Ok, so your complaint is a mouse for use in a portable system, in this case a laptop, has a different charging mechanism? This thing charges in the PC-Card slot; it is not like you are having to carry around a whole new charger. Actually this is probably a good idea since a great majority of people nowadays do not even need the PC-Card slot for anything. Most every drive accessory you might need can be swapped with drive bays now, and there is not much need for the expansion, unless you happen to get a laptop without firewire and you really need the connection or maybe some card reader.
I think your post is sorely off topic. Did you even bother to rtfa? I mean besides the fact I would probably crush this thing it is actually somewhat useful, and more so then that ridiculously tiny travel mouse that is the size of my thumb.
Just for reference some consider Diamon v. Diehr the SCOTUS case that opened the way for software patents. The office attempted to limit business method patents, but the recent Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) ruling will make that harder.
First off, I believe some of their citations are a bit dubious. They mention these great critics without citing any, and use the period of two decades with no supporting fact for the decline over that time. The Patent backlog has only worsened in recent years and the only way I can think they came up with the two decade number is because that is around the time SCOTUS opened the door for software and business method patents.
Interestingly enough, the case they pointed to is in a field not covered by either of these, but this is their attack. This is probably because these have become the two hotbed matters of discussion so it is best to stick to what infuriates readers the most, I suppose. However, a decision by SCOTUS would affect all patent areas, so maybe they aren't too far off...but still.
They say the obviousness bar has been lowered. However, I truly believe it was only lowered once when the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), decided to require motivations for making combinations and throwing "the one of ordinary skill in the art" out the window. Some have said this was an overreaction to hindsight issues in obviousness rejections.
They only mentioned one side of the brief as well. If I remember correctly an amiscus (that might be spelled wrong) brief was also filed against the arguments made by KSR. You see your technologies sit on one side while the bio-techs seem to be sitting on the other side, meaning two of the largest industries are pulling for opposite sides of the fight.
While they use the number of patent issuances going up, they seem to ignore the fact that patent filings have also sky-rocketed along with them. If the percentage of allowances per examinations are the same, then the stat is pretty irrelevant since the number would just be a case of more cases being viewed because of greater numbers of filings and more examiners examining cases.
I think an equally big problem with the patent process today is the number of simultaneous directions a company can use to defend itself. However, while you are waiting for a decision on one of the routes you may be decided against in another. The perfect example of this is RIM and NTP. RIM is waiting for the completion of re-examinations before the USPTO of NTPs patents and a case before SCOTUS on NTP's ability to sue RIM because of their location and operation as a Canadian company, but the District Court judge does not want to wait to hear from these cases (or the injunction case of ebay and Merch Exchange) and may force RIM into an expensive settlement that turns out to be pointless.
In the end, the blame for obviousness problems lies fairly firmly on the CAFC who added the unnecessary burden on the examiner of providing motivation for the combination of references. If this gets overturned it would send many patents tumbling and make rejections a lot easier. The last line of the article, however, is just plain wrong. I would be willing to wager that obviousness rejections under 35 USC 103 are the most common form of rejection used by the USPTO. It is very rare that anyone files for a patent for a device that has been previously released and would be rejectable under 35 USC 102. The article does provide some good information, but it also sorely lacks facts and definitely shows some degree of bias on the issue; however, it is an op-ed piece, so bias is fairly inherent.
I know what Free Speech is. Actually, of my grandparents only maybe a few hundred thousand of their generation died. American military death toll from WWII was ~407,000.
In the end, I do not believe The Register's example is a good one for arguing state sponsored censorship, and I think, as with a great many of their articles, that the article is highly inflammatory and missing a great deal of supported fact.
No, trust me, I believe in free speech. If we didn't have it, I would be one of the first people to exercise my 2nd amendment rights. However, you can look at this case in a million directions and no matter what, the fact is Kazakhistan has the right to control its own ccTLD. Had this happened without ICANN giving control to Kazakhistan, people would be wondering why the US didn't try to prevent it from happening.
The US has a dilemma. One of the (if not THE) most powerful countries in the world, they often get stuck with a lot of blame for the positions they take. You see the US could sit here and do nothing, but then we would be accused by certain people and by many countries to not be doing anything but protecting our own interests. Now, when we do go outside the US and "help" other countries people always say we are forcing our ideologies on other peoples.
It is interesting that everyone always seems to complain about the "bad" we do, while seemingly managing to forget the good that comes from here so often. Trust me, there are far worse places in the world to live and some that would be far worse for the rest of the world if they possessed the power the US has.
There's this thing called free speech. A few people think it's important. Lots of other people wouldn't know it if it kicked them in the ass, and do stupid shit like nodding to each other about how sure, free speech is important, but you don't want anything bad out there, right?
"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." -Soren Kierkegaard
Any time *anyone* uses authority to suppress or alter someones speech, that is censorship.
The problem is they did not alter his speech or even suppress it. They took away his registration of a domain name. My god, he can get one of the million or so other available ones or hell just use a static IP to forward people to his page. They have not removed his speech from the internet. This is hardly censorship by your definition, but of course the good old standard of insulting the people you are arguing always helps your point.
You are missing the picture here. You see, the internet is this great big place and you are not restricted to viewing places that end solely in the ccTLD of your country. If that were the case I am sure half of slashdot would disappear and you wouldn't be able to few some of the Motherboard manufacturers' websites who haven't purchased now.tw domains. Censorship by your own definition requires suppression or altering of a users speech and by not allowing someone to get a ccTLD domain you are not doing that by any means. If he did not already have the domain and tried to register it recently I am sure this would have been completely missed by everyone since any group technically has the power to deny you the registration of a domain name.
In the end, this is nothing more then a nuisance for the individual and people who view the site. Heck, the material probably wasn't even published, as you said, in Kazakhistan but was probably sitting on a server in the UK or just about anywhere else for that matter. The only way this becomes censorship is if the forcibly block the content of his site to the people of Kazakhistan.
Isn't calling it censorship a bit of a stretch. What we are talking about is who controls the domain rights within a country. Now in the example they give for Kazakhstan, they point to their removal of Sacha Baron Cohen's website borat.kz. Their excuse is actually laughable, but who is to deny anyone, government controlled, influenced or not the right to protect their perceived "integrity".
Now, is this right? This is debatable and surely will be debated over and over here. Is this censorship? Hardly. We are not talking about some Great Firewall preventing the people from visiting any site of Cohen's. This is the WWW afterall and he can easily have the site with a different domain avoiding the.kz all together and people will still be able to see it.
To say this is the beginning of state sponsored censorship is ridiculous, of course we are trusting on an article from The Register, so inflammatory language is a requirement, as is misinformation. Trust me, if a country was really wanting to censor anything they would do it one way or the other even if it meant "cutting the line". So let us all calm down and put the little tin foil hats away.
The entertainment industry would fall into that 15% for "consumer goods", which means that over 85% of the US exports have absolutely nothing to do with American entertainment. Don't forget, many countries think our music sucks about as much as we think theirs does. As a side note, by the 2004 numbers the US is the 2nd largest exporter of goods at $795 billion. Germany is the only single country who exports more. The EU exports $1,109 billion, but they are not a single country, but if you did count them that makes the US 3rd.
Despite what you might think the US still makes a good chunk of change on its exports and not so much of it would be the entertainment industry. I think what you mean is that the US imports more then it exports, which is quite true, but this is largely because we are a huge consumer. I think the only category listed above for which we are considered a "net exporter" is the Agriculture industry.
Actually, BSD is a unix derivative just like Linux. Both have their separation from Unix and neither is Unix.
In reality, it is probably still safe to call it a *nix, only the BSD zealots would like us to separate it into a "BSD", which is about as anal as separating the Linux distributions into different groups.
BTW, your original post compared it to *nix operating systems and complained about OSX. The Article refers to this about NetBSD, therefore making your statements a bit mixed.
The folks over at Wikipedia seem to agree with us on this one.
What if we just start buying everything from the other side of that pesky border? Or the one to the south as well? I am sure some internet based companies make enough money on their lower prices and no sales tax to move operations costs across the border and pick up the slight increase in shipping costs without too much trouble.
I do agree to some degree that this is a bit harder then they realize since many states have quiet variable sales tax laws. There are several states with tiered systems where food is taxed differently and other items are on another level aside from regular purchases. I think some states with extremely high sales tax rates are the ones complaining the most because they are the ones who are probably losing the most money.
Blaming retailers is a bit like shooting the messenger. Why should we have to go after the middle man when in reality the company who performed the harmful act was the distributor (in this case Sony)?
Based on your slightly thawed theory, if I purchased item X. Now it is possible that 1 out of every 1,000,000 has a defect that might be potentially harmful. So, if I am the unfortunate individual who gets that one and suffer serious injury the blame is on the retailer not the manufacturer? This makes no sense at all. You, as a retailer, cannot be responsible for testing every unit you sale and you would actually be more likely to get in trouble if people found out because they would say you are selling used merchandise as new.
Now, the case of Sony is a bit different; however, it should not be the responsibility of the retailer to police the manufacturers and none of the majors ones will do it, because they will probably be threatened with having their supply of future products cut off. My example is what happens when you start down the slippery slope by moving blame away from companies like Sony. If you seriously do believe this policy you mention, then please tell me what stores you own so we can have this conversation again after someone sues you for selling that harmful product.
I hope there's evidence that TV is constructive for recreation or learning.
There actually is some standard that sets what television programming is considered "educational". Interesting enough, the standard was actually lowered a few years back creating a whole new level of "educational" TV that was probably not really as educational or developmental as they would have liked. Besides, I do not see many kids past the age of like 5 or so watching PBS.
First, most authors are not compensated; their works are flops and have no economic value, as far as copyright goes.
This is true, but it is also quite true that most patents have no economic value. Yet, many people spend a great deal of money to get one, a lot more then on copyrights. The fact that a persons work may flop does not change the fact that they have a right to protection of the work in order to prevent others from making money off their ideas or to claim the work as their own. It gives people control over the content they create.
But secondly, authors have never inherently deserved compensation. Copyright is an artifical system intended to benefit the public.
So, if an author has no right to compensation for his work, then no one else does either? The people writing the scripts for multi-million dollar plays and movies deserve none of the money to be made off their work? You then argue that the system is artificial and made for the public's benefit. This is not really true since the exclusive rights afforded are primarily for the benefit of content creators, not the public. The laws actual prevent items from going into the public domain for decades limiting the ability of copyright material to freely spread, because in a place where people cannot afford books, movies, tv, etc. there is no ready means available to gain access to the copyrighted material.
Among the few who do, most of them don't derive enough for it to be worth it; they would have made more money doing something else.
This reminds me of a line from Whose Line where Ryan Style's (giving bad parental advice) says, "A teacher? A teacher? Honey, prostitutes make twice that money." Some people do their profession because they enjoy it. Firemen, Police Officers, Teachers, Artists, and many writers are just a few of the people who enjoy their work and who are underpaid (in many areas). The fact is copyright guarantees the artist and writers a chance to make money off their work and prevents people from freely disseminating the information by photocopying it and selling it to everyone at minimal prices or giving it away outright.
As it happens, it can. We can require authors to deposit copies of their works as a prerequisite for copyright. And we can cause their copyright to expire at a date that is most beneficial to the public, regardless of whether the author likes it or not.
Actually this is false. In the United States, Copyright protection is now automatic and no longer requires registration. Once a work has been placed into it form, it is covered by the laws and anyone can seek to exact their exclusive rights on their work.
The only thing there is no inherent right to is to cause authors to create and publish works in the first place. No one can make an author write a book, but if they do, they have to play by our rules if they want a copyright. They cannot assert an inherent right to control others' use of the work, especially for no better reason than that they happen to be the author.
You seem stuck on this idea that copyright was created to protect the public from getting eternally screwed by copyright holders. This may be somewhat true, but without copyright laws, authors would have no guaranteed protection of their works and no real repercussion against "infringers" since there would be no infringing, everything would be public domain. Copyrights make it possible to encourage authorship because now they are guaranteed some protection, but it is limited and not eternal. This is why the copyright in some way benefits the public, because it does encourage authors to create works and subsequent derivative works.
If a change to law that better accomplished those goals happened to result in a number of authors leaving the field, we would nevertheless be better off without them. Heck, some authors would never leave, even if they had no copyright at all/
I mean isn't this beginning to start a move towards the point where we are typing like we do on our cell phones? Seriously, I don't think these great advantages he talks about are really that advantageous. The fewer keys to learn is nice, but you have to remember twice a many shift options. I have a hard enough times remembering some of the symbols on the number row.
Who is to say this keyboard is easier for the hunt and peck typist? What if the person thinks keys should be arranged ABCD EFGH instead of ABCD NOPQ? Also why make the space bar so small? It has to be one of the most used keys on a keyboard and very easy to find. The keys on the bottom is also a bit disturbing to me. I have a tendancy to user the lower portion of a keyboard and/or the desk for "lowering" my hands while typing and my thumb often rests there or on the space bar (as is evident by the wearing of the plastic wear my thumb constantly rubs and presses).
And who made this guy the delete nazi? Where is my damn delete key or insert for that matter? There are times for using both. Two caps and num lock buttons? What a waste of space! Those are buttons you either turn on and leave on or you never turn on. The lack of the 10-key numpad also means this keyboard will find a lack of acceptance with people who type a lot of numbers. When I worked doing order entry, it was faster entering product numbers and credit card numbers with the 10-digit pad. The same is true for people working on accounting spreadsheets and programs, I am sure. If you are not typing text it is easier to move over to there, but if you have to type a balanced mix of both having it is also nice and anyone with a laptop can tell you how annoying it can be to have the number pad as part of the regular keypad.
This is a great idea if the mentality of people really is to get reduced size keyboards at the expensive of having to learn a ton of shift inputs. Work on improving the exist model to a point where people would like and still use it for a smaller size. I mean with a bit of effort you can probably make a very functional keyboard with about the same size (look at laptops). I don't think re-inventing the wheel is really necessary.
False analogy. They couldn't because of trademark law. On the other hand they could easily open a store with their own spin on what they think the customer wants, including ideas from the original cafe if they think they might work.
Wrong. Trademarks are meant to protect product names and logos. It is trademarks that prevent me from making Loco-Cola with a very similar or exact style as Coca-Cola. Trademarks also become useless when the term because diluted or is accepted as a "industry standard" term (i.e. why Linux should not be trademarkable, or at least is not an effective trademark or how Firewire is widely used now because Apple played nice on that one).
It's obvious; if one large company can lock out another large company and succeeds what hope has a small inventor got if the large company decides to lock them out? That's one of the major reasons why large companies are going for broke with patents, to block the development of competition and the free market.
Are you serious? If small company X came up with a great new invention that could potentially put Microsoft, IBM, HP, or some other large company out of business, they would not stand a chance without patents. Patents enable protection for inventions so people do not have to worry about not even being able to get started. This idea of a "Free Market" is, as I have described it, the "wet dream" of economists. Think of the great number of political systems. A great many of them all sound good on paper, but in the end they all have their potential failings.
Patents are a necessitated evil and will not be going anywhere no matter what anyone on slashdot or anywhere else may hope. The fact is many countries around the world have patent systems in place and there is even an entire treaty for Patents, Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). Is the US system busted? Yes. Does this mean the US should rid themselves of patents? No. I think if you asked enough people you would find the consensus to be, the patent system needs to be fixed, but patents are required to protect the rights and ideas of inventors. Now, if you asked them how to fix the patent system, you will probably get a different answer from each person and that is the problem.
of the old Netzero commercials. You remember the ones that were set in some sort of McCarthy-esque trial where people were saying the internet should be free for everyone. As cheesy as these old commercials were, is it not really the case that the internet should be as free as broadcast TV? We have a new form of media that by and large exists quite similar to television. Consider each website as a television program, some of them have ads on the page just like product placement and some temporarily stop your navigation with an ad before the next page, just like a TV commercial.
The internet offers an opportunity for information exchange beyond what could have ever been conceived even 10 or 20 yrs ago. I can talk to friends a few states or even half the world away and the communication is nearly instantaneous. Not only that, but this new form of communication travels with me. A truly wireless world where each person with their laptop, pda or cell phone can instantly be online talking to their best friends. However, there are some people standing in the way of this great digital, free internet revolution.
Are the people standing in the way the US Government or our elected officials? No, they are just the pawns of bigger more interested individuals who are not ready for the new order of things. Large corporations sit on vast supplies of money and they are dependent on archaic communication methods to maintain their precious power. Who are these huge conglomerates? The telecos who already lose a great deal of money to VoiP, Instant Messaging and e-mail. They tried to offset this some with cell phones, but that only appears to take them so far. The huge cable companies. These people have built an industry out of nothing. There was a time (believe it or not) when you had three networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) and that was it. Now we have thousands of channels delivered by huges companies like Time-Warner and Comcast.
Of course these people have the most to lose, but so do large media groups. Some of these groups are the same people bringing you cable, but others exist as well. They all have a lot to lose.
This new technology threatens their livelyhood and the livelyhood of a great many people. I liken the matter to an idea I had once. Consider matter transportation like we see on Star Trek. How many people would oppose such a great new technology? Well, you have the entire transportation industry who would lose countless passengers on their airlines, trains and buses. What about car manufacturers? Would you really need a car anymore to get to point B if you could arrive in a few seconds? Shipping companies? You would be able to order from Amazon and have the item magically appear next to you a few moments later.
The problem is the power and the money lies with people who do not want change. They are the ones who currently have our money and who continue to get it, so why should they want to change anything. They use lies and "studies" to convince these gullable politicians they need new laws to protect the consumer, or some other BS argument that is meant to sounds friendly. In reality, they are only trying to protect their own pockets and sadly it seems the people we vote into office are stupid enough to listen. I had a history professor tell me once, "Most Americans are just stupid." I guess that explains why people elect the people they do (i.e. George W. Bush).
I still argue this had the most diverse and complete list of games at launch. As I recall, a few months back, one of the millions of gamer sites (1up maybe) ranked the launches of consoles, and Dreamcast was one of the (if not the) highest one. Of course they were making up for the poor showing in their previous launch, but alas lies and deceit from the Sony camp caused the premature end of the Dreamcast and all future Sega consoles.
What do you mean 'nasty junk'? There are stand-alone hardware firewalls, but I believe most anymore are finding their way into other networking devices. Afterall, why have a router and firewall as two separate parts when you can combine the two together. The Hardware vs. Software firewall debate is one I have heard a great many times including a few on slashdot. Of course, both appear to have their ups and downs but as a government contracting company they should be running both (because redundancy never hurt anyone in security).
I am a firm believer that almost all IT work can be broken down into 3 major groups: Hardware, Software and Network. With that in mind let us proceed with further discussion.
The easiest to deal with is probably the hardware. The key of course is to keep items under warranty with proper replacement cycles. By doing this the job is pretty simple. If a part of computer X breaks then you can simply call (or use web-based customer service) to receive a replacement part or have someone come out to do the work for you. In my previous place of employ we used Dell hardware on a rotating 3-year cycle. If a warranteed item broke we simply called and had them send out the replacement which we promptly shipped back. The only exception to this was laptops and for those we made them send a service person out, because replacing a motherboard in one of those is not my idea of fun.
Next up is the software. All software presently in use should be tested on a machine of the desired hardware mentioned above. You will of course have uniformity in machines, because this means you have a lot less problems to worry about. It is the Apple approach, sort of. You will want to be using a single operating system (well maybe two). In this case either Windows 2000 or XP. Build a machine with the specs of all the others and install and test all the software on the machine, once it is running properly, using Symantec Ghost to create images and since you will have the same hardware, you can quickly roll out new machines or re-image bad ones.
Finally the network. Please tell me they have a properly created network using nice switches and a good hardware firewall. We once found a network closet at a previous place of employ that was connected to the rest of the network with a HUB. Several of us almost died at how horribly setup this was. You are dealing with a small number of computers so I do not expect you to have several grand worth of networking equipment. So long as this is maintained properly, it should never really be a problem.
Now, how do you sell them on changes being necessary? First off, if you have sporadic and out of warranty hardware, be sure they are perfectly aware that if the machine(s) die that it could take several days or weeks to replace. I know this might be a huge overestimate, but it will give them an idea of the sort of down time that a user could face.
Next, do a similar survey of the software. Also if you can verify the licenses on everything. If you find any missing licenses tell them of the ramifications and be sure to give them the worst case scenario. We had an instance like this at my last job and several people were upset when they were cut off from software, but at several thousand dollars per license, the company was willing to make a huge deal out of it with us. Any software that is out of warranty also must go or be removed from the network. So those NT4 and 9x machines you might have running around (I hope you don't), need to be taken care of. Once again a proper explanation might do the trick.
Remember, no matter what all management always wants productivity. So if you show how their system can result in losses of productivity, not only for you but for users, they are more willing to consider change. The key of a good IT department is always going to be to maximize uptime and minimize downtime.
One final suggestion, request the power to hire and fire. Then remind them of reasonable salary expectations. I am not sure what they are paying you, but a true IT manager should be making 70k or more and good staff at least 40-50k. If you convince them of this, well give me a call because I know a thing or two about straightening out IT departments, I helped fix two of them before I finally started getting engineering jobs.
Yet this development helps RIM as it seeks to avoid an injunction against operation of the Blackberry network pending appeal.
The judge in the case seems pretty reluctant to listen to RIM when it comes to the re-examinations going on before the PTO. The judge might still institute an injunction and that could force RIM to settle. This is particularly bad because if all the patents are invalidated then there would be no reason to have an injunction or a settlement and would cost RIM a lot of money. I think that if the judge does order the injunction RIM will go ahead and continue to appeal the process and prevent the injunction as long as possible.
The judge also refused to await for a decision in the MercExchange v. eBay case currently before SCOTUS that pertains to injunctions. RIM is still challenging to SCOTUS that they are not infringing because their routers are maintained in Canada and they are a Canadian company. Their argument may have some merit and it could just stop the whole case in its tracks. RIM has and will keep trying to avoid the injunction as long as possible, until the PTO cases go final or until SCOTUS makes a ruling in eBay case or decide to hear their case on jurisdiction.
No, people are constantly saying this is obvious. I thought of that so could anyone else. They are trying to argue that a patent is obvious or that prior art exists, I occassionally do see a few people who try to argue what should constitute patentability.
The problem usually arises because people are in gross misunderstanding about the definition of obviousness. Obviousness and utility are probably the two most mis-understood terms used by people when discussing patents.
Saying a patent is preventing research is a bit overstated. Plenty of research is still done to improve on existing drugs and to take existing drugs in combination with other drugs to improve effectiveness. I cannot speak too much for drug related patents, because most of them make a minimal amount of sense to me, but I would argue that a bigger cause of drug denial, in the US, is the prescription drug system and the higher prices that brings along with it. Look at drugs priced in the US that are Prescription and the same drug in Canada that is OTC and you will see that patents are not wholly to blame here.
I see that you are now bringing up the NTP v. RIM case. This case is more complicated then many might give it credit for and in the end it is more likely that RIM's BlackBerry devices will be up and running at the end of the day. The appeals process in that case is far from over and it isn't that far reaching of a case. Also, I would not call BlackBerry devices relatively expensive in comparison to other items available in the cellphone market, particularly other multi-function devices like the Treo's and Smartphones.
So are we now talking about the Eolas v. Microsoft case? Once again a case that is still not quite settled. It could arguably affect the internet greatly and could effect other browsers; however, if people are so worried about it then the time to start thinking of a way to work around the patent is now and not later. It would not be a huge task to ask Mozilla/Firefox to begin working on a method to change the implementation to get around the patent and it might still be possible to fix the problem with "destroying the web".
I have taken the high road and not returned your foul-mouthed, incoherent complaint. You see, this is part of the problem I spoke of in my original post, people do not want to discuss, they want to cuss and call people names.
It annoys me greatly how many people blindly post on here based on a news article with only half the information, or worse yet, on a brief synopsis of an already bad article, when it comes to patent related issues.
Half the posts are instantly finding ways to bash the PTO and a lot of those are people pulling quotes from their little text file they keep hand to copy and paste their "smart" words. The problem there is no real discussion. No real interest in talking about if the patent is valid, what issues may or may not arise from the patent, or how limited the patent may be.
There are far better places to argue about the patent system and how broken (or unbroken it may be), just don't codemn a single patent you have never read as being obvious or simple. If you really think a case went this long, through this many continuing applications without being effectively and properly researched for prior art, then closed-minded is where you stay.
It is important that people realize the patent system needs reform, but there is no motivation for the government to do so at this time. It is not an issue that many people in the government fully understand and there are two large lobbyist groups on opposite sides of a great many of the reforms that were proposed in the last Patent Reform Act.
I will admit the patent system could use a few tweaks to correct some issues, but the problems are not these end of the world, destruction of all innovation that people are continually making them out to be. I would like to hope that some of you have taken a view that is not alarmist and actually researched the current issues with the patent system and not just listened to the words from your "friends" here at slashdot. Trust me, some of these patents people are crying foul on are more patentable then they realize.
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Ok, so your complaint is a mouse for use in a portable system, in this case a laptop, has a different charging mechanism? This thing charges in the PC-Card slot; it is not like you are having to carry around a whole new charger. Actually this is probably a good idea since a great majority of people nowadays do not even need the PC-Card slot for anything. Most every drive accessory you might need can be swapped with drive bays now, and there is not much need for the expansion, unless you happen to get a laptop without firewire and you really need the connection or maybe some card reader.
I think your post is sorely off topic. Did you even bother to rtfa? I mean besides the fact I would probably crush this thing it is actually somewhat useful, and more so then that ridiculously tiny travel mouse that is the size of my thumb.
Just for reference some consider Diamon v. Diehr the SCOTUS case that opened the way for software patents. The office attempted to limit business method patents, but the recent Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) ruling will make that harder.
First off, I believe some of their citations are a bit dubious. They mention these great critics without citing any, and use the period of two decades with no supporting fact for the decline over that time. The Patent backlog has only worsened in recent years and the only way I can think they came up with the two decade number is because that is around the time SCOTUS opened the door for software and business method patents.
Interestingly enough, the case they pointed to is in a field not covered by either of these, but this is their attack. This is probably because these have become the two hotbed matters of discussion so it is best to stick to what infuriates readers the most, I suppose. However, a decision by SCOTUS would affect all patent areas, so maybe they aren't too far off...but still.
They say the obviousness bar has been lowered. However, I truly believe it was only lowered once when the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), decided to require motivations for making combinations and throwing "the one of ordinary skill in the art" out the window. Some have said this was an overreaction to hindsight issues in obviousness rejections.
They only mentioned one side of the brief as well. If I remember correctly an amiscus (that might be spelled wrong) brief was also filed against the arguments made by KSR. You see your technologies sit on one side while the bio-techs seem to be sitting on the other side, meaning two of the largest industries are pulling for opposite sides of the fight.
While they use the number of patent issuances going up, they seem to ignore the fact that patent filings have also sky-rocketed along with them. If the percentage of allowances per examinations are the same, then the stat is pretty irrelevant since the number would just be a case of more cases being viewed because of greater numbers of filings and more examiners examining cases.
I think an equally big problem with the patent process today is the number of simultaneous directions a company can use to defend itself. However, while you are waiting for a decision on one of the routes you may be decided against in another. The perfect example of this is RIM and NTP. RIM is waiting for the completion of re-examinations before the USPTO of NTPs patents and a case before SCOTUS on NTP's ability to sue RIM because of their location and operation as a Canadian company, but the District Court judge does not want to wait to hear from these cases (or the injunction case of ebay and Merch Exchange) and may force RIM into an expensive settlement that turns out to be pointless.
In the end, the blame for obviousness problems lies fairly firmly on the CAFC who added the unnecessary burden on the examiner of providing motivation for the combination of references. If this gets overturned it would send many patents tumbling and make rejections a lot easier. The last line of the article, however, is just plain wrong. I would be willing to wager that obviousness rejections under 35 USC 103 are the most common form of rejection used by the USPTO. It is very rare that anyone files for a patent for a device that has been previously released and would be rejectable under 35 USC 102. The article does provide some good information, but it also sorely lacks facts and definitely shows some degree of bias on the issue; however, it is an op-ed piece, so bias is fairly inherent.
when did I [bleep] your sister?
I know what Free Speech is. Actually, of my grandparents only maybe a few hundred thousand of their generation died. American military death toll from WWII was ~407,000.
In the end, I do not believe The Register's example is a good one for arguing state sponsored censorship, and I think, as with a great many of their articles, that the article is highly inflammatory and missing a great deal of supported fact.
No, trust me, I believe in free speech. If we didn't have it, I would be one of the first people to exercise my 2nd amendment rights. However, you can look at this case in a million directions and no matter what, the fact is Kazakhistan has the right to control its own ccTLD. Had this happened without ICANN giving control to Kazakhistan, people would be wondering why the US didn't try to prevent it from happening.
The US has a dilemma. One of the (if not THE) most powerful countries in the world, they often get stuck with a lot of blame for the positions they take. You see the US could sit here and do nothing, but then we would be accused by certain people and by many countries to not be doing anything but protecting our own interests. Now, when we do go outside the US and "help" other countries people always say we are forcing our ideologies on other peoples.
It is interesting that everyone always seems to complain about the "bad" we do, while seemingly managing to forget the good that comes from here so often. Trust me, there are far worse places in the world to live and some that would be far worse for the rest of the world if they possessed the power the US has.
There's this thing called free speech. A few people think it's important. Lots of other people wouldn't know it if it kicked them in the ass, and do stupid shit like nodding to each other about how sure, free speech is important, but you don't want anything bad out there, right?
.tw domains. Censorship by your own definition requires suppression or altering of a users speech and by not allowing someone to get a ccTLD domain you are not doing that by any means. If he did not already have the domain and tried to register it recently I am sure this would have been completely missed by everyone since any group technically has the power to deny you the registration of a domain name.
"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." -Soren Kierkegaard
Any time *anyone* uses authority to suppress or alter someones speech, that is censorship.
The problem is they did not alter his speech or even suppress it. They took away his registration of a domain name. My god, he can get one of the million or so other available ones or hell just use a static IP to forward people to his page. They have not removed his speech from the internet. This is hardly censorship by your definition, but of course the good old standard of insulting the people you are arguing always helps your point.
You are missing the picture here. You see, the internet is this great big place and you are not restricted to viewing places that end solely in the ccTLD of your country. If that were the case I am sure half of slashdot would disappear and you wouldn't be able to few some of the Motherboard manufacturers' websites who haven't purchased now
In the end, this is nothing more then a nuisance for the individual and people who view the site. Heck, the material probably wasn't even published, as you said, in Kazakhistan but was probably sitting on a server in the UK or just about anywhere else for that matter. The only way this becomes censorship is if the forcibly block the content of his site to the people of Kazakhistan.
Isn't calling it censorship a bit of a stretch. What we are talking about is who controls the domain rights within a country. Now in the example they give for Kazakhstan, they point to their removal of Sacha Baron Cohen's website borat.kz. Their excuse is actually laughable, but who is to deny anyone, government controlled, influenced or not the right to protect their perceived "integrity".
.kz all together and people will still be able to see it.
Now, is this right? This is debatable and surely will be debated over and over here. Is this censorship? Hardly. We are not talking about some Great Firewall preventing the people from visiting any site of Cohen's. This is the WWW afterall and he can easily have the site with a different domain avoiding the
To say this is the beginning of state sponsored censorship is ridiculous, of course we are trusting on an article from The Register, so inflammatory language is a requirement, as is misinformation. Trust me, if a country was really wanting to censor anything they would do it one way or the other even if it meant "cutting the line". So let us all calm down and put the little tin foil hats away.
Ok here is the most recent info I found:
agricultural products (soybeans, fruit, corn) 9.2%, industrial supplies (organic chemicals) 26.8%, capital goods (transistors, aircraft, motor vehicle parts, computers, telecommunications equipment) 49.0%, consumer goods (automobiles, medicines) 15.0% (2003)
The entertainment industry would fall into that 15% for "consumer goods", which means that over 85% of the US exports have absolutely nothing to do with American entertainment. Don't forget, many countries think our music sucks about as much as we think theirs does. As a side note, by the 2004 numbers the US is the 2nd largest exporter of goods at $795 billion. Germany is the only single country who exports more. The EU exports $1,109 billion, but they are not a single country, but if you did count them that makes the US 3rd.
Despite what you might think the US still makes a good chunk of change on its exports and not so much of it would be the entertainment industry. I think what you mean is that the US imports more then it exports, which is quite true, but this is largely because we are a huge consumer. I think the only category listed above for which we are considered a "net exporter" is the Agriculture industry.
Actually, BSD is a unix derivative just like Linux. Both have their separation from Unix and neither is Unix.
In reality, it is probably still safe to call it a *nix, only the BSD zealots would like us to separate it into a "BSD", which is about as anal as separating the Linux distributions into different groups.
BTW, your original post compared it to *nix operating systems and complained about OSX. The Article refers to this about NetBSD, therefore making your statements a bit mixed.
The folks over at Wikipedia seem to agree with us on this one.
What if we just start buying everything from the other side of that pesky border? Or the one to the south as well? I am sure some internet based companies make enough money on their lower prices and no sales tax to move operations costs across the border and pick up the slight increase in shipping costs without too much trouble.
I do agree to some degree that this is a bit harder then they realize since many states have quiet variable sales tax laws. There are several states with tiered systems where food is taxed differently and other items are on another level aside from regular purchases. I think some states with extremely high sales tax rates are the ones complaining the most because they are the ones who are probably losing the most money.
Blaming retailers is a bit like shooting the messenger. Why should we have to go after the middle man when in reality the company who performed the harmful act was the distributor (in this case Sony)?
Based on your slightly thawed theory, if I purchased item X. Now it is possible that 1 out of every 1,000,000 has a defect that might be potentially harmful. So, if I am the unfortunate individual who gets that one and suffer serious injury the blame is on the retailer not the manufacturer? This makes no sense at all. You, as a retailer, cannot be responsible for testing every unit you sale and you would actually be more likely to get in trouble if people found out because they would say you are selling used merchandise as new.
Now, the case of Sony is a bit different; however, it should not be the responsibility of the retailer to police the manufacturers and none of the majors ones will do it, because they will probably be threatened with having their supply of future products cut off. My example is what happens when you start down the slippery slope by moving blame away from companies like Sony. If you seriously do believe this policy you mention, then please tell me what stores you own so we can have this conversation again after someone sues you for selling that harmful product.
I hope there's evidence that TV is constructive for recreation or learning.
There actually is some standard that sets what television programming is considered "educational". Interesting enough, the standard was actually lowered a few years back creating a whole new level of "educational" TV that was probably not really as educational or developmental as they would have liked. Besides, I do not see many kids past the age of like 5 or so watching PBS.
No No...In Soviet Russia your autobiography WRITES you.
First, most authors are not compensated; their works are flops and have no economic value, as far as copyright goes.
This is true, but it is also quite true that most patents have no economic value. Yet, many people spend a great deal of money to get one, a lot more then on copyrights. The fact that a persons work may flop does not change the fact that they have a right to protection of the work in order to prevent others from making money off their ideas or to claim the work as their own. It gives people control over the content they create.
But secondly, authors have never inherently deserved compensation. Copyright is an artifical system intended to benefit the public.
So, if an author has no right to compensation for his work, then no one else does either? The people writing the scripts for multi-million dollar plays and movies deserve none of the money to be made off their work? You then argue that the system is artificial and made for the public's benefit. This is not really true since the exclusive rights afforded are primarily for the benefit of content creators, not the public. The laws actual prevent items from going into the public domain for decades limiting the ability of copyright material to freely spread, because in a place where people cannot afford books, movies, tv, etc. there is no ready means available to gain access to the copyrighted material.
Among the few who do, most of them don't derive enough for it to be worth it; they would have made more money doing something else.
This reminds me of a line from Whose Line where Ryan Style's (giving bad parental advice) says, "A teacher? A teacher? Honey, prostitutes make twice that money." Some people do their profession because they enjoy it. Firemen, Police Officers, Teachers, Artists, and many writers are just a few of the people who enjoy their work and who are underpaid (in many areas). The fact is copyright guarantees the artist and writers a chance to make money off their work and prevents people from freely disseminating the information by photocopying it and selling it to everyone at minimal prices or giving it away outright.
As it happens, it can. We can require authors to deposit copies of their works as a prerequisite for copyright. And we can cause their copyright to expire at a date that is most beneficial to the public, regardless of whether the author likes it or not.
Actually this is false. In the United States, Copyright protection is now automatic and no longer requires registration. Once a work has been placed into it form, it is covered by the laws and anyone can seek to exact their exclusive rights on their work.
The only thing there is no inherent right to is to cause authors to create and publish works in the first place. No one can make an author write a book, but if they do, they have to play by our rules if they want a copyright. They cannot assert an inherent right to control others' use of the work, especially for no better reason than that they happen to be the author.
You seem stuck on this idea that copyright was created to protect the public from getting eternally screwed by copyright holders. This may be somewhat true, but without copyright laws, authors would have no guaranteed protection of their works and no real repercussion against "infringers" since there would be no infringing, everything would be public domain. Copyrights make it possible to encourage authorship because now they are guaranteed some protection, but it is limited and not eternal. This is why the copyright in some way benefits the public, because it does encourage authors to create works and subsequent derivative works.
If a change to law that better accomplished those goals happened to result in a number of authors leaving the field, we would nevertheless be better off without them. Heck, some authors would never leave, even if they had no copyright at all/
This is true. Some authors love th
I mean isn't this beginning to start a move towards the point where we are typing like we do on our cell phones? Seriously, I don't think these great advantages he talks about are really that advantageous. The fewer keys to learn is nice, but you have to remember twice a many shift options. I have a hard enough times remembering some of the symbols on the number row.
Who is to say this keyboard is easier for the hunt and peck typist? What if the person thinks keys should be arranged ABCD EFGH instead of ABCD NOPQ? Also why make the space bar so small? It has to be one of the most used keys on a keyboard and very easy to find. The keys on the bottom is also a bit disturbing to me. I have a tendancy to user the lower portion of a keyboard and/or the desk for "lowering" my hands while typing and my thumb often rests there or on the space bar (as is evident by the wearing of the plastic wear my thumb constantly rubs and presses).
And who made this guy the delete nazi? Where is my damn delete key or insert for that matter? There are times for using both. Two caps and num lock buttons? What a waste of space! Those are buttons you either turn on and leave on or you never turn on. The lack of the 10-key numpad also means this keyboard will find a lack of acceptance with people who type a lot of numbers. When I worked doing order entry, it was faster entering product numbers and credit card numbers with the 10-digit pad. The same is true for people working on accounting spreadsheets and programs, I am sure. If you are not typing text it is easier to move over to there, but if you have to type a balanced mix of both having it is also nice and anyone with a laptop can tell you how annoying it can be to have the number pad as part of the regular keypad.
This is a great idea if the mentality of people really is to get reduced size keyboards at the expensive of having to learn a ton of shift inputs. Work on improving the exist model to a point where people would like and still use it for a smaller size. I mean with a bit of effort you can probably make a very functional keyboard with about the same size (look at laptops). I don't think re-inventing the wheel is really necessary.
False analogy. They couldn't because of trademark law. On the other hand they could easily open a store with their own spin on what they think the customer wants, including ideas from the original cafe if they think they might work.
Wrong. Trademarks are meant to protect product names and logos. It is trademarks that prevent me from making Loco-Cola with a very similar or exact style as Coca-Cola. Trademarks also become useless when the term because diluted or is accepted as a "industry standard" term (i.e. why Linux should not be trademarkable, or at least is not an effective trademark or how Firewire is widely used now because Apple played nice on that one).
It's obvious; if one large company can lock out another large company and succeeds what hope has a small inventor got if the large company decides to lock them out? That's one of the major reasons why large companies are going for broke with patents, to block the development of competition and the free market.
Are you serious? If small company X came up with a great new invention that could potentially put Microsoft, IBM, HP, or some other large company out of business, they would not stand a chance without patents. Patents enable protection for inventions so people do not have to worry about not even being able to get started. This idea of a "Free Market" is, as I have described it, the "wet dream" of economists. Think of the great number of political systems. A great many of them all sound good on paper, but in the end they all have their potential failings.
Patents are a necessitated evil and will not be going anywhere no matter what anyone on slashdot or anywhere else may hope. The fact is many countries around the world have patent systems in place and there is even an entire treaty for Patents, Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). Is the US system busted? Yes. Does this mean the US should rid themselves of patents? No. I think if you asked enough people you would find the consensus to be, the patent system needs to be fixed, but patents are required to protect the rights and ideas of inventors. Now, if you asked them how to fix the patent system, you will probably get a different answer from each person and that is the problem.
of the old Netzero commercials. You remember the ones that were set in some sort of McCarthy-esque trial where people were saying the internet should be free for everyone. As cheesy as these old commercials were, is it not really the case that the internet should be as free as broadcast TV? We have a new form of media that by and large exists quite similar to television. Consider each website as a television program, some of them have ads on the page just like product placement and some temporarily stop your navigation with an ad before the next page, just like a TV commercial.
The internet offers an opportunity for information exchange beyond what could have ever been conceived even 10 or 20 yrs ago. I can talk to friends a few states or even half the world away and the communication is nearly instantaneous. Not only that, but this new form of communication travels with me. A truly wireless world where each person with their laptop, pda or cell phone can instantly be online talking to their best friends. However, there are some people standing in the way of this great digital, free internet revolution.
Are the people standing in the way the US Government or our elected officials? No, they are just the pawns of bigger more interested individuals who are not ready for the new order of things. Large corporations sit on vast supplies of money and they are dependent on archaic communication methods to maintain their precious power. Who are these huge conglomerates? The telecos who already lose a great deal of money to VoiP, Instant Messaging and e-mail. They tried to offset this some with cell phones, but that only appears to take them so far. The huge cable companies. These people have built an industry out of nothing. There was a time (believe it or not) when you had three networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) and that was it. Now we have thousands of channels delivered by huges companies like Time-Warner and Comcast.
Of course these people have the most to lose, but so do large media groups. Some of these groups are the same people bringing you cable, but others exist as well. They all have a lot to lose.
This new technology threatens their livelyhood and the livelyhood of a great many people. I liken the matter to an idea I had once. Consider matter transportation like we see on Star Trek. How many people would oppose such a great new technology? Well, you have the entire transportation industry who would lose countless passengers on their airlines, trains and buses. What about car manufacturers? Would you really need a car anymore to get to point B if you could arrive in a few seconds? Shipping companies? You would be able to order from Amazon and have the item magically appear next to you a few moments later.
The problem is the power and the money lies with people who do not want change. They are the ones who currently have our money and who continue to get it, so why should they want to change anything. They use lies and "studies" to convince these gullable politicians they need new laws to protect the consumer, or some other BS argument that is meant to sounds friendly. In reality, they are only trying to protect their own pockets and sadly it seems the people we vote into office are stupid enough to listen. I had a history professor tell me once, "Most Americans are just stupid." I guess that explains why people elect the people they do (i.e. George W. Bush).
I still argue this had the most diverse and complete list of games at launch. As I recall, a few months back, one of the millions of gamer sites (1up maybe) ranked the launches of consoles, and Dreamcast was one of the (if not the) highest one. Of course they were making up for the poor showing in their previous launch, but alas lies and deceit from the Sony camp caused the premature end of the Dreamcast and all future Sega consoles.
What do you mean 'nasty junk'? There are stand-alone hardware firewalls, but I believe most anymore are finding their way into other networking devices. Afterall, why have a router and firewall as two separate parts when you can combine the two together. The Hardware vs. Software firewall debate is one I have heard a great many times including a few on slashdot. Of course, both appear to have their ups and downs but as a government contracting company they should be running both (because redundancy never hurt anyone in security).
I am a firm believer that almost all IT work can be broken down into 3 major groups: Hardware, Software and Network. With that in mind let us proceed with further discussion.
The easiest to deal with is probably the hardware. The key of course is to keep items under warranty with proper replacement cycles. By doing this the job is pretty simple. If a part of computer X breaks then you can simply call (or use web-based customer service) to receive a replacement part or have someone come out to do the work for you. In my previous place of employ we used Dell hardware on a rotating 3-year cycle. If a warranteed item broke we simply called and had them send out the replacement which we promptly shipped back. The only exception to this was laptops and for those we made them send a service person out, because replacing a motherboard in one of those is not my idea of fun.
Next up is the software. All software presently in use should be tested on a machine of the desired hardware mentioned above. You will of course have uniformity in machines, because this means you have a lot less problems to worry about. It is the Apple approach, sort of. You will want to be using a single operating system (well maybe two). In this case either Windows 2000 or XP. Build a machine with the specs of all the others and install and test all the software on the machine, once it is running properly, using Symantec Ghost to create images and since you will have the same hardware, you can quickly roll out new machines or re-image bad ones.
Finally the network. Please tell me they have a properly created network using nice switches and a good hardware firewall. We once found a network closet at a previous place of employ that was connected to the rest of the network with a HUB. Several of us almost died at how horribly setup this was. You are dealing with a small number of computers so I do not expect you to have several grand worth of networking equipment. So long as this is maintained properly, it should never really be a problem.
Now, how do you sell them on changes being necessary? First off, if you have sporadic and out of warranty hardware, be sure they are perfectly aware that if the machine(s) die that it could take several days or weeks to replace. I know this might be a huge overestimate, but it will give them an idea of the sort of down time that a user could face.
Next, do a similar survey of the software. Also if you can verify the licenses on everything. If you find any missing licenses tell them of the ramifications and be sure to give them the worst case scenario. We had an instance like this at my last job and several people were upset when they were cut off from software, but at several thousand dollars per license, the company was willing to make a huge deal out of it with us. Any software that is out of warranty also must go or be removed from the network. So those NT4 and 9x machines you might have running around (I hope you don't), need to be taken care of. Once again a proper explanation might do the trick.
Remember, no matter what all management always wants productivity. So if you show how their system can result in losses of productivity, not only for you but for users, they are more willing to consider change. The key of a good IT department is always going to be to maximize uptime and minimize downtime.
One final suggestion, request the power to hire and fire. Then remind them of reasonable salary expectations. I am not sure what they are paying you, but a true IT manager should be making 70k or more and good staff at least 40-50k. If you convince them of this, well give me a call because I know a thing or two about straightening out IT departments, I helped fix two of them before I finally started getting engineering jobs.
Yet this development helps RIM as it seeks to avoid an injunction against operation of the Blackberry network pending appeal.
The judge in the case seems pretty reluctant to listen to RIM when it comes to the re-examinations going on before the PTO. The judge might still institute an injunction and that could force RIM to settle. This is particularly bad because if all the patents are invalidated then there would be no reason to have an injunction or a settlement and would cost RIM a lot of money. I think that if the judge does order the injunction RIM will go ahead and continue to appeal the process and prevent the injunction as long as possible.
The judge also refused to await for a decision in the MercExchange v. eBay case currently before SCOTUS that pertains to injunctions. RIM is still challenging to SCOTUS that they are not infringing because their routers are maintained in Canada and they are a Canadian company. Their argument may have some merit and it could just stop the whole case in its tracks. RIM has and will keep trying to avoid the injunction as long as possible, until the PTO cases go final or until SCOTUS makes a ruling in eBay case or decide to hear their case on jurisdiction.
No, people are constantly saying this is obvious. I thought of that so could anyone else. They are trying to argue that a patent is obvious or that prior art exists, I occassionally do see a few people who try to argue what should constitute patentability.
The problem usually arises because people are in gross misunderstanding about the definition of obviousness. Obviousness and utility are probably the two most mis-understood terms used by people when discussing patents.
Saying a patent is preventing research is a bit overstated. Plenty of research is still done to improve on existing drugs and to take existing drugs in combination with other drugs to improve effectiveness. I cannot speak too much for drug related patents, because most of them make a minimal amount of sense to me, but I would argue that a bigger cause of drug denial, in the US, is the prescription drug system and the higher prices that brings along with it. Look at drugs priced in the US that are Prescription and the same drug in Canada that is OTC and you will see that patents are not wholly to blame here.
I see that you are now bringing up the NTP v. RIM case. This case is more complicated then many might give it credit for and in the end it is more likely that RIM's BlackBerry devices will be up and running at the end of the day. The appeals process in that case is far from over and it isn't that far reaching of a case. Also, I would not call BlackBerry devices relatively expensive in comparison to other items available in the cellphone market, particularly other multi-function devices like the Treo's and Smartphones.
So are we now talking about the Eolas v. Microsoft case? Once again a case that is still not quite settled. It could arguably affect the internet greatly and could effect other browsers; however, if people are so worried about it then the time to start thinking of a way to work around the patent is now and not later. It would not be a huge task to ask Mozilla/Firefox to begin working on a method to change the implementation to get around the patent and it might still be possible to fix the problem with "destroying the web".
I have taken the high road and not returned your foul-mouthed, incoherent complaint. You see, this is part of the problem I spoke of in my original post, people do not want to discuss, they want to cuss and call people names.
PCs that adjust their response depending on the user's mood.
Hal: Good Morning, Dave.
Just what we all need a computer that can sense we are getting pissed off and attempt to kill us before we kill it, our advantage is over.
It annoys me greatly how many people blindly post on here based on a news article with only half the information, or worse yet, on a brief synopsis of an already bad article, when it comes to patent related issues.
Half the posts are instantly finding ways to bash the PTO and a lot of those are people pulling quotes from their little text file they keep hand to copy and paste their "smart" words. The problem there is no real discussion. No real interest in talking about if the patent is valid, what issues may or may not arise from the patent, or how limited the patent may be.
There are far better places to argue about the patent system and how broken (or unbroken it may be), just don't codemn a single patent you have never read as being obvious or simple. If you really think a case went this long, through this many continuing applications without being effectively and properly researched for prior art, then closed-minded is where you stay.
It is important that people realize the patent system needs reform, but there is no motivation for the government to do so at this time. It is not an issue that many people in the government fully understand and there are two large lobbyist groups on opposite sides of a great many of the reforms that were proposed in the last Patent Reform Act.
I will admit the patent system could use a few tweaks to correct some issues, but the problems are not these end of the world, destruction of all innovation that people are continually making them out to be. I would like to hope that some of you have taken a view that is not alarmist and actually researched the current issues with the patent system and not just listened to the words from your "friends" here at slashdot. Trust me, some of these patents people are crying foul on are more patentable then they realize.