An example of what? That patent is legal because of bad patent law. That's not the USPTO that's congress.

Why the hell should companies, including tax payers (costs of running courts & all) have to pay for the USPTO's fuckups?

There are two different issues here.

For the USPTO to vet patents properly would require a substantially higher cost per patent. The tax payers through their elected representative did not allow for patent fees to go high enough to cover that cost nor subsidies to cover that cost. They are the most responsible party for the policies.

As for companies. Companies don't have to pay for the USPTO. What they do have is a situation where their patents are registered but unvetted. They have to understand what they bought. They didn't buy much more than a filing.

Either the USPTO didn't do their job right (incompetence gets you fired in the real world, but not if you're a bureaucrat apparently)

In the "real world" offering a lower quality product at a much better price is applauded. It doesn't get you fired it makes you rich.

#1 Richest man Bill Gates got their for cutting the cost of desktop software.
#2 Warren Buffet got their for cutting the cost of running insurance companies
#3 Larry Ellison got their for reducing administrative expenses

etc...

What does often get people fired in the real world is blaming others rather than owning your mistakes. If people want a better patent system where the USPTO vets patents rather than registers them, they should pay for that system and stop pretend the reason they aren't getting such a system for 95% off is because patent examiners are being lazy.

The entire world isn't the US/Japan/EU. While most airlines outside that region who operate 787s run tight operations (Ethiopian for example is often mentioned as very well-run with a strong safety culture), there are a few who do not.

That said, in the few instances where less organized airlines have managed to acquired 787s they are probably being shut down 2-3 times/week much less every 9 months.

sPh

The first time I was on a new plane where the pilots did that at the gate to "fix a computer glitch" (~1998) I was utterly terrified.

sPh

There are so many decent UPS / inverter-charger systems out there.

Posts should help, not just criticize. Mentioning *even one* would have been helpful. Your post is just Slashtrash as written and I know you usually do better. How about fixing that?

I heard the acute problem aptly summarized recently: "Patents are supposed to cover inventions, but what they're being issued for is mere engineering."

This is a better metric than the "obviousness test" - what is the essential and genius inspiration that led to a the idea of putting a delivery message in a SMS message? There is none - no patent.

I realize the entire system has evolved into one giant mechanism to enrich entrenched corporate interests, but it's still a good insight into how maybe the system could have been designed less-wrong from the beginning.

You are better off spending money on geothermal HVAC

Not that effective during a long power outage.

Is there a valid reason we accept studies that have not been reproduced at least one more time to truly vet them before the community?

The point of papers [in real science] is to say, "we did this, here's what we found". It's not to announce a beacon of new Revealed Truth. That's largely the fault of science "reporters" looking to sell advertising space.

The papers are themselves the invitations to replicate.

The problem is the government science-funding model is largely based on fame and popularity, and doing replication studies is felt to be beneath most researchers except for the most extraordinary of claims, or those that threaten the Orthodoxy.

None of these problems will go away until the incentives of the funding model change. To assume anything else would be economically ignorant.

Other posters have already demolished the idea that banks will do this voluntarily or by edict.

The engineering approach is to not involve them. The Finance::Bank collection is the closest you're going to find to a workable solution.

Anybody who has money to spend on a government "solution" should send it to these developers instead.

Think about it. You may love the open source movement, but how would you like it if you wrote software at your day job for a salary...and then one day the government said "Hey, we decided that all software is free now. So you can't charge for it, even if you worked hard to make it and invested tons of money in the software-making process."

That's a nonsense argument. Absent monopoly grants, software goes to the person who paid for it, and they have the choice of whether to release it or not.

It's when it's released to the public, do you have Men With Guns threaten the People for making copies of that software or not? That is the ethical question. Do predictions of purported benefit from social-engineering justify threats of murder?

You, or at least anyone reading this who fits this profile, should think carefully about the foundation of your own ethics.

*Yours* is based on threats of violence for duplication (not stealing) of information. It abolishes a portion of _real_ property rights for imaginary ones, when there is no demonstrable harm other than a postulate of diminution of earning potential.

The reduced argument is "murder for profit".

I doubt it. Their vision for the future is sound, but they're not strongly connected to the reality of maintaining a good browser for the present at the same time. Mostly chest-beating rather than doing the hard work required.

Mozilla has gotten brazen lately about forcing questionable changes on users

Right. I have to manage $1200 PDU's that use SSLv3, so to use Firefox I had to re-enable SSLv3 for all sites. That's the only choice Mozilla felt like giving users. That's not bold, it's lazy and worsens overall security for the Internet.

If they think I'm going to get $30K to replace working gear "because Firefox" they're delusional.

and don't forget that most wealth is generated by engaging in activities with energy requirements.

That Tesla 80D Insane Edition that I want takes $115K worth of economic profit to acquire, which in most industries requires 5-20x as much revenue. So over a million dollars worth of economic activity on average to just get that Tesla before you can drive it. Is that greener than a Fiesta?

he is showing his value by creating crap for his handlers to screw up your future.

Yeah, I totally hate the Internet too. If only the FCC had been regulating it since it's inception, it would be so much better now!

Classic example of a market failure.

Just so you know, Microsoft did a lot of shitty deals back then and screwed over a lot of people.

Why wasn't the contact enforced when Vista or 7 came out? One party is a nuclear-armed sovereign - don't tell me Microsoft refused... the courts would surely order cooperation if that were the case.

lemme guess, American public school student?

It's rich since the government in the region of Iran hasn't attacked another country since the 1820's but jingoistic Americans insist that they need to be attacked before they strike again. The irony is laid on thicker than the blood of the millions of victims of American imperialism. Or the women in Iran who have been repressed and murdered since the US overthrew the Shah there and installed theocratic thugs 40 years ago.

Even the CIA admits that all the imperialists are doing is creating more terrorists. We need to take down these morons - for our own safety.