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But why choose a (effectively) proprietary format?
ISO/IEC 29500 is not a proprietary format.
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Seems to work in LibreOffice, which is open-source just fine.
It's completely unrelated. LibreOffice can open most completely binary DOC or XLS as well, they were just reverse engineered. It has nothing to do with openness.
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It's completely unrelated. LibreOffice can open most completely binary DOC or XLS as well, they were just reverse engineered. It has nothing to do with openness.
Correlation does not imply causation. The fact that Libreoffice can open binary proprietary formats does not automatically imply that all formats it uses are binary and proprietary. DOCX is an open standard.
[1] https://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2007/01/05/criticism-of-...
[2] http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/01/how-to-hire-guillaume-po...
[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Op...
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Correlation does not imply causation. The fact that Libreoffice can open binary proprietary formats does not automatically imply that all formats it uses are binary and proprietary. DOCX is an open standard.
DOCX is not an open standard, there are many articles[1][2] why it isn't - even in Wikipedia article [3]. ISO standards committee were just a rubber stamp Microsoft puppets to ensure vendor lock for decades. [1] https://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2007/01/05/criticism-of-... [2] http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/01/how-to-hire-guillaume-po... [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Op...
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Government can't afford to hire the competent talent, only the scraps after everyone else (even the consulting bodyshops) are done. The top GS pay bracket is lower than entry level engineers at many companies (not just FAANG, but also defense, F500 companies, etc.)
One of the many things that I found tempting about working for the U.S. Digital Service was that, while the GS-15 pay grade is definitely way less than I'd make in the private sector, my spouse's family is military/government and the difference between "hippy programming thingy" and "has a GS-15/O-6 job" would've been night and day. The one puts me in a pile of stereotypes, but the other says "oh, he's basically the…
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One of the many things that I found tempting about working for the U.S. Digital Service was that, while the GS-15 pay grade is definitely way less than I'd make in the private sector, my spouse's family is military/government and the difference between "hippy programming thingy" and "has a GS-15/O-6 job" would've been night and day. The one puts me in a pile of stereotypes, but the other says "oh, he's basically the…
Different circles I guess. While my spouse's family considers government jobs to be stable and somewhat respectable, there is a lot more respect for FAANG and other high paying jobs. One is respectable, the other is prestigious.
> Due to aggressive automated scraping of FederalRegister.gov and eCFR.gov, programmatic access to these sites is limited to access to our extensive developer APIs. Apparently. Then a captcha and a button to request access, which if you complete, returns a 500 Internal Server Error. … my tax dollars are hard at work, I see. The Wayback Machine hasn't got a snapshot, either, it seems.
If you go to USPTO Operating Levels FY 2021-FY 2023 note that the Estimated Fee Revenue and Total Estimated Spending are approximately the same.
There are no tax dollars hard at work here.
Machine learning is coming for the examiners jobs. :P
Probably one of the easiest but also higher paying jobs of the federal government. They seriously work maybe one day a week.
I encourage anyone who believes being a patent examiner is an easy job to read this subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/patentexaminer/
You can find patent examiners who say that being a patent examiner is relatively easy. These folks typically changed from a notoriously difficult job in law or academia. So it's only relatively easier. Beyond these cases, there do seem to be some examiners who have an easy time, but that's quite rare in my experience, and I'd question the quality of their work.
As for why I took the job: I came from academia, so the job is easier in some respects. The quota isn't entirely bad: It's hard to meet, yes, but it's also mostly objective. If an examiner's numbers are good, the USPTO is happy with them. That contrasts with my experience in academia, where one's job performance is often subjective. If a researcher's boss decides they don't like the researcher for whatever reason (office politics, the researcher is socially awkward, etc.), there might be nothing the researcher could do to recover from that. The job also does give me a lot of freedom in other ways: I can live mostly anywhere I want to, I'm not expected to work all the time (production numbers beat looking busy by working all the time), there are few IP restrictions (aside from that I can't get a US patent), etc. The main problems for me are that the quota is too high and that I don't care for the technology I'm assigned (though the technology could be a lot worse).
(It should go without saying that this comment is my own opinion and not that of the USPTO, US govt., my previous employers, etc.)
Machine learning is coming for the examiners jobs. :P
Some aspects of patent administration are being assisted by machine learning, which might mean that statistically a few jobs have already been lost, maybe not examiners per se . I gather IPCCAT https://ipcpub.wipo.int/?notion=search&version=20220101&symb... , uses ML - and other offices have similar tools. UKIPO use AI for trademark searches and to streamline applications, eg https://ipo.blog.gov.uk/2020/10/29/introd…
Note: I am a current USPTO patent examiner, and this is my opinion, not that of the USPTO or US govt.
The USPTO apparently has two contractors to classify patent documents. I've heard that some sort of AI system is used for classification, in combination with a lot of poorly paid contractors. In my experience, the classification is so frequently wrong that this is clearly not working. It might seem okay to upper management, who never has to actually deal with the classification being inaccurate. But examiners aren't happy with it.
Many people are calling for AI search. The new head of the USPTO mentioned it during a recent all-hands meeting. Unfortunately, the people who propose AI search don't seem to realize that 1. the USPTO has at least 5 AI search tools at their disposal (PLUS, More Like This, Dialog's similarity search, IP.com's similarity search, and Google Patents similar documents) and 2. none of these AI search tools work that well. In my experience, most of the time these tools don't return useful documents. (I still try them for every application as there's little downside.) The documents are usually close but it's rare that I'll actually use one of these documents in a prior art rejection. AI search sounds good to people who have never searched for patents and particularly have never used the existing AI search tools. AI search technology probably won't be good for a decade or more.
In contrast, tools to analyze patent claims for various problems (basically, linters) have been available for around 30 years and can be quite useful in my opinion. But the USPTO has no such tool available to examiners, and analysis under 112(b), etc., is almost always done manually. I wrote my own tool, which I run on my USPTO computer on a regular basis.
There are a huge number of opportunities to streamline USPTO operations with automation. Why are IDS forms not computer-readable? Why is so much information not auto-filled? Why do I have to fill out "bib data sheets" for every application? Why do I have to manually upload my search history when the system could easily automatically grab it for me? Etc.
And automation isn't enough. There should be more data validation in the process, as a lot of problems can be automatically caught at the time of filing or when I post an office action. That's when fixing these problems would be easiest.
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ISO/IEC 29500 is not a proprietary format.
ISO is not free which is very cumbersome and why many ISO standards are not implemented correctly (like 8601). I consider ISO proprietary and bad for that reason.