How can any company expect to profit from 'purchased patents'. I don't think it'd fly in the more civilised world. If this is the case: NO Mercy. Even if Google won with pi*10^9 dollars, what good would it really be in the end? Let the innovators and not the trolls make out technology.

BillSF

Ads that originate from the site, I display, the rest >/dev/null. You can proxy where the ad is displayed 'internally', the site gets paid by the trash provider and I never have to see it. 'Flash' ads are by far the worst and no site I use places them directly on their own site. (A 30s flash commercial may take 10s to load >/dev/null) On the brighter side, the conduits for targeted ads can be sometimes used as proxies to beat the "Not available in your country" crap.

http://www.sshguard.net/ is the URL. It got commented out by accident: Sorry.

Try sshguard if you must use port 22 for ssh.

Brain waves are VERY low voltage. It takes about 50V to feel a shock. It looks like it feeds-back on itself! Suggestion: Replace the shocker with a buzzer/vibrator.

Its only a patent application that has been very well written. There is nothing novel about it and it probably will be rejected. Many products like MS Windows have done this for some time. Its a form of "nag-ware" that has been applied in areas outside of games too. It is interesting to note it is actually a game in itself. Copyright is a more correct place for this and the USPTO has stated they'll crack down on applications of this sort.

Prior art is everywhere and this is just a matter of how much one can spend on lawyers. I should know. I'm involved in another patent which is probably valid. If its been published in print, that is prior art. Describing it on BBC at the start is not. This is how patent courts work. The test is to see if something previously written in software is 'prior art'. True, the 'one-click shopping' patent is pure troll. (It came from KDE, not my company at the time, DigiCash.) It is really a patent on scripts and what a script does at the most basic (high)level.

If software patents continue, those lands that accept them will lose out. You can't develop anything when you have to do a patent search and then patent it if its new. The end result would be fighting your patent and not doing anything useful.

True inventions apply science. ("Computer science" is a tool for science, not a science itself.) While software is truly engineering, it has no place with inventions: A new material, a novel application of a discovery (almost all inventions) and a process that leads to a novel substance, device or an improvement are inventions. The way aluminium is made today is invention. The structure of a computer and its parts is an invention and covers anything that can be done with it. The later is mathematical and expressly excluded. Modulation methods and codecs are a means to an end and while mathematical, qualify for short term protection. Crypto is probably just where it doesn't qualify. These are where 'the lines are drawn' in a rational legal environment.