Saved by Alice
eff.org
eff.org
And even if they were being used "correctly", software development is still poorer as an industry because of them. As they say, Stallman was right all along. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/software-patents.en.html
> If I wanted to put an ‘If’ statement in a ‘While’ statement, I don't have to worry about whether the ‘If’ statement will oscillate at a certain frequency and rub against the ‘While’ statement and eventually they will fracture. I don't have to worry whether it will oscillate at a certain higher frequency and induce a signal in the value of some other variable. [...]
Enfish v Microsoft
> The Supreme Court has suggested that claims “purport[ing] to improve the functioning of the computer itself,” or “improv[ing] an existing technological process” might not succumb to the abstract idea exception.
http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-or...
1. There should be an absolute maximum on the litigation that can be brought against any organization for any reason in a given time period (say, a year), and that total cost should not be able to exceed some tiny fraction of its total operating costs for that period (parent companies included, to avoid hiding actual illegal activities in subsidiaries). In other words, it should be impossible for someone to kill a startup “in the crib” simply by creating overwhelming lawsuits that are too expensive in time and money to deal with.
2. There should be a very substantial penalty for failing to convict after accusing a someone of a patent violation; something like 10x the legal costs of the party that was accused, and a moratorium on any similar accusations against any party for some period (like 6 months). In other words, slow these trolls down and hit them hard when they fail, and they might not try to make a shady business out of it.
The intended purpose of patents is to _support_ innovation. People spending time and money on inventing should be able to reap financial benefits of such research rather than seeing their hard research work just being copied over by someone else.
Thereby there should be an absolute maximum on the litigation brought by someone using patents based on the R&D spend they had for the said patent(s). Let's say that the litigation can at most be 10x of the said investment.
Since determining how much of the R&D expenses were directed towards the said patents could be tough, the maximum litigation for all patents could be set to 10x the money a company has spent on R&D in say the two years preceding the filing of concerned patents. This means that if a company sues X for $120 million after having spend $20 million for the given period, they can now sue someone else for at most $80 million for any other patent(s) over the same period. Further details can be worked out.
> In Alice v. CLS Bank, the Supreme Court ruled ...
That introduces the context pretty early and clearly.
"In Alice v. CLS Bank, the Supreme Court ruled that ..."
That makes it clear that "Alice v. CLS Bank" is a court case, and Alice was the name of one of the litigants. That phrase is linked to another article, whose first sentence is:
"In a long-awaited decision, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank today."
Anyone older than six who can't figure this out on their own should be ashamed of themselves.
I see nothing wrong with the article abbreviating it in this way, but your ridiculously condescending comment is way out of line.
You may not realize it, but I'm doing you and lucb1e a favor by telling you this. Many people will just quietly write you off as a hopeless dweeb if you expose your laziness in this way. Some people go their whole lives wondering why no one takes them seriously because no one ever gave them a dope slap.
How's that workin' for you, the acting like an ass part?
I know how annoying that is. But it always feels like the other person started it and did worse, so if we don't approach the problem this way, it's a downward spiral for the lot of us.
In this case, the other person said "Many people will just quietly write you off as a hopeless dweeb if you expose your laziness in this way."
Is that not a personal attack because it's hidden behind one layer of indirection?
>if we don't approach the problem this way, it's a downward spiral
I get that it's not easy moderating a site like this when there's only two of you to do the job, but once you've shown up in the thread, is it that much more work to call out everyone involved instead of just picking the last nasty comment?
No, it isn't. That "layer of indirection" changes it from a personal attack to a statement of fact. It's a lesson that I had to learn the hard way, and I said it because I wish someone had said it to me back in the day. If someone had, it would have saved me a lot of pain.
But now I understand why no one did. I will certainly never make the mistake of trying to offer this advice on HN again.
So if instead of calling you an ass, 'mixmastamyk has said to you "many people would think you're acting like an ass for commenting like this" -- would that also be something you wish people had said you back in the day? Or are you so convinced of the value of your "advice" that you wouldn't care what many people would think?
EDIT:
>I wish someone had said it to me back in the day. If someone had, it would have saved me a lot of pain.
I am genuinely sorry that people treated you so badly for asking questions.
And it wasn't for asking questions. It was for asking stupid questions. Important distinction.
Fair enough. I suppose there's a certain type of person you've never had to interact with; but can you imagine the existence of such a person who, when they said "many people will just write you off as a hopeless dweeb", what they actually meant was "many people including myself..." or "all the people whose opinion matters..."?
In other words, the sort of person who, when they want to make a personal attack, hide behind the kind of language that lets them claim they're just stating a fact about what other people think?
After our little back-and-forth, I don't believe that you are that kind of person; and maybe its a problem with me that I'm too ready to connect insulting language with ill intent; I just find it easier all around to frame things in a way that avoids any misapprehensions (for example, by pointing out "stupid" questions by saying "HN users don't appreciate questions that could be easily answered by reading the article and using Google")
I am acquainted with the "precious snowflake" theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Snowflake). I was hoping it wasn't true. Alas.
So I'll be more clear; assholes that hide behind weaselly language are not imaginary; maybe I attach too much importance on not being mistaken for an asshole, and if that makes me a snowflake then so be it.
No, that's not your problem. (Though it's actually much more important to not actually be an asshole than to not be mistaken for one. People will make mistaken assessments of you throughout your life. If you let that bother you, you will never get anything done.)
Your problem is that you don't seem to understand what makes HN a cool place to hang out: there are really smart, successful people here who will give you incredibly high quality insights and answers to questions that you won't find anywhere else, and they'll do it for free. But the flip side of the bargain is that you not waste these people's time by asking stupid questions, i.e. questions whose answers are plainly stated in the linked article, or can be easily found with a simple Google search or on Wikipedia. If too many people break that rule, the cool kids will go away because they have better things to do with their time than read a site full of stupid questions. So if you ask a stupid question you will sometimes be called on the carpet for it, and sometimes the person calling you out will do it inartfully. There are a lot of aspies here.
But it is very important to understand that on HN the stupid question is the greater sin because those are what will drive the cool kids away more than the inartful calling out. (One of the things that makes the cool kids cool is that they actually appreciate it when someone calls them out because they learn something when that happens.) You can argue that lucb1e's question was not stupid, and if you win that argument, you can expect me to apologize. But if you focus on my use of the phrase "stupid dweeb" while tacitly conceding that lucb1e did ask a stupid question then you are missing the point: the stupid question does a lot more harm than the inartful calling-out, so we let the latter slide more than the former.
I guess I have a different perspective on HN than you do; because I've never noticed the "cool kids" wasting their time by griping about stupid questions (presumably they just scroll past them), and I've never seen anyone I consider one of the "cool kids" give warning that they were going to leave HN because of stupid questions.
EDITED to add: And I do know smart, successful, insightful people who don't post on HN precisely because of the kind of behaviors that you want to "let slide".
HN is a site dedicated, ultimately, to high-tech entrepreneurship. In the startup world, if you don't do your homework, or worse, if you get offended when someone calls you out for not doing your homework, even if they do it undiplomatically, even if they level actual personal attacks at you, you will lose, and your competition will happily dance on your grave.
If you notice a bad post going unmoderated, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. Users can help by flagging those, or by emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.
I read the article before commenting, but a simple first name doesn't tell me anything so I asked. I find the way you wrote that condescending so let me do you a favor by telling you, have a care what assumptions you make.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_Intern...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilski_v._Kappos
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enfish,_LLC_v._Microsoft_Corp.,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_Intern...
> Alice Corp.'s patent claimed a form of escrowing that was well known. Called an “intermediated settlement,” it allowed a third party to act as an intermediary by creating “shadow accounts” for parties, and only allowing transactions to go through if the “shadow account” showed the party had enough money. Oh—and it was done with a computer.
Somebody told me that it was not really well known when the patent was filed. Apparently keeping shadow accounts was not really feasible without computers and networks, so such methods did not exist previously. I'm not sure how accurate that is, though. I'm not knowledgeable about that domain.