One problem: the worst offenders, giant companies, can pay any reasonable fee amount without blinking basically forever. On the other hand small companies wouldn't and would be placed at an unfair disadvantage. However your idea isn't all bad, it just needs a little tweaking. If we make the fee based exponentially on time or on exponentially based on the number of other patents held, or both, then it might work. Small companies with few patents pay little, bug companies with over a thousand patents get it in the shorts. We all win because (in theory) the money collected in this way reduces our taxes.
Really, they need more than say 20-30 patents? I doubt it, sure products need some short protection, but after a few years the patent is effectively useless since your technology is outdated anyways. But yes big companies are slightly penalized in comparison to their smaller competitors, but then again it would be nice to reign in big companies a bit, as they have way too much wealth and power. I am liking my idea more and more now, it kills two birds with one stone.
In theory the law might be written to prevent things like that (as in if you lease to one person you have to lease to everyone at the same price). Of course this introduces complications, which knowing law, would be implemented poorly, and we would end up just where we started. Damn it!
Ok, there have been a lot of complicated improvements on patent law suggested, so let me propose a really simple one: there can be only so many patents owned in total by a corporation (patents owned by employees count towards this total). Yes you can patent like crazy, but that would mean giving up your old patents. Or you could just patent when it is really needed, just as the system was meant to be used all along.
I think the point is just so it can be out there, to help solidify the standard and raise consumer awareness. That way when titles do start being released in Blu-Ray you will at least know that they can be played, versus the other marketing strategy, where they realease a bunch of movies in Blu-Ray, but no player, which would be stupid.
This is dumb for two reasons. One is that it is the US meddling in other nations purely internal affairs. The other is that it is yet another war on an abstract idea. (joining the war on terror and the war on poverty) Bad news, you can't win against an idea, only against a group of people (terrorists, pirates, the poor?). And yes there are too many pirates to even think about "winning" against them. They probably make up more than 50% of the population.
Ok, I posted this exact same comment above, so don't mod this up:
I am one of the few people left who agrees with you, and this raises the question: isn't the meaning of a phrase determined in large part by its usage? If the majority of people use "beg the question" to mean "raise the question" then who are we to say it doesn't mean that. We don't need the phrase "it begs the question" anyways; you can always say "the argument is circular".
I am probably one of the few people left who agrees with you, and this raises the question: isn't the meaning of a phrase determined in large part by its usage. If the majority of people use "beg the question" to mean "raise the question" then who are we to say it doesn't mean that. We don't need the phrase "it begs the question" anyways; you can always say "the argument is circular".
Yes but we expect companies to be greedy and to try to get away with as much as they can. On the other hand the government is supposed to represent the people and respect our rights. A company is created by a few people for their benefit, but the government is created by all the people, and it should be run to the benefit of everyone, not just the power-hungry and the wealthy.
Well the real benefit to geeks is that your phone will become more hackable. With source released you could, in theory, modify the OS, and add any features you want. Of course this assumes the OS isn't hard wired into the phone, although even that could be overcome with a little hardware hacking.
You must not have used windows in a while. Even if a single program crashes, and not the OS, you have the option to send in crash reports, for that program. This is what the GP was talking about.
One would hope they would be outweighed by the real input of real customers, and that microsoft might try to reproduce crashes and throw out reports that seem bogus.
Oh it's clear how this will doom innovation for all time. You see with free and unlimited access to the web people who would normally be innovating will now be tied up in flame wars and watching funny videos. Clearly their productivity would plummet and innovation would grind to a screeching halt. In fact we should destroy the internet completely in order to protect innovation.
I really think they would boil them down to essentially the exact same game play, which would be exceedingly boring. (I don't plat WoW, it's simply not the kind of game that can hold my interest for long periods of time.)
Well we will always have Linux/BSD. I mean that is why they became so popular in the first place, because people wanted to kernel hack. You want to be all practical and have pretty graphics get a Mac. You want to have fun rewriting the driver stack install something open source, it's that simple.
In my opinion the more focused Diablo became on online play the less fun it became. For example originally you could play through the entire game with just the rares you found. However Blizzard quickly realized that due to trading in online games everyone would have the best items, and thus they made the last mode exceedingly difficult, ruining it for the single player people, and in my opinion taking away some of the fun (go do 1000 runs so you can find the one item you need to beat the game, bah!).
I am really glad there will be no "world of Diablo". Trying to fit all games into an online model forces them to be basically all versions of the same game (all the same run around-kill-collect-level model of game play). Much of the variety in the single player experience for example can't be carried over into multi-player because it would be too unbalanced (just to name one example).
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One problem: the worst offenders, giant companies, can pay any reasonable fee amount without blinking basically forever. On the other hand small companies wouldn't and would be placed at an unfair disadvantage. However your idea isn't all bad, it just needs a little tweaking. If we make the fee based exponentially on time or on exponentially based on the number of other patents held, or both, then it might work. Small companies with few patents pay little, bug companies with over a thousand patents get it in the shorts. We all win because (in theory) the money collected in this way reduces our taxes.
Really, they need more than say 20-30 patents? I doubt it, sure products need some short protection, but after a few years the patent is effectively useless since your technology is outdated anyways. But yes big companies are slightly penalized in comparison to their smaller competitors, but then again it would be nice to reign in big companies a bit, as they have way too much wealth and power. I am liking my idea more and more now, it kills two birds with one stone.
Just look up two posts for my suggestion (here)
In theory the law might be written to prevent things like that (as in if you lease to one person you have to lease to everyone at the same price). Of course this introduces complications, which knowing law, would be implemented poorly, and we would end up just where we started. Damn it!
What is sadder is that you didn't get a +5 funny for that joke.
Ok, there have been a lot of complicated improvements on patent law suggested, so let me propose a really simple one: there can be only so many patents owned in total by a corporation (patents owned by employees count towards this total). Yes you can patent like crazy, but that would mean giving up your old patents. Or you could just patent when it is really needed, just as the system was meant to be used all along.
I think the point is just so it can be out there, to help solidify the standard and raise consumer awareness. That way when titles do start being released in Blu-Ray you will at least know that they can be played, versus the other marketing strategy, where they realease a bunch of movies in Blu-Ray, but no player, which would be stupid.
So ... we should have a war on Fox? Now I'm really confused.
This is dumb for two reasons. One is that it is the US meddling in other nations purely internal affairs. The other is that it is yet another war on an abstract idea. (joining the war on terror and the war on poverty) Bad news, you can't win against an idea, only against a group of people (terrorists, pirates, the poor?). And yes there are too many pirates to even think about "winning" against them. They probably make up more than 50% of the population.
Ok, I posted this exact same comment above, so don't mod this up: I am one of the few people left who agrees with you, and this raises the question: isn't the meaning of a phrase determined in large part by its usage? If the majority of people use "beg the question" to mean "raise the question" then who are we to say it doesn't mean that. We don't need the phrase "it begs the question" anyways; you can always say "the argument is circular".
I am probably one of the few people left who agrees with you, and this raises the question: isn't the meaning of a phrase determined in large part by its usage. If the majority of people use "beg the question" to mean "raise the question" then who are we to say it doesn't mean that. We don't need the phrase "it begs the question" anyways; you can always say "the argument is circular".
I agree with you, no need to convince me.
What is sad thought is that some people actually believe things like that.
Yes but we expect companies to be greedy and to try to get away with as much as they can. On the other hand the government is supposed to represent the people and respect our rights. A company is created by a few people for their benefit, but the government is created by all the people, and it should be run to the benefit of everyone, not just the power-hungry and the wealthy.
Well the real benefit to geeks is that your phone will become more hackable. With source released you could, in theory, modify the OS, and add any features you want. Of course this assumes the OS isn't hard wired into the phone, although even that could be overcome with a little hardware hacking.
Is it ust me or has slashdot not updated the front page in almost 5 hours now? Did news stop happenning this evening, or are there server issues?
You must not have used windows in a while. Even if a single program crashes, and not the OS, you have the option to send in crash reports, for that program. This is what the GP was talking about.
One would hope they would be outweighed by the real input of real customers, and that microsoft might try to reproduce crashes and throw out reports that seem bogus.
I guess that means the spyware people were bribing them while the video game companies were not.
Oh it's clear how this will doom innovation for all time. You see with free and unlimited access to the web people who would normally be innovating will now be tied up in flame wars and watching funny videos. Clearly their productivity would plummet and innovation would grind to a screeching halt. In fact we should destroy the internet completely in order to protect innovation.
I really think they would boil them down to essentially the exact same game play, which would be exceedingly boring. (I don't plat WoW, it's simply not the kind of game that can hold my interest for long periods of time.)
I could see them thinking that Diablo would appeal more to the "serious" audience. But yeah, basically I agree with you.
Well we will always have Linux/BSD. I mean that is why they became so popular in the first place, because people wanted to kernel hack. You want to be all practical and have pretty graphics get a Mac. You want to have fun rewriting the driver stack install something open source, it's that simple.
In my opinion the more focused Diablo became on online play the less fun it became. For example originally you could play through the entire game with just the rares you found. However Blizzard quickly realized that due to trading in online games everyone would have the best items, and thus they made the last mode exceedingly difficult, ruining it for the single player people, and in my opinion taking away some of the fun (go do 1000 runs so you can find the one item you need to beat the game, bah!).
I am really glad there will be no "world of Diablo". Trying to fit all games into an online model forces them to be basically all versions of the same game (all the same run around-kill-collect-level model of game play). Much of the variety in the single player experience for example can't be carried over into multi-player because it would be too unbalanced (just to name one example).