The OP wouldn't seem quite so hypocritical if VCs didn't put immense pressure on startups to generate patents. Don't tell me those patents are supposed to be purely defensive, either. They were supposed to stake out a bit of technical turf, just like Yahoo's doing. I'm not saying it's right, but I don't think much of demanding patent generation on one hand and then complaining about their use on the other. If you wan…
This comment is nonsense and is guilt by association. Fred has been on the record numerous times advising startups not to bother with patents.
This title is unnecessarily sensational. Why not use the actual title of the post ("Yahoo! Crosses the Line")?
I did consider the title, and was about to go with the original. Fred is one of the best writers out there - insight, humor, compassion, humility, honesty. I thought his closing remarks really captured his rare but real venom at the shakedown. Nothing more than that.
The OP wouldn't seem quite so hypocritical if VCs didn't put immense pressure on startups to generate patents. Don't tell me those patents are supposed to be purely defensive, either. They were supposed to stake out a bit of technical turf, just like Yahoo's doing. I'm not saying it's right, but I don't think much of demanding patent generation on one hand and then complaining about their use on the other. If you wan…
This comment is nonsense and is guilt by association. Fred has been on the record numerous times advising startups not to bother with patents.
This is why I use my own domain for my primary email address. If Google decides to pull some kind of crap on me, I can always ditch them without having to write that silly "My new email is" message to all my contacts.
I use a personal email domain on gmail[1] as well. But for a different reason: It allows a "catch all" email, so I register on every site as @vekslers.org and have my account act as a catch all sink. This allows me to both filter out spamming sources and trace back who leaked my email address to 3rd party sources. This approach is a pivot on the name+tag@domain.com email tagging which most js form validations devs ar…
I've been doing this for a while. I've caught out 3 companies selling (or leaking, presumably via an employee) my email address. In one case they claimed they'd do something and I never heard a followup (but received no further spam, which could mean the boss was in on it); in the second case the company never bothered replying (Topaz Labs, pretty disappointed with them) and I still receive spam directed towards the address; in the 3rd case I didn't bother doing anything because of the previous 2 experiences - I realised it didn't help much except in the extreme case of being spammed heavily, which so far hasn't actually happened.
Yep. I don't even use/like Facebook, but I just deleted my 10 year old Yahoo account in protest (in truth it was only a secondary account after Google, but still).
> I just deleted my 10 year old Yahoo account in protest
This comment is nonsense and is guilt by association. Fred has been on the record numerous times advising startups not to bother with patents.
[citation needed]
for starters, in the comment section of the original post
and besides, the onus of citation should be on you with your crazy broad assumption that Fred has placed 'immense pressure' on startups to generate patents.