Sure, and completely stipulated. The "do something well known and described in finance books" and "on a computer" stuff shouldn't be patentable... Rather, it's new processes (that are nonetheless, done on a computer):

What if it was a brand new process or business method, never been done before, on a computer. Like, say, calculating the value of some strange multidimensional factorial required to teleport yourself twenty feet to the left and six hours into the future? Certainly new, but let's assume it can be done with a TI-83. Should that be patentable?

If you start with PHP, even Brainfuck looks fun and refreshing. Jesus pal, talk about damning a language with faint praise.

Another attempt by a vendor to try to lock in software development and make cross platform development incredibly difficult by introducing a new language.

Fuck, I do tire of the sociopathic tendencies of corporations.

Pseudocode and detailed* flow charts should be enough for any skilled programmer. You shouldn't need C+ code - and if you do, what happens in 5 years when you say "I don't know C+, I only know Swift" or whatever the next language is? Conversely, what about art from the 60s or 70s - if it had COBOL code would you know how to use that? No, pseudocode and detailed* flow charts should be enough of a disclosure, because from them, you can implement the program in any language.

*Many patent applications do not have detailed flow charts, but rather "flow charts" that just show a single series of steps in a line, as Prof. Lemley noted in one of the interviews linked from another comment. You're right - those are total crap and don't teach anyone anything.

Yes, and no... Patent Examiners are bound under the requirements of due process to present a prima facie case for why an application is not patentable, as the initial burden rests on the Office. How do you provide a prima facie case that an idea is abstract? It's a conclusion, not an argument supported by evidence, as the Courts have admitted when their evidence is "I know it when I see it".

Quite possibly, though it fails to answer my question about your definition of "actually inventive". It also points to part of the problem with Alice, since your first question is really about 112 written description, your second question is really about 112 enablement and unclaimed essential matter, and your third question (as you note) is really about 103 obviousness. Now, I agree, that if you meet 103 and 112, Justice Thomas would likely not "know an [abstract idea] when he sees it" and find the application invalid under 101, and maybe that's a fine answer from a pragmatic standpoint, but it's a terrible one from a jurisprudence standpoint.

Which is a shame, because Congress has already defined it in Section 100:

So, for example, a new use of a known machine - like, say, a new business method performed on a known computer - would fall under that statutory definition.

They've been great in the two major 101 cases, Bilski and Alice. Hardly anyone thought those claims were (or should have been) valid, as the methods were old and well known... But that's also like going back to the old obscenity cases and having your "test case" be Two Girls, One Cup. The old saying "bad facts make bad law" is true primarily because everyone agrees with the outcome based on those bad facts... but then it's used as precedent in cases where the facts aren't nearly so bad.

As an aside, patents have a historic tie to property law, hence things like permanent injunctions and willful infringement damages... but maybe that's not such a good thing, as they're primarily economic instruments. It leads naturally to equity-based judgements rather than concrete tests and rules... people would be outraged if judges were routinely invalidating contracts as a matter of law on a "I know it when I see it" justification.
If we did away with the property tie and abandoned permanent injunctions and what are effectively punitive damages, in exchange for compulsory licensing and reasonable royalties, a lot of the issues people have with trolls would go away, too.

That's stupid.

If the terrorists changed their tactics, and you state that they've changed their tactics, you're revealing that the terrorists took action in response to finding out you've been monitoring them. If their new tactics made them vanish, made them hard to read (encryption), or did nothing, you would still notice: you'd notice them disappear if they completely beat you, or you'd notice their tactics change if their new tactics were just as ineffective as the old ones. As you say, giving terrorists information which they act on does help them, even if their response doesn't gain them anything; so saying in public that the Snowden leak helped terrorists, in any situation where they responded to the leak by change, is both accurate and not revealing.

If you confirm that the leaks haven't helped the terrorists, then you're only confirming that the situation hasn't changed. This would only happen if the terrorists didn't gain enough information from the leaks to make any changes--useful or otherwise--and thus you would confirm exactly what the terrorists know: that they don't know if there are any leaks, what the extent of the leaks are, and where those leaks may be. This is, again, unhelpful.

Technically, one could easily argue that the District Court found the claims to be invalid under 35 USC 103 over an electronic device in view of Official Notice that "suggesting an additional good or service... based on certain information obtained about the customer and the initial purchase" is known in the art because "shrewd sales representatives have long made their living off of this basic practice" and it therefore is "purely conventional steps that are well-understood, routine, and previously known to the industry". Certainly, nothing in the decision points to it being abstract - rather, the judge repeatedly states that it is known.

In fact, one could argue that if something is routinely done, it's not abstract at all. It's just not new.

... at trial, yes. Not at the USPTO or before the PTAB.

And in KSR, SCOTUS pushed that way back. Now it's actually quite easy, unless the claims recite an element that you just can't find a reference for, anywhere.

That'd be an easy 103 rejection: you can prove it's been "done previously," right? You can prove that the platform existed previously, right? Where's the problem?

How do you define "actually inventive"? Currently, we have the 102/103 tests of novelty and nonobviousness, but if you're saying we shouldn't use those tests and should just determine, under 101, whether something is "actually inventive", what's the test? As Judge Wu said, "I know it when I see it"?

Indeed. And quite often even dead FOSS projects can be cannibalized. The difference between dead open source and dead closed source projects is that the bones of one sit in an open pit that anyone can pick at, and the other sits in a concrete bunker twenty miles underground.

Those patents - of which I've to actually see an example - would already be invalid under 103: [known method]+[known computer/network/device]=obvious combination of two prior art elements that, between them, teach or suggest each and every element in the claim.

Sure, they're also invalid under Alice's interpretation of 101... but that's because Thomas' eligibility test is really just an obviousness test, hence his repeated references to "conventional techniques". Effectively, what Alice changed was to give courts an easy way to handwave something away as obvious as a matter of law, without requiring any actual prior art evidence, simply by calling it "abstract".

I think the special part is that 2.4 GHz is a convenient frequency where there is a balance between a larger amount of energy being absorbed by water and a smaller amount of energy being absorbed by glass and plastic.

No, 2.4 GHz was just one of seven convenient open frequency bands when, in 1947, the FCC assigned frequencies for the industrial heating, diathermy, and other RF sources that were causing interference on communication systems. These bands were scattered from 25 MHz to 20 GHz. See p. 8 and p. 50-51 of the Thirteenth Annual Report of the FCC, and the 1947 US Frequency Allocation Proposal to the Atlantic City International Radio Conference (see pdf page 464 of this pdf file). They were collectively called the "ISM bands", because the FCC aggregated Industrial heating, Scientific uses, and Medical heating (diathermy) equipment into bands that would minimize interference to communication systems. The microwave oven (called an "electronic cooker" in the FCC report) was so new that it was explicitly mentioned, and lumped in with other "industrial" heating systems.

The report is a lie.

Terrorist groups have absolutely changed their behaviors and communications patterns to increase obfuscation and move attention away from their important operations. The United States National Security Agency, the US Military, and other terrorist operations have added increased layers of misdirection to better cover and draw attention away from their most critical activities.