Hey, now that's just fighting words. That was my favorite movie. Yeah, and what of it! No, seriously, it was.

Not quite, although I can see where you got that from. What I am saying is that a system open to blatant corruption is a broken system. We can obviously differ on definitions of "blatant corruption." My opinion, the patent system is open to "blatant corruption" to the extreme. Ergo, the patent system is broken.

Excellent, car analogies. I am not arguing the theory of patents with you, only the implementation. If there were no rules on roads regarding direction of flow, stop signs/lights, speed, etc, people can still drive carefully and avoid accidents. But that is just not a reasonable expectation. Therefore, we need to make rules and enforce them. Otherwise, the system would be broken: open to blatant corruption . . . "because most people drive like assholes." People still break the laws and drive like assholes, but the system doesn't seem broken in this case. At least, not according to my view of "blatant corruption." Boy, I sure like those quotes, don't I?

Isn't that the basis of "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument? If a system exists where people are going to break it, and requires that people will play nice to each other, then I think the system truly IS broken. Because you just can't expect people to naturally play nice, and not game the system.

With regard to your earlier post, eliminating patents would screw over the honest patent appliers. Status quo screws over everyone.

Several solutions, but the most obvious would be to upgrade to wife 2.0+.

100% agree. In a free society (not saying we have one in the US, just in theory), the default should be to protect freedom and prevent monopolies, unless there is some overwhelming reason to otherwise limit this freedom. In the US, and much of the world, we forgot that somewhere along the line.

Yet, you use software that has been, and is currently being tested on human beings all the time. Oh, the humanity!

Unfortunately, even then, that means nothing. Just because someone reviewed each and every patent in existence and doesn't think there is patent infringement, doesn't mean someone else will review the same information and disagree. So the question is really of high risk versus low risk for patent infringement, rather than yes or no. To me, it seem like h264 is guaranteed patent infringement, while VP8 is low risk, given that the distribution license has a patent clause.

Yes, but in all fairness, that wasn't on the final exam . . .

Doesn't Mark Shuttleworth feel like a sucker now?

I see your point. But it probably would have cost $300 million to shoot up 100 tons of lawyers. Would have been money well spent though.

Agreed. Any extreme is not good, but the system leads itself to the extreme every time. It sucks, and none of the suggestions I see so far are any good either, nor would fix the problem. Get rid of the crap. Sure, it would not a perfect system then (nothing ever is), but I think it would be better than what we have now. Of course, not if you are a lawyer . . .

This reminds me of my favorite scene from History of the World, Part I

"Pump the shit, right out of your house!"

That's not right. I don't mean to preach, but if they're pregnant, they should not be climbing such obstacles.

Somehow, this sounds like the opposite of "I'm just big boned." I'm sure it exists, but it's probably a lot rarer than what most people need to be concerned about.

I can just imagine the size of the shark this laser is attached to

"Look at the size of that thing!"