One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind • Hacker News Board

Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind

#51

Post by anamax » Sat, Oct 03, 2009, 5:48 PM UTC

loup-vaillant wrote: post #46

evgen wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and Rick are incorrect. The pure research part is, as stated, a small part of the costs, but 2/3 of that amount is not dedicated to patent applications, and of the remainder the bulk of it is taken up by the costs of testing. Marketing is a large part of the costs, but it is not the largest component. > I may be wrong on each point, You are.

I made another point: that the bulk of pharmaceutical business may not be really useful, or at least not critical (cosmetics and such). Did you say I am wrong on this point as well? Anyway, I am quite ignorant. Do you have any references I could read so I have a better understanding of the problem? Thank you.

> I made another point: that the bulk of pharmaceutical business may not be really useful, or at least not critical (cosmetics and such). Did you say I am wrong on this point as well?

Cosmetics? What cosmetics does Abbott make?

To the extent that the argument has any connection to reality, it's a combintation of irrelevant and wrong.

If you don't want to pay the costs of "cosmetics", don't buy them.

To the extent that there's any cross-subsidization in Pharma, it goes from the "non-essential but popular" to the critical. In other words, you've got it backwards.

Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind

#52

Post by evgen » Sun, Oct 04, 2009, 5:38 AM UTC

anamax wrote: post #51

loup-vaillant wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made another point: that the bulk of pharmaceutical business may not be really useful, or at least not critical (cosmetics and such). Did you say I am wrong on this point as well? Anyway, I am quite ignorant. Do you have any references I could read so I have a better understanding of the problem? Thank you.

> I made another point: that the bulk of pharmaceutical business may not be really useful, or at least not critical (cosmetics and such). Did you say I am wrong on this point as well? Cosmetics? What cosmetics does Abbott make? To the extent that the argument has any connection to reality, it's a combintation of irrelevant and wrong. If you don't want to pay the costs of "cosmetics", don't buy them. To the extent tha…

It is also worth noting that a lot of what we consider "non-essential" did not start out that way. Pfizer did not discover Viagra because they were looking to help aging baby boomers get wood; it started out as a treatment for angina (hypertension kills millions...) and it was not until phase one trials that it was discovered that one of the side-effects of sildenafil was to encourage erections. Along the route to trying to cure a deadly disease a blockbuster non-essential drug was discovered.

Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind

#53

Post by loup-vaillant » Sun, Oct 04, 2009, 12:14 PM UTC

anamax wrote: post #51

loup-vaillant wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made another point: that the bulk of pharmaceutical business may not be really useful, or at least not critical (cosmetics and such). Did you say I am wrong on this point as well? Anyway, I am quite ignorant. Do you have any references I could read so I have a better understanding of the problem? Thank you.

> I made another point: that the bulk of pharmaceutical business may not be really useful, or at least not critical (cosmetics and such). Did you say I am wrong on this point as well? Cosmetics? What cosmetics does Abbott make? To the extent that the argument has any connection to reality, it's a combintation of irrelevant and wrong. If you don't want to pay the costs of "cosmetics", don't buy them. To the extent tha…

Again, I don't know much about pharmaceutical industry. Do anyone have any reference?

Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind

#54

Post by anamax » Sun, Oct 04, 2009, 5:20 PM UTC

loup-vaillant wrote: post #53

anamax wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I made another point: that the bulk of pharmaceutical business may not be really useful, or at least not critical (cosmetics and such). Did you say I am wrong on this point as well? Cosmetics? What cosmetics does Abbott make? To the extent that the argument has any connection to reality, it's a combintation of irrelevant and wrong. If you don't want to pay the costs of "cosmetics", don't buy them. To the extent tha…

Again, I don't know much about pharmaceutical industry. Do anyone have any reference?

> Again, I don't know much about pharmaceutical industry.

Not so fast. You made claims that depended on knowledge. You suggested policy.

And now it turns out that you knew that don't know what you're talking about....

Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind

#55

Post by cabalamat » Tue, Oct 06, 2009, 1:15 PM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #31

cabalamat wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not saying that software patents shouldn't be abolished - just that such a result is highly unlikely to come from any ruling in this case. You're probably right. The best way for a person to help get software patents abolished, IMO, would be to join their local Pirate Party -- http://www.pp-international.net/

Heh, no it's not. That'll just get you marked a radical and summarily ignored by anyone with power. Not that I agree with that, but that's how things are. The _real_ way to get software patents taken care of is, as with any other matter of public policy, to convince large swaths of major, consistent contributors to the campaigns of your incumbent representatives to press the issue. This will probably be difficult bec…

(on joining the Pirate Party)

> Heh, no it's not. That'll just get you marked a radical and summarily ignored by anyone with power. Not that I agree with that, but that's how things are.

The Pirate Party already has one MEP. If (probably when) the Lisbon Treaty is passed, they'll have two. The Pirate Party will probably be in power in several countries over the next 10 years (as part of coalitions).

> The _real_ way to get software patents taken care of is, as with any other matter of public policy, to convince large swaths of major, consistent contributors to the campaigns of your incumbent representatives to press the issue.

This might be true in the USA under their current political system. But as you imply from what you say, the USA isn't properly a democracy, it's an oligarchy ruled by corporations. This is in fact a bigger problem than software patents.

It isn't true in Europe, where Pirate Parties have a siginificant chance of getting people elected, due to using more democratic electoral systems.

If Pirate manage to get software patents abolished or neutered in one major jurisdiction, they will probably indirectly win in the rest of the world.

> This will probably be difficult because people with money want to do evil with these patents

I agree.

> But right now, Microsoft is trying to use its patents to neuter its open-source competitors, so they may value that too highly.

That's certainly part of Microsoft's plan for their patents.

Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind

#56

Post by miloshh » Wed, Oct 07, 2009, 12:35 PM UTC

anamax wrote: post #49

miloshh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure that's the typical software patent? Some famous law-suits were about patents that are far less trivial than your bridge example. For example, Pixar holds a patent on Monte Carlo sampling, and has sued or threatened a number of companies that used any sort of randomization in their rendering algorithms. This despite the fact that Monte Carlo methods have been known and used for many decades before Pixar w…

> For example, Pixar holds a patent on Monte Carlo sampling, and has sued or threatened a number of companies that used any sort of randomization in their rendering algorithms. Actually, Pixar has a patent on certain uses of randomization in rendering. In patent-speak, randomization is the mechanism and rendering is the result. I mention patent-speak because patents are the use of mechanism to accomplish result. Woul…

I'm mostly arguing against patenting trivial increments over non-trivial ideas.

It has been long known that MC can be applied to computing any integral over any domain, so computing the integral of color over a pixel is simply a specialization of a general technique, and should not be patented.

Similarly, in akeefer's post above, storing insurance claims in a relational database is a specialization of the well known process of storing anything in a database, so should not be patented.

Re: One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind

#57

Post by loup-vaillant » Thu, Oct 08, 2009, 7:44 PM UTC

anamax wrote: post #54

loup-vaillant wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, I don't know much about pharmaceutical industry. Do anyone have any reference?

> Again, I don't know much about pharmaceutical industry. Not so fast. You made claims that depended on knowledge. You suggested policy. And now it turns out that you knew that don't know what you're talking about....

My bad. I currently know enough to be wary of even pharmaceutical patents (I think they should disappear, eventually), but still not enough to seriously back my claims. I know this is dangerous, I should have known better.

Anyway, I stumbled upon a better source than myself: http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.ht... (a case against intellectual monopoly). Chapter 9 is particularly relevant here. If you have any counter-argument, I would be glad to hear them.