Politicians suck in new and innovative ways every day, teachers teach the dumbest shit, and bakers bake cakes that look like cars. It's all front page material, sadly!
I believe johnlcallaway was offended more by your choice of quote, which has become a widely overused cliche. We get it; Ben wouldn't have approved, and neither do you.
> [...] and not have to terrorized by people like you [...]
Feel free to tell us in your own words how parody is terrorism though, that should be fun;-)
Reminds me of this one time a friend of mine said something about a third Indiana Jones movie, something about a temple, and possibly doom... crazy talk of course.
First up... it won't be good enough for your mother. Unless you're mother is already tech savvy, then you just plain don't have a point. Simply making the machine a thin client will not resolve any existing HCI woes your average 50 -80 year old has.
...and no virus/worm/spyware on earth would be able to get to it. Hell, it wouldn't need a firewall or AV.
Ok, a worm/virus/spyware app doesn't need lots of hard disk space to do nasty things. All it needs is a local vulnerability to exploit (or your mothers mistaken consent in the spyware case), memory to live in and a processor to run on. Then it can spam its little heart out / corrupt your flash based storage / steal your personal details for as long as the machine is up. Making the machine a thin client does not remove the need for security. In fact it increases the need, as almost all the work done on the machine is being sent over the web to GMail or your web based version of Picassa.
It would be good enough for my mother, and no virus/worm/spyware on earth would be able to get to it. Hell, it wouldn't need a firewall or AV. Combine it with a flatscreen which I can also use as TV. How much would that cost?
Or maybe I'm reading this all wrong, and these are you're specifications? In which case the answer to your question is 'a lot more than you think'.
Only an limited number of patents to be granted every year. Let's say 500 patents.
This way only really important inventions (not innovations) will be honored with `limited goverment granted monopoly`.
If you limit the number of patents to 500 a year then you will get a situation where everyone scrambles for patents when the counter resets every year (or whatever increment), and I'm willing to bet good money on the majority of those 500 patents will end up in the hands of major corporations.
And in any case, after all 500 patents have expired, does that mean no protection for the ideas of those left behind? Sure, they can wait until next year, and maintain prior art to avoid future unpleasantness, but thats another year without government protection of your ideas. And is usually the Slashdot cry in this matter, "Won't sombody please think of the small businesses!
As a side effect the less probability of granting patent will discourage the firms to fill as many patents as possible.
Won't that simply force them to fill in more patent applications to increase their chances?
The really good thing is that there will be an limited number of patents that could be checked more easy (e.g. only 10'000 valid patents at any time)
Ah, but your wrong... limited supply would only force the competition to become more fierce. I'd imagine that this would increase the quality of the patent applications (not necessarily a bad thing), forcing the patent office to spend more time on each application, especially if they need to choose a top 500.
To me, the issue is instead what happens 150 years from now -- they copyright has expired, but Rights Manglement never dies....
This is an excellent point, and is something I have a particular problem with. When purchasing DRM'd products you are essentially giving up rights you would normally have, which includes your right to do whatever the hell you like with the product after the copyright expires.
For example, what happens if a movie is only ever released in a DRM'd format? When the copyright expires, there is no legal way to obtain the movie, so the rights holder has effectively extended the movies copyright indefinitely. Something tells me in 150 years time, the big studios are not going to just give up their film and allow it to be distributed for free just because the law says they don't have a monopoly on it anymore.
Of course in 150 years, you'll probably have been enticed to buy the re-re-re-remake with quadruple hi-def and an interview with the directors corpse, so it a bit of a moot point.
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Care to share a name? ;-) I'm always on the lookout for a more reliable ISP.
Politicians suck in new and innovative ways every day, teachers teach the dumbest shit, and bakers bake cakes that look like cars. It's all front page material, sadly!
I believe johnlcallaway was offended more by your choice of quote, which has become a widely overused cliche. We get it; Ben wouldn't have approved, and neither do you. > [...] and not have to terrorized by people like you [...] Feel free to tell us in your own words how parody is terrorism though, that should be fun ;-)
Reminds me of this one time a friend of mine said something about a third Indiana Jones movie, something about a temple, and possibly doom... crazy talk of course.
And in any case, after all 500 patents have expired, does that mean no protection for the ideas of those left behind? Sure, they can wait until next year, and maintain prior art to avoid future unpleasantness, but thats another year without government protection of your ideas. And is usually the Slashdot cry in this matter, "Won't sombody please think of the small businesses!
Won't that simply force them to fill in more patent applications to increase their chances? Ah, but your wrong... limited supply would only force the competition to become more fierce. I'd imagine that this would increase the quality of the patent applications (not necessarily a bad thing), forcing the patent office to spend more time on each application, especially if they need to choose a top 500. I'm with you there, thoughTry searching for WHO ARE THE WHO. As usual, proper grammar saves the day :)
For example, what happens if a movie is only ever released in a DRM'd format? When the copyright expires, there is no legal way to obtain the movie, so the rights holder has effectively extended the movies copyright indefinitely. Something tells me in 150 years time, the big studios are not going to just give up their film and allow it to be distributed for free just because the law says they don't have a monopoly on it anymore.
Of course in 150 years, you'll probably have been enticed to buy the re-re-re-remake with quadruple hi-def and an interview with the directors corpse, so it a bit of a moot point.