissioner said that to Congress in 1899 when he advocated the disbandment of the patent service because he claimed it was doing little to spur innovation. We know how right he was.
No, we really don't. A lot of people, like you, equate patent applications and/or grants with innovation.
I don't think it's the amount of patents applied for, it's how much progress is made. A lot of progress has been made since the 1890s. Unless I go out into the forest or other wilderness areas I can't avoid hearing, seeing, or smelling something that isn't a demonstration pof progress. Why, what I'm typing on now is one such display, even if it is old. The first computers I got to play with, write programs to run on, were Trash, er TRS80s, the original Apples, and an IBM 360 Series 60 Mainframe that took more space than my appartment and had less power than the PC I'm using now. I'd go to the local Radshack and spend hours typing programs on the Trash80s.
In case it isn't clear from what I wrote above, I fully support patents for hardware but fully oppose patents for algorithms, business methods, and software.
Did you notice how IBM counter-sued SCO for patent infringement?
And that is a completely legitimate and well-known use of patents. It's defensive patenting. What's wrong with that? A gun can be used to commit cold-blooded murder, or it can be used for self-defense.
Taking out patents as a form of protection against being sued for patent infringment IS NOT a legitimate reason. There is one simple way to protect yourself from this without the cost of getting a patent. It's called publishing. As long as you publish what you've "invented" in a distributed publication, say an industry journal or magazine, then it's incumbent upon the accuser to prove they were awarded a patent before the date of publication. Defensive patents aren't really fo rprotection, instead they are a blunt billyclub to hit someone else other the head with if they try release a product made using the mechanism patented. Test this, if Company X gets a patent does it release the patent into the public domain? If not the patent isn't for protection.
Jefferson and Madison corresponded at length about patent rights during Madison's formulation of the Constitution.
Originally Jefferson was against patents however Madison, who was his friend, convinced Jefferson patents were good and that they would encourage progress.
Throughout its 200+ year history, the U.S. patent system has granted private ownership rights to abstract ideas. Some people don't like that notion. It's understandable - even Thomas Jefferson was opposed to it at first.
Yea, it took Jefferson's friend James Madison to convince him patents would encourage progress.
Really? I was under the impression that patent law was intended to protect intellectual property. In the same way that real estate law is intended to protect greographical property.
Patent law may be this way or it may not be, however patents themself are meant to encourage progress:
USA Constitution: Section 8 - Powers of Congress
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Thomas Jefferson was originally against patents but then his friend James Madison convinced him patents could encourage progress. Once convinced Jefferson sat down with an actuary table and calculated a patent term of 14 year with one 14 year extension possible was the optimum length they should last.
The US patent system is a well of misery, corporate bootlicking, and "let's crush the little guy" methodologies. Sure, everyone else looks to the US system, because it is a system designed to turn over money, not encourage innovation. The fact that it manages to encourage at least corporations to innovate can be considered a side effect. It certainly isn't the main goal of the system, which is to feed the legal profession a regular set of juicy, meaty bones.
As the patent system in the US is now it is a drag on progress, which it was originally supposed to do, however it has been corrupted. As have copyrights. Thomas Jefferson was originally against patents but then his friend James Madison convinced him patents could encourage progress. Once convinced Jefferson sat down with an actuary table and calculated a patent term of 14 year with one 14 year extension possible was the optimum length they should last.
The number of devices/programs you can actually create without running smack into someone's fool patent is very near zero. So much for encouraging innovation.
That's not the fault of patents, that's a symtom of a broken patent system. More needs to be done to investigate whether a patent application actually deserves to be awarded, whether prior art already exists or if something is actually novel. Also in no way, shape, or form, should patents be issued for either algorithms, business methods, or for software!!!
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Exactly!!! A person should be able to collect some money recycling. Growing up I used to go around collecting glasses and cans which I'd then take to a recycling station and get a little extra spending money. The way things are now though, is if your area collects recyclables you have to pay extra. At least I know of no place that collects recyclables curbside that don't include a recycle fee in property or other tax.
FalconActually, my municipality has electronics recycling, and they are really good about it. Just bring it over to the landfill, pay them $7.00, and they'll throw it away for you!
I'm not kidding... somehow you can throw it away for free (well, it's considered part of your waste removal fee), but if you want to recycle it you either have to pay for it, or hold-on to it for the free recycle day event that happens every 6 months. They're so good at advertizing these events too, signs up all over the place, if you consider all over the place to mean less than 2 miles from the landfill.
We have the same thing where I live but we only have one free recycle event a year.
FalconGet your facts straight first if you want convince people you actually know what you're talking about.
I did not provide any facts I didn't include a link to where I got the data.
The population of Taiwan IS about 23 million at the moment, minus 2 million mainland immigrants - that's 1 million. Are you saying after 60 some years since Japan handed back Taiwan to Chiang's government after WWII, the net population growth is only 1 million?
Secondly, nowhere did I give any numbers other than "thousands" or "28 February 1947", so you're wrong if you think I said anything about Taiwan's net population growth. Can you please point out where you get the impression I did say it?
If the KMT government was so bad as to cause the population stop growing, how come its economy took off and became one of the Asian Dragons, together with Hong Kong, Korea and Singapore, since the 80s?
Notice the respective dates: 28 Febuary 1947 and 1980s. The first is more than 30 year before the second. A lot can happen in 30 years.
I'm not trying to explain the whole thing here. It's so much more than what can be explained in a post. What I'm trying to do is to ask you to refrain from making moral judgement based on one-sided statements. History has much more than that.
The only tyme I made a moral judgement was when I said "Both sides in China have a bloody history." Saying both sides were bloody IS NOT one sided. Can you point out where anywhere else I made a moral judgement?
The other thing I'd like to point out here is that Mao and Chiang are not related by marriage. Mao is married to Jiang Qing. Chiang's wife was Soong May-ling. Sun Yat-sen, on the other hand, did marry Soong May-ling's big sister Soong Ching-ling.
You may have me here, I thought I read somewhere where Mao had married a Soong daughter. But after reading your post I googled and didn't find anything about him marrying a Soong as well, only that he had 4 wives, Yang Kaihui, He Zizhen, and Jiang Qing being the fourth. So in this at least, thanks for the correction.
FalconI knew which they were referring to without reading the summary, let alone the article.
Having a narrow field of interest, such as in electronics, one may readily conclude "PCBs" mean "printed circuit boards". However if some knows or has a wider field of interest then no, it isn't really possible to know what they mean by "PCBs". For instance I have an interest in the Inuits of northern Canada, and PCBs are building up in the blood of Inuits causing health issues. The Monodon monoceros or norwhale which the Inuit hunt for sustenance bioaccumulates PCBs from the prey they consume. PCBs end up it mother's milk thus in babies when they drink the milk. Polar bears are also showing high levels of PCBs in them. Another whale showing high levels are the Orca or Killer Whales of Pugot Sound.
So it's not really easy to know what is meant by the use of "PCB" without at least a summary. Now maybe not everyone knows this, but some do. I've learned of it, PCBs in whales, from my interest interest in marine biology. In high school, it was a hard decision what career field to go into, after taking both a programming and a marine biology class it was either marine science or computer engineering.
FalconMe too, but most with regard to all of the barely used nuclear fuel rods languishing at reactors all over the country. There's a ton of energy left in them, and by burning up the actinides you're left with waste that's 'hot' for a faction of the time.
IEEE's magazine "Spectrum" has a good article on this, dealing with France's Nuclear Wasteland . The article also points out the problems with reprocessing.
FalconPeople who dislike China tend to mention Tiananmen Square a lot, but they always forget the Tank Man is also a Chinese.
Some who like China also talk of Tiananmen Square, as well as how 2 million Nationists Chinese led by Chiang Kai-shek invaded and subjegated 20 million on the island called Formosa, meaning "beautiful island", by the Portuguese but now called Taiwan. After the invasion Formosans had their own version of the Holocaust, 28 February 1947, which led to the massive slaughter of thousands of Taiwanese at the hands of Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese troops. Both sides in China have a bloody history.
Also, did you know Mao and Chiang and got started in the same political party? They both were members of Sun Yat-sen's Nationalist Party. They were also related by marriage to each other. Both married daughters of the Soong family.
FalconLarge quantities are being shipped to China for stripping of components and recovery of the copper. Especially now the copper price is so high. So I don't believe just a small number is being recycled - in the USA maybe, but not world wide!
Another thing that needs to be recycled more are cellphones. Many electronics gadgets, especially cellphones, use coltan, and mining of coltan is fueling the conflict or fighting and war along with the dissemination of gorillas in the Congo. That new movie out about conflict diamonds can easily be applied to coltan mining in the Congo. Allafrica.com has had some good coverage of this.
FalconThanks for the thoughts.
Really, good luck getting things turned around and breaking into the photography business - my sense is that it's a rewarding one.
I've always been interested in photography. I took it in high school, then while I was in the army I was my unit's unofficial photographer. Whenever we went out for training and in other circumstances my CO, Cammanding Officer, wanted photos taken he'd go to an office on post to pick up film for me to shoot. After I got out and started college though my major then, before my accident, was Computer Engineering I kept my interest in photography. Now, it may be the one thing I can do for work.
FalconThey don't need patents.. they have trade secret and contract law.
Trade secrets aren't useful for protecting an invention, all they are for is to protect what is to be kept secret. A trade secret is any information that allows you to make money because it is not generally known. Which is the opposite of what patents are for, which is to publish or make available to the public how something is made. Contract laws can't prevent someone from dimantling something to see how it is made so they can then turn around and make one themself. Contract law may prevent the buyer of said object from doing so, or at least can be sued for breach of contract, but it can't stop someone else from copying it.
The purpose of patents is to make information on technique public instead of confidential.. a purpose that it largely fails because the patent office doesn't accept complaints on the quality of patent descriptions.
Ah but because an item patented is published it is public. The patent provides a description of how something is made so someone using the info in the patent can make one themself, provided they have the skills. Not accepting complaints doesn't affect the ability to make the patent public, it only prevents said complaints. Having said that, I believe a workign prototype should be available like it used to be, instead iof just papers. The problem with prototypes though is where are all of them going to be stored?
FalconInstead of trying to fix it in the patent office (which would be near impossible, although it would certainly help) I think the system would be better fixed in the courts. Just pass legislation that says "If a patent holder sues an alleged infringer for $X and loses, the winner is entitled to an award of $X from the loser."
This would automatically place a reality check on the award amounts, and even reduce the number of patent cases brought into court in the first place. It'd be like betting on your odds of success in the courtroom, balancing out the risk/reward ratio for patent trolls.
It would also prevent deserving lawsuits from being filed. I personally know this to be true. A little over ten years ago I was riding my bike after class in college when I was hit. While I was in a coma my family hired a lawyer on contingency. When all was said and done the driver's insurance, decided to settle however if they decided not to and if we had lost not only would my family have been left with a hugh legal bill but also with a hospital bill that was more than $125,000 under your system.
FalconPatents are government issued monopolies... that's more than "broken", that's wrong.
Patents give the inventor the possibility of making a profit therefore they encourage progress. Which is what patents are for. How many people or businesses spend millions of dollars to invent something if they couldn't potentially make a profit?
FalconYes, but ActiveX was repurposed for the task of making a mess of the Netscape plugin system:
To creat a mess of Netscape plugins yes, but not to kill ActiveX.
Ever try creating an ActiveX component and plugging it into these architectures? I have, and I still have mental scars from the experience.
Fortunately NO! Actually I've been wondering what OS platform would be best for me to try to learn, AJAX, Python, Ruby on Rails, or what. I'll work on Java and PERL, I'd been working on a web programming degree and they both were required but not the others, but I have no idea which ones. This degree was only an AAAS or two year degree but was a stepping stone for a multidisiplinary BE/S degree based on EE or IT. Unfortunately that was a couple of years ago when I had to drop out of college for financial reasons. I'm on disability, don't work, and don't get financial aid. Now I am hoping I can break into photography and developing websites for other pro photographers.
FalconSo in order to definitely maximize profits, another patent application goes out a few years after FDA approval for a major improvement. It just happens to be that that improvement was old news in the company. This is bad for patients but reflects reasonable actions by the company. I'm not sure how to fix this. Maybe drug patents should only be granted and the clock start ticking once the drug is approved by the FDA.
Starting the clock when a drug is FDA approved may help but I've got what I think may be a better course of action. Let the National Institutes of Health, NIH, do more R&D, Research and Development. Then the NIH can license the drugs created out to manufacturers. The NIH already develops some drugs. For instance the NCI, National Cancer Institute, spent $183,000,000 the develop Taxol, a drug used in chemotherapy for some cancers. Unfortunately however the NCI "sold" the rights to all of the data the NCI generated for FDA approval to Bristol-Myers Squibb for only $43,000,000. With such a low price BMS spent, they made almost $1,000,0000,000 in 2000 alone. Imagine the R&D the NCI, NIH, could do with that type of money.
FalconAfter the patent on a useful and effective drug expires, it is quickly manufactured as a generic and profitability drops (which is exactly what the point of a patent is in the first place). Great.
No, profits aren't the point of patents, the purpose of patents are to encourage progress and giving a limited monopoly on an invention is that encouragement, if someone/thing might be able to make a profit they are more likely to invent something. And notice they don't have the right to make a profit but they do have the right to try to make a profit.
FalconI'll give you a counterexample, though. In fact, the very term "embrace, extend, and extinguish" was invented to describe MS's tactic of destroying the ActiveX platform in order to throttle one of Netscape's best features. Worked very well, too - ActiveX is a swamp of crappy technology that no one really wants to touch.
ActiveX is by Microsoft, MS didn't try to extend and kill it, MS originated ActiveX:
ActiveX is a series of high-level, Internet/Intranet technologies Microsoft introduced in mid-1990. The term ActiveX itself is seldom used today, and many of the technologies were rendered defunct or renamed, but some are still in wide use.
FalconOnce convinced Jefferson sat down with an actuary table and calculated a patent term of 14 year with one 14 year extension possible was the optimum length they should last.
I'm pretty sure you're confusing patents and copyright. They're different.
Yes copyrights and patents are different however they both had the same length of duration, 14 years: "a Patent Law (1791) gave inventors exclusive rights to their inventions for 14 years."
FalconPerhaps, it does have a lot of ammendments. Plus, things Bush has done, and legislated into existence, violate the spirit and wording of the Constitution. Yet most Americans support Bush, right ;-)
The last poll results I saw, last night on CNN, was that 55% of Americans disapproved of Bush's policies. I used to feel lonely, but now more are waking up to what they elected.
FalconHere's a third: to protect an open technology standard:
Patents aren't needed to protect open tech standards. Two examples are Linux and Apache. That is that I know of, I don't know that either has patents, copyrights but not patents. And MS's Embrace, extend and extinguish hasn't been able to get rid of them. I'm not sure about Apache but Linux is actually growing not being extinguished, no matter how much MS tried to use FUD or pay others (SCO) to get rid of Linux.
FalconWhy does my sweetheart's diabetes injection (not insulin) cost $200+ for a month's dose? Because first to (whatever) holds ALL the rights to the drug, that's why. So for 20 years, we'll be paying huge $$$ for a drug that is trivially easy to make.
Do you know how much money it took for the pharm co to bring that drug to market? Research on new drugs can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to bring to market. If Company A couldn't have a "limited" monopoly on said drug then it wouldn't spend those $100,000,000s. Especially when there's a good possibility that money will never result in a marketable drug.
So patents on JPEG, GIF, compression methods (like LZW) or anything in this general area are a minefield for me;
Patents for these are either patents on algorithms or on software, maybe both, however patents should never be issued for either. A patent should only be issued for a specific implimentation. So I agree with you at least some it looks like here.
Charles Duell, then USPO Commissioner said that to Congress in 1899 when he advocated the disbandment of the patent service because he claimed it was doing little to spur innovation. We know how right he was.
No, we really don't. A lot of people, like you, equate patent applications and/or grants with innovation.
I don't think it's the amount of patents applied for, it's how much progress is made. A lot of progress has been made since the 1890s. Unless I go out into the forest or other wilderness areas I can't avoid hearing, seeing, or smelling something that isn't a demonstration pof progress. Why, what I'm typing on now is one such display, even if it is old. The first computers I got to play with, write programs to run on, were Trash, er TRS80s, the original Apples, and an IBM 360 Series 60 Mainframe that took more space than my appartment and had less power than the PC I'm using now. I'd go to the local Radshack and spend hours typing programs on the Trash80s.
In case it isn't clear from what I wrote above, I fully support patents for hardware but fully oppose patents for algorithms, business methods, and software.
FalconDid you notice how IBM counter-sued SCO for patent infringement?
And that is a completely legitimate and well-known use of patents. It's defensive patenting. What's wrong with that? A gun can be used to commit cold-blooded murder, or it can be used for self-defense.
Taking out patents as a form of protection against being sued for patent infringment IS NOT a legitimate reason. There is one simple way to protect yourself from this without the cost of getting a patent. It's called publishing. As long as you publish what you've "invented" in a distributed publication, say an industry journal or magazine, then it's incumbent upon the accuser to prove they were awarded a patent before the date of publication. Defensive patents aren't really fo rprotection, instead they are a blunt billyclub to hit someone else other the head with if they try release a product made using the mechanism patented. Test this, if Company X gets a patent does it release the patent into the public domain? If not the patent isn't for protection.
FalconJefferson and Madison corresponded at length about patent rights during Madison's formulation of the Constitution.
Originally Jefferson was against patents however Madison, who was his friend, convinced Jefferson patents were good and that they would encourage progress.
FalconThroughout its 200+ year history, the U.S. patent system has granted private ownership rights to abstract ideas. Some people don't like that notion. It's understandable - even Thomas Jefferson was opposed to it at first.
Yea, it took Jefferson's friend James Madison to convince him patents would encourage progress.
FalconReally? I was under the impression that patent law was intended to protect intellectual property. In the same way that real estate law is intended to protect greographical property.
Patent law may be this way or it may not be, however patents themself are meant to encourage progress:
USA Constitution:
Section 8 - Powers of Congress
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Thomas Jefferson was originally against patents but then his friend James Madison convinced him patents could encourage progress. Once convinced Jefferson sat down with an actuary table and calculated a patent term of 14 year with one 14 year extension possible was the optimum length they should last.
FalconThe US patent system is a well of misery, corporate bootlicking, and "let's crush the little guy" methodologies. Sure, everyone else looks to the US system, because it is a system designed to turn over money, not encourage innovation. The fact that it manages to encourage at least corporations to innovate can be considered a side effect. It certainly isn't the main goal of the system, which is to feed the legal profession a regular set of juicy, meaty bones.
As the patent system in the US is now it is a drag on progress, which it was originally supposed to do, however it has been corrupted. As have copyrights. Thomas Jefferson was originally against patents but then his friend James Madison convinced him patents could encourage progress. Once convinced Jefferson sat down with an actuary table and calculated a patent term of 14 year with one 14 year extension possible was the optimum length they should last.
The number of devices/programs you can actually create without running smack into someone's fool patent is very near zero. So much for encouraging innovation.
That's not the fault of patents, that's a symtom of a broken patent system. More needs to be done to investigate whether a patent application actually deserves to be awarded, whether prior art already exists or if something is actually novel. Also in no way, shape, or form, should patents be issued for either algorithms, business methods, or for software!!!
FalconI know. I'm reading that book right now :)
I loved the book and read it when it first came out, in the '80s if I recall right. Damn, my memory is bad, so it might of been in the '90s.
Falcon