And yet somehow the cycle still continued, even well into and even beyond the medieval period. Case in point, there was a high-grade steel from India known as wootz, whose quality was legendary in its time, and of higher quality than a Bessemer Converter could produce. It was consistently made in small quantities from around 200 AD to around 1700 AD, so the technique got passed down for quite a few generations, but then in the 18th century wootz production abruptly disappeared from history, and even today no one's sure exactly how it was made anymore.
Yeah, the protection aspect of patents is badly broken. That's been known for decades. Consider the case of Philo Farnsworth.
Have you ever heard of him? Most people haven't, which is a bit surprising considering his enormous impact on modern culture: He's the guy who invented television! He really ought to be a household name, alongside Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Alexander Graham Bell, but a funny thing happened on the way to the history books: RCA started producing his invention.
It's not that Farnsworth's television wasn't worthy of patent protection. It was a truly novel and revolutionary invention, a genuine American success story. There were lots of people working on "the television problem" at about the same time, but most of them were trying (unsuccessfully) to build something based on the principle of some sort of rotating device. That was the obvious way to do it, right? Afterall, that's how movie projectors work!
Farnsworth had the brilliant idea of abandoning the "projector" paradigm entirely and setting up a grid of pixels that would be selectively activated by a completely stationary electron gun, and he was essentially the only one who went that route. And it worked! He did everything right, took out a patent, and started producing and selling televisions.
And then the RCA company started producing them too. There's really no room for doubt or interpretation here; Farnsworth had a valid patent, and RCA was ripping him off. He tried to take them to court, but he was one guy and they were a giant company with tons of lawyers, and... long story short, Philo Farnsworth died in poverty.
The basic idea of the patent system is a good one, but it's in serious need of reform and has been for at least that long.
Be careful recommending something like this. As strange as it may seem to us today, since the patent system has been around for centuries before any of us were born, it was put in place to help do away with something even worse: trade secrets, and the great loss to society that occurs when such secrets die with the tradesman.
One of the most extreme examples--and yet one of the most useful--is steel. How old do you think it is? Modern steelmaking techniques were first developed as part of the Industrial Revolution, but of course that wasn't the beginning of it; the iconic imagery of the knight in steel armor with a steel sword is centuries older than that. But steel was old even in Medieval times; the oldest known samples date back to the 14th century BC!
It wasn't until the 19th century that it began to be created in great quantities, which proved the catalyst for the Industrial Revolution that laid the foundation for modern life. But why?
The actual answer is basic greed. Steel is difficult to get right, and throughout the ages, whenever some smith would stumble on the formula, they would keep it as a closely-guarded secret, generally to get lots of money from the local royalty supplying weapons and armor to the army. Which is a nice job if you can get it, but then a funny thing happens a few decades later: the smith ends up dying one way or another, and unless he's passed on the secret to an apprentice or another smith... no more steel.
This happened over and over and over for more than 3000 years, to the point where you have to wonder if the real question isn't "why did it not happen that way again in the 19th century?" And the answer is patents.
The British government, fed up with the way society kept losing valuable knowledge to trade secrets, set up a patent system that provided an incentive to publish the details of new inventions rather than keep them secret... and it worked. When steelmaking patents expired and the techniques entered the public domain, anyone with the requisite technical expertise and a bit of capital could set up a Bessemer Converter. The price of steel plummeted almost tenfold, making it readily available as a structural material, people started building machines out of it, and the rest is history. Turns out valueless steel is far more valuable than valuable steel, from a societal perspective at least. (Interesting note: The patent on the Bessemer Converter expired in 1870. In 1873, Karl Benz produced his first gasoline engine, and then went on to invent the automobile.)
Without the patent system, the Industrial Revolution might never have happened, and we would still be stuck at an early-19th-century standard of living. If that sounds unrealistic, keep in mind that trade secrets on steel had already held the progress of civilization back by over 3000 years, so what's another couple centuries?
Gamer here. Grew up (partially) in the 80s. Still have fond memories of playing games on the NES and SNES consoles.
"Completely flabbergasted" that Nintendo... has so steadfastly resisted getting involved in mobile-device gaming? Not in the slightest.
First off, bear in mind that Nintendo essentially invented "mobile device gaming." They called it the Game Boy, and it was one of the most successful consoles of all time. Its successors are still doing well today.
But that's not what you're talking about here, is it? You don't really mean mobile devices, you mean smartphones. Well, there's a perfectly good reason for that: Have you ever tried actually playing games on a smartphone? They suck!
Smartphones are great for doing what they're designed for, but console-style gaming, rich in games whose gameplay style requires multiple buttons that can be manipulated by touch (without looking at them) and pressed at the same time is not one of them. It's no wonder that the most popular smartphone games have all had incredibly simplistic interfaces; that's all you can do. If you want to actually play console games on a smartphone OS, you basically need to get an OUYA. Nintendo's been wise to stay out of that particular mess thus far.
A friend of mine was a bit of an early bloomer as well. She didn't grow to 6' or anything, but she certainly developed early on.
She told me how one time, when she was 13, she went to visit her big sister at college. They were hanging out with a few of her sister's friends, and some of the guys were hitting on her. After it happened a few times, the sister was all "hey guys, knock it off! How old do you think she is?" And most of them seemed to seriously think she was 16-18. (Thankfully, they all backed off--with a fair amount of shock and disbelief--when told she was 13.) And knowing her, I could totally believe it.
So yeah, it can happen. Though on the other hand, I've never met a guy like that.
As a developer, I don't see it that way. What Google is saying, sadly, doesn't match observed facts all that well. Their annointed successor, Github, is a mess and a half.
Trivial (on Google Code) tasks such as viewing the commit history of a project or a file don't appear to even exist anywhere in the Github interface. (Yes, I know there exists a way to do it, but it's not discoverable.) Navigating to the front page of the project takes you to the root of the repository hierarchy, instead of something reasonable such as, oh, I dunno, a front page for the project maybe? They claim to have SVN support, but it crashes and burns horribly whenever you try to do trivial things like add an ignore from TortoiseSVN or switch from one branch to another. And so on. Google saying GitHub is "a better system" is a bad joke, from the perspective of someone who's used both.
No, this really does feel like they got bored with the project and now they're abandoning it, and if some of the users end up getting screwed over, oh well. And it's not the first time they've done this. So why should we think it will be the last?
The one thing that has me worried about Google Fiber is Google's recent display of yet another example of its shifting attitudes towards engineering. My brother lives in Provo, Utah and he's on Google Fiber. He says it's great, an amazing Internet service, the kind of thing everyone should have.
But what's gonna happen to him if/when Google loses interest in it?
So no one is talking (seriously, at least) about bringing criminal charges against the 47 Traitors, who actually and obviously broke the law, and did so in a blatant and insulting attempt to undermine the President's authority, but the President is threatening Congressmen of his own party with prosecution for doing something that they are completely within their rights to do? (See the Speech and Debate Clause and the Pentagon Papers for reference and precedent.)
Is it just me or is Barack Obama getting more and more ridiculous as time goes by?
People will rat out people they don't like over people who owe a lot of money, for a start. That's how these things work.
Did you miss the part about them wearing hidden recording devices? Even if Varoufakis is a Marxist, this isn't the 20th century USSR or East Germany. Having them "wired for sound and video" works keep them honest; you can't just make an accusation against someone you don't like.
And yes, while what you're describing would undoubtedly be a good solution in the long run, it is a long-term solution. Changing society's values always is, and right now, tax dodging is a deeply-ingrained Greek cultural value. The problem is, they've been at it for so long that it's killing their country right now. This isn't a problem that's decades in the future; the chickens have already come home to roost.
To put a new twist an old saying, while the man is starving to death is no time to teach him to fish.
I don't see how anything in that article, which discusses the implications of current policies regarding how to deal with the Greek crisis, contradicts limbodog's explanation of how they got into that mess in the first place.
Yeah, that's pretty much what happened. It's different over there; not like in the US where the economic catastrophes were brought about almost entirely by large financial institutions; in Greece it's John Q. Publikopolis screwing himself over.
I don't know how much things have changed in the last couple years, but a while back I read an article with some stats on Greece, and their budget deficit was approximately identical to the amount of taxes not being paid. In other words, if the people would just shape up, they would not be in this mess.
On the post: Does Patent Licensing by Patent Trolls - Or Anyone - Serve A Useful Purpose?
Re: Re: Re:
That's the problem that patents solve.
On the post: Does Patent Licensing by Patent Trolls - Or Anyone - Serve A Useful Purpose?
Re: Re: Yes it does
Have you ever heard of him? Most people haven't, which is a bit surprising considering his enormous impact on modern culture: He's the guy who invented television! He really ought to be a household name, alongside Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Alexander Graham Bell, but a funny thing happened on the way to the history books: RCA started producing his invention.
It's not that Farnsworth's television wasn't worthy of patent protection. It was a truly novel and revolutionary invention, a genuine American success story. There were lots of people working on "the television problem" at about the same time, but most of them were trying (unsuccessfully) to build something based on the principle of some sort of rotating device. That was the obvious way to do it, right? Afterall, that's how movie projectors work!
Farnsworth had the brilliant idea of abandoning the "projector" paradigm entirely and setting up a grid of pixels that would be selectively activated by a completely stationary electron gun, and he was essentially the only one who went that route. And it worked! He did everything right, took out a patent, and started producing and selling televisions.
And then the RCA company started producing them too. There's really no room for doubt or interpretation here; Farnsworth had a valid patent, and RCA was ripping him off. He tried to take them to court, but he was one guy and they were a giant company with tons of lawyers, and... long story short, Philo Farnsworth died in poverty.
The basic idea of the patent system is a good one, but it's in serious need of reform and has been for at least that long.
On the post: Does Patent Licensing by Patent Trolls - Or Anyone - Serve A Useful Purpose?
Re:
One of the most extreme examples--and yet one of the most useful--is steel. How old do you think it is? Modern steelmaking techniques were first developed as part of the Industrial Revolution, but of course that wasn't the beginning of it; the iconic imagery of the knight in steel armor with a steel sword is centuries older than that. But steel was old even in Medieval times; the oldest known samples date back to the 14th century BC!
It wasn't until the 19th century that it began to be created in great quantities, which proved the catalyst for the Industrial Revolution that laid the foundation for modern life. But why?
The actual answer is basic greed. Steel is difficult to get right, and throughout the ages, whenever some smith would stumble on the formula, they would keep it as a closely-guarded secret, generally to get lots of money from the local royalty supplying weapons and armor to the army. Which is a nice job if you can get it, but then a funny thing happens a few decades later: the smith ends up dying one way or another, and unless he's passed on the secret to an apprentice or another smith... no more steel.
This happened over and over and over for more than 3000 years, to the point where you have to wonder if the real question isn't "why did it not happen that way again in the 19th century?" And the answer is patents.
The British government, fed up with the way society kept losing valuable knowledge to trade secrets, set up a patent system that provided an incentive to publish the details of new inventions rather than keep them secret... and it worked. When steelmaking patents expired and the techniques entered the public domain, anyone with the requisite technical expertise and a bit of capital could set up a Bessemer Converter. The price of steel plummeted almost tenfold, making it readily available as a structural material, people started building machines out of it, and the rest is history. Turns out valueless steel is far more valuable than valuable steel, from a societal perspective at least. (Interesting note: The patent on the Bessemer Converter expired in 1870. In 1873, Karl Benz produced his first gasoline engine, and then went on to invent the automobile.)
Without the patent system, the Industrial Revolution might never have happened, and we would still be stuck at an early-19th-century standard of living. If that sounds unrealistic, keep in mind that trade secrets on steel had already held the progress of civilization back by over 3000 years, so what's another couple centuries?
Still want to get rid of patents?
On the post: Rightscorp Discovering That Harassing Broadband Users Isn't The Cash Cow It Thought It Would Be
Re:
On the post: How Corporate Sovereignty Provisions Could Undermine Anti-Trust Actions
That's a feature, not a bug.
Sincerely,
Rational Citizens Against ISDS
On the post: DailyDirt: Mars Or Bust
I see what you did there...
On the post: Nintendo Finally To Dip Its Toe In The Smartphone/Tablet Gaming Market
You gotta be kidding me
"Completely flabbergasted" that Nintendo... has so steadfastly resisted getting involved in mobile-device gaming? Not in the slightest.
First off, bear in mind that Nintendo essentially invented "mobile device gaming." They called it the Game Boy, and it was one of the most successful consoles of all time. Its successors are still doing well today.
But that's not what you're talking about here, is it? You don't really mean mobile devices, you mean smartphones. Well, there's a perfectly good reason for that: Have you ever tried actually playing games on a smartphone? They suck!
Smartphones are great for doing what they're designed for, but console-style gaming, rich in games whose gameplay style requires multiple buttons that can be manipulated by touch (without looking at them) and pressed at the same time is not one of them. It's no wonder that the most popular smartphone games have all had incredibly simplistic interfaces; that's all you can do. If you want to actually play console games on a smartphone OS, you basically need to get an OUYA. Nintendo's been wise to stay out of that particular mess thus far.
On the post: Telco Analyst Compares Google Fiber To Ebola... Completely Misses The Point
Re: Telecom industry analyst Craig Muppet?
On the post: No, You Can't Sue Grindr Because It Hooked You Up With A 13-Year-Old For Sex
Re:
On the post: No, You Can't Sue Grindr Because It Hooked You Up With A 13-Year-Old For Sex
Re: Re: ok, but...
She told me how one time, when she was 13, she went to visit her big sister at college. They were hanging out with a few of her sister's friends, and some of the guys were hitting on her. After it happened a few times, the sister was all "hey guys, knock it off! How old do you think she is?" And most of them seemed to seriously think she was 16-18. (Thankfully, they all backed off--with a fair amount of shock and disbelief--when told she was 13.) And knowing her, I could totally believe it.
So yeah, it can happen. Though on the other hand, I've never met a guy like that.
On the post: Telco Analyst Compares Google Fiber To Ebola... Completely Misses The Point
Re: Re:
Trivial (on Google Code) tasks such as viewing the commit history of a project or a file don't appear to even exist anywhere in the Github interface. (Yes, I know there exists a way to do it, but it's not discoverable.) Navigating to the front page of the project takes you to the root of the repository hierarchy, instead of something reasonable such as, oh, I dunno, a front page for the project maybe? They claim to have SVN support, but it crashes and burns horribly whenever you try to do trivial things like add an ignore from TortoiseSVN or switch from one branch to another. And so on. Google saying GitHub is "a better system" is a bad joke, from the perspective of someone who's used both.
No, this really does feel like they got bored with the project and now they're abandoning it, and if some of the users end up getting screwed over, oh well. And it's not the first time they've done this. So why should we think it will be the last?
On the post: Telco Analyst Compares Google Fiber To Ebola... Completely Misses The Point
But what's gonna happen to him if/when Google loses interest in it?
On the post: UMG Licenses Indie Artist's Track, Then Uses Content ID To Claim Ownership Of It
On the post: Massive Copyright Troll Malibu Media/xArt Defies Court Order To Publicly Name Defendant
Error in headline?
Massive Copyright Troll Malibu Media/xArt Defies Court Order To Not Publicly Name Defendant
On the post: USTR Pushes Congress To Approve Trade Deals... But Threatens Reps With Criminal Prosecution If They Tell The Public What's In Them
Is it just me or is Barack Obama getting more and more ridiculous as time goes by?
On the post: Greece Wants To Use Amateur Snoopers Wired For Sound And Video To Catch Business Tax Dodgers
Re:
Did you miss the part about them wearing hidden recording devices? Even if Varoufakis is a Marxist, this isn't the 20th century USSR or East Germany. Having them "wired for sound and video" works keep them honest; you can't just make an accusation against someone you don't like.
And yes, while what you're describing would undoubtedly be a good solution in the long run, it is a long-term solution. Changing society's values always is, and right now, tax dodging is a deeply-ingrained Greek cultural value. The problem is, they've been at it for so long that it's killing their country right now. This isn't a problem that's decades in the future; the chickens have already come home to roost.
To put a new twist an old saying, while the man is starving to death is no time to teach him to fish.
On the post: Australians Get Their Own SOPA; Attorney General Doesn't Even Bother To See If His Censorship Regime Is Technically Feasible
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Greece Wants To Use Amateur Snoopers Wired For Sound And Video To Catch Business Tax Dodgers
Re: Re: Huh
On the post: Greece Wants To Use Amateur Snoopers Wired For Sound And Video To Catch Business Tax Dodgers
Re: Huh
I don't know how much things have changed in the last couple years, but a while back I read an article with some stats on Greece, and their budget deficit was approximately identical to the amount of taxes not being paid. In other words, if the people would just shape up, they would not be in this mess.
On the post: FCC Outlines Plan To Crush Awful State Protectionist Broadband Laws
Every time I try to parse that sentence, my brain throws an exception.
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