No, it wouldn't, because in effect that's what we already have. I get the impression you don't like what we already have. My point was that it isn't supposed to be that way.

I think we agree that, too, is not the way it's supposed to be. But "first to market" doesn't solve that problem, it just hides it. So... you market your idea. To two people. One buys. What does that accomplish? Granted, that's a ridiculous example but what we have now is ridiculous, so I don't think it's unrealistic.

I think the whole point here is to prevent patent trolling. TFA says universities are against this, but so what? Why should universities be granted patents in the first place? They're taxpayer-funded institutions. Their inventions should therefore not be "protected" from the public.

The law that allowed corporate-university partnerships to patent innovations was a mistake. It hasn't done the public any good, and again, I think we agree that the whole idea of the patent system is "the public good".

But on the same note: getting rid of the incentives of patents would also not be in the public good. We need to find a balance.

(Burn, baby, burn) Software inferno!
(Burn, baby, burn) Burn that mother down!

Warrantless Wiretapping was about getting blackmail materials on every sitting member of the House and the Senate, as well as their staff and acquaintances.

Your government fell to a silent coup a handful of years ago, and we're now seeing the direction to which the "winners" want to take your country and our world.

Insufficient.

According to news reports of the stops in Texas, peoples' breath was being sampled by officer-worn "non contact" breathalyzers before they were notified and without consent.

A surreptitious search is still a search. There SHOULD BE lawsuits over this.

According to the news story I read, a lot of people in Texas "bought" that, because they were under the impression they had no choice. One woman, in an interview, said she was intimidated by the police questions and thought she had to comply.

That news story (apologies, I don't have a link) also claimed that their breath was being sampled by an experimental "non contact" breathalyzer device without being notified in advance and without their consent.

If you notice, in the original article that was linked, the primary complaint is NOBODY is DANCING.

I don't care if you have only 1sq foot of space per person. That wouldn't be a problem if you had Kool and the Gang bumping your house down. The bans is tapped INTO THE EARTH'S RHYTHM. The people are tapped into THAT SAME rhythm. Every one is getting DOWN.

Thanks.

By the way, have you ever heard me rant AGAINST GODDAMN EARBUDS!!!????

Music is intended to create a space of shared experience, not isolate people into private sonic boundaries.

Buy a BOOM BOX. Turn it UP!

Cook and Ives.

They will be found in the 9th circle of hell, with heads up each other's arses - where like in Dante's inferno they will be whipped for all eternity by the disembodied heads of Brin and Page, attached to a single robot body.

Try hitting "forward" or "reverse" to the next/previous track, without looking. With out accidentally changing volume, or switching "shuffle".

Right.

Try doing WHILE looking! Still the deuce to do!

This was perfectly positioned, and responded to the right touch, prior to 7 - even with the 6.x face lift.

TOTAL DISASTER. I now use a 3rd party player, after 3 months of bitch-fight with Ives' abortion.

It's awful. Things that function as multi-state buttons now look like hyperlinks. Low-contrast shading "highlights" state changes. Other buttons, formerly intuitive and multi-state, now summon fly-up menus from the bottom of the screen (like the loop one/all button in Music app).

"WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO RUIN MY COMPANY?"
-- Steve Jobs, c. 2003

iOS7 would have gotten Jony FIRED if Jobs were still alive. Give the man a gong, and "Sir" Ives fucks everything to hell.

The man was a great PHYSICAL designer of cases and objects. Not allowed near software UXD in Steve's lifetime. Now you know why.

Nothing works well, any longer - shadows and reflections or not. The laundry list of how screwed the music app deserved a post of its own.

Red chevrons? REALLY? Lotus Notes, Borland SideKick and ccMail.

That's because the comic book was never really worth $500 in the first place.
The reason some comics are so valuable is BECAUSE they're scarce.
In the last 40 years, they've been ANYTHING but scarce.
So, no matter how much some schmuck sets the value for it, unless just about every other of the tens or hundreds of thousands of copies are known to be destroyed, it probably isn't even worth the cover price.

But a key thing here many seem to have forgotten is funding.

Without funding, or some kind of financial backer, you're not going to have a reasonable opportunity to patent your invention in a short amount of time. While the big boys with lots of funding can. That's one of the bit problems we're currently going through in the area of patents... the huge advantage that has been given corporations, versus the little guy who, actually most of the time, actually invents something.

So it shouldn't be any great surprise that Engelbart in his little group did not patent in those years but Telefunken did.

Patents are supposed to be about invention, not about who can get to market first.