Sometimes patents are not useful, but sometimes they are.

Intuitive Surgical have spent many millions developing surgical robotics and even more millions getting the products certified and convincing doctors (some of the most conservative people around) that they can be used safely. It's reasonable that they receive substantial rewards for their work for some limited time period. It's far, far less expensive to develop the second example of a brand new concept. It's reasonable to assume that absent some legal impairment Intuitive products would be quickly copied and their prices undercut.

Truly novel products are EXACTLY why patents are are still needed. This is especially true for medical devices that can directly benefit humanity. Just because we have a substantial number of unfortunate software patents doesn't mean that the concept, when properly applied, isn't valid. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I think this should be "Fortunately". When I was in chemotherapy, my capecitabene tablets cost $1600 for a 2 week supply, or I could buy them from an on-line pharmacy for $650. It was tempting to save a bunch of money but I didn't because that medication was too important for me to trust an unknown supplier. One of other patients at my clinic told me that he ordered some from an online pharmacy in the US (or so he thought) and they arrived in an anonymous envelope from Guyana and with a size, shape and color different from the tablets supplied by local pharmacies. Fake? No way to tell for sure. But how many unsuspecting people are dying from pharmacies supplying fake medications? I don't know, nobody knows.

Cutting off the ways to advertise these places is a good idea. You think it's "unfortunate" that Google was caught and you decry the methods used to go after Google. I think that this is a great way for the government to help save people's lives by enforcing reasonable and necessary laws.

Costs have declined dramatically since 2003. A similar installation these days would cost less than $30k, and rebates are pretty minimal these days.

Maintenance costs over the last 8 years have been zero. I do clean the panels with a water hose (from the ground) once a year, but no other maintenance has been necessary. The panels have a lifetime of 30+ years according to the manufacturer, and they lose efficiency at the rate of 0.4% per year (which is far less than the variance caused by weather).

The Great State of California paid $29,000 and tax rebates paid the rest. But remember, this was 2003. A neighbor installed a very similar installation last year at a total cost of $26,000. The rebates these days are quite minor - I'm not certain if there are any at all.

I installed 48 solar panels on my house which generates around 12,000 kW per year. The installation costs were $65,000 in 2003, or $31,500 after all the direct and indirect rebates. Based on my annual savings, I calculated (in 2003) that I would recoup the cost by the end of 2013, but as electricity costs have risen since that I time I think I'm pretty close to having saved all the installation costs already.

I do use the local utility company for power during non-daylight hours, but that's just a matter of convenience. I could have installed batteries at the cost of $5,000 - but why bother when the utility company can act as my battery? They pay me for excess electricity that is generated during the day, and I pay them for electricity used during the night. My annual bill in December 2011 was $(-133) - that's a $133 check from the utility company.

As an added advantage, we leave the house thermostat at the same temperature settings all year - a low of 72 degrees and a high of 76 degrees, so we are always comfortable at home.

Some people say that solar isn't ready for prime time, and never will be. That's just crap.

Right now, the ARM architecture equates to tablets and phones for many, maybe most people.

However, a number of companies (Qualcomm, NVIDIA, and others) have announced that they are developing ARM processors to challenge Intel in laptops and desktop systems. Probably they are going with ARM because Intel is being somewhat uncooperative (and maybe anticompetitive) by not letting them have licenses that would allow them to produce x86 compatible systems.

For these companies, having Windows on their ARM systems is vital. However, we shouldn't be short-sighted - restricting the ability for ARM systems to boot anything but Windows will (in the long run) benefit Intel, AMD, Via, etc. as much as it will benefit Microsoft by restricting which operating systems the upcoming ARM based systems can boot. They will either run Windows or they will run everything else, depending on the boot ROM in the system. Guess which most will chose.

Just as important, 8 of the 9 members of the PolitBuro Standing Committee (the highest and most powerful decision-making body in China) are engineers by profession. The most popular profession in the US Congress is lawyer.

I know which I would expect to get things right over the long haul.

You believe you have better algorithms than the competition. Starting a company is hard enough without giving Christmas presents to the competition. Keep everything closed while the company is young and vulnerable. Open source your code later if it won't help the competition AND you believe it will add value to your company. How far would Google have progressed if they had open sourced their search engine ten minutes after they had it working?

Frankly, if you have to ask this question you aren't really serious about succeeding.

Back in 2003 I installed 48 panels on my roof rated at 7.5kw. They generate between 11,000 and 12,000 kWh per year which is enough for all the energy we use and we get a small payback from the utility company for the excess - should be around $150 this year, which more than covers the $5 a month meter rental :)

The initial cost was $31,000 after rebates and tax incentives and based on my usage I calculated a 10 year break-even. However, energy costs in California have risen quite a bit since 2003 and I think I've broken even already, 18 months ahead of schedule. The panels should be be good for another 20-25 years, so I'm pretty happy with the way it's turned out.

Four thoughts:

They may well be right in thinking their data will be more accessible to the US government.

If I were an overseas competitor, I'd certainly use this as a reason to not to use a US provider. In a heartbeat.

The law of unintended consequences bites the US yet again.

This wouldn't be an issue if the US government hadn't acted the way it has over the last 10 years. The US government has so little trust overseas that people have no trouble thinking the worst of it. Karma is a bitch.

I remember when a megabyte of RAM dropped to under $1,000,000, when we switched from core to semiconductor technology circa 1972. And we thought it a great advance.

Now get off my lawn, noob.

Yes.

According to TFA, he did apply for a license and was refused by the DOJ. He's appealing that decision.

The fact remains that a useful product to purify water cheaply is no longer available because the government wants to control the active ingredient, and is willing to make the product unavailable as "collateral damage". I would guess some other collateral damage is the people who may end up with diseases because they drink water that isn't purified, and the percentage that die as a result.