Dizzying, but thanks (and thanks to parent post). Undoubtedly the lawyers are helpful and yes, I'm talking to legal counsel. I do still see some useful non-legal advice here, however. I'm interested in how many people say they would not hire someone with patents because they worried they had a hidden agenda or were more motivated to leave the company, and it's also relieving to see the number of people who recommend complete up-front disclosure.

Thanks!

No, I didn't patent those ideas, the links were examples; but I completely agree that the patent system is failing, and I pointed that out. The question is how to deal with it. I think it's a valid approach to continue to patent ideas until the issue is fixed because the mixed-bag approach is very difficult.

The EFF agrees at least that the situation is not black and white... from their site: "While [abandoning patents is] compelling, there are risks to this strong approach. Every piece of software released to the world without legal protections may leave open a door for someone else to attempt to patent the same technology (and may leave its creators more open to legal threats without a patent to wield defensively)." (https://www.eff.org/patent).

I am genuinely not trying to get rich (well, not through patent evil or trolling), or to be exploitative, and while I don't want to contribute to the problem, I don't want to be a victim of it. Anyway, I appreciate the comments, but again I was trying to shy the focus away from software patents... much ink has already been spilled on that topic. Assuming the patents were one that met your complete approval, would you feel differently?

The situation that worries me is that, while working for them, they'll ask me to solve the problem that the patent solves, which seems likely since I keep working in the same industry. I mean, say you invent something that makes cars a tiny fraction more fuel efficient; enough that it's useful but not so much that you can quit your job to market it. Then, you start working for a company who asks you to make their cars more fuel efficient. The patented ideas are relevant to my job; it's a small but useful aspect of what I do, and it would be reasonable to encounter the same problem that I've already solved.

Most of the time that's what an employer looks for -- someone with experience solving the sorts of problems you'll encounter working for them. Right? So when they ask you to make their cars more fuel efficient, what do you say then? That conversation changes a lot based on whether you talked about the patent when you were hired. But that's how I expect the two will intersect... the IP is related to my industry and it will likely be related to the job. Employers have an assumption (thus the de-facto) that something you know how to do is something you can do for your job. Violating copyright or someone ELSE's patent is clearly not covered... but using your own IP seems more grey to me.

I almost put a note in the original question about that, but I decided not to, in an effort to keep the talk on topic. So let me point out my stance. First, I'm against software patents and frankly I think the whole patent situation needs reform far beyond software patents. At the same time, if something is patentable, I'm not sure anyone should avoid patenting the idea simply because you disagree with the system. I'd rather patent them and donate the patents to the EFF and GPL an implementation. On the other hand, I want to avoid a situation where for-profit companies co-opt the idea and charge people for it. Maybe I'm not altruistic enough; I'm conflicted on it, honestly. I haven't quite gotten there yet, though, so in order to not turn this into a flame war I skipped the topic. Anyway, here we are, and I'm trying to respond thoughtfully rather than just, as you say, fuck off.

To answer you point, though, some of my ideas are similar to these patents... decide for yourself if these are deeply "software patents": https://www.google.com/patents/US6263334, https://www.google.com/patents/US20030187867, and https://www.google.com/patents/US7185023, and I'd love to get feedback on how to deal with that aspect of the issue.

This comes up about once a year. Iraq had chemical weapons and everyone knew about it BUT this was during the Iran/Iraq war. They were largely destroyed before the second gulf war. What we're cleaning up NOW is still remnants from way back then. What Bush said was that we had to go to war due to imminent threat of actual weapons being used. That was not the case at the time -- when Bush was justifying invasion -- nor is it the case now. We're finding debris and remnants that are hazardous, sure, but no longer weaponized. And they have not been weaponized since well before Bush referenced them as "weapons".

Here's a recent reference:
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/conservatives-continue-get-iraqi-wmd-story-wrong

And here's one from a nearly identical situation in 2011:
http://www.wired.com/2011/11/iraq-wmd-seal-target-geronimo/

And here's a fantastic timeline that CNN put together back in 2010:
http://cns.miis.edu/stories/100304_iraq_cw_legacy.htm

Thank you! Snowden's information release impacted far more than the use of a few specific cryptography tools. It pointed out a vast information gathering system that people can now take pains to avoid. I sincerely doubt we can measure that avoidance, but even this attempt is a ridiculously small proxy to the overall question of whether the leak "helped" terrorists.

I agree with the parent (@HornWumpus -- good name), but I'd like to elaborate.

First, I agree that "There have always been a subset of CS students that didn't get anywhere close to the metal. They suck.", and I agree that "C isn't good enough." No language is good enough by itself. If you haven't played with Functional, Procedural, Object-Oriented, and hardware-level (Assembler) languages by the time you've graduated, you've missed something.

You can figure it out no matter what they teach you, you just have to be inquisitive and ask good questions. You should take compiler, operating systems, and a numeric computing class which will each teach you about overflow and precision and memory allocation, in different ways, regardless of programming language used. You should have a basic understanding of how to do everything from scratch, with bare hardware, short of soldering the chip to a board (unless that's your thing, then go learn that too).

But then you should also learn that many "higher" languages make this easier... they have garbage collection built-in and you should learn why and when that's a good thing and why and when it's a bad thing. Java is good for some things, bad for others. If you go through a CS degree and all that you come out with is knowing one language, get your money back. Ask "why" early and often.

You should learn concepts and hands-on. You should learn the ideas so that, when a new language comes up next year, you can understand the literature about the pros and cons. But you should also be able to sit down with a couple of languages and pound out some simple algorithms and I/O with no references.

I liked my CS degree, but there were things missing. I had to learn network programming (TCP/IP, etc.) on my own. We didn't do embedded systems, so I didn't have much experience with small hardware and the nuances that come with them. But the advice I'd give is to avoid too many classes that are "just" programming, and focus on the fundamentals. Use as many languages as possible. Take Artificial Intelligence, Compiler design, Operating systems, data structures, numerical computing. Take a comparative languages class if one is offered. Take a database class. And take these all realizing that they're teaching you exactly the same thing -- how to solve problems using computers.

It's all ones and zeroes in the end. Once you've mastered pushing them around for one thing, you should be able to push them around for another, it just takes practice. Practice as many things as possible.

Actually, if you guessed that a randomly selected set of youtube videos were being played, you know... FORWARD, you'd probably be correct more than 80% of the time without having to actually think at all. I assume their 80% result was based on something more difficult, but it's still kind of a silly sounding number without context.

I did it. I loved BF3, but I didn't pick up 4 and I won't be picking up Hardline because of EA. In addition to everything the original article mentions, most of which I agree with, one thing not mentioned in the original article is the pay-to-have-everything (which is not "Pay-to-win" only in a very strict sense, but that doesn't make it right).

I don't mind these companies making money, but they do it at the expense of loyal customers, rather than in support of them... I don't think it's a good long-term practice, but that's just me. But it's definitely not nobody.

If I'm paying my ISP for a specific amount of bandwidth, then that's the bandwidth I should get -- if I get less bandwidth than I paid for going to any site, due to my ISP, then I'm not getting what I paid for from them, period. There is price difference -- cheap low bandwidth, expensive high bandwidth, and some variety in between (and probably price/speed inversion in some markets where low bandwidth is expensive, but whatever). The problem is when I pay top dollar for Filet Mignon, but I get flank steak. If the restaurant doesn't give me what I paid for then I have been defrauded. I don't care WHY they were out of filet... if they were trying to negotiate price with the cattle company, or get a kick back from them, that's not my problem... they advertised the Filet and they charged me for the Filet.

The price I pay to my ISP should support the delivery mechanism to give me the bandwidth I paid for, however I want to use it; that's why it's advertised and priced in terms of bandwidth. If they charged me per website it may be different (although I'd object for other reasons), but they don't. If they can't handle the bandwidth then they're not giving me what I paid for. Free markets don't let people charge for one thing and deliver another.

That's the deposit box. The lock-box under your bed is going to be tough even for the feds.

Write down everything in paper, then lock it away in a fireproof box or a safety deposit box (or both).

I'm a fan of the phrase "we know how to secure a piece of paper". Not the sticky note taped to your desk that anyone can read and put back without your knowledge, but something really secure. You will know if your lock box has been stolen or broken in to; I would have no idea if someone broke into my e-mail or stole a file off of my computer or backup due to some weird exploit. If you want off-site safety, a deposit box is about as good as it gets with some assurance that no-one will go peeking. Let your close relatives and friends know where everything is so that when it is needed they can get to it, but they don't need access in the mean time if you have things you don't want them to know (or, you can give a copy of the key to someone if you want to... you have options, but you're still relatively safe in who accesses what).

I don't see how 3D gets permanent "gimmick" status while 4k doesn't... there are times when seeing things in 3D give you a completely different perspective, feel, immersion, and experience than something not in 3D. There are times when higher resolution does the same. And there are times when both actually seem to make things worse. Curved TVs as well... I run three monitors on my desktop and I'd be ecstatic if I could get the same resolution in a single curved display. If it weren't curved, though, then I'd have to sit farther away to see the edges properly and that distance is beyond the "retina" distance for my monitor's resolution, so I'm kind of wasting pixels.

Much of the math is different between TVs and monitors and, yes, much of what is gimmicky in one situation is definitely not in another.

Of course we should fix that. I pointed out a few ways that may be effective, and there are many more. One way that is NOT effective is grouping people who aren't part of the problem in with people who are and then verbally abusing the whole group. It's unconstructive and, as this large thread shows, it has a lot of collateral damage to people who don't deserve it.

It's a venn-diagram, it's not that hard. Some nerds are misogynists, some aren't, and some (likely most) misogynists aren't nerds (the same goes for pretty much any group). Focusing on geek culture to solve misogyny because one obviously messed up kid was a geek is wrong headed. Some individual issues fall clearly into geek culture -- women in video games as an example -- but we can address those without equating the whole gaming population with a deranged mass murderer.