You guys don't seem to have the ability to think one step further.
If no patent on the drug was allowed, then other companies would quickly copy the drug, and then sell it at a lower price than the developer of the drug would be able to.
And this would be bad how?
That would be bad because the pharma companies then will not continue to do R&D for new drugs because they are guaranteed to not make a return on their investment. In fact, they would be obligated to their shareholders to not do R&D for new drugs because they are guaranteed to not make a return on their investment.
I agree with you that there are too many patents like this.
Should we abolish the entire patent system because of this? It seems that if your group wants to get anything by at all, they should first start with restricting the patent system, not abolishing it. Abolition just goes too far to be comfotable with, and it will garner very little support. It would be more wise for these anti-patent groups to push for restrictions, and then, after those are passed, push for more restrictions, etc. (for more on this, see an article called "Is it immoral to be prudent" about the passage of anti-abortion laws)
Also, as for the frivolous patents that get by, getting a patent doesn't mean the patent is valid. It can still be struck down at a later date. If a company thinks another company's patent is invalid, they just infringe, and pray the courts will see it their way. Often the other company won't try to press their "patent" because they know it won't be upheld, so defending it is more expensive than just letting it go.
Also, I forgot to note--you apparently didn't read to the end of my post because I did give another example (I used a cell phone example, but you couldn't read that far).
No need for a different example. You're just plain wrong (as to the US at least). Almost all of "Big Pharma's" reseach is funded by itself. The state funds only projects that would not otherwise happen--there are strict rules governing this (In fact I just took a class on these rules last semester). The projects that get special treatment are the ones that patent law is not enough incentive for R&D. For example, treatments for diseases that affect only a very small portion of the population--the drug companies would never recover their investment no matter how long the patent term, so extra incentives are needed. Why can't these companies just be nicer?! You might ask. They can't be nicer because they owe a duty to their shareholders. If the government doesn't subsidize some projects, the project won't happen. But the vast majority of Pharma R&D is funded by the Pharma co.
I don't think it would be wise to abolish patents. For some things patents are not needed (business methods...), but, for other things, the vitality of the industry depends on patents.
Here's what I mean: pharmaceuticals. Some countries still don't patent them; they also don't have a pharmaceutical industry. It costs a ton of money to create a new drug, and it takes a long time to make a profit of that drug. If no patent on the drug was allowed, then other companies would quickly copy the drug, and then sell it at a lower price than the developer of the drug would be able to. There would be no profit in research and development--so no new drugs would be developed, everyone would just copy each other's old drugs.
What would happen instead is something that already hinders the industry to a degree--trade secrets. Patents would be replaced by trade secrets. Since "the next big drug" usually comes from developments ontop of earlier research, each company would be totally separate not telling the other what its developed, so each company would be duplicating research to find out what another company had already discovered. So it is much more efficient to have patents where the discovery is published but protected. Then research need not be inefficiently duplicated at a huge wasteful cost.
I think that if patents were actually abolished governments would be required to take up the slack. It would be like public roads--no single entity profits from deciding to make a road unless they will make money. Since they can't make money of developing drugs without outside help, the government must offer that help--so the government would have to fund new drug development. Or, they could just use patents.
How would you like it if you were Motorola, and you spent $10,000,000 depeloping a new technology for a telephone, and then, 6 months after you put it on sale, all the other major companies have developed the exact same thing but can undercut your price because they only had to pay $500,000 for research and development (research consisted of dismantling your invention; development consisted of reproducing it)? According to the article, to make money Motorola needs to just develop something better than the last thing. So, it spends $10,000,000 developing something even better. 6 months later, Nokia had that copied and out on their new phones as well, also undercutting your price.
If you don't believe me regarding this scenario--look at history. Experiences exactly like this are the very reason that patent law came into existence in the first place. Do we really want to go back where we already were, find out again that it was bad, and then reimpliment patent law...ad infinitum???
So email providers may not provide spam filters in your country? And you are thankful for this? I must be misunderstanding something. Do people in your country like to receive spam? What country is this--I think this is of interest to spammers--the country where every spam makes it through.
Additionally, is AOL and Goodmail, etc only available in the US?
At least we know now that we'll be able to easily recognize junkmail that paid its way passed the filter--it'll have a "blue ribbon." Blue ribbon=certified junk mail.
Why is Google doing this redundant service?! For $
on
Google Pages Reviewed
·
· Score: 1
Just another means of ad revenue. They'll figure out some way to get ad revenue out of this--why else would they do it?
Ummm, he's not missing "the point," you're missing his point. He wants to run a mac at home, but he has to run Windows at work but he doesn't want to buy 2 computers. "why not just get a regular PC, which is gonna be cheaper...?" Because, if he buys a regular PC but still wants to use Mac at home, he has to buy two computers. One Mac + one PC = More than the cost of just one Mac.
Now let's imagine work is willing to reimburse for one windows-compatible computer. You will say--"there, you only need to pay for one computer. Work is paying for the other." But that's a foolish argument--if work will pay for one Mac, and he can run Windows on it for work, then he has to pay for zero computers, and he still has Mac at home.
I think the forum has made it clear that Google, as a private company (though "publicly traded") has no obligations to Kinderstart under the First Amendment, so their lawsuit is bunk. BUT Kinderstart did a good think for their business by suing Google. How many people here after looking at this article looked at Kindercrap.com too see what it is? Would any of us have gone there otherwise? So the lawsuit is going to easily die very quickly, but suing Google gets you on the front page of the news! It even got the company some free advertising here on Slashdot of all places!
Ummm--basically you're exactly right. But there are laws enacted under the interstate commerce clause of the constitution that disallow discrimination based on skin color. If not for those law, however, your logic would hold perfectly. So, to repeat you, but more correctly, the same logic could be used to say that a loan officer could refuse loans to people based on the fact that they only have 7 teeth. And that is exactly correct--a loan officer may do exactly that. He may choose not to give loans to anyone with brown hair. It's totally irrelevant to the liklihood the person will be a good borrower, but there are no laws against it.
I'll correct him more precisely. Google is not a government entity. There. Done. Now everything he says applies.
And I'll correct you more precisely. Google is a publicly traded company. It is not "owned by the public" in the sense that a government entity is--our taxes do not fund the existence of Google. It is "public" in the sense that anyone can invest in it if they so choose.
I don't know whether or not the parent was intended to be sarcastic, but it is a notable point. I keep Opera set to spoof IE (#5, not #3, for those who understand what that means). In fact, my cell phone provider's website won't let me on unless I'm spoofing (and then it works perfectly...).
But, on the other hand, the people that calculate such comparisons seem to be able to tell the difference somehow. Also, it is notable, the MSupdate is not fooled by the spoof (though, as I understand it, it used to be).
When I bought my computer off eBay, I asked the seller if it had Windows XP Pro (my school required XP 'Pro,' and not 'Home'). He told me that it does, and Office too, but that eBay shut his site down when he advertized it. I thought, that's odd... (I was so naiive).
Anyway, I bought the computer, and it came with a burned version of the resource CD, and the hard drive had images of windows XP, Office, Nero, Norton (no, I didn't install Norton!) and several other programs. Mind you this computer was cheap too. I though, wow I got a deal!
But obviously everything on here is pirated. However, whenever I download something from Microsoft, they check to make sure my copy of Windows is "genuine" and it seems to think everything is in proper order...
It seems to me that the DOJ would have an easier time if they just did this on their own. Type in a search term(s), see what comes up. Rinse and repeat.
Now, I unserstand that might not give them an idea of what is really being searched for out there. But there are other things you could do--ask some people to play around on DOJ computers for a while. Set up a little webcafe with a sign that says "all search terms will be recorded and used in a research project." People might be reluctant to really let themselves go on their searches, knowing that the DOJ is recording their search terms, but it's better than nothing.
I assume the real problem is that the search terms could be connected with the person who typed them in. I think people are afraid of the DOJ saying, "we just want to know what comes up in searches with the real search terms people use" but then when the DOJ finds "15 year olds having sex" in a search box they'll go find who typed it in and prosecute. I think that really is a problem. But If Google was sure that all personally identifiable information was removed from the searches (i.e., the DOJ has the search terms and the results, but no way to figure out who typed in the search), then I find this acceptable. It's still problematic, though, because Google does store information on what we searched for (search history) which I guess would be open to subpoena.
In conclusio, the doomsday-sayers are correct--this is long and rambling but I've come to the conclusion that unless Google starts making it so searches aren't personally identifiable there very well may be some sort of constitutional violation. I don't know exactly what though. People say "the right to privacy, of course!" But no, that is really more of a right to personal autonomy. The "right to privacy" does not refer to a right to not have information about us revealed (though the name would make it sound like something along those lines). Freedom of speech? Perhaps the right to receive speech from willing speakers? Hmmm, I don't know. I think I'm almost changing my mind again--even if the information is personally identifiable, what's the constitutional violation? It sounds bad to me, but I don't see a legal problem... I guess that would explain why Google is using a "trade secret" argument.
At least the judge is favouring less than the gorvernment originally requested, still... I feel this is again the over-eager government wiping its feet on the flag and blowing its nose in the Constitution.
Is this a Brit or Canadian speaking up for the US citizenry?
I don't know what you were talking about in the first paragraph or what relevance it has to do with the supposed statement by IBM.
But as to the second part, IBM does still sell "Workstations" which are known to the general public as "desktop computers" (note in that link that its easy to find and buy "Workstations" through IBM's site, but impossible to find laptops). It sold only its "personal computing" business to Lenovo, which includes the "Thinkpad" and the "ThinkCentre" lines of computers, not the "IntelliStation" line, which is aimed toward business computing.
Finally, even if IBM was purchasing computers (and now it must purchase laptops from a third-party vendor), since it buys 1000 in a shot, I'm sure it can include something in the contract along the lines of "the computers will be shipped with the image supplied by IBM." IBM would do this so it doesn't have to pay the extra cost of having Windows on its machines.
Lastly, you could be correct that this is just a lot of hot air--after all it's just some rumor that even IBM itself denies. All I was saying was that it was rash to say "'No one will upgrade to Vista' doesn't mean that new machines won't be bundled with Vista." It's technically true, but your interpretation doesn't make sense in this context--supposedly he said this in a private meeting with close employees, and the company denies it having been said, even. This is not some political statement that was said to make the masses happy.
Ummm--you're making one of two misinterpretations of the article. Here are the corrections: First, this is for machines that IBM employees will use, not the machines that are sold by IBM. Second, when IBM acquires machines for its own employees' usage, it does not acquire them from an outside vendor. So maybe in your company, computers purchased from IBM will come with Vista on them, and the machines will cost a bit more due to the cost of the operating system. But within IBM, they supply their own computers for themselves and they will just not bother with Vista (think about it, imagine you owned a company that made computers, and you had 10 employees, would you order your employees' computers from Dell? No, you would pull them out of your own factory and plop them on the employees' desks. Now you want an OS for them--pick whatever you want before plopping them on the employees' desks).
Now, what I'm wondering is--will we be able to by an IBM workstation with their version of Linux preinstalled? And, further, how much will that cost compared to a computer with Vista preinstalled? Lastly, will IBM, with its version of Linux, compete against Dell, using Ubuntu?
I think I'd have to say no, this is different from that. The "aero" GUI actually requires a better graphic card. That is no different from similar GUIs on Linux--they also require better graphics cards.
One might argue that it does "force obsolescence" because Windows is so ubiquitous--you want to be able to run Vista, you gotta have an nVidia (sp?). But that isn't the case either, as you can turn off "aero" and use the "classic" look, which requires a less sophisticated graphics card.
Next year a cable company will put high speed internet access in his town (as opposed to this guy's medium speed--but better than dialup), and I am imagining this guy very stubbornly refusing to subscribe to faster internet. I mean seriously, I'd be mad if I did all that work for nothing.
I was thinking though--I don't think the record companies are necessarily trying to push people back to CDs with artificially high prices, I think they're just trying to give online music just as high of an artificial price.
I haven't purchased any CDs in a while--in general, is it harder to "rip" newer CDs now? Do they have funny copy protection things? Like what I'm asking is--if CDs and individual songs both cost the same price (like if a ten track CD cost $10), which would be the better deal (meaning, would the download be limited to 3 computers while I could rip the CD and keep in electronic form on all my future computers forever)?
Sure they do. I used to send out mass emails to realtors who signed up for our emails. AOL's spam filters junked our emails more regularly than anyone.
Slashdot Mirror
That would be bad because the pharma companies then will not continue to do R&D for new drugs because they are guaranteed to not make a return on their investment. In fact, they would be obligated to their shareholders to not do R&D for new drugs because they are guaranteed to not make a return on their investment.
Should we abolish the entire patent system because of this? It seems that if your group wants to get anything by at all, they should first start with restricting the patent system, not abolishing it. Abolition just goes too far to be comfotable with, and it will garner very little support. It would be more wise for these anti-patent groups to push for restrictions, and then, after those are passed, push for more restrictions, etc. (for more on this, see an article called "Is it immoral to be prudent" about the passage of anti-abortion laws)
Also, as for the frivolous patents that get by, getting a patent doesn't mean the patent is valid. It can still be struck down at a later date. If a company thinks another company's patent is invalid, they just infringe, and pray the courts will see it their way. Often the other company won't try to press their "patent" because they know it won't be upheld, so defending it is more expensive than just letting it go.
Also, I forgot to note--you apparently didn't read to the end of my post because I did give another example (I used a cell phone example, but you couldn't read that far).
No need for a different example. You're just plain wrong (as to the US at least). Almost all of "Big Pharma's" reseach is funded by itself. The state funds only projects that would not otherwise happen--there are strict rules governing this (In fact I just took a class on these rules last semester). The projects that get special treatment are the ones that patent law is not enough incentive for R&D. For example, treatments for diseases that affect only a very small portion of the population--the drug companies would never recover their investment no matter how long the patent term, so extra incentives are needed. Why can't these companies just be nicer?! You might ask. They can't be nicer because they owe a duty to their shareholders. If the government doesn't subsidize some projects, the project won't happen. But the vast majority of Pharma R&D is funded by the Pharma co.
Here's what I mean: pharmaceuticals. Some countries still don't patent them; they also don't have a pharmaceutical industry. It costs a ton of money to create a new drug, and it takes a long time to make a profit of that drug. If no patent on the drug was allowed, then other companies would quickly copy the drug, and then sell it at a lower price than the developer of the drug would be able to. There would be no profit in research and development--so no new drugs would be developed, everyone would just copy each other's old drugs.
What would happen instead is something that already hinders the industry to a degree--trade secrets. Patents would be replaced by trade secrets. Since "the next big drug" usually comes from developments ontop of earlier research, each company would be totally separate not telling the other what its developed, so each company would be duplicating research to find out what another company had already discovered. So it is much more efficient to have patents where the discovery is published but protected. Then research need not be inefficiently duplicated at a huge wasteful cost.
I think that if patents were actually abolished governments would be required to take up the slack. It would be like public roads--no single entity profits from deciding to make a road unless they will make money. Since they can't make money of developing drugs without outside help, the government must offer that help--so the government would have to fund new drug development. Or, they could just use patents.
How would you like it if you were Motorola, and you spent $10,000,000 depeloping a new technology for a telephone, and then, 6 months after you put it on sale, all the other major companies have developed the exact same thing but can undercut your price because they only had to pay $500,000 for research and development (research consisted of dismantling your invention; development consisted of reproducing it)? According to the article, to make money Motorola needs to just develop something better than the last thing. So, it spends $10,000,000 developing something even better. 6 months later, Nokia had that copied and out on their new phones as well, also undercutting your price.
If you don't believe me regarding this scenario--look at history. Experiences exactly like this are the very reason that patent law came into existence in the first place. Do we really want to go back where we already were, find out again that it was bad, and then reimpliment patent law...ad infinitum???
Read all about it! lol, no I'm not a virus!
I suppose every household may have its own definition of rebellion...
So email providers may not provide spam filters in your country? And you are thankful for this? I must be misunderstanding something. Do people in your country like to receive spam? What country is this--I think this is of interest to spammers--the country where every spam makes it through.
Additionally, is AOL and Goodmail, etc only available in the US?
At least we know now that we'll be able to easily recognize junkmail that paid its way passed the filter--it'll have a "blue ribbon." Blue ribbon=certified junk mail.
Just another means of ad revenue. They'll figure out some way to get ad revenue out of this--why else would they do it?
Now let's imagine work is willing to reimburse for one windows-compatible computer. You will say--"there, you only need to pay for one computer. Work is paying for the other." But that's a foolish argument--if work will pay for one Mac, and he can run Windows on it for work, then he has to pay for zero computers, and he still has Mac at home.
"Anybody want a peanut?"
I think the forum has made it clear that Google, as a private company (though "publicly traded") has no obligations to Kinderstart under the First Amendment, so their lawsuit is bunk. BUT Kinderstart did a good think for their business by suing Google. How many people here after looking at this article looked at Kindercrap.com too see what it is? Would any of us have gone there otherwise? So the lawsuit is going to easily die very quickly, but suing Google gets you on the front page of the news! It even got the company some free advertising here on Slashdot of all places!
Ummm--basically you're exactly right. But there are laws enacted under the interstate commerce clause of the constitution that disallow discrimination based on skin color. If not for those law, however, your logic would hold perfectly. So, to repeat you, but more correctly, the same logic could be used to say that a loan officer could refuse loans to people based on the fact that they only have 7 teeth. And that is exactly correct--a loan officer may do exactly that. He may choose not to give loans to anyone with brown hair. It's totally irrelevant to the liklihood the person will be a good borrower, but there are no laws against it.
And I'll correct you more precisely. Google is a publicly traded company. It is not "owned by the public" in the sense that a government entity is--our taxes do not fund the existence of Google. It is "public" in the sense that anyone can invest in it if they so choose.
I don't know whether or not the parent was intended to be sarcastic, but it is a notable point. I keep Opera set to spoof IE (#5, not #3, for those who understand what that means). In fact, my cell phone provider's website won't let me on unless I'm spoofing (and then it works perfectly...).
But, on the other hand, the people that calculate such comparisons seem to be able to tell the difference somehow. Also, it is notable, the MSupdate is not fooled by the spoof (though, as I understand it, it used to be).
When I bought my computer off eBay, I asked the seller if it had Windows XP Pro (my school required XP 'Pro,' and not 'Home'). He told me that it does, and Office too, but that eBay shut his site down when he advertized it. I thought, that's odd... (I was so naiive).
Anyway, I bought the computer, and it came with a burned version of the resource CD, and the hard drive had images of windows XP, Office, Nero, Norton (no, I didn't install Norton!) and several other programs. Mind you this computer was cheap too. I though, wow I got a deal!
But obviously everything on here is pirated. However, whenever I download something from Microsoft, they check to make sure my copy of Windows is "genuine" and it seems to think everything is in proper order...
Now, I unserstand that might not give them an idea of what is really being searched for out there. But there are other things you could do--ask some people to play around on DOJ computers for a while. Set up a little webcafe with a sign that says "all search terms will be recorded and used in a research project." People might be reluctant to really let themselves go on their searches, knowing that the DOJ is recording their search terms, but it's better than nothing.
I assume the real problem is that the search terms could be connected with the person who typed them in. I think people are afraid of the DOJ saying, "we just want to know what comes up in searches with the real search terms people use" but then when the DOJ finds "15 year olds having sex" in a search box they'll go find who typed it in and prosecute. I think that really is a problem. But If Google was sure that all personally identifiable information was removed from the searches (i.e., the DOJ has the search terms and the results, but no way to figure out who typed in the search), then I find this acceptable. It's still problematic, though, because Google does store information on what we searched for (search history) which I guess would be open to subpoena.
In conclusio, the doomsday-sayers are correct--this is long and rambling but I've come to the conclusion that unless Google starts making it so searches aren't personally identifiable there very well may be some sort of constitutional violation. I don't know exactly what though. People say "the right to privacy, of course!" But no, that is really more of a right to personal autonomy. The "right to privacy" does not refer to a right to not have information about us revealed (though the name would make it sound like something along those lines). Freedom of speech? Perhaps the right to receive speech from willing speakers? Hmmm, I don't know. I think I'm almost changing my mind again--even if the information is personally identifiable, what's the constitutional violation? It sounds bad to me, but I don't see a legal problem... I guess that would explain why Google is using a "trade secret" argument.
Is this a Brit or Canadian speaking up for the US citizenry?
But as to the second part, IBM does still sell "Workstations" which are known to the general public as "desktop computers" (note in that link that its easy to find and buy "Workstations" through IBM's site, but impossible to find laptops). It sold only its "personal computing" business to Lenovo, which includes the "Thinkpad" and the "ThinkCentre" lines of computers, not the "IntelliStation" line, which is aimed toward business computing.
Finally, even if IBM was purchasing computers (and now it must purchase laptops from a third-party vendor), since it buys 1000 in a shot, I'm sure it can include something in the contract along the lines of "the computers will be shipped with the image supplied by IBM." IBM would do this so it doesn't have to pay the extra cost of having Windows on its machines.
Lastly, you could be correct that this is just a lot of hot air--after all it's just some rumor that even IBM itself denies. All I was saying was that it was rash to say "'No one will upgrade to Vista' doesn't mean that new machines won't be bundled with Vista." It's technically true, but your interpretation doesn't make sense in this context--supposedly he said this in a private meeting with close employees, and the company denies it having been said, even. This is not some political statement that was said to make the masses happy.
Ummm--you're making one of two misinterpretations of the article. Here are the corrections: First, this is for machines that IBM employees will use, not the machines that are sold by IBM. Second, when IBM acquires machines for its own employees' usage, it does not acquire them from an outside vendor. So maybe in your company, computers purchased from IBM will come with Vista on them, and the machines will cost a bit more due to the cost of the operating system. But within IBM, they supply their own computers for themselves and they will just not bother with Vista (think about it, imagine you owned a company that made computers, and you had 10 employees, would you order your employees' computers from Dell? No, you would pull them out of your own factory and plop them on the employees' desks. Now you want an OS for them--pick whatever you want before plopping them on the employees' desks).
Now, what I'm wondering is--will we be able to by an IBM workstation with their version of Linux preinstalled? And, further, how much will that cost compared to a computer with Vista preinstalled? Lastly, will IBM, with its version of Linux, compete against Dell, using Ubuntu?
I think I'd have to say no, this is different from that. The "aero" GUI actually requires a better graphic card. That is no different from similar GUIs on Linux--they also require better graphics cards.
One might argue that it does "force obsolescence" because Windows is so ubiquitous--you want to be able to run Vista, you gotta have an nVidia (sp?). But that isn't the case either, as you can turn off "aero" and use the "classic" look, which requires a less sophisticated graphics card.
Nice try giving a shot at Bill though...
Next year a cable company will put high speed internet access in his town (as opposed to this guy's medium speed--but better than dialup), and I am imagining this guy very stubbornly refusing to subscribe to faster internet. I mean seriously, I'd be mad if I did all that work for nothing.
Word.
I was thinking though--I don't think the record companies are necessarily trying to push people back to CDs with artificially high prices, I think they're just trying to give online music just as high of an artificial price.
I haven't purchased any CDs in a while--in general, is it harder to "rip" newer CDs now? Do they have funny copy protection things? Like what I'm asking is--if CDs and individual songs both cost the same price (like if a ten track CD cost $10), which would be the better deal (meaning, would the download be limited to 3 computers while I could rip the CD and keep in electronic form on all my future computers forever)?
Sure they do. I used to send out mass emails to realtors who signed up for our emails. AOL's spam filters junked our emails more regularly than anyone.