[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('step back', 'I')t seems like Keith has a hankering for discussing patent law, and more specifically, a recent decision by the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) to review a case known as Alice versus CLS.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('step back', 'K')eith has changed the topic again. OK. Fair enough:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')What things] were important in the rapid development of the FF economy [for example in 18th century England] and you also seem to hold a belief that patents are a Good Thing.

Do you think patents are part of the solution to the resulting resource depletion and environmental issues?

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('step back', 'I') should have perhaps explained better that the current title of this post (UVN) is an outgrowth of a search between myself and Keith_McClary for a way to describe how our current "culture" drives the way we attack or see our "problems" versus the way that other cultures do or do not see things and deal with them in same or different ways.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('step back', 'A')ctually, the claim to property rights originates in Nature ... in territorial animals of ... declare via perimeter markings, what areas of land they consider to be their regions of exclusive control.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('step back', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Keith_McClary', 'I') don't think any other critters have anything like the state granted and enforced monopolies that we refer to as "property rights".

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('step back', 'Y')es I do (have and use different dictionaries).
Just because "it is written" and the book calls itself a 'dictionary' doesn't mean that the understanding you extract from it is a correct understanding.

In the case of modern day, patents to inventors; these are definitely not "monopolies".

Maybe this link will help you:
http://www.ipwatchdog.com/patent/nonprovisional-utility-patent/

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('step back', 'E')nlighten us with your definitions of what is a "computer", what is "software", what is "general purpose".

[dissident]

Intellectual property as a legal construct is nonsense designed to feed variants of patent trolls. For example, if you torrent some TV show you are engaging in IP theft and illegal distribution. Really, what rubbish. It's the fault of the cable oligopoly for putting up barriers to distribution of said shows via forced packages. You also pay a fee for watching commercials. Commercials are designed for free over the air TV and not for cable. There is no real free marketplace for TV shows and having someone face jail time and massive fines (i.e. tens of thousands of dollars) for "ripping" off TV shows is absurd.

Stealing software is a different thing altogether but it is the case that you can get away with it but can be busted for "stealing" TV. The software companies are not as aggressive as TV and film studios in their zealous fight against "piracy". None of these zealously defended TV shows contributes any value to society. The ones that do are freely accessible anyway.

Rambus is another fine example of patent trolling. The joke called the US Patent Office allows the filing of empty patents with a long grace period to provide the details. Totally absurd and it allowed Rambus to sit in on JEDEC committee meetings defining the SDRAM standard. Rambus then ran off and filled in the details in its place holder patents and proceeded to sue every memory manufacturer it could get at for "stealing its technology". The real theft was by Rambus.

Major corporations spend lots of money acquiring as many patents as they can in a preemptive attempt to defend themselves against patent troll attacks. The notion that some innovator is protected by the US Patent Office is a joke and a fairy tale. They are more likely to be sued into the ground by some patent trolls for violating BS patents granted by said office.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('step back', 'W')ell, apparently somebody has a negative view about the whole IP thing.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dohboi', 'T')he Great Question, to me, is: "What are the elements that drove what had been a relatively small ideology/culture that sprung up mostly in about 18th c mostly in England to become so large and powerful as to now threaten the whole of complex life on earth." Was it merely the accident that they stumbled into fossil fuel and figured out a way to use it to dominate other human and non-human communities?

[Tanada]

Actually the skill for turning angular momentum into reciprocal motion had nothing to do with clocks. The Dutch monasteries way back in the early middle ages built Windmills and by 1400 they were converting the circular motion of the windmills into pumping action to drain the lowlands. Steam engine gear trains came from Windmills and Watermills, not clocks. Not to mention that the clocks of the day were either weight or spring driven and either energy source pulling on a gear is circular motion to start with. The bulk of the gear train in a time piece is to get all the hands to move at exactly the correct pace despite the fact that the energy input varies a bit as the spring winds down. That is a matter of escapement devices that only allow a tiny fraction of the stored energy to be released at the design pace giving the clock its tick-tock rhythm of clicks as the escapement assembly rocks back and forth.