1. The patent will require significant maintenance fees in order to keep it active for 20 years.
That is the first time I hear about that. AFAIK, a patent is issued, and at that point you have it, for a period of 20 years. Perhaps you are referring to keeping up with the state of the industry, to see if someone is violating your patent. Or you are referring to seeking someone who wants to buy your patent. The point of patent trolls, however, is that they will only try to enforce their patents when someone else has made a successful invention and strikes it rich. At that point, the troll will know about it, without research. Of course, at that point there is the matter of sueing, which may be costly. But you can always start with threatening letters.
2. Anybody is free to patent a "slight modification" of the original invention.
Sure, sure. But if you really want to produce a product which is based on the original invention, even if it is modified, you still owe the original inventor. And he may not even want to share his invention, or will ask a ridiculous fee (see, for instance, Eolas).
3. A patent does not prevent you from "working on" the technology it discloses. The concept of public disclosure in a patent ensures the exact opposite.
Absolutely true, my original statement was in error here. It is certainly not the case that no-one can work on it. The only thing is that al the time you work on it, you know you are doing R&D for someone else for free.
4. You don't seem to have very much experience in the patent industry. I am a patent law professional.
I'm so sorry for you.
And, as a "patent law professional", aren't you bothered by the fact that nowadays the issuing of patents stiffles rather than stimulates innovation?
5. How would you react if I didn't know much about your profession but masqueraded as an expert?
Writing two sentences in a slashdot post hardly qualifies as "masquerading as an expert." And as for people spouting half-truths about my profession: happens all the time, but I laugh it away. You should do that too, instead of getting all worked up about it. It saves you a lot of anger over time.
here are two reasons why it is VERY, VERY bad. if the patent exists, there is absolutely no reason for any person to develop, you are just doing R&D work for someone else for free. That happens for the life of the patent, and after it expires (IF it ever does as the current rate), there still is no incentive to develop it, since it is now public domain if you do, free to be copied by anyone else.
The point is the following: either the invention works, or it does not. If it works, the inventor has actually done something useful, and even if he cannot further develop it, with a patent in hand he can get a share of the profits of someone who does have enough money to continue the process. If the invention does not work, nobody will gain anything by further developing it, so it does not matter whether a patent is issued.
I think that what you are referring to is a patent on an idea, without a specific description on how this idea should be implemented. This would fall under the header "software patents", which most of us here are not in favor of. However, it seems to me that in this case a complete description of the invention has been provided. If someone else solves the actual problem the invention is meant for, but in a different way, the person with the patent gets nothing. It is as simple as that. Technical patents are not the problem, software patents are.
Sounds nice, but it doesn't work that way. For 20 years, the "invention" is protected, so no-one can work on it. Then, after 19 years, they apply for a new patent on a completely new invention, which is a slight modification on the old invention. Blammo, they are in it for another 20 years.
There's nothing wrong with that. Perpetual motion machines have been patented for years. As long as you are giving a complete description of your invention, and it hasn't been patented by someone else, you can get a patent. It doesn't matter if it works. That's the problem of the person who wants the patent. If he wants to shell out lots of moolah for hogwash, why not let him?
The problem is, of course, that this will not work against patent trolls. Patent trolls have no use for the patents themselves, they are only interested in sueing others. So the OIN might hold off Microsoft, but it won't hold off sleazy extortionists whose only business is patent litigation.
I thought MS' rule of 3's was that at launch, the product actually was still beta and thus unusable, after the first patch problems got even worse, and only the second patch would make the product barely usable.
I once discussed designing games for blind people with a woman who did research in this. She was mainly working with sound, and used a specially-designed touchpad for the gamer to interface with the game. The games she created were fairly stupid, such as recreating sound sequences, and 'whack-a-mole' like exercises.
I suggested that you could also use a couple of big lamps. A blind person could feel the heat of a lamp when it was switched on. I then suggested creating a Thief-like game, which would play in a world of blind people with monsters that could see infra-red. So, when you would be in the full light (you would feel the heat of the lamps), you would be invisible, but in the dark (lamps off) you would be highly visible. Combine this with 3D-sounds, and a pad which would represent walls in the environment by raised buttons (which she already had available), and IMHO you can create a challenging, story-like game for the visually-impaired.
The point is, of course, that people who can see well enough don't need more than what they can see on a screen, but being able to address other sensory inputs may open up the world of computer games to people with certain disabilities. But the games need to be designed around the extra gadgets, and the gadgets should not only be used as an enhancement.
While I agree that patenting plotlines is a stupid idea, it all hinges on how detailed the plotline should be described to allow patenting. "Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy loses girl. Boy finds new girl." Definitely is not specific enough. However, a plot outline that details from paragraph to paragraph I would have no problems with making patentable. The problem is, of course, that no-one would be interested in a patent on that, because it would be too easy to circumvent the patent while still using the plot - just change a few paragraphs.
Re:Oh please...
on
Pixar For Sale?
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· Score: 3, Informative
Think "The Emperor's New Groove" but done with shiny new CG. Ugh.
Bad example. "The Emperor's New Groove" is actually one of the very best Disney films of recent years. It is a lot of fun, doesn't take itself seriously, for once has an obnoxious hero who does not really become a sweet guy at the end, and has a very original style. But it sucked at the box office and DVD sales, so I am wondering that maybe those suits really know what they are doing when they make the team focus on crappy sequels for blockbusters. They are not in it for the art, you know.
That's not patenting because you have a product on the market that you're trying to protect, it's a form of intellectual highway robbery by digging a big hole in the road and then charging people to cross the hole using the one bridge and the police preventing people from going around the hole.
Nice analogy, but it is even worse. Software patenting is more like buying very small pieces of land everywhere in the country, perhaps a few centimeters on every acre, burying the records of your purchases in an enormous hidden filing cabinet, and waiting until someone builds a road that unintendedly goes over one of your small squares. And then, when the road becomes very busy and lots of money have been invested, you come forward and say that nobody is allowed to drive over your small piece of ground, unless they pay a lot.
Probably not, since downmodding ends at -1, while upmodding can go as high as 5. So you'll probably end up somewhere in the middle, but higher than average, say about 3.
Then: Big company thinks of stealing open source code for their products, but refrain because they are afraid of legal consequences.
Intermediate: Insurance company knows that no open source developer has the money to sue, even if they would be able to discover that their code had been stolen.
Now: Big company tajes insurance and starts stealing open source code, because they feel there is no legal risk anymore.
In the end: Open source developers get screwed once again and the only people getting rich over it are the lawyers. Nothing new here.
...that Britain was moving closer to the stance of the US, which has refused to back Kyoto-style emission reductions.
Yeah, but the reason for the British is that they start doubting whether the Kyoto protocols are a good way to reduce global warming. The reason for the US is that the president and his cronies deny that global warming is taking place. Another hurricane, mr. Bush?
No it is not, as you can look up on any relevant website yourself, if you take the time. If you can find a website which says that the probability for the other door is 1/2, please point it out to me, because that site is wrong. And I think you will find that either no such site exists, or that it is about a different problem.
I am sorry, but you can ALWAYS add probabilities. There are three doors. One is already open, so it has a probability of zero that the car is behind it. The other two are still closed, and if there is indeed a car behind one of them, the probability that the car is behind one of them is 1. The probabilities of the two remaining doors therefore must add up to 1. And, indeed, the correct answer would be that the "other door" now has a probability of 2/3. If you still don't believe me, I really would like to do some betting with you.
I always loved this one, because it is so counter-intuitive (at first): There is a worm which starts to crawl along a rubber band. The rubber band starts with a length of 1 meter, with the worm at one end. The worm crawls 1 centimeter per second. At the end of each second, the rubber band expands with another meter. Suppose the worm will live forever and the rubber band never breaks, will the worm ever reach the end of the band? If so, when?
This only seems paradoxical because the prisoner is a poor logician. He will always be hanged on Thursday, so he could have known this, and it should not have been unexpected. The judge, therefore, is a liar. Since many people won't believe me if I say he will always be hanged on Thursday, here's the proof:
We start with two statements:
Statement 1 and statement 2 are either both true or both false.
The prisoner will always be hanged on Thursday.
If statement 1 is true, statement 2 must also be true, since it cannot be true that both are false and therefore both must be true. If statement 1 is false, it cannot be that statement 2 would be false, since in that case statement 1 would be true. Therefore, regardless whether statement 1 is true or false, statement 2 must be true. Ergo, the prisoner will always be hanged on Thursday. QED.
If it is known to all that there is at least one suicide mark, and if it is know to all that they all are perfect logicians, and if they know they all commit suicide the moment they know they bear the mark, the answer is three.
If there is only one mark, the person bearing it knows that he has the mark after the first meeting, and kills himself.
If there are two marks, both persons bearing the mark will not kill themselves after the first day, since they know that there is one person bearing the mark. However, if they see on the second day that the person who bears the mark has not committed suicide, they know there is at least one other mark. That mark they bear themselves. So the commit suicide after the second meeting.
With three persons, the same thing happens, only they commit suicide after the third meeting, since they see that the the other persons who bear the mark have not committed suicide after the second meeting, so there must be a third mark. Etc.
A more interesting version of the same riddle I read in a book by Smullyan: Three philosophers are taking a nap under a tree, when a farmboy comes around and paints all their foreheads black. The philosophers awake at exactly the same moment, see each other, and all start laughing. Suddenly, the smartest among them stops laughing, being certain that his own forehead must also be black. How did he deduce this?
I encountered the problem of the cube crawlers only once. It goes as follows.
There is a cube which houses cube crawlers. The corners of the cube are labeled A to H, where G is furthest away from A (that is, three edges away from A, in the opposite corner). All cube crawlers are born in A, and each day they travel along one of the edges, to rest in the next corner. They will never turn around and travel back along the edge they traversed the previous day, but will always choose one of the two edges they did not traverse the previous day, with a chance of 50% for each of them. In corner G, the Cube Crawler Predator is situated, who devours all cube crawlers that end up in G. The question is: what is the average life span of a cube crawler?
Obviously, the minimum life span of a cube crawler is three days, since G is three edges away from A. Theoretically, the maximum life span of a cube crawler is infinity, because it can travel in circles from A to B to C to D and back again to A.
It took me two days to solve this problem when I first encountered it, using a purely mathematical approach. However, when I stated this problem to a physicist he provided me with the correct answer in a few minutes (without proof, that is).
Here in the Netherlands, the country's media was recently abuzz for a while over news of a puma living in the forests here. Given the tiny nation here is not much bigger than tasmania and with 16m people, it got locals rather nervous:
Yes, and based on hearsay and a few vague photographs that could be of a normal housecat, hunting parties were formed, and a special organisation was funded to research the puma and bring it in. The story lasted all Summer. Nobody found the puma. But new photographs were definitely of a housecat. Of course, believers argued that this was a different animal, and the puma was still on the loose.
I am a great consumer of DVDs. I have bought over a 1000 DVDs in the last five years. How many times have I watched all these DVDs? I would say, on average, each DVD once. But it is just like books: if I like a book, I want to own it. I want to have it on a shelf. And if I like a movie, I want to own the DVD. Not a play-once DVD, I want a DVD I can believe will last until I die (fat chance that, but let me keep my little dreams). I don't want this crap. Not even for $1. So, for me, the solution is simple: either I pay the full price for a DVD I can play 'forever', or I download a ripped one for free. And since most of the DVDs are sold to people like me, this product is simply silly.
Slashdot Mirror
Micorosft doing something only for the money?
Noooooooooooooooo.
That is the first time I hear about that. AFAIK, a patent is issued, and at that point you have it, for a period of 20 years. Perhaps you are referring to keeping up with the state of the industry, to see if someone is violating your patent. Or you are referring to seeking someone who wants to buy your patent. The point of patent trolls, however, is that they will only try to enforce their patents when someone else has made a successful invention and strikes it rich. At that point, the troll will know about it, without research. Of course, at that point there is the matter of sueing, which may be costly. But you can always start with threatening letters.
2. Anybody is free to patent a "slight modification" of the original invention.
Sure, sure. But if you really want to produce a product which is based on the original invention, even if it is modified, you still owe the original inventor. And he may not even want to share his invention, or will ask a ridiculous fee (see, for instance, Eolas).
3. A patent does not prevent you from "working on" the technology it discloses. The concept of public disclosure in a patent ensures the exact opposite.
Absolutely true, my original statement was in error here. It is certainly not the case that no-one can work on it. The only thing is that al the time you work on it, you know you are doing R&D for someone else for free.
4. You don't seem to have very much experience in the patent industry. I am a patent law professional.
I'm so sorry for you.
And, as a "patent law professional", aren't you bothered by the fact that nowadays the issuing of patents stiffles rather than stimulates innovation?
5. How would you react if I didn't know much about your profession but masqueraded as an expert?
Writing two sentences in a slashdot post hardly qualifies as "masquerading as an expert." And as for people spouting half-truths about my profession: happens all the time, but I laugh it away. You should do that too, instead of getting all worked up about it. It saves you a lot of anger over time.
The point is the following: either the invention works, or it does not. If it works, the inventor has actually done something useful, and even if he cannot further develop it, with a patent in hand he can get a share of the profits of someone who does have enough money to continue the process. If the invention does not work, nobody will gain anything by further developing it, so it does not matter whether a patent is issued.
I think that what you are referring to is a patent on an idea, without a specific description on how this idea should be implemented. This would fall under the header "software patents", which most of us here are not in favor of. However, it seems to me that in this case a complete description of the invention has been provided. If someone else solves the actual problem the invention is meant for, but in a different way, the person with the patent gets nothing. It is as simple as that. Technical patents are not the problem, software patents are.
Sounds nice, but it doesn't work that way. For 20 years, the "invention" is protected, so no-one can work on it. Then, after 19 years, they apply for a new patent on a completely new invention, which is a slight modification on the old invention. Blammo, they are in it for another 20 years.
There's nothing wrong with that. Perpetual motion machines have been patented for years. As long as you are giving a complete description of your invention, and it hasn't been patented by someone else, you can get a patent. It doesn't matter if it works. That's the problem of the person who wants the patent. If he wants to shell out lots of moolah for hogwash, why not let him?
The problem is, of course, that this will not work against patent trolls. Patent trolls have no use for the patents themselves, they are only interested in sueing others. So the OIN might hold off Microsoft, but it won't hold off sleazy extortionists whose only business is patent litigation.
I thought MS' rule of 3's was that at launch, the product actually was still beta and thus unusable, after the first patch problems got even worse, and only the second patch would make the product barely usable.
I suggested that you could also use a couple of big lamps. A blind person could feel the heat of a lamp when it was switched on. I then suggested creating a Thief-like game, which would play in a world of blind people with monsters that could see infra-red. So, when you would be in the full light (you would feel the heat of the lamps), you would be invisible, but in the dark (lamps off) you would be highly visible. Combine this with 3D-sounds, and a pad which would represent walls in the environment by raised buttons (which she already had available), and IMHO you can create a challenging, story-like game for the visually-impaired.
The point is, of course, that people who can see well enough don't need more than what they can see on a screen, but being able to address other sensory inputs may open up the world of computer games to people with certain disabilities. But the games need to be designed around the extra gadgets, and the gadgets should not only be used as an enhancement.
Why don't they release it like that? I'd buy it. Not for $2500, probably, but they would be able to make a nice profit.
While I agree that patenting plotlines is a stupid idea, it all hinges on how detailed the plotline should be described to allow patenting. "Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy loses girl. Boy finds new girl." Definitely is not specific enough. However, a plot outline that details from paragraph to paragraph I would have no problems with making patentable. The problem is, of course, that no-one would be interested in a patent on that, because it would be too easy to circumvent the patent while still using the plot - just change a few paragraphs.
Bad example. "The Emperor's New Groove" is actually one of the very best Disney films of recent years. It is a lot of fun, doesn't take itself seriously, for once has an obnoxious hero who does not really become a sweet guy at the end, and has a very original style. But it sucked at the box office and DVD sales, so I am wondering that maybe those suits really know what they are doing when they make the team focus on crappy sequels for blockbusters. They are not in it for the art, you know.
Nice analogy, but it is even worse. Software patenting is more like buying very small pieces of land everywhere in the country, perhaps a few centimeters on every acre, burying the records of your purchases in an enormous hidden filing cabinet, and waiting until someone builds a road that unintendedly goes over one of your small squares. And then, when the road becomes very busy and lots of money have been invested, you come forward and say that nobody is allowed to drive over your small piece of ground, unless they pay a lot.
Probably not, since downmodding ends at -1, while upmodding can go as high as 5. So you'll probably end up somewhere in the middle, but higher than average, say about 3.
Lookee, I'm right!
I thought you couldn't insure yourself against "Acts of God".
Intermediate: Insurance company knows that no open source developer has the money to sue, even if they would be able to discover that their code had been stolen.
Now: Big company tajes insurance and starts stealing open source code, because they feel there is no legal risk anymore.
In the end: Open source developers get screwed once again and the only people getting rich over it are the lawyers. Nothing new here.
Yeah, but the reason for the British is that they start doubting whether the Kyoto protocols are a good way to reduce global warming. The reason for the US is that the president and his cronies deny that global warming is taking place. Another hurricane, mr. Bush?
No it is not, as you can look up on any relevant website yourself, if you take the time. If you can find a website which says that the probability for the other door is 1/2, please point it out to me, because that site is wrong. And I think you will find that either no such site exists, or that it is about a different problem.
I am sorry, but you can ALWAYS add probabilities. There are three doors. One is already open, so it has a probability of zero that the car is behind it. The other two are still closed, and if there is indeed a car behind one of them, the probability that the car is behind one of them is 1. The probabilities of the two remaining doors therefore must add up to 1. And, indeed, the correct answer would be that the "other door" now has a probability of 2/3. If you still don't believe me, I really would like to do some betting with you.
I always loved this one, because it is so counter-intuitive (at first): There is a worm which starts to crawl along a rubber band. The rubber band starts with a length of 1 meter, with the worm at one end. The worm crawls 1 centimeter per second. At the end of each second, the rubber band expands with another meter. Suppose the worm will live forever and the rubber band never breaks, will the worm ever reach the end of the band? If so, when?
We start with two statements:
If statement 1 is true, statement 2 must also be true, since it cannot be true that both are false and therefore both must be true. If statement 1 is false, it cannot be that statement 2 would be false, since in that case statement 1 would be true. Therefore, regardless whether statement 1 is true or false, statement 2 must be true. Ergo, the prisoner will always be hanged on Thursday. QED.
And what about the remaining 1/6? Is that the chance that you are fooled and that there is no prize at all?
If there is only one mark, the person bearing it knows that he has the mark after the first meeting, and kills himself.
If there are two marks, both persons bearing the mark will not kill themselves after the first day, since they know that there is one person bearing the mark. However, if they see on the second day that the person who bears the mark has not committed suicide, they know there is at least one other mark. That mark they bear themselves. So the commit suicide after the second meeting.
With three persons, the same thing happens, only they commit suicide after the third meeting, since they see that the the other persons who bear the mark have not committed suicide after the second meeting, so there must be a third mark. Etc.
A more interesting version of the same riddle I read in a book by Smullyan: Three philosophers are taking a nap under a tree, when a farmboy comes around and paints all their foreheads black. The philosophers awake at exactly the same moment, see each other, and all start laughing. Suddenly, the smartest among them stops laughing, being certain that his own forehead must also be black. How did he deduce this?
There is a cube which houses cube crawlers. The corners of the cube are labeled A to H, where G is furthest away from A (that is, three edges away from A, in the opposite corner). All cube crawlers are born in A, and each day they travel along one of the edges, to rest in the next corner. They will never turn around and travel back along the edge they traversed the previous day, but will always choose one of the two edges they did not traverse the previous day, with a chance of 50% for each of them. In corner G, the Cube Crawler Predator is situated, who devours all cube crawlers that end up in G. The question is: what is the average life span of a cube crawler?
Obviously, the minimum life span of a cube crawler is three days, since G is three edges away from A. Theoretically, the maximum life span of a cube crawler is infinity, because it can travel in circles from A to B to C to D and back again to A.
It took me two days to solve this problem when I first encountered it, using a purely mathematical approach. However, when I stated this problem to a physicist he provided me with the correct answer in a few minutes (without proof, that is).
Yes, and based on hearsay and a few vague photographs that could be of a normal housecat, hunting parties were formed, and a special organisation was funded to research the puma and bring it in. The story lasted all Summer. Nobody found the puma. But new photographs were definitely of a housecat. Of course, believers argued that this was a different animal, and the puma was still on the loose.
It's just like a UFO, really.
I am a great consumer of DVDs. I have bought over a 1000 DVDs in the last five years. How many times have I watched all these DVDs? I would say, on average, each DVD once. But it is just like books: if I like a book, I want to own it. I want to have it on a shelf. And if I like a movie, I want to own the DVD. Not a play-once DVD, I want a DVD I can believe will last until I die (fat chance that, but let me keep my little dreams). I don't want this crap. Not even for $1. So, for me, the solution is simple: either I pay the full price for a DVD I can play 'forever', or I download a ripped one for free. And since most of the DVDs are sold to people like me, this product is simply silly.