So once again as far as relevance goes, I refuse to have anything to do with it. Relevance is for the irrelevant! Anywho, while perusing the ridiculously small scoped internet, I ran across some interesting things and some upsetting things. That is the nature of the beast though I suppose.
First on the list today is the topic of patents! While the fundamental idea of patents is sound, I feel the implementation should be listed on the top 10 worst ideas ever. Software patents are the worst, but not too far behind that is hardware setup that ties into software patents. While I'm not a big Microsoft fan, I've got to take their side on this thing, FullView vs Microsoft. That's right, you read correctly. Some company patented the setup of a group of cameras in a circle... Upsetting? Yes, very. Patents are the devil...end of story.
That was the super upsetting. Now time for some fun! Tomorrow is a birthday, albeit a very not so likable one. May 3 marks the 30th birthday of Spam emails! Happy birthday Spam, and you jerks who started this suck!
Speaking of spam there is a useless, but interesting site, called Worldometers. It tracks a slew of statistics related to world things. At the very top of the page you can see the number of spam emails sent for the current day! There are some more interesting things on there too.
And finally, for all you open source fiends out there, good news in the browser market. Apparently Firefox has reached almost 50% market share in some European countries with an overall market share of roughly 29% for all of Europe. That's almost a 6% increase since February! Go open source!
WHOO WHOO WHOO!!!!
3 comments:
I agree as well that some patents do seem to go a little too far. This one is an actual physical implementation though, so it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
Also, you sound like a choo-choo train.
I must say I don't know much about patents. I see the point in helping out the small guy if he comes up with some truly great idea and then a huge company takes it and make huge sums of money with it while he go hungry and dies homeless. The thing is where and how do you draw that line. Patents are like some way to make life fair, but with all things that try that it is just not possible. In the end some people and companies use patents to make life not fair.
I find a lot of times I come up with things on my own that other already had. I see theirs later and am like, yea I did it just like that. How is a patent fair then? We both had the idea but one could of patented it and the other not (I am not saying the idea I came up with where patent like just an example).
To me in the end the human race needs to focus on what it can do to make life and the world better and a little less on the "I".
You do raise a couple of good points, Paul. It seems to me like your situation is ideal: The little man or garage shop operation is protected, fostering development and competition. These are very important building blocks of capitalism, if not cornerstones (I have no idea really, I never bothered learning about that in whatever class would teach that).
However, today's patenting situation that I see (at least from the distant standpoint I'm observing it) seems more like the giant corporations are being both bullies and bullied.
Microsoft has shown they like to lord patents over others with that whole "Hey, Linux people, you are violating several of our patents, we won't tell you which ones though. Why don't you go away now and drop this whole 'Other OS' thing?"
However, large companies also need to protect themselves from companies that have made a business in mooching money by hiding their patents until just the right time. For example, Microsoft could make some killer app, gaining a nice chunk of profit off of it in a matter of years. Some company, in the meantime, is keeping their patent a secret until just the right time, and then sues Microsoft for millions of dollars, hoping that Microsoft will settle for some generous amount.
If you want real-life evidence of that, just take a look at the whole GIF fiasco back in the late '90s, or recently with the rumble feature of the Xbox360 and PS2 remotes.
In either case, it has taken the heart out of why patents were invented in the first place and stinks like Adam's dog on a UT night.
Post a Comment