Everything Else

Look at this disgusting piece of shit :

http://www.patents.com/us-6670967.html

They gave someone (in the NSA, no less) a patent for a frigging Xdefaults entry. What a bunch of clowns. "Intellectual Property" indeed

To somebody at the US Patents office, that a hammer can be used to strike things is only obvious once it has been used to attempt to bludgeon some sense into them.

NZ is happily a software patent free zone.

I personally support software patents; however, there's no question we need lots of changes and reform.

That is one unenforceable patent!

Sorry, can't help myself : why would anyone who is not a lawyer or a job creator think this ?

Patents are ludicrous crap. In 1800 there was a point to the idea but since then, they have become nothing but a disease. They serve no useful purpose whatsoever. They are yet another layer of shit on top of the cesspool of garbage burying life today ... How can anyone rational "support" something like that ?

In my personal opinion software patents are from ass and too easy to abuse for killing any competition.

And competition is always good as it prevents prices going too high for normal people to be able to afford things.

I've agree; software patents are a blight on the landscape and must be purged and expurgated. From endsoftpatents.org:

Each software patent blocks software developers from implementing a feature such as a video format, pinch-to-zoom, or nested menus. For 20 years, no developer can implement that feature without asking the patent holder, who can refuse, or ask for payment and impose conditions. Today there are tens of thousands of software patents and this affects all computer users:

Software patents block standards, leading to incompatibility. If you can’t view a video, if a document doesn’t look right on your computer, or if two software packages don’t work well together, it’s often because a patent prohibits the software developer from making that feature work correctly.

Software patents block individuals from taking part in the development and distribution of software. This may not seem relevant to most people but it’s the same as the freedom to write a book. Most people will never write a book, but some people will, and society as a whole benefits from what is made by the few people who do write books or develop software.

Software patents create legal and financial risks that most companies can’t afford. The result is monopolies or only two or three companies being active in a given domain. Software users are left with very little choice, and because the patent-owning software companies know that the users are locked in, there is little incentive to respond to complaints from the users.

Careful, you are starting to sound a lot like hamei.

R.

Please spare a thought for the poor patent illustrators. The job is already very constraining, but at least for mechanical patents they can deploy their skills at shading and complex details. Software patents only have horrible little boxes and arrows, it's enough to make a man jump out a window.

I support patents; I have 47 of them, they're claims on demonstations of building, with safe high performance programming techniques for multiprogrammed, memory sharing, multiple processors with channel oriented message passing threads for kernels. The HW patents demonstrates the proven hardware techniquies ; this is why we build them. the SW patents demonstrate the system operating in the presense of faults that exceed the fault detection level of the HW alone.

I'll have what he's having...

it was late for me. and what i had was bog of money for them. i must prefer the east. what have you got patents on r10k? if you can be civil?

There's a difference between:

and
.

Impressive, 47 different ways of using linked lists with a mutex within a try/catch! You can immediately double that number by duplicating the same patents and adding "...on the internet".

So since you guys clearly missed the point; let's dig a little deeper; these are hardware methods that allow your little program examples to operate under the presence a fault without incurring more than a clock or two a (couple of nanoseconds) depending on the methods. These are the type that keeps all your back account information from going poof.

Now, let's go one step further, I can't sum up several thousand pages of descriptions to satisfy a couple of armchair engineers as to the validity of my claims, so I'm not going to bother. Just suffice to say; I got 'em 15-20 years ago, made a sh*t load of money, and moved on to better things. You guys can hang around here and make fun of me, but it won't change that fact.


and that my dregs is that.

just a few thus far, plenty of stuff still in the pipeline though; a couple regarding out-of-order structures, a couple more having to do with cache and memory controller stuffs for multicore, six or so on the design (and manufacturability) side of things, and one last set dealing with failure analysis and automation thereof. Boring specialized stuff with limited audience, and spread over a couple of employers and uni. I must add that filing patents individually and under the umbrella of a large organization are two very different processes, from personal experience.

Anyhoo, I don't have much of an opinion either way regarding patents. I hope this response met your particularly high standards of civility.

It did, I'm glad we had a chance to have one conversation not maligned, or driven off the path of equality by some 'issue-du-jour'.

Good luck to you sir, in whatever endeavor you find yourself in the future.

thanks, and may the skies be clear and the stars plentiful to you sir.

Here in northeast Ohio
Back in eighteen-o-three
James and Dan Heaton
Found the ore that was linin' Yellow Creek.

They built a blast furnace
Here along the shore
And they made the cannonballs
That helped the Union win the war.

Software patents ...
Software patents ...
My sweet Jenny I'm sinkin' down
Here darlin' in Youngstown.

Well my daddy worked the furnaces
Kept 'em hotter than hell.
I come home from 'Nam worked my way to scarfer
A job that'd suit the devil as well.

Taconite coke and limestone
Fed my children and make my pay
Them smokestacks reachin' like the arms of God
Into a beautiful sky of soot and clay.

Software patents ...
Software patents ...
Sweet Jenny I'm sinkin' down
Here darlin' in Youngstown.

Well my daddy come on the Ohio works
When he come home from World War Two.
Now the yard's just scrap and rubble
He said "Them big boys did what Hitler couldn't do."

These mills they built the tanks and bombs
That won this country's wars.
We sent our sons to Korea and Vietnam
Now we're wondering what they were dyin' for.

Software patents ...
Software patents ...
My sweet Jenny I'm sinkin' down
Here darlin' in Youngstown.

From the Monongahela valley
To the Mesabi iron range
To the coal mines of Appalachia
The story's always the same.

Seven hundred tons of metal a day
Now sir you tell me the world's changed
Once I made you rich enough
Rich enough to forget my name.

Software patents ...
Software patents ...
My sweet Jenny I'm sinkin' down
Here darlin' in Youngstown.

When I die I don't want no part of heaven
I would not do heaven's work well.
I pray the devil comes and takes me
To stand in the fiery furnaces of hell.

Software patents ...
Software patents ...