Patents are meant to reward the act of inventing by granting a government-enforced short-term monopoly on its implementation in exchange of it being registered (and thus added to the public pool).
It is of note that the patent system does not require the inventor to license its patents for others to use. It only requires them to be registered. Registering a patent means that, even if the inventor does not license it to others, it is out in the open and will eventually enter the public domain once the patent expires.
The whole point is to promote new inventions by giving incentives to inventors.
TomTom uses their customers input as recommendations for changes, which are then vetted by their experts. OSM users act as their experts relying on self-policing and trust.
Surely, even Slashdot readers can understand the difference.
You keep saying this, but it just shows the free market at play. So you don't purchase the ebook because you feel it should be cheaper. Fine.
If the market agrees with you, the ebooks will not sell well at their new price, and the seller will be forced to adjust or make less profit on the lower-margin physical book.
What's the problem?
If people have the choice between both products, and yet continue to accept the higher price for the ebook, then that means that is the price the market will bear.
What's the problem?
Oh, I see, you want it cheaper now, because you say it should be cheaper, not because the market decides it is.
Except for that... you know... that whole Android thing.
Right, you mean the Android thing that has virtually no revenue? Or the Android thing that makes money by offering yet another outlet for search advertising?
Google is just as much of a one-trick-pony as Facebook is.
So what you are proposing is, to lower the bar for PhD graduation by accepting publication of uninteresting research of common-place phenomena. Gotcha!
That'll go well, I'm sure. It certainly won't be abuse by every would-have-been drop-out to "predict" the boiling point of water, or the acceleration due to gravity, or what happens when you paint a room a different colour (hint: it no longer retains the previous colour, surprise!).
It's OK, you see, because they acquired their measurements in a novel way, with Legos, or macaroni, or something.
in-no-va-tion noun
1. something new or different introduced: numerous innovations in the high-school curriculum.
2. the act of innovating; introduction of new things or methods.
Technically interesting and clever not does necessarily mean a new thing or method; therefore it is not innovation.
Just as implementing a simple machine using Lego bricks is not an innovative transformation of such a machine, however interesting and clever it may be.
Without making any judgement regarding Apple's actual technological innovation, what I said about Google is nothing like what you said.
My point was not that Google was offering improvements on existing concepts, quite the opposite: their "breakthroughs" were a step backwards from the state of the art, except that it was implemented over the Web.
Webmail clients sucked in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and GMail was better than most of them. However, it did not do absolutely anything that native mail clients did at the time, and in fact did much less.
If your goal is to reimplement everything as a web service, then this may seem as innovation. But there is arguably little advantage in doing the same things we did 10 years ago but in a generalized platform that serves as the lowest common denominator.
As a webmail client, yes. But webmail clients in general still lack the features we used to have with advanced native mail clients back in the late 1990s, or are just getting up to parity.
Google's insistence of reimplementing every single speciallized software technology that we already have, as an HTTP service running on a generalized web platform, may be technically interesting and very clever, but hardly innovating.
I have seen Breaking Bad, back when it first started.
I was absolutely impressed by the first episode, but lost my interest by the fifth or sixth one.
I thought it kept getting more weird every time, and I didn't really like the direction they were taking, nor the cliched character development and stilted action sequences in the subsequent shows.
Slashdot Mirror
So Samsung was hired help, just like when any other widget manufacturer gives a specification to a machine shop for creating metal parts.
That does not make the machine shop the "designer" of the widget.
-dZ.
Apparently, they do.
That's one of many. I don't feel like searching for more right now.
Of course, it is more fashionable to say that Foxconn designs and builds everything and Apple puts their logo on it.
-dZ.
Paying cash implies an illegal transaction? That is highly presumptuous, and wrong in the majority of cases.
-dZ.
You are wrong.
Patents are meant to reward the act of inventing by granting a government-enforced short-term monopoly on its implementation in exchange of it being registered (and thus added to the public pool).
It is of note that the patent system does not require the inventor to license its patents for others to use. It only requires them to be registered. Registering a patent means that, even if the inventor does not license it to others, it is out in the open and will eventually enter the public domain once the patent expires.
The whole point is to promote new inventions by giving incentives to inventors.
-dZ.
Actually, I think that most here on /. think that exerting the rights of a patent--any patent, by whomever--is patent-trolling.
-dZ.
I thought PAL was an always standard. Never standards don't exist.
What gives the patent trolling rights?
Or more to the point, why would a patent be trolling?
-dZ.
Is it as amazing as putting on prescription glasses and avoiding the unpleasantness, cost, and the low-light clarity side-effects?
-dZ.
If they design it and write the specifications, what's the difference? The component builder is just the hired help.
Really? What device is that?
Great strawman there, did you make it yourself? Pretty.
The response is, obviously, that we nobody relies on Wikipedia.
-dZ.
TomTom uses their customers input as recommendations for changes, which are then vetted by their experts. OSM users act as their experts relying on self-policing and trust.
Surely, even Slashdot readers can understand the difference.
-dZ.
You keep saying this, but it just shows the free market at play. So you don't purchase the ebook because you feel it should be cheaper. Fine.
If the market agrees with you, the ebooks will not sell well at their new price, and the seller will be forced to adjust or make less profit on the lower-margin physical book.
What's the problem?
If people have the choice between both products, and yet continue to accept the higher price for the ebook, then that means that is the price the market will bear.
What's the problem?
Oh, I see, you want it cheaper now, because you say it should be cheaper, not because the market decides it is.
-dZ.
Right, you mean the Android thing that has virtually no revenue? Or the Android thing that makes money by offering yet another outlet for search advertising?
Google is just as much of a one-trick-pony as Facebook is.
dZ.
LOL! Glad to know I wasn't the only one that thought of that.
So what you are proposing is, to lower the bar for PhD graduation by accepting publication of uninteresting research of common-place phenomena. Gotcha!
That'll go well, I'm sure. It certainly won't be abuse by every would-have-been drop-out to "predict" the boiling point of water, or the acceleration due to gravity, or what happens when you paint a room a different colour (hint: it no longer retains the previous colour, surprise!).
It's OK, you see, because they acquired their measurements in a novel way, with Legos, or macaroni, or something.
-dZ.
Actually, he said "science is a method dingbat," whatever that means.
Does nerd-bias count as "Positive" or "Negative" bias?
(I think you kinda prove the parent's point.)
-dZ.
not does should have been does not, sorry.
noun 1. something new or different introduced: numerous innovations in the high-school curriculum. 2. the act of innovating; introduction of new things or methods.
Technically interesting and clever not does necessarily mean a new thing or method; therefore it is not innovation.
Just as implementing a simple machine using Lego bricks is not an innovative transformation of such a machine, however interesting and clever it may be.
-dZ.
Without making any judgement regarding Apple's actual technological innovation, what I said about Google is nothing like what you said.
My point was not that Google was offering improvements on existing concepts, quite the opposite: their "breakthroughs" were a step backwards from the state of the art, except that it was implemented over the Web.
Webmail clients sucked in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and GMail was better than most of them. However, it did not do absolutely anything that native mail clients did at the time, and in fact did much less.
If your goal is to reimplement everything as a web service, then this may seem as innovation. But there is arguably little advantage in doing the same things we did 10 years ago but in a generalized platform that serves as the lowest common denominator.
-dZ.
As a webmail client, yes. But webmail clients in general still lack the features we used to have with advanced native mail clients back in the late 1990s, or are just getting up to parity.
Google's insistence of reimplementing every single speciallized software technology that we already have, as an HTTP service running on a generalized web platform, may be technically interesting and very clever, but hardly innovating.
dZ.
It was a joke, arguably not a very good one.
I have seen Breaking Bad, back when it first started.
I was absolutely impressed by the first episode, but lost my interest by the fifth or sixth one.
I thought it kept getting more weird every time, and I didn't really like the direction they were taking, nor the cliched character development and stilted action sequences in the subsequent shows.
dZ.
Because Chrome is paid for and developed by Google; and Firefox is paid for by...
Oh, never mind.
-dZ.
I weep for the future of this country.
Wait, you said "TV shows"--I take it back.