Since the US Constitution states that the purpose of patents is to advance the useful arts and sciences, and interoperability is key to that advance, all interfaces (whether human-machine or machine-machine) should only be patentable if they are FRAND. That should be a constitutional legal requirement for any US patent covering an interface or protocol.

Interfaces are important. Imagine if every car were forced to have a different interface by patents, with different pedals in different places and different steering wheels. That's no different from the slide-to-lock patent. We want to reward the creation of new and better interfaces, yet allow such interfaces to spread when they are proven to be better. FRAND is exactly the middle ground we want, as the success of GSM (a machine-machine interface) shows.

Is Google's search algorithm patented to begin with? I believe that nearly all modern search engines use conceptually similar heuristics (i.e. content that is often linked from important content is important).

I think it is a big leap to assume that the first autonomous cars will be owned by the rich who have money to burn. The first autonomous vehicles will be used to MAKE money. Driverless taxis and buses will carry passengers, autonomous semis and trucks will haul freight, and small ATVs will courier documents and urgent deliveries in cities. The speed limit might matter to the last, but not the others.

Refusing to put blame on the correct party is a form of partisanship. Trying to pretend both sides are equally at fault when one side is clearly wrong is precisely a "stupid partisan game". Being willing to call a spade a spade and basing debate and policy on facts, regardless of how it makes each party looks, is how one gets past partisanship.

When the Authors Guild says these kinds of ridiculous things (and uses logic which, incidentally, implies that people with disabilities should not be allowed to convert media to a form they can use), it makes all members look like greedy idiots.

No, it just makes you look like an illiterate moron. Read the article before you start boycotting authors:

On the National Federation of the Blind's Web site, the guild is accused of arguing that it is illegal for blind people to use "readers, either human or machine, to access books that are not available in alternative formats like Braille or audio." In fact, publishers, authors and American copyright laws have long provided for free audio availability to the blind and the guild is all for technologies that expand that availability. (The federation, though, points out that blind readers can't independently use the Kindle 2's visual, on-screen controls.) But that doesn't mean Amazon should be able, without copyright-holders' participation, to pass that service on to everyone.

Read the fucking article. Roy Blount Jr talks about exactly this very technology.

I guess that's too much to ask for today's businesses?

Now, I'm the furthest from a paid author by any means, but surely, it's not too much to not expect authors to think like business-people? They aren't selling products for fuck's sake, they're writing books.

The guild is also accused of wanting to profiteer off family bedtime rituals. A lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation sarcastically warned that "parents everywhere should be on the lookout for legal papers haling them into court for reading to their kids."

For the record: no, the Authors Guild does not expect royalties from anybody doing non-commercial performances of "Goodnight Moon."

I had mod-points and was modding posts here, but heck: I find it _extremely frustrating_ when people don't read the article in question, or read it and misunderstand it entirely. Here's what Roy Blount Jr said:

Audio rights are not generally packaged with e-book rights. They are more valuable than e-book rights.

Basically, he's lamenting the certain death of audio-rights as an income-source when you sell e-book rights. Now you may call it immoral or greedy or whatever, but the argument is that Kindle 2 presents a lost stream of revenue for authors. I don't see this an unreasonable argument to make.

This is not about copyright infringement folks, this is about selling the site of a future financial center for 60 guilders.

It is remarkable difficult to be too incompetent if you are a MS contractor in Hyderabad. -- All generalizations are false, including this one

Glad we got that cleared!