I'm also at a loss as to why it's such a difficult problem to solve. People have their registration form -> enter voting station building, show form which is stamped or somethnig so it can't be used again & get an anonymous RFID card or something. That card allows them to vote once by putting it in a machine and pressing a couple of buttons. If you screw up the voting, reset and do it again as the RFID card would be valid for an hour or so.

If you still manage to screw up after an hour then you're really too stupid to be involved in the political process - except maybe as a politician.

"I have never heard of the UI of a handheld application requiring significant processor resources"

Guessing you've never played any games that were more demanding than Angry Birds then. The fact is that WebKit is fine for rending web content, but developers need lower level access to get the performance required for non-web apps.Even if the device could just about grind along at a reasonable pace using a WebKit based version of a native app, the fact the processor is working a lot harder will lead to much shorter battery life, and in some cases the device becoming noticably warm.

Web-based interfaces on mobile devices are find for simple apps with mostly static content, but for a nice responsive and efficient UI then native (or at least a fast virtual machine) is required.

Just visited a site with 1.4MB of Javascript - used to display an image carousel and do some Google analytics. 1.4 fucking megs. Ridiculous.

As others have said, they'd have little to no chance of success in the UK.

They tried something similar back in 2000, when they claimed they owned the patent to the hyperlink. The judge wouldn't have any of it and they were told to go away.

I've heard a sense of humour is also good.

It hasn't made programming cool, it has made some of the jobs based around programming appear cooler. If someone asks what you do and you reply that you're a cobol programmer woring for a mortgage company, it's hardly likely to make you seem like the coolest guy in the room. However, if you mention that you write apps for phones, or Facebook, or write games then it's likely to seem more interesting. People can relate to it as they will be using the devices and services you help create content for.

There's also a crossover now, with people who put together a Powerpoint presentation, or mark up an HTML page considering themselves programmers.

Exactly - i wrote that to hilight just how bad the current situation is, by reversing it (I thought I'd added enough sarcasm to the comment, but still) :

"you want people with patents to read through what would be thousands of product ideas a day?"

This, in a nutshell is the problem currently, but in reverse, with the person WITHOUT the patents having to read through potentially 10's or 100's of thousands of vague patents, AND understanding all of those patents, before having any confidence they can go ahead without being accused of criminality.

"hell you would need a team dedicated 24x7 to read all of the intended product developments"
=
"hell you currently need a team dedicated 24x7 to read all of the vague product patents"

Why shouldn't it be the responsibility of the patent owner to contact the company intending to develop a product, before they sink resources into it?

Much like building planning works (in the UK at least) the company involved must declare their intentions in the local papers, and posters around the area, so that anyone with an concern or complaint can find an avenue to raise their objections.

If there were a site where any company could post details of what they were intending to produce, then the patent trolls... sorry, I mean innovators with patent portfolios would be responsible for contacting the company. This would effectively prevent a "crime" and obviously save the patent troll... I mean innovators with the patents "millions of dollars" worth of damage to their business. Surely we'd all like to prevent crime right? Of course, this could cost the patent trolls (ah hell, I'll leave it) money scanning the site for things that could infringe on their highly valuable patents, but I won't lose any sleep over that, personally.

This would obviously only work where the invention is blatantly obvious and the company intending to produce the product is not concerned with their idea being out in the public (think: making a a cog, writing a quicksort algorythm, a web browser, etc)

At the moment the whole patent system is designed to criminalise people who often have absolutely no way of knowing they're commiting any crime. How on Earth can the law support that position?

"Just a fyi - what YOU perceive to be a valued function may not be the same as what the person next to you values."

You mean like a phone that can actually make a phone call reliably? Yeah I can see how that would be seen as an optional extra if you're just flashing the device around to increase hipster cred.