The alternative is that you come up with something, a rich guy sees or hears what it is, the rich guy screws you over because he doesn't need the loan to patent the thing.

As opposed to the current systen where the rich guy has a thicket of patents ready to block you from doing anything useful. Patents are a weapon that anybody can use, rich guys have more of them, and patents don't change the balance of power at all, just escalate the damage.

The superficial thinking of patent proponents is just incredible. Not to mention the endless spamming of naive view points to drown out much more sophisticated alternative points of view. The PP post has been spammed on slashdot for years. Tto this day patent proponents still pretend the sophisticated view points that many slashdotters have from years of discussing this topic don't exist.

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Has the Least Patentable Unit reached zero yet?

Just because theft leads you to enjoy a product later on doesn't mean your still not stealing.

Fanatics like you who can't cope with even the simplest discussion about what ownership is and is not, and thus what theft is and is not, are either barefaced liars or delusional. Which are you?

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Anonymous company communication is unethical and can and should be highly illegal. Company legal structures require accountability.

but why such the hate lately?

There appears to be an astroturf campaign going on. Multiple hysterical slashdot story submissions and numerous idiotically "fake angry" posts suggest somebody is trying to spam mud at Canonical hoping some of it will stick.

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There are many corporate shills on social media sites like slashdot fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Make these scums' life hell.

That's not really a justification.

It is actually. Those kids are harming no one and they are better off. The world is a better place. Really.

Uptight content "owners" need to get their head around that fact. The amount of broken law making being done in the name of "controlling" those harmless kids is a travesty of the democratic process.

Content "owners" need to understand what "ownership" is; simply the right given to them by we the people to control most, though not all, uses of some object or entity.

e.g. Owning some real estate allows you, with planning permission, build a house on it and restrict access to others but, depending on the country or area, doesn't give you the right to build a shop in a residential zone or dig a big hole endangering neighboring structures. These seem reasonable restrictions on this particular style of physical object.

The concept of "ownership" maps fairly well to the physical restriction that only one person can use a physical object at a time but when it comes to non-physical entities there is very little that's natural about "ownership." "Ownership" of non-physical entities is a very messy concept with no clear definition or boundaries. Vendors are able to "sell" copies of bits and give only very restricted access to those bits while still calling it a sale. First sale doctrine and free speech just some of the many traditional rights that vendors are trampling all over with DRM and broken law at the moment.

Personally, I'd like to see "intellectual property" law that recognizes that artificial scarcity is an artificial, harmful construct that should be structured and kept to the bare minimum necessary to encourage people to create. Copyright terms should be drastically reduced (e.g. 7 years) and not apply when something is DRM'ed. There should be many exceptions for socially useful activities (e.g. education, third world, the poor, reverse engineering for compatibility). Contravention of such laws should be a misdemeanor only. Patents should be very restricted and require significant proof that it took a lot of time and effort to research, not develop, something. etc.

Artificial scarcity blocks billions of peoples' free speech and drastically limits the spread and use of ideas so that a very small number can have an increased profit. That's not right.

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Copyright rewards distributors (copiers) far more than creators.

Interesting how I've seen this news on so many sites, and they all report it with overwhelmingly positive headlines

Many of those websites are not exactly unbiased.

That's been a problem with the entire "intellectual property" discussion; main stream media with extreme vested interests framing the debate (e.g. Don't think of an elephant). Not to mention compromising democracy in general for their own profit.

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Like software, "intellectual property" law is a product of the mind, and can be anything we want it to be. Let's get it right.

Hi MR FOSSie! ...

And the rest of your post goes downhill from there. You haven't responded substantively to anything I've said; just content free emotionally loaded words trying to distract the reader. You're not an honest broker. Ever thought of getting a real job and contributing to the community rather than being a parasite? You might earn less money but you'll be richer in the things that matter.

I didn't make those numbers up friend

I'm your friend? That's just sad.

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Adopt an astroturfer. Make their life hell.

with the nasty mods coming from zealots that stick their heads in the sand

Actually the zealot here is you who can't cope with alternate points of view. Time for you to grow up I think.

Linux supporters are well aware of the numbers and desktop challenges. The fact that you like to pretend things like android don't exist, that embedded linux is not everywhere, that preinstalls and the economic network effect are not the main reasons Windows is common, that an Ubuntu install disk doesn't work as well as a Windows install disk if the user hasn't been FUD'ed, that for naive users the linux GUI is as easy/difficult to use as the windows GUI and that server sales numbers equate with all server numbers etc. shows you are a dishonest broker worse than the people you are attempting to accuse.

M$ marketing is attempting to keep a bandwagon effect going by claiming that windows is the be all and all and that people will be using it until the end of time with no reason to consider alternatives. Quite simply, that's bullshit.

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Paid marketers are the worst zealots.

I find it sickening, personally, that the parent's post has been downmodded,

Oh gosh, crocodile tears! Get a life, you obviously need one.

simply because bratty Linux zealots can't take the truth.

Actually, the brat and zealot here is you. Grow up please. Either that or you're a shill fraudulently misrepresenting yourself as a third party. "hairyfeet"'s post is deliberately trying to deceive the reader by misrepresenting paid installations (sales) as all installations. That's dishonest and typical of the alleycat ethics of the M$ marketing department. The world would be a better place if they grew a pair and stopped engaging in wholesale misrepresentation and fraud.

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Paid marketers are the worst zealots.

See? Others can use that tactic too. Your low UID doesn't make you less of a troll. It just makes you someone who should have known better by now.

Hairyfeet is engaging is extremely biased commercial propaganda by quoting sales rather than numbers. He is deliberately trying to deceive the reader. Just because he is using "polite" words doesn't mean he is not being extremely rude. He is also probably engaging in fraud for commercial gain ie. astroturf.

As such he is a first class arsehole and you are an arsehole by by attempting to support such mendacity with misdirection. You both deserve all the flack you get.

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There are many corporate shills on social media sites like slashdot fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Make these scums' life hell.

I actually LIKE well-targeted ads,

You mean it's useful to 2 people in 10,000 rather than 1 person in 10,000? Don't make us laugh. The cost/benefit ratio isn't even remotely there.

because they connect me with a company which provides goods or services for which I have a need, and thus they save me time and effort.

Yeah, like doing a web search is hard.

You are a fool. Anybody who uses paid propaganda to make purchasing decisions is being a fool.

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Anonymous company communication is unethical and can and should be highly illegal. Company legal structures require accountability.

I don't see the fundamental difference between the arrangement of cogs, springs and rods (say), and the arrangement of conditionals and loops.

Artificial scarcity anyone? One is copyable/usable by 6,900,000,000+ people at little or no cost. The other isn't.

The onus is on any patent proponent to show why billions of people should be blocked from using an idea, their free speech, to give a small number of people additional profit, for every single area of technology. Not for anybody else to prove that patents are not applicable.

Patents are a damaging, unnatural monopoly and by default should not exist unless there is compelling, scientific evidence, not anecdotes, that patents actually help rather than hinder in every single area of technology where they may be applied.

Particularly since there are vast swathes of ideas that have no patent protection and those areas of technology work just fine. Everything from cooking recipes to math to locating businesses to business organization to artistic ideas to political ideas to ...

The whole patent edifice is based on handwaving about what it means to say two ideas are the same or different (fundamental to deciding whether something is original or not). They can't even cope with the difference between inventing new words and inventing new ideas. The PTO's depth of thinking is atrocious.

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"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

just like most problems with the operating system are actually human error.

No, most problems are due to poor OS design. As in not designing it for their target audience.

The best OS currently on the market is Windows 7.

No, the best consumer OS on the market is probably the Ipad. Millions, naive and expert, are using it who have all but given up on Windows ever being designed properly. The number of glitches in the Windows user interface is ridiculous, everything from icons acting in about 6 different ways when clicked on depending on which part of the desktop they happen to be sitting on to slow interactivity to your own silly argument trying to equate complexity with sophistication.

A good rule of thumb is to only bash a company for a product line when the latest product in the series isn't clearly the best current choice in that arena.

Only if it's a free upgrade and they haven't had decades to fix their problems, security or otherwise.

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Adopt an astroturfer. Make their life hell.

It is the consumer/user error.

It's producer error. As in not designing the their software for their target audience. Software is soft, it can be anything we it to be, but shills and mediocre programmers continue to blame everybody but themselves for the mess.

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Adopt an astroturfer. Make their life hell.