Ack. Thank you for the correction. I wish slashdot allowed me to edit my post.

This should be illegal. Not just the transfer of patents solely for the purpose of litigating with them, but patents in this field - and maybe patents in general.

This post rambles a bit, but please bare with me as I explain that Intellectual Property is a large component of the destruction of modern society and civilization.

Originally, copyright was a big deal. I understand that. A couple hundred years ago, there weren't a large number of printing presses "in the field". Since then, technology has progressed to the point that not only can we print documents immediately upon desiring a hard copy of them, but there are entire publishing houses based on the idea of "print on demand" for books, periodicals, and other similar products. Humans have even developed a three-dimensional printer, allowing the production of any single plastic object that we can make a CAD document of. "Copying things" was not a personal concern when these laws were instituted, it was to prevent CompanyA from stealing CompanyB's work and printing a couple hundred copies, so that CompanyA would make money by stealing CompanyB's market. At that point in the technology curve, big companies were the only means of production for these products.

Let's think about the here and now, where nearly every home has a printing device. Where paper and ink are available to anyone who has access to a vehicle, and even to those who do not, if they live close enough to a Walmart, a Kmart, a drug store, a grocery store, or in some places even a convenience store. At this point in the technology curve, it becomes obvious that "protecting intellectual property" really means "creating an alternate revenue stream in the guise of monopoly".

It has been said over and over, but I'm going to repeat it one more time to be sure my point is clear:
Patenting software is like patenting a recipe, or an algebraic equation. You cannot patent the number 7, you shouldn't be able to patent "a method for obtaining the number 7 as output from a specific sequence of calculations". Recipes are protected under copyright law, because there is an artistic expression in listing ingredients and instructions for mixing them together... Wait, what?

So-called "design patents" are even worse - they attempt to make it illegal to do what any layman could do with no more tools than their eyes. "Rounded rectangle" should not be patentable, any more than "cube" should be patentable. Apple suing Samsung for making a smartphone that happens to be white was one of the most retarded, idiotic, moronic things that I have ever read, until I came across this article, describing how Apple sued a teenager for making "conversion kits" to turn iPhones white before Apple was ready to release the white iPhones... The appropriate thing to do in that case would have been to tell Apple they should have gotten their product to market sooner, and stopped using an artificial shortage to inflate sales figures. That is to say, Apple built the hype for a specific product, but hadn't made it to market with that product yet. Someone else made a product that allowed a cosmetic change to Apple's existing product in response to the apparent demand, and they sued the crap out of him.

I am sick and tired of seeing people arguing about implementations of ideas. I am sick and tired of seeing people trying to claim a monopolistic chokehold on the technology industry, simply because they were able to get to the patent office first. I am sick and tired of being afraid to publish my own software, due to the fact that someone out there will claim I'm infringing on some obscure, obvious "to one skilled in the arts" method of doing something that they have a patent on... like clicking a button, or scrolling a text field.

These intellectual property laws are stifling innovation, doing the exact opposite of the original purpose of the system; patents were designed to promote science and the arts by ensuring the creation details become public domain.

Let's stop beating this horse, take him out back, and shoot him in the head. It's the only merciful course of action.

The outrage is right here - or are you missing the large number of comments calling out Apple for the crooked, non-innovating, patent-abusing company they have turned out to be?

I am reminded of the parable with the snake and the turtle - the turtle doesn't want to carry the snake across the river because he is afraid the snake will bite him, but the snake convinces him to do so anyway, with the comment "Why would I bite you in the middle of the river? I would drown!"
The turtle agrees to carry the snake across the river, and the snake bites him halfway across.
"Why would you do that?!?" the turtle cries as he sinks.
The snake replies, "I'm a snake, what did you expect?"

The big problem with massive corporations is that they are designed to acquire profit. When we expect them to act in a fashion that is anything other than self-serving and greedy, we are expecting the snake not to bite.

Except that by rescuing Apple, Microsoft was able to later claim they were not a monopoly.
It is also worth pointing out that at the time, Microsoft was making more money selling software to Apple users than Apple was making selling products to them in the first place.

On the other hand, I agree with your statement about Apple's corporate composition.

people should be loved.
things should be used.
the world is in chaos because
people are being used
and things are being loved.
        -unknown

The purpose of the machines afterwards is not specified in the summary, so I was just adding the information in case this particular instance was a "we want to re-use the systems being discussed".

"Wiping the drive several times" may be a PHB-inspired "security" method.

Never assume anything.

I was attempting to be funny, and using "PHB-Think"

So what you're saying is that the "Citrix Admin" portion of your title is not as meaningful as the "remote helpdesk" portion?

from the linked blog post:

"One morning I decided to get ambitious and try to move a bug of older bugs for a feature I was working on to be assigned to me..."

I think I see why you have so many bugs...

Content of the link:

Are you stuck in a lift?
Are you on fire?

If you answered "no" to either of these questions, it's probably not the BOFH.

http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/11/20/025254/in-the-eu-water-doesnt-officially-prevent-dehydration is the discussion of that recent event, right here on slashdot.

Just a note, for clarification:
"clean room" reverse engineering can legally be used to implement a functional replacement for a piece of software.
As an example:
Person_A creates a piece of software.
Person_B studies that piece of software, noting what it does (but not how it does it).
Person_C receives Person_B's description, and implements the functionality therein described.

As a real-world example:
Google used this process for their Dalvik engine (a clean-room reverse-engineered implementation of the Java interpreter). Copyright-wise, they were OK.

Patents, on the other hand, are a different subject entirely. Google was not in the clear patent-wise in this particular instance, until it was discovered that the Sun CEO had expressly given consent for them to do so in the company newsletter, when he welcomed them to the development community.

The finer details of this incident are available to anyone with a modicum of google-fu.

... except the USPTO.

Oh, how quickly our memory fades.