31–40 of 43 posts
Have you guys seen the other White House responses to these petitions? They're a joke and a waste of time.
Except from the White House's point of view, because they get to harvest your email address.
Have you guys seen the other White House responses to these petitions? They're a joke and a waste of time.
Except from the White House's point of view, because they get to harvest your email address.
So Facebook knows when you go to a government site.
I imagine Facebook also knows which petitions you sign, or at least which ones you click on. I say imagine, because although I'm signed in, it still asks me to sign in before I can sign the petition, and signing in while I'm signed in leads to a 404.
Have you guys seen the other White House responses to these petitions? They're a joke and a waste of time.
Except from the White House's point of view, because they get to harvest your email address.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But millions of people have workbenches and toolboxes in their garages, and are quite capable of building physical objects and devices.
But physical manufacturing outside of freestanding factories has never been a significant part of an industrial economy. It more or less amounts to "arts and crafts". This changed with computers. You could never start a car factory in a garage, but there was a golden age where you could start a high-tech electronics company like HP or Apple. Today you can start a web-based or software company on a laptop in a coffee…
Actually, it has. Large scale production may have usually been in a factory, but often that factory was small production multiplied. Ford and the like were anomalies, even in the car biz.
> You could never start a car factory in a garage
I don't know about you, but literally thousands of folks did exactly that.
I frankly do not understand such black and white take on software patents. I don't think that all of them are evil. If one invests his time and money in developing a software algorithm - something non-trivial, say, an IFS compressor for binary data - why should such invention not be entitled to the same level of exclusive use protection that a mechanical design receives?
The previous story on this provided the perfect response: "If millions of people carried machine shops around in their backpacks, mechanical engineering would be incompatible with the patent system too." ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3182882 )
Not really - it was wrong then/there and it's wrong here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But physical manufacturing outside of freestanding factories has never been a significant part of an industrial economy. It more or less amounts to "arts and crafts". This changed with computers. You could never start a car factory in a garage, but there was a golden age where you could start a high-tech electronics company like HP or Apple. Today you can start a web-based or software company on a laptop in a coffee…
> But physical manufacturing outside of freestanding factories has never been a significant part of an industrial economy. Actually, it has. Large scale production may have usually been in a factory, but often that factory was small production multiplied. Ford and the like were anomalies, even in the car biz. > You could never start a car factory in a garage I don't know about you, but literally thousands of folks di…
I frankly do not understand such black and white take on software patents. I don't think that all of them are evil. If one invests his time and money in developing a software algorithm - something non-trivial, say, an IFS compressor for binary data - why should such invention not be entitled to the same level of exclusive use protection that a mechanical design receives?
Why should it not be treated the way a mathematical result is? People invest time and effort into proving theorems too. It seems to me that software is ideas, like math is.
That's not a very well done petition. Here are some of the problems. (1) The America Invents act was not toothless. It contains provisions that put major hurt on patent trolls. (2) It fails to actually state any realistic action items. (3) It shows a misunderstanding of the role of the President in the patent system. What they are trying to accomplish requires Congressional action, not Presidential action.
I liked it better than the first one. (1) It's not just trolls that are dragging us all down with patents. (2) Eliminate patents, starting with the software ones. (3) The President doesn't vote on the federal budget either, but it's not correct to say he doesn't have a role in it. In this case the USPTO is under the Executive Branch, so actually, I would think the President would have a lot of authority in the matter…
(2) Patents are good, as long as they are NON-OBVIOUS. In the realm of software, a lot of things are obvious. In fact most of what is patented is obvious. The problem is that its non-obvious until an engineer needs to solve it, then it will become obvious as it is on the path to the solution. Software patent problem: SOFTWARE IS ALGORITHMS; MATH! You cannot patent equations. We have lots of proof that software is just an equation, though more complex and in a different form. Hell implement it in Lisp and you have lambda calculus. That's the point.
Software is mathematics. End of story. Cannot be patented.
(3) President is not in full power, but not powerless either. He can put pressure via the citizens.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should it not be treated the way a mathematical result is? People invest time and effort into proving theorems too. It seems to me that software is ideas, like math is.
Perhaps because math is a fundamental science and therefore funded in a completely different way?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I liked it better than the first one. (1) It's not just trolls that are dragging us all down with patents. (2) Eliminate patents, starting with the software ones. (3) The President doesn't vote on the federal budget either, but it's not correct to say he doesn't have a role in it. In this case the USPTO is under the Executive Branch, so actually, I would think the President would have a lot of authority in the matter…
(1) Trolls are definitely a problem, but so is apple, MS, and Oracle. Hell we saw what happens when Samsung got pissed off, they decided to start suing for patents the world needs to implement cell phones. Samsung may have failed, but MS may not. (2) Patents are good, as long as they are NON-OBVIOUS. In the realm of software, a lot of things are obvious. In fact most of what is patented is obvious. The problem is tha…
Wasn't it Apple that fired the first shot there?