christopherjrider - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Ok..how about taxes? (Score 1) 2369

by christopherjrider on Wednesday October 29, 2008 @01:10PM (#25557613) Attached to: Discuss the US Presidential Election & the Economy

Perhaps because most of that third who don't pay can't even make a living. It's like getting blood out of a rock.

If that were true, then you'd expect the same pattern to be pretty consistent over time, right? But it's not - it used to be the case that more wage-earners paid at least something. Even low wage-earners should be paying some taxes, if for no other reason to make sure they have a stake in tax policy.

The problem with this argument is that real wages (i.e. wages adjusted for inflation) have been falling for some time. Back when wage earners were paying taxes, they were also making ends meet.

The Death of Nearly All Software Patents? 731

Posted by kdawson on Thursday July 24, 2008 @11:25AM from the we-can-only-hope dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Patent and Trademark Office has now made clear that its newly developed position on patentable subject matter will invalidate many and perhaps most software patents, including pioneering patent claims to such innovators as Google, Inc. In a series of cases including In re Nuijten, In re Comiskey and In re Bilski, the Patent and Trademark Office has argued in favor of imposing new restrictions on the scope of patentable subject matter set forth by Congress in article 101 of the Patent Act. In the most recent of these three — the currently pending en banc Bilski appeal — the Office takes the position that process inventions generally are unpatentable unless they 'result in a physical transformation of an article' or are 'tied to a particular machine.'"

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