We have to get off this stupid idea that inventors are unique snowflakes who invent unique stuff that nobody else could ever discover and we therefore owe them.

Do you have solid proof lots of people can come up with the same patented idea?

Just to reiterate, this was not any kind of auto-driving failure.

Really? Suppose he was using the "auto park" feature in the car to park and hit someone in the process, it would not be not be an "auto-driving failure"? That's stupid and wrong: they should not sell the "auto park" feature without the "pedestrian detection" feature.

Well, how do propose we avoid a repeat of hanging doors and pregnant chads, like in the Bush/Florida election, without computers?

That's a good idea although it makes the patent holder wonder what he paid all that attorney, filing and maintenance fees for if it turns out his patent is invalid, years after being accepted.

But you're right, since the USPTO can't afford to spend too much time researching all the patent claims, the person being sued for infringement should have the right to prove that some or many claims in the patent are trivial, obvious or frivolous and therefore, invalid.

http://www.merriam-webster.com...

First Known Use of INCENTIVIZE
1970

Slavery, monarchy, and arranged marriages were much older institutions that ended.

Big LOL on equating slavery to patent rights. The patent holders are the ones getting screwed by a tiny amount of monopoly time granted to make money off their invention -- just 20 years. If you subtract the time taken from patent filing date to bringing the product to market, including marketing, say 4-5 years, the monopoly is only for 15 years. And the first 3-5 years, you won't have much sales because nobody has heard of your product. So the effective monopoly is only for 10-13 years, not a long time.

There are plenty of very ordinary businesses like furniture sales and fast food franchises that make money for decades.

So how exactly are patents free gifts? Take cars for instance. The total revenue from new cars in the US alone is tens of billions, yearly. But because of poor patent laws that grant you monopoly only during the initial phases of the selling an invention, when sales of cars were relatively low, the inventor of cars gets nothing, whereas the patent freeloading capitalists, who wait until someone else has worked to make a product popular, then enter the market and seize control of the market share by outspending the little guys, and make all the money for centuries and kick the inventors out of the market.

In fact, like copyrights, inventors should get an additional 20 years where they can charge a 1% sales royalty to companies manufacturing products that use their invention. The start date of royalty should be chosen by the inventor. If the sold product uses multiple patents, the royalty is split among the patent holders.

This is a very subjective matter -- what one considers a valid patent, another considers it obvious and invalid patent.

Instead of courts attacking patent holders (trolls), the USPTO should set clear guidelines as to what is patentable and what is not. Once they invalidate patents that have obvious claims, the trolling and racketeering will end. This is not an easy task (determining obvious vs non-obvious claims), but it must be done.

Exactly, how is this any different than black boxes on airplanes? It isn't.

It's more invasive and personal than a blackbox. The NTSB wants cameras in cockpits of planes, but the pilots don't want them.

Maybe you count them by machine but you always have the fallback of machine counting.

Perhaps you meant "fallback of human counting." For simplicity:
1. The voter selects a candidate on a touch-screen tablet.
2. The tablet prints out the vote selection on a piece of paper. This ensures a valid vote has been cast by the voter.
3. Voter deposits paper into a box along with other votes.
4. A computer with a scanner rapidly scans the paper votes after the box is emptied into the counting machine.
5. Humans manually recount votes using paper votes if any discrepancy in the vote count is found.

The TL;DR version is use printers to cast machine-readable paper votes.

Isn't this what open source is all about, freedom? So take the source code and remove the data-collecting code and recompile. Otherwise, what good is open source?

Even if you pay a monthly subscription, there will always be ads. See cable TV as an example.

Perhaps not directly, but don't they get scholarships?

if you're allowed on the movie set, allowed to take pictures there.. no contract was made and the pictures are not a work for hire.

But will any movie studio allow strangers to capture video of all their movie scenes on their set and then release that (edited) video for free or commercial use? I highly doubt it. Such a video would dilute/harm the value of the movie released by the studio.

Movies cost money to make. Actors are paid.

I think the school's argument is along similar lines. The school has to pay to rent, maintenance and other fees to organize the sporting event at the stadium. It also has to pay long term for coaches/trainers, training area and equipment to train its football player students. So it's a huge cost in time and money to organize this event.

All the kid did was spend a few hours taking pictures with a cheap camera and make oodles of money off someone else's work -- therefore he's a leech.

but has a restriction on the use of photographs taken at a sporting event and subsequently used for commercial gain ever been tested in court?

Why restrict the question to sporting events when there are already general guidelines for photographing strangers (athletes in this case)?

http://www.photocoachpro.com/h...