More Complete Patent Insanity (Warning -- You may vomit)

[Renegade]

Get ready to puke your brains out, this is certain to make you freak out:

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2011/12/26/high_stakes_fueling_patent_wars/?p1=News_links

For example, Android phones can automatically decide whether to download data over a cellular network or over a local Wi-Fi network. British Telecommunications claims that it earned a US patent on the underlying technology in 2000. If the company prevails in this suit, instead of having the phone automatically begin downloads from the network the user would have to manually make the choice instead, switching from 3G or 4G cellular data on the road to Wi-Fi at home.

Please allow me to explain what took me less than a second to figure out:

Code: (csharp)

bool wifi = WifiIsConnected();
bool carrier = DumbAssCarrierIsConnected();

if (wifi)
{
    connection = UseConnection(wifi_constant);
}
else if (!wifi && carrier)
{
    connection = UseConnection(carrier_constant);
}
else
{
    // error as no connection is available..
    connection = UseConnection(null);
}

Just how retarded are these people?

And that's just small 1 part of the insanity...

This stuff isn't rocket science.

Lesson learned (NSFW)

Lesson learned:

1) THE CARRIERS ARE TRYING TO FUCK YOU AS HARD AS POSSIBLE.
2) IF YOU CAN'T TASTE THEIR COCK, IT'S BECAUSE IT'S IN YOUR ASS.

[rgdot]

Who are these people in the patent office? supposedly following some law that allows these stuff? If decisions can be patented this is even more hilarious than usual. It's like saying the thermostat switching off when it's 70F can be patented

[Renegade]

Who are these people in the patent office? supposedly following some law that allows these stuff? If decisions can be patented this is even more hilarious than usual. It's like saying the thermostat switching off when it's 70F can be patented

Exactly. This stuff is just off the hook nutty.

[mahesh2k]

What the eff?

[Carol Haynes]

The bigger irony is that BT don't even make/sell mobile technology any more - so they are effectively saying 'we don't use this and neither can anyone else'.

You have to laugh though - at last a British company has finally realised that there is a quick buck to be made from this scam.

Soon no one will be able to do anything as all the tech companies are locked out of their own products and the lawyers have one giant worldwide orgasm - maybe the solution to dwindling fossil fuels if someone can harness that energy. Now where is my patent application form ...

[4wd]

You have to laugh though - at last a British company has finally realised that there is a quick buck to be made from this scam.

You notice they had to go to the USPO to get it - does this mean that the USPO is the only PO retarded enough to grant it?

Also note that apparently BT was granted a US patent for being able to put your location on a map in 2001 - I'm sure Garmin's going to be in a lot of trouble now since they had that capability in the model GPS-12 in 1999.

[rgdot]

Courtesy of Electronic Frontier Foundation

A simple explanation of how the current patent system hampers innovation

[attachthumb=#]

[Edit - added inline clickable attachment]

[mouser]

That flowchart is depressingly accurate except there is no big black box.. all paths connect to the red box in the bottom left, except for the one box not shown -- it's a big green box for if you are a billion-dollar plus corporation, in which case everything is working just fine thank you very much.

[40hz]

Microsoft is eroding the ground out from under the FOSS world by doing this to one Linux distro or open source technology at a time.

I personally suspect the reason the U.S. government is allowing this to continue - and pushing so hard for international IP laws favorable to large companies - is in order to preserve US corporate dominance in key areas of technology. Something that's becoming increasingly hard to do now that the world's technical sophistication is catching up, or surpassing it, in areas where the US was traditionally considered the world leader. (Examples include: genetic research being throttled or actively blocked because of fundamentalist religious opposition; space exploration due to public indifference and mounting public debt following the Afghanistan and Iraq military actions, etc.),

Now that America has farmed out as much manufacturing and production as it possibly can (for short term stock gains that primarily benefit corporate directors and officers no less!), what else do most large US businesses have left to protect?

If people around the world refuse to let the US have a legal lock on all innovation through an abusive copyright and troll infested patent system, Uncle Sam is screwed royally. And the US legislature and corporations all know it.

It's no accident so much important research is being conducted in places other than the US. The US has lost it's way. And the rest of the world has better things to do with itself besides waiting for all those right-thinking-god-fearing-freedom-loving Americans to get their act together and rediscover the sources of their former greatness. (Hint: a commitment to innovation, the discipline to forgo short-term gains in order  to invest in the future, a respect for education, a willingness to take chances and experiment, and the ability to see beyond next quarter's profit statement.)

Maybe nobody likes patent trolling. But I think the government can't figure out a way to prevent it and still keep it's restrictive global IP agenda on track.

Trolls may be evil. But as of right now, the government considers them as an unfortunate side effect of a bigger agenda. And that's to keep what lead the US still has in certain key areas of technology through legal fiat rather than innovation and entrepreneurship.

So don't expect any relief from Washington or US courts on any of this crap.

About the only thing we can expect is for all the "alphabet soup" coming out of Washington (ACTA, PIPA, SOPA, PreCISE, DMCA, etc.) to increase as time goes on.

That and for the rest of the world to eventually say: "You know what USA? Screw you! Get lost."  

[IainB]

I personally suspect the reason the U.S. government is allowing this to continue - and ...

+ 1 from me for what you wrote.

I suspect that a great majority of people would share those sentiments, but would probably feel impotent to do anything about it because the collaboration between government and the corporations (common vested interests) has already successfully created an impenetrable and self-sustaining wall of law built in such a way as to prevent anyone from dismantling the wall. This presumably is to "secure" the future economic dominance of the US and US corporations in the ongoing economic wars.
I think it's akin to a form of economic hegemony.
After the Philippines (a case of economic colonisation), the US doesn't "colonise" other territories anymore, but it sure seems to exercise an economic and political command and control system over them when it wants to.

[40hz]

After the Philippines (a case of economic colonisation), the US doesn't "colonise" other territories anymore, but it sure seems to exercise an economic and political command and control system over them when it wants to.

It's right out of the old playbook the Soviets used in Eastern Europe and Finland. You don't want to occupy anything you can control without doing so. Much like the asset protection strategy employed by the very rich: Own nothing personally. Maintain full control using proxies.

[attach]

[Stoic Joker]

Wait a minute ... Prius is/means mad in latin?!?  Oh I'll have a ball with that!

[40hz]

Wait a minute ... Prius is/means mad in latin?!?  Oh I'll have a ball with that!

Sorry to disappoint. Prius means "prior to" or "before."

[IainB]

Wait a minute ... Prius is/means mad in latin?!?  Oh I'll have a ball with that!

Sorry to disappoint. Prius means "prior to" or "before."

All those proud Prius owners can now heave a sigh of relief?     

[Stoic Joker]

Wait a minute ... Prius is/means mad in latin?!?  Oh I'll have a ball with that!

Sorry to disappoint. Prius means "prior to" or "before."

All those proud Prius owners can now heave a sigh of relief?     

Not on my watch they can't - I hate those things.

[40hz]

Wait a minute ... Prius is/means mad in latin?!?  Oh I'll have a ball with that!

Sorry to disappoint. Prius means "prior to" or "before."

All those proud Prius owners can now heave a sigh of relief?      

Not on my watch they can't - I hate those things.

It's only because you know them for the fraud they currently are. (Their "all-in" environmental footprint is bigger than that of an internal combustion vehicle!)

Y'know ... if you're gonna confuse the issue with logic and facts...we might as well end this conversation right now!

[Stoic Joker]

I promised myself I wouldn't do this, but...

Wait a minute ... Prius is/means mad in latin?!?  Oh I'll have a ball with that!

Sorry to disappoint. Prius means "prior to" or "before."

All those proud Prius owners can now heave a sigh of relief?       

Not on my watch they can't - I hate those things.

It's only because you know them for the fraud they currently are. (Their "all-in" environmental footprint is bigger than that of an internal combustion vehicle!)

Actually I just think that they're hideously ugly and pathetically slow. Every time I see one of those contraptions on the road I just want to ram the thing into a ditch. But you do make a good point also.

There are three vehicles in my driveway, two are from Detroit, the other is from Milwaukee...I like it that way. The Dodge Challenger is a car. The Ford Mustang is a car (that also gets great gas milage). The Prius is a metro-sexual status symbol that demonstraits how gloriously epicene one has become.

Y'know ... if you're gonna confuse the issue with logic and facts...we might as well end this conversation right now!

Ligic? Facts? Me?? Oh hell no...perish the thought ... I'll not be caught near such things!!

[40hz]

After the Philippines (a case of economic colonisation), the US doesn't "colonise" other territories anymore, but it sure seems to exercise an economic and political command and control system over them when it wants to.

That's the way it's done today.

The USA does it. Russia does it. China does it to the point of conducting missile tests and war games off the coast of Taiwan just to let everybody know they can go in and take it any time they want to. The European Union wishes it could do it...as does all those little nations who are furiously trying to get a nuclear weapons capability in place.

Brave new world. And one which is much like the bad "old" one.

Hegemony is hegemony no matter whose flag it flies. Roman eagle, star, crescent, cross, hammer & sickle, red star, stars & stripes? Bah! Purely cosmetic. The underlying attitude and philosophy remains the same:

Biggest kids boss the big kids. The big kids boss the smaller kids. And the small kids push the little kids around.

Life's no different on the international stage than it is on any other barnyard or school playground.

So it goes. 

[IainB]

That's the way it's done today.
...

So it goes. 

Wow. A succinct précis of foreign policy.
My favourite précis of US foreign policy is Randy Newman's song "Political Science" (Lyrics - "Let's drop the Big One now.")