More likely this is a function of the internet, and the ability to search for prior art in a matter of minutes.

In the past a party looking to get a patent would go back and forth with the patent examiner at the USPTO a number of times, because the USPTO had a vast library of prior art that your average person doesn't have access to. Every time the examiner came up with prior art the patent would have to be rewritten to shrink it claims.

Now with the internet, anybody can search just about any database, this means the first draft patent will include more examples of prior art, a patent with less broad claims, and less for the patent examiner to object to.

A better measure of whether the USPTO is lowering its standards is the number of broad claims versus narrow claims in a patent. As well as the number of prior art examples cited in the patent, by definition if the prior art describes an aspect of the patent, that aspect is not patented, it is cited as a reference to what the patent DOES NOT cover.

That is completely wrong and the word inventor doesn't mean what you think it means.

Assuming you are right, if the inventor "needs to be part of the network" then 99% of patent holding companies would be NPEs, because as I said before - Big corporations do not "own" the patents. A shell company in a tax haven like Ireland owns the patents and license them back to the parent, and other licensees. If the Open Invention Network is considered an NPE then so are these shell companies.

No that sounds completely wrong.

1. The Open Invention Network actively licenses the patents it holds, so it would not be considered an NPE.
2. The SCO litigation was about copyright, not patent.
3. Your statement about unequal protection is false, a non sequitur, and illogical. Big corporations do not "own" the patents it. A shell company in a tax haven like Ireland owns the patents and license them back to the parent, and other licensees. If the Open Invention Network is considered an NPE then so are these shell companies.
4. Attorneys fees to a defendant are already allowed in many types of cases when it is determined that the plaintiff had no business filing suit, including patent litigation. Revising the patent law so that a bond has to be placed before the suit can go forward ensures the wrongfully accused defendant will actually get paid and the plaintiff can't just vanish after they lose, thus leaving the defendant with the attorneys fees.

Your visceral knee jerk reaction to a concept that you do not understand is absurd.

The ocean is freezing, the sub is well insulated, that traps heat. Even if you stop the rapid oxidation of the material in the compartment the heat does not dissipate instantly, so as soon as you open the compartment the fire will start again. Also the stored heat will continue to deform/ weaken the material that makes up the compartment.

Look at the coal fires that have been raging underground in PA for decades.

That is not to say that they did not seal off compartments, just that the whole situation is more complicated than just sealing the compartment until there are no visible flames.

Look at all those saps in China stuck working in all the high tech sectors manufacturing plants, you think their standard of living is any good. Trust me people no nation ever improved its status with factories.

As much as I dislike Best Buy, some of these ideas seem good: new checkout lines, presumably faster, better online pick-up options and a place in the center of the store to find help.

However, if their "technology support" plans are just expanding the current "Geek squad" offerings then that will further alienate people and lead to more bad word of mouth.

Anything that makes court opinions more accessible is a good thing. Your concern about "privately owned services" is about 200 years too late and ignorant of the way court opinions are presently published.

The present system is WestLaw Lexis or another legal publishing company publishes decisions of note, i.e. only decision that change something in the law. Your average case is never published. You have to pay major money to get access to this material.

The courts do store decisions but in such a difficult way to access that it is not worth the effort. Are you going to go and wait in line for a civil service person to go and get the physical copy of the official court opinion, every time you want to see it? Imagine trying to get hundreds of documents from the DMV everyday. And then paying photocopying services because the official court document cannot leave the file storage room.

I wish this was how it was done! I hope someone working at MS reads this and takes heed, but I know better....

Yeah if you were in Netflix's position what would you do? Potentially piss off the people who set the prices for the content your customers want access too or shit on part of your customer base? It puzzled me too for a bit, then I realized there was probably some business contracts where they could not name the studios as being a cause, I mean there are only about 6 major content distributors and they all march very closely together.

In fact all the stories that reported the price increase only speculated it was due to a probable licensing rate rise, no one besides Netflix has the real numbers, the rest is speculation.

I know I did not even blink about missing an optical drive from my latest build. Even MS supports creating a boot-able USB drive with Windows 7 on it! Granted you need an existing copy of windows but still. I cast my vote firmly in the fewer moving parts camp.

Apple can do this because their software is tied directly to the hardware, MS is solely a software company, realm of computers anyways. Office and Windows are currently the most profitable divisions of the company http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/04/microsoft-beats-estimates-but-not-apple-in-third-quarter-earnings.ars I'm sure they would sell more upgrades at a lower price but the question to answer is: "What price point nets them the most money?"

Isn't this the problem with all hobbies? As you mature and get older you move away from things with which you used to fill your leisure time. Hobbies drop off and are filled with spouse/kid/work related issues.

When the typical editor noted in the article ages through the honeymoon/kids period of their lives, I would suspect they will return to editing Wikipedia, even more so when they retire from work. The typical editor will return to editing just like the typical person that built models as a kid or played with toy trains, when they have leisure time to devote without distraction.