Let's say you use a password to store your banking information, and that password is "dumbass5." Now a blog posts that your password to your banking account is "dumbass5." Would you call it censorship when you retained an attorney to shut down that blog/forum/site? More specifically, would you call it censorship that infringed on your rights?
This isn't a story about censorship. It's a story about data integrity. Whether you like it or not, DRM and encryption keys are perfectly legal means of protecting content produced by major studios. Whether it should be or should not be, they have every right to exercise that control to protect their business interests. A DMCA takedown notice DOES NOT MEAN that the number here is purported to by copyrighted. It means that copyrighted content, which is protected by an encryption key, has been compromised. The DMCA takedown is to protect their copyrighted content, not this sequence of numbers (which is probably an encryption key used dozens of times over in the world at large).
Sure. Take away the copyright, and watch the news coverage vanish. Things cost money. Why should private news companies pay for something that earns them nothing? They're not going to spend millions of dollars covering a campaign if they don't have any way of making that investment worthwhile. They'll simply continue to cover news elsewhere, where it's worth the money.
And politicians "get away" with sound bites because the public doesn't want to hear any more, not the other way around. Having worked in government in the past, I have never met a candidate who was unwilling to talk in more detail if asked by someone legitimately interested in what they had to say.
How, exactly, does the public own a presidential campaign? They don't bear the risk of any of it, and they certainly don't own the candidates. It's a series of private individuals using private money to seek the public office. The candidates have an interest in having a dialogue with the public, but they have every right to act as they see fit. Candidates don't owe the public anything until they've been asked by voters to serve in the office.
How is time measured, though? Every clock we have is relative to something else in the universe. The time it takes me to get to work is equal to x movement of the sun or y rotations of an atomic clock.
If the entire universe is expanding, and everything in it is expanding, wouldn't it both speed up and slow down consistent with that rate? Time *COULD* be expanding, but we'd have no way of perceiving it.
The problem isn't one of physics, and unlike the excellent and appropriately modded-up reply in this thread, it also isn't necessarily semantic. It's conceptual.
If the universe is speeding up, our cognitive understanding of that is like a car engine going from 2000 RPM to 3000RPM or something (or 40 to 50 mph, etc.). Well if time is expanding, too, a "minute" would expand to match. That's because according to our understanding of physics, acceleration includes a time vector, and we assume time to be a constant in that model. But if the universe (and time) are expanding, 2000 RPM would stay 2000PRM because "minute" would keep pace with rotation. What we would need is an EXTERNAL TIME reference--a "multiverse" time--before we could evaluate it.
Time isn't necessarily special as a dimension, but our cognition of time as a clock may well be flawed, since a clock is bound to our own universe and is only a measure of relative speed (one second=x vibrations). As the earth's rotation slows, solar time will slow to match. Perhaps "time" performs the equivalent--but we'd have no way of knowing without having a relative comparison from outside our universe.
That's a load of crap. There are plenty of "free media" outlets who could campaign speeches. You know why they don't have as much coverage? They can't afford it. I'm not talking about the private-venue events, I'm talking about the campaign trail where candidates repeat everything until it bleeds from their ears and the "free media" has to piggyback on coverage paid for by someone else or choose their two events per year to attend.
"Free and open political discourse" isn't being owned by anyone. The video production of an event, like any other video production of any other news event, is controlled by the people who paid for it. If you want complete control over these events, then have them hosted by the government and filmed by CSPAN. And then STFU when you complain about the 15 cents in taxes it'll cost you to make it happen. Sometimes things cost money.
Candidates are private citizens. People who have achieved public office should use a public forum if they want free access to their speeches (many of them will release transcripts on their websites). When the president attends a private dinner party, what he says is really no one's business if they haven't allowed media to attend.
We have PBS and CSPAN to carry free, open political debate. Nobody watches those channels, and it's not for lack of content. CSPAN carries some incredible footage that CNN and MSNBC don't. People don't watch it very often though, and they don't demand that CSPAN record all debates (for the record, CSPAN has previously recorded speeches and debates from the campaign trail and does cover the related news at least once a week).
If MSNBC wants to host a debate and wants to own the copyright, so be it. It's their cameramen, their film, their labor charges, their transportation bill, their cameras and lighting equipment, their production work, their broadcasting costs, and from the look of things, their venue costs. "The public" doesn't want to pay for any of that, so why should they control it? This is simply the outcome of privatization. Have CSPAN do it--that means pay the extra 15 cents a year to expand their budget so they can keep up with these debates.
Granted, a government news source has its own share of problems, but if you want guaranteed free access and control granted to "the public" then you need a representative of "the public" to pony up the cash. Expecting a private business to run a charity and give up all of its assets as it produces them is unrealistic.
Interestingly, I always do the opposite, given the choice. I'd much rather get the complicated portions out of the way so that I'm left with a straight shot to my destination. It allows me to evaluate how much farther I have to walk by the time I start to be concerned with it (the second half of the trip). I also tend to park in spots I know I can remember or know the walking distance to my destination, even if they're a little further away. It's not worth saving a minute or two of walking time to spend five minutes looking for a parking spot. Then again, that might just be a result of San Francisco--you take the parking spot you've found, because it won't be there when you come back after failing to find a closer one and you end up being fifteen minutes late instead of just cutting it close.
I'm one of the worst procrastinators on the planet, though, so that doesn't map to my life generally. Just physical navigation. I also have no problem taking the slim chance in life decisions, but parking is not one of them. I nearly always lose the parking game. But obviously, as you say, these aren't entirely rational decisions, merely rationalized ones.
In a perfect world, none of it would even be necessary; not IP, not criminal law, not contracts. In a perfect world, everyone would be able to pursue his or her interests freely without worrying about the realities of making ends meet. In a perfect world, nothing would cost anything and all technology would be 100% green. The ozone hole wouldn't exist, the rainforest would still be intact, and we wouldn't have hunted humpback whales nearly to the brink of extinction. We'd also all look like supermodels and be able to eat fried anything-we-want without damaging six-pack abs.
In the real world, we have to compromise. We have to coax multibillion-dollar corporations into sharing their research and innovations, and we have to artificially inflate the earning potential of artists, since the goods they produce have zero "need." We have to work to keep our magazine-cover abs and endure decades of debt to pay for our houses. It's not ideal, but it's what we've got to work with.
Patents lapse, and the methods indicated become free for all to enjoy. A perfect world would have no need for trade secrets to begin with, let alone any measure of compatibility (or incompatibility) with any other field of law. But people suck, so here we are.
Patent proponents love to ignore that simple fact. At the risk of sounding like a broken record they need to get it into their thick skulls that no prior art is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for something being non-obvious. No one said any different. That's why "novel and non-obvious" tends to be the descriptor used. What Slashdot trolls need to get into their lead skulls is that it's not always practical to speak in English of "novel, non-obvious, and innovative" and to qualify and identify those terms completely each and every time one wants to speak of a new and patentable invention. The pedanticism is unnecessary--the fact that they were patentable stands to reason that they met the criteria. I am not going to give the complete breakdown for every example, as the posts would simply be too long.
The lack of such a discussion does not negate its importance, particularly when one assumes that people understand that there is more to say. When one talks about programming here, it is not necessary to explain the code step=by-step. If you don't understand patents, don't make an ass of yourself.
obviousness can indeed be judged after the fact. In fact it it can be judged better. Of course it can be judged better in hindsight. That does not mean, however, that people can successfully separate themselves from a world in which the consequences are utterly engrained. That's why patents have to be practical. Of course you'll fire back about some odd patent granted for an anitgravity drive or something, but those are the exception, not the rule. Please also remember that patents don't themselves grant any manufacturing rights. Also try to understand that simplicity is not the same as obviousness. How many super-complicated flying machines had to be tried before the simple airfoil came about? You certainly can't demonstrate the obviousness of the scroll bar, for example. However, the horizontal scroll bar would not be deserving of a second patent.
Patent opponents like to pretend that things that are now obvious would have been invented at some point anyway and that point would be just weeks or months later by massive numbers of people, but in most cases, that's impossible to prove. "Prior art" does not include whimsical fantasy, and ideas of striking simplicity do not mean that they are obvious in a patent-barring sense. Additionally, the last few patents in the initial creation stage of anything are always going to be a grey area as the different lines of "obvious" are drawn by different people. The application of an existing technology to a completely unrelated field also qualifies as non-obvious. Computers and desks, for example, or household lighting and aircraft are non-obvious evolution. Civil aircraft and commercial aircraft, probably not; applications in Windows and applications in Linux, probably not. Each patent solves a problem. That problem would likely be solved at some point, with some method, perhaps even one adapted from a totally different field. The original thinking that produces the answer is still patentable--it was only "obvious" if other companies all had the same idea. With the flame can, lots of people were trying dozens of different methods. The flame can came about and it was adopted across the board almost immediately. That may look like obviousness in hindsight, but it clearly was not at the time. It was adopted rapidly and completely because it worked, it was cheap, and it was simple; even still, almost no one had thought to use it until it was demonstrated.
Hey genius, pay special attention to the "skilled in the technological area" part. A patent is not a complete blueprint. It is only enough information to allow someone else to identify its unique features, i.e. to recreate it. A patent does not, and has never, required any company to surrender any legally protectable trade secrets. Once again, I repeat: trade secret trumps patent. No legal field stands alone.
That shouldn't be allowed. The orignal meaning of the word patent is open (as in patently obvious). Actually, "patently obvious" and "patent" come from "letters patent" which itself comes from Latin, but that's neither here nor there. The openness refers to the opening of the design at the expiration of the period, not to the clarity and precision of the filing itself. A patent has never been expected to provide enough information to produce the result--only enough information to describe it sufficiently for identification.
For the reasons I stated above, allowing a partially secret patent is a contradiction in terms Only from a poor understanding. Trade secret trumps patent in IP poker.
You should not be allowed to patent "a means of producing mechanical energy from gasoline. It's got metal bits in it, and that's all I'm saying." But you should be allowed to patent a specific implementation, e.g. the four stroke internal combustion engine. That would not prevent someone else inventing another means to the same end, e.g. a turbine. Start from the beginning. "A means of producing mechanical energy from a combustible fuel source" absolutely was patentable (not by 1850, though). The external combustion engine was patentable when created; the internal combustion engine was patentable, too. From there, someone could come up with the idea of the piston engine to drive a rotating shaft attached to a wheel. Another person could come up with the idea of a turbine. Yet another could come up with the rotary engine. Using these engines to drive a fan blade (propeller) instead of a wheel would be novel, and then using a series of fan blades to compress air, or using that propeller to generate direct lift would branch out from there. This process continues, and the original patents lapse as innovation compresses them into a mass of "basic principles."
Each of these innovations builds from the previous in a new way. But each of them also was non-obvious when it was invented. The wheel seems utterly obvious to all of us alive today, but it obviously wasn't when it was invented (or it would have been invented sooner). Absurdly simple things like four-stroke engines or counter-sinking screws or using a visual desktop metaphor weren't always so.
Coanda did some very important and innovative work, but not on the flame can to my knowledge. If you have a link, please share. Also, "prior art" doesn't affect patentability--it just affects who should hold the patent.
For the record, I'm not in school and don't understand the Slashdot meme of trying to score points by accusing people of being students. It always seems to pop up when people want to prop up a weak argument.
There is no confusion on my end, except what you're trying to say with your first paragraph. "Just like my schoolbook only on a computer" is exactly the same as "just like my candle only in an engine." There's no functional difference here.
So the camera is not patentable because paint and paintbrushes have been able to approximate things seen in real life for centuries?
Your argument lacks subtlety. Everything in the world is a logical continuation of something--nothing has been entirely original since the dawn of civilization.
The patent of a "four weeled vehicle with engine" would be denied, just because it doesn't explain what sort of verhicle it is. Sure it does. It's a motorized carriage. If you're the first one with the foresight to use an engine to generate rotational force to drive wheels, you've got yourself a patent. Something can only be obvious after someone has thought of it.
Specific patent that applies to well defined piece of technology -> granted. That's the way it was, and that is what doesn't happen with software patents. I'd say a "personal computer" is a fairly well-defined and sufficiently narrow innovation space. If you're an aeronautics engineer, you would think that patents that apply to aircraft generally are too broad, but that's not the case. There are lots more software titles than there are brands of pencils or models of cars, to be sure. But even if you think about your example, the differential, you'd realize that it applies to countless kinds of products with axles of some kind, from conveyor belts to dune buggies to space probes. Anything at the horizon, indeed.
What do you think would happen if somebody was able to patent a "four weeled vehicle with engine" before the diferential gear was created? Do you think it would be developed? Absolutely. The guy who invented the differential and the guy who invented the motorized carriage with turning problems would have gotten together. The differential guy can't just sell his gear--he'd need a product for it. The carriage guy benefits from an improved product. Bam. Patents at work.
Good for you. Unless your schoolbooks were on a computer, though, it doesn't matter. In 1981, the "desktop metaphor" for computers didn't exist. That (patented) metaphor came about through a series of innovations throughout the decade. Turbines had been in use for decades prior to the invention of the jet engine. You're fooling yourself if you think the jet engine didn't involve a swarm of patents ("using a turbine to force air through a combustion chamber").
For a concrete example, though, take the flame can. Candle holders (primitive flashlights) have for a good 200 years, if not longer, put a cylinder around candles to keep them from blowing out as you walked with them. Early jet engines wouldn't stay lit, because the wind would blow out the fire. The flame can put a perforated metal cylinder around the ignition point to keep the engines lit. This was patented and non-obvious (in the patent sense).
Have you ever read a patent? They all but say "using engineering" for most detailed and complex methods and go on to describe the results and/or consequences without disclosing the full answer to "how." That is because the engineering processes (including the mathematical algorithms that produced them [I'm talking even outside of software]) are protected trade secrets. Patents are vague in places where trade secrets are involved (that includes specific source code and particular manufacturing processes and formulas).
Copyright does not offer the same level of protection. Copyright only covers an explicit work (in software, that would mean the exact source code specifically). Patent holders do not have to file for new patents with every minor revision of a product, nor do most of them require a new patent when switching what building materials are used (except of course where the material itself is part of the patent). Copyright does not and cannot protect a method or process.
Think of those formulaic novels by the pulp author of your choice. Copyright protects each novel. Copyright cannot protect the method used to produce them.
Paper tabs don't automatically convert to a digital environment. We're quite accustomed to thinking in terms of a "desktop metaphor" today--but it did not exist prior to 1984 and even then not anywhere near the extent it does now. In 1981, it simply had not been done.
Just because you invent the wheel doesn't mean that every innovation that is based on that idea is suddenly non-patentable. The inspiration rarely matters (think of how many patented designs and mechanisms are based on observations about the natural world).
Then they'd be guilty of the same kind of profiteering that I already stated should be outlawed. You shouldn't be able to file a patent and let it propagate until you have lots of ripe targets for infringement suits. Patent holders should be required to defend their patents from the beginning or forfeit the right to sue for infringement.
Once your invention has propagated to achieve so much market share that no one can even identify you as the creator without methods more complicated than a one-minute Google search, you don't really have a stable ground to sue from if you've never filed suit before. While it isn't reported on Slashdot, these suits ARE dismissed for blatant profiteering so long as there is some meat for a judge to cling to elsewhere (since profiteering itself is not currently illegal).
That's not strictly true. Patents protect methods. Whether that method involves a series of gears, a paintbrush's movement on canvas, or some lines of code isn't really relevant, generally.
Saying it's not patentable is a false conclusion based on hindsight. If someone put a computer in front of you with a text-based interface, you wouldn't immediately look at it and say "tabs!" That's the answer! Obviously, you wouldn't even immediately create the idea of a GUI. A basic graphical interface was possible long before it was actually implemented. In 1981, I wouldn't have been able to find a single reason to identify a tab patent as obvious. Just because an idea is simple doesn't mean it's not patentable. Adding flush rivets to planes is a very simple idea, but it took a tremendous amount of engineering and trial-and-error in manufacturing processes. The end result is patentable because they figured out how to make it happen. The method itself is a trade secret (just as the source code for implementing a software feature can be). You'll note that most patents say "a method where..." or something similar and the patent describes the results. This is why.
Organizing information to display in tabs is a method. At one time, it was novel and non-obvious. There was no reason to reject a patent for it ("I should have thought of that!" isn't one) in 1981. The problem is that software patents last too long (things which were groundbreaking even just 5 years ago are old news), and infringement suits have become a method for profiteering. In 2007, tabs and scroll bars are old hat. Patent infringement suits should have to be defended from day one. If you wait 15 years to sue (at which time, 99% of the industry has gradually adopted that method), you're profiteering. There is no legitimate excuse. If you have been defended your patent since the beginning, that's an entirely different story.
I don't have a problem with patents being granted for novel innovations. I do feel that the USPTO should insist on a uniform licensing model, though, and that patents should need to be defended as the holder becomes aware of the problem, not several years later when the fruit is ripe, so to speak. I also believe that once your idea has propagated to the point where no one can even pinpoint the source, it's too late to sue. It's the difference between holding a patent on a gasoline engine in 1800 and trying to sue for one in 2007.
The thing is that "four wheeled vehicle with engine" at one time would have been truly novel and patentable. As technologies progress, they're supposed to be compressed and the initial patents lapse and society goes on.
The problem with software patents is that software moves a lot more quickly than most kinds of manufacturing and design; it is also more likely with software that good ideas will be emulated across the board as users begin to expect it--to the point that it becomes standardized. The steering wheel, after all, is not the only possible navigation interface for a car. However, car users have come to expect it.
Other companies are supposed to license the really good ideas and adopt and improve upon them. You get to a mature system in which US car manufacturers all hold a number of patents, and all license patents from each other. No one gets saddled with dramatically higher or lower costs, and the companies all continue to innovate.
The big difference with software is that lots of companies don't want to license patents from each other, and innovation/evolution has occurred so fast that it's quite difficult to keep up. In 1981, a tabbed visual interface would have been groundbreaking. In 2007, filing that same patent would be absurd. The USPTO would be served quite well to implement mandatory licensing of software patents; patent owners could continue to reap the legitimate benefits of patents, while having each company pay a "bulk licensing fee" would prevent these infringement suits as a profiteering business model. It would lessen pressure on the courts and leave room for actual patent infringement suits to be heard LESS than two years after filing.
Again, we have that choice. They're called primary elections. A two-party system does not remove voter choice, because voters are ultimately responsible for which two candidates face off against each other. There can only be one person in the office.
Strategic voting occurs in all voting systems with the possible exception of the Hare system. Just this morning on the BBC World News, they covered the French election and two of the voters they interviewed voted against Sarkozy instead of for Segolene-Royal.
You only get to vote for your one MP. You have to vote strategically to do so. You don't have any say in who your Prime Minister is. Every system has to narrow down. If in the US the registered Democrats select Clinton-style Democrats for Congressional positions, they reshape the party into that direction. The UK system also relies on strict party discipline, where elected MPs don't even get to make up their own minds. Third party candidates get elected, but in majority government they have extremely limited power to stop anything. The US system does not have such extreme lockouts because there are more opportunities to put blocks on any single unit. Party discipline is also far more relaxed.
Quite simply, it's a mistake to think that there is "a" Demcratic Party and "a" Republican Party. Both have multiple supporters with opposing views, just like multiparty systems. These groups all have to be satisfied to some extent, or the Congressional majority cannot govern. For example, at this stage in the game, there are no less than 7 different ideologies represented by presidential candidates.
Ultimately, the top two will face off, but voters have already had the opportunity to express their choice on which two they like best. They have this choice in more minor races as well. It doesn't get reported in the news and most people don't bother to vote, but it's there. If you change the rules to let them all run in the general election, it's not magically going to make people start caring; in fact, it would probably further depress voter turnout in this country since the time and effort involved in voting would increase, and many of them already find it inconvenient.
Wrong. It's an intentional vote choice. There are many electoral systems experts in this country, and a lot of them work for the government. The single-stage plurality vote is simple, direct, and decisive. It is not "broken" because it tends to produce two strong parties--it's a known, documented, mechanical effect of the system.
It's fine that you'd rather have a multiparty system with coalition governments or a costly and time-consuming runoff vote. Neither of those voting systems are any more or less broken, though. Plurality voting is meant to drive a tendency to create mandates and to produce transparent and immediate results. The voters still have their choice in primary elections. They choose not to use it to accomplish anything; why would they act any different in multicandidate elections than they do with primaries?
It's also only a superficial binary state. There is no lack of variety of ideology in either major party--but ultimately, the people in charge of the party set the tone for the "official" line. If it wasn't working, they'd change it. A Clinton Democrat and a Carter Democrat are quite different things, and an Obama Democrat is neither. Same with the other party.
Now all attorneys had better do what the prez says all the time, or he'll just fire them. Now? That has always been the case. That's what it means to serve at the PLEASURE of the president. They work for the president. The president can fire them whenever he wants, for whatever reason he wants. You think he won't fire a cabinet undersecretary for failing to toe the line? Remember Colin Powell?
These attorneys follow the orders of the Attorney General. The AG follows the orders of the president (and any designated delegates in this particular White House organizational schema). If they're not doing what the AG or the president wants, they're out. They're political appointments, not independent arbiters.
The Justice Department is an *executive* agency. The firing of federal attorneys is well within the purview of the White House. The *Judicial Branch* is still just as separate as it has been in a century (more spineless maybe, but that's not an institutional function).
Executive appointments serve at the pleasure of the president. He can fire them whenever he wants. What's wrong here is that they tried to lie about WHY they were fired to avoid bad press and his already miserable cronyism. There's a mile-long list of reasons to impeach the son of a bitch, but this is about as back-burner as they get.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's say you use a password to store your banking information, and that password is "dumbass5." Now a blog posts that your password to your banking account is "dumbass5." Would you call it censorship when you retained an attorney to shut down that blog/forum/site? More specifically, would you call it censorship that infringed on your rights?
This isn't a story about censorship. It's a story about data integrity. Whether you like it or not, DRM and encryption keys are perfectly legal means of protecting content produced by major studios. Whether it should be or should not be, they have every right to exercise that control to protect their business interests. A DMCA takedown notice DOES NOT MEAN that the number here is purported to by copyrighted. It means that copyrighted content, which is protected by an encryption key, has been compromised. The DMCA takedown is to protect their copyrighted content, not this sequence of numbers (which is probably an encryption key used dozens of times over in the world at large).
Is that a question.
Sure. Take away the copyright, and watch the news coverage vanish. Things cost money. Why should private news companies pay for something that earns them nothing? They're not going to spend millions of dollars covering a campaign if they don't have any way of making that investment worthwhile. They'll simply continue to cover news elsewhere, where it's worth the money.
And politicians "get away" with sound bites because the public doesn't want to hear any more, not the other way around. Having worked in government in the past, I have never met a candidate who was unwilling to talk in more detail if asked by someone legitimately interested in what they had to say.
How, exactly, does the public own a presidential campaign? They don't bear the risk of any of it, and they certainly don't own the candidates. It's a series of private individuals using private money to seek the public office. The candidates have an interest in having a dialogue with the public, but they have every right to act as they see fit. Candidates don't owe the public anything until they've been asked by voters to serve in the office.
Santa Clara isn't in southern California...
This is also a trial court case. It sets no precedent, period.
How is time measured, though? Every clock we have is relative to something else in the universe. The time it takes me to get to work is equal to x movement of the sun or y rotations of an atomic clock.
If the entire universe is expanding, and everything in it is expanding, wouldn't it both speed up and slow down consistent with that rate? Time *COULD* be expanding, but we'd have no way of perceiving it.
The problem isn't one of physics, and unlike the excellent and appropriately modded-up reply in this thread, it also isn't necessarily semantic. It's conceptual.
If the universe is speeding up, our cognitive understanding of that is like a car engine going from 2000 RPM to 3000RPM or something (or 40 to 50 mph, etc.). Well if time is expanding, too, a "minute" would expand to match. That's because according to our understanding of physics, acceleration includes a time vector, and we assume time to be a constant in that model. But if the universe (and time) are expanding, 2000 RPM would stay 2000PRM because "minute" would keep pace with rotation. What we would need is an EXTERNAL TIME reference--a "multiverse" time--before we could evaluate it.
Time isn't necessarily special as a dimension, but our cognition of time as a clock may well be flawed, since a clock is bound to our own universe and is only a measure of relative speed (one second=x vibrations). As the earth's rotation slows, solar time will slow to match. Perhaps "time" performs the equivalent--but we'd have no way of knowing without having a relative comparison from outside our universe.
That's a load of crap. There are plenty of "free media" outlets who could campaign speeches. You know why they don't have as much coverage? They can't afford it. I'm not talking about the private-venue events, I'm talking about the campaign trail where candidates repeat everything until it bleeds from their ears and the "free media" has to piggyback on coverage paid for by someone else or choose their two events per year to attend.
"Free and open political discourse" isn't being owned by anyone. The video production of an event, like any other video production of any other news event, is controlled by the people who paid for it. If you want complete control over these events, then have them hosted by the government and filmed by CSPAN. And then STFU when you complain about the 15 cents in taxes it'll cost you to make it happen. Sometimes things cost money.
Candidates are private citizens. People who have achieved public office should use a public forum if they want free access to their speeches (many of them will release transcripts on their websites). When the president attends a private dinner party, what he says is really no one's business if they haven't allowed media to attend.
We have PBS and CSPAN to carry free, open political debate. Nobody watches those channels, and it's not for lack of content. CSPAN carries some incredible footage that CNN and MSNBC don't. People don't watch it very often though, and they don't demand that CSPAN record all debates (for the record, CSPAN has previously recorded speeches and debates from the campaign trail and does cover the related news at least once a week).
If MSNBC wants to host a debate and wants to own the copyright, so be it. It's their cameramen, their film, their labor charges, their transportation bill, their cameras and lighting equipment, their production work, their broadcasting costs, and from the look of things, their venue costs. "The public" doesn't want to pay for any of that, so why should they control it? This is simply the outcome of privatization. Have CSPAN do it--that means pay the extra 15 cents a year to expand their budget so they can keep up with these debates.
Granted, a government news source has its own share of problems, but if you want guaranteed free access and control granted to "the public" then you need a representative of "the public" to pony up the cash. Expecting a private business to run a charity and give up all of its assets as it produces them is unrealistic.
Interestingly, I always do the opposite, given the choice. I'd much rather get the complicated portions out of the way so that I'm left with a straight shot to my destination. It allows me to evaluate how much farther I have to walk by the time I start to be concerned with it (the second half of the trip). I also tend to park in spots I know I can remember or know the walking distance to my destination, even if they're a little further away. It's not worth saving a minute or two of walking time to spend five minutes looking for a parking spot. Then again, that might just be a result of San Francisco--you take the parking spot you've found, because it won't be there when you come back after failing to find a closer one and you end up being fifteen minutes late instead of just cutting it close. I'm one of the worst procrastinators on the planet, though, so that doesn't map to my life generally. Just physical navigation. I also have no problem taking the slim chance in life decisions, but parking is not one of them. I nearly always lose the parking game. But obviously, as you say, these aren't entirely rational decisions, merely rationalized ones.
In a perfect world, none of it would even be necessary; not IP, not criminal law, not contracts. In a perfect world, everyone would be able to pursue his or her interests freely without worrying about the realities of making ends meet. In a perfect world, nothing would cost anything and all technology would be 100% green. The ozone hole wouldn't exist, the rainforest would still be intact, and we wouldn't have hunted humpback whales nearly to the brink of extinction. We'd also all look like supermodels and be able to eat fried anything-we-want without damaging six-pack abs.
In the real world, we have to compromise. We have to coax multibillion-dollar corporations into sharing their research and innovations, and we have to artificially inflate the earning potential of artists, since the goods they produce have zero "need." We have to work to keep our magazine-cover abs and endure decades of debt to pay for our houses. It's not ideal, but it's what we've got to work with.
Patents lapse, and the methods indicated become free for all to enjoy. A perfect world would have no need for trade secrets to begin with, let alone any measure of compatibility (or incompatibility) with any other field of law. But people suck, so here we are.
The lack of such a discussion does not negate its importance, particularly when one assumes that people understand that there is more to say. When one talks about programming here, it is not necessary to explain the code step=by-step. If you don't understand patents, don't make an ass of yourself. obviousness can indeed be judged after the fact. In fact it it can be judged better. Of course it can be judged better in hindsight. That does not mean, however, that people can successfully separate themselves from a world in which the consequences are utterly engrained. That's why patents have to be practical. Of course you'll fire back about some odd patent granted for an anitgravity drive or something, but those are the exception, not the rule. Please also remember that patents don't themselves grant any manufacturing rights. Also try to understand that simplicity is not the same as obviousness. How many super-complicated flying machines had to be tried before the simple airfoil came about? You certainly can't demonstrate the obviousness of the scroll bar, for example. However, the horizontal scroll bar would not be deserving of a second patent.
Patent opponents like to pretend that things that are now obvious would have been invented at some point anyway and that point would be just weeks or months later by massive numbers of people, but in most cases, that's impossible to prove. "Prior art" does not include whimsical fantasy, and ideas of striking simplicity do not mean that they are obvious in a patent-barring sense. Additionally, the last few patents in the initial creation stage of anything are always going to be a grey area as the different lines of "obvious" are drawn by different people. The application of an existing technology to a completely unrelated field also qualifies as non-obvious. Computers and desks, for example, or household lighting and aircraft are non-obvious evolution. Civil aircraft and commercial aircraft, probably not; applications in Windows and applications in Linux, probably not. Each patent solves a problem. That problem would likely be solved at some point, with some method, perhaps even one adapted from a totally different field. The original thinking that produces the answer is still patentable--it was only "obvious" if other companies all had the same idea. With the flame can, lots of people were trying dozens of different methods. The flame can came about and it was adopted across the board almost immediately. That may look like obviousness in hindsight, but it clearly was not at the time. It was adopted rapidly and completely because it worked, it was cheap, and it was simple; even still, almost no one had thought to use it until it was demonstrated.
Hey genius, pay special attention to the "skilled in the technological area" part. A patent is not a complete blueprint. It is only enough information to allow someone else to identify its unique features, i.e. to recreate it. A patent does not, and has never, required any company to surrender any legally protectable trade secrets. Once again, I repeat: trade secret trumps patent. No legal field stands alone.
Each of these innovations builds from the previous in a new way. But each of them also was non-obvious when it was invented. The wheel seems utterly obvious to all of us alive today, but it obviously wasn't when it was invented (or it would have been invented sooner). Absurdly simple things like four-stroke engines or counter-sinking screws or using a visual desktop metaphor weren't always so.
Coanda did some very important and innovative work, but not on the flame can to my knowledge. If you have a link, please share. Also, "prior art" doesn't affect patentability--it just affects who should hold the patent.
For the record, I'm not in school and don't understand the Slashdot meme of trying to score points by accusing people of being students. It always seems to pop up when people want to prop up a weak argument.
There is no confusion on my end, except what you're trying to say with your first paragraph. "Just like my schoolbook only on a computer" is exactly the same as "just like my candle only in an engine." There's no functional difference here.
So the camera is not patentable because paint and paintbrushes have been able to approximate things seen in real life for centuries?
Your argument lacks subtlety. Everything in the world is a logical continuation of something--nothing has been entirely original since the dawn of civilization.
Good for you. Unless your schoolbooks were on a computer, though, it doesn't matter. In 1981, the "desktop metaphor" for computers didn't exist. That (patented) metaphor came about through a series of innovations throughout the decade. Turbines had been in use for decades prior to the invention of the jet engine. You're fooling yourself if you think the jet engine didn't involve a swarm of patents ("using a turbine to force air through a combustion chamber").
For a concrete example, though, take the flame can. Candle holders (primitive flashlights) have for a good 200 years, if not longer, put a cylinder around candles to keep them from blowing out as you walked with them. Early jet engines wouldn't stay lit, because the wind would blow out the fire. The flame can put a perforated metal cylinder around the ignition point to keep the engines lit. This was patented and non-obvious (in the patent sense).
Have you ever read a patent? They all but say "using engineering" for most detailed and complex methods and go on to describe the results and/or consequences without disclosing the full answer to "how." That is because the engineering processes (including the mathematical algorithms that produced them [I'm talking even outside of software]) are protected trade secrets. Patents are vague in places where trade secrets are involved (that includes specific source code and particular manufacturing processes and formulas).
Copyright does not offer the same level of protection. Copyright only covers an explicit work (in software, that would mean the exact source code specifically). Patent holders do not have to file for new patents with every minor revision of a product, nor do most of them require a new patent when switching what building materials are used (except of course where the material itself is part of the patent). Copyright does not and cannot protect a method or process.
Think of those formulaic novels by the pulp author of your choice. Copyright protects each novel. Copyright cannot protect the method used to produce them.
Paper tabs don't automatically convert to a digital environment. We're quite accustomed to thinking in terms of a "desktop metaphor" today--but it did not exist prior to 1984 and even then not anywhere near the extent it does now. In 1981, it simply had not been done.
Just because you invent the wheel doesn't mean that every innovation that is based on that idea is suddenly non-patentable. The inspiration rarely matters (think of how many patented designs and mechanisms are based on observations about the natural world).
Then they'd be guilty of the same kind of profiteering that I already stated should be outlawed. You shouldn't be able to file a patent and let it propagate until you have lots of ripe targets for infringement suits. Patent holders should be required to defend their patents from the beginning or forfeit the right to sue for infringement.
Once your invention has propagated to achieve so much market share that no one can even identify you as the creator without methods more complicated than a one-minute Google search, you don't really have a stable ground to sue from if you've never filed suit before. While it isn't reported on Slashdot, these suits ARE dismissed for blatant profiteering so long as there is some meat for a judge to cling to elsewhere (since profiteering itself is not currently illegal).
That's not strictly true. Patents protect methods. Whether that method involves a series of gears, a paintbrush's movement on canvas, or some lines of code isn't really relevant, generally.
Saying it's not patentable is a false conclusion based on hindsight. If someone put a computer in front of you with a text-based interface, you wouldn't immediately look at it and say "tabs!" That's the answer! Obviously, you wouldn't even immediately create the idea of a GUI. A basic graphical interface was possible long before it was actually implemented. In 1981, I wouldn't have been able to find a single reason to identify a tab patent as obvious. Just because an idea is simple doesn't mean it's not patentable. Adding flush rivets to planes is a very simple idea, but it took a tremendous amount of engineering and trial-and-error in manufacturing processes. The end result is patentable because they figured out how to make it happen. The method itself is a trade secret (just as the source code for implementing a software feature can be). You'll note that most patents say "a method where..." or something similar and the patent describes the results. This is why.
Organizing information to display in tabs is a method. At one time, it was novel and non-obvious. There was no reason to reject a patent for it ("I should have thought of that!" isn't one) in 1981. The problem is that software patents last too long (things which were groundbreaking even just 5 years ago are old news), and infringement suits have become a method for profiteering. In 2007, tabs and scroll bars are old hat. Patent infringement suits should have to be defended from day one. If you wait 15 years to sue (at which time, 99% of the industry has gradually adopted that method), you're profiteering. There is no legitimate excuse. If you have been defended your patent since the beginning, that's an entirely different story.
I don't have a problem with patents being granted for novel innovations. I do feel that the USPTO should insist on a uniform licensing model, though, and that patents should need to be defended as the holder becomes aware of the problem, not several years later when the fruit is ripe, so to speak. I also believe that once your idea has propagated to the point where no one can even pinpoint the source, it's too late to sue. It's the difference between holding a patent on a gasoline engine in 1800 and trying to sue for one in 2007.
The thing is that "four wheeled vehicle with engine" at one time would have been truly novel and patentable. As technologies progress, they're supposed to be compressed and the initial patents lapse and society goes on.
The problem with software patents is that software moves a lot more quickly than most kinds of manufacturing and design; it is also more likely with software that good ideas will be emulated across the board as users begin to expect it--to the point that it becomes standardized. The steering wheel, after all, is not the only possible navigation interface for a car. However, car users have come to expect it.
Other companies are supposed to license the really good ideas and adopt and improve upon them. You get to a mature system in which US car manufacturers all hold a number of patents, and all license patents from each other. No one gets saddled with dramatically higher or lower costs, and the companies all continue to innovate.
The big difference with software is that lots of companies don't want to license patents from each other, and innovation/evolution has occurred so fast that it's quite difficult to keep up. In 1981, a tabbed visual interface would have been groundbreaking. In 2007, filing that same patent would be absurd. The USPTO would be served quite well to implement mandatory licensing of software patents; patent owners could continue to reap the legitimate benefits of patents, while having each company pay a "bulk licensing fee" would prevent these infringement suits as a profiteering business model. It would lessen pressure on the courts and leave room for actual patent infringement suits to be heard LESS than two years after filing.
Again, we have that choice. They're called primary elections. A two-party system does not remove voter choice, because voters are ultimately responsible for which two candidates face off against each other. There can only be one person in the office.
Strategic voting occurs in all voting systems with the possible exception of the Hare system. Just this morning on the BBC World News, they covered the French election and two of the voters they interviewed voted against Sarkozy instead of for Segolene-Royal.
You only get to vote for your one MP. You have to vote strategically to do so. You don't have any say in who your Prime Minister is. Every system has to narrow down. If in the US the registered Democrats select Clinton-style Democrats for Congressional positions, they reshape the party into that direction. The UK system also relies on strict party discipline, where elected MPs don't even get to make up their own minds. Third party candidates get elected, but in majority government they have extremely limited power to stop anything. The US system does not have such extreme lockouts because there are more opportunities to put blocks on any single unit. Party discipline is also far more relaxed.
Quite simply, it's a mistake to think that there is "a" Demcratic Party and "a" Republican Party. Both have multiple supporters with opposing views, just like multiparty systems. These groups all have to be satisfied to some extent, or the Congressional majority cannot govern. For example, at this stage in the game, there are no less than 7 different ideologies represented by presidential candidates.
Ultimately, the top two will face off, but voters have already had the opportunity to express their choice on which two they like best. They have this choice in more minor races as well. It doesn't get reported in the news and most people don't bother to vote, but it's there. If you change the rules to let them all run in the general election, it's not magically going to make people start caring; in fact, it would probably further depress voter turnout in this country since the time and effort involved in voting would increase, and many of them already find it inconvenient.
Wrong. It's an intentional vote choice. There are many electoral systems experts in this country, and a lot of them work for the government. The single-stage plurality vote is simple, direct, and decisive. It is not "broken" because it tends to produce two strong parties--it's a known, documented, mechanical effect of the system.
It's fine that you'd rather have a multiparty system with coalition governments or a costly and time-consuming runoff vote. Neither of those voting systems are any more or less broken, though. Plurality voting is meant to drive a tendency to create mandates and to produce transparent and immediate results. The voters still have their choice in primary elections. They choose not to use it to accomplish anything; why would they act any different in multicandidate elections than they do with primaries?
It's also only a superficial binary state. There is no lack of variety of ideology in either major party--but ultimately, the people in charge of the party set the tone for the "official" line. If it wasn't working, they'd change it. A Clinton Democrat and a Carter Democrat are quite different things, and an Obama Democrat is neither. Same with the other party.
These attorneys follow the orders of the Attorney General. The AG follows the orders of the president (and any designated delegates in this particular White House organizational schema). If they're not doing what the AG or the president wants, they're out. They're political appointments, not independent arbiters.
The Justice Department is an *executive* agency. The firing of federal attorneys is well within the purview of the White House. The *Judicial Branch* is still just as separate as it has been in a century (more spineless maybe, but that's not an institutional function).
Executive appointments serve at the pleasure of the president. He can fire them whenever he wants. What's wrong here is that they tried to lie about WHY they were fired to avoid bad press and his already miserable cronyism. There's a mile-long list of reasons to impeach the son of a bitch, but this is about as back-burner as they get.