PythonicAlpha

>because the creator is ensured a return.

No it is not. There can be ideas and "copyright" without having IP. But IP does also mean that the "property" can be owned by people that did not create it. This notion is fundamentally wrong and de-valuates any creative work. In patents you can already see it (most inventors are getting just a little fixed money -- the most of the value goes to the companies) -- but also in copyrighted work. The most of the value goes not to the performers of the art (eg music) but to the distributors.

Exactly. Ideas don't fit into their system of wealth and money -- so they try to put it into the system. But it does not fit and only brings much trouble, since ideas can not be measured. The patent system is awfully broken because of this and it will go downhills more and more if nobody stops it (it does not seem so, because the neo-capitalism is still going strong and has more might than all governments together).

   It's attempting to reward investments in really pushing the line forward ...

No, I don't think so. IP was never meant to help innovative people. IP -- at least as it was created in the last decades (before, nobody talked about IP, but patents and trademarks and ideas -- no IP) -- is a fighting term that was coined to create a new form of property -- thus, after having things and than land, now also have ideas "own-able". Ideas are no property. How can they? That is just a bad, bad word.

And when you say, that the intent would be to help people with ideas, I can not consent! It is something to make investors and owners happy! To make rich people happy and steal from those with the ideas.

Intellectual property is a wording that shows, what the intention is:

Making ideas and thinking property, thus de-valuating it

What is the property of "property": Property is owned by somebody independently from the creator of the property. Thus, the person that has the ideas becomes less important -- important is only the owner and the money, that was paid for the property.

Without "IP", rich people can live from their money, and their money pays them a living, just from the interest they "earn". But with IP they can also own your ideas and we all become slaves to the rich.

2FA based on mobile phones is a very weak method of security. It goes worse, when using smartphones. When you use your smartphone to access internet services (worse: make banking) secured by 2FA, your 2FA is reduced to 1FA, Trojaner prone security.

There are also already cases known, where attackers just made phone companies send a "replacement" sim card and the attackers intercept those. Thus the second factor was very simple out. Some phone companies are more aware now, but all is very much prone to social engineering.

So: 2FA is only a good idea, when using some dedicated device, else it just makes the barrier a little higher, sometimes not so much, as you think.

I don't know if I understand you right (my English is not perfect), but when you mean, that using Bitcoin could prevent this from being illegal: I don't think so. The problem is not the amount of payment or the type of payment, but that it is a sales contract (at least in Germany, every sale would be made via a contract, if explicitly written or not -- also a handshake could be seen as contract). And the law just says, how any sale contract must be made ... There must be a good visible button that clearly states the intention: "Buy with costs" or something similar. The customer must be very clearly informed about the sale and the fact that he is making a sale now. Your demo informs afterwards in a rather weird way. Just giving a link and say "read further" or similar would be accounted to be a fraud, I guess. I am also not sure that having a different text would be enough.

I am no lawyer, but one remedy could be to have some kind of "frame contract" where you buy an amount of readings in advance -- and the readings afterwards could be accounted for with such a system. But such a frame contract would of course counter your ease of use goal -- and of course would bind the customers what would counter your goal to lower barriers.

Currently this kind of embedding (user interface) could cause some problems in some countries like Germany.

In Germany there is a law that when any contract of purchase is made on the web, the decisive button must conform to strict regulations. That is because in the past there where many frauds in Germany where contracts where made by clicking some buttons with and giving the address of the customers that lead to huge recurring costs -- and the customers believed that they just joined a user base without costs. To prevent such frauds, this law was given, but the regulations are rather strict. So the button must clearly tell, that a sale is to be made. I believe thus, a service like in the demo would be illegal in Germany.

I often read that the Bitcoin system has limits for the amount of transactions processed worldwide in a given time frame. I think it has to do with the block chain and the mining, but I am no expert in this topic.

When such payment systems spread, couldn't they overburden the system?

To make it clear: I am a huge friend of alternative payment systems, particularly if they make it possible to have smaller amounts paid on the web without hassle and with less transaction fees. But there are always the people that warn against Bitcoin because of diverse reasons (keywords: inherent limits, Ponzy scheme).

What do you think/know?

Of course you loose a little platform independence, but that is something you don't have anyway when you program in C++ or that kind. Also you get rather rich support for makefiles that are cross platform. I had no problems till now with C code I wrote that integrates into the Python environment. When you don't need OS specifics and have knowledge how to implement things CPU independent (given a common >=32bit architecture) in C, you will have little to no trouble at all.

Also one little hint: Use Cython for enhancements. Cython is great for implementing small enhancements when you don't want to hassle with refcounts and the normal Python API. Also your enhancements are automatically compatible to Python 2 + Python 3. You can also call C functions from Cython very easily for full speed. Cython is really great, when you don't need to optimize to the last nanosecond.

Wow, did not know that either. I know some tools working under Windows, but they are rather complicated. This one is neat.

I have none, it is my personal experience, since I programmed in C++ (and other languages) before. So cite me, if necessary.

Yes, Python is slower in execution than some other languages, but:

   ... efficient use of development time ...

That is the reason, why Python counts (not only references). Python has many very good libraries, is a good OOP language, easy to learn, but still very, very powerful. You can express in Python some things in a single line, where you need hundreds of lines in C++ or other languages.

The few percent of running speed that you might loose, are neglect-able in most cases against the win in development speed.

In many applications you don't need the full CPU power, but often times you are hindered by e.g. the disk speed or other factors ... and than you don't lose anything when you are a little bit slower in some minor tasks.

Thank you very much. Did not know that website!

To sad, that there is no mp3 or ogg download version available.

Or for women: Having been raped ....

(I don't find the link now, but there was a news about a European woman, that was raped and when she was going to the police, she was arrested for adultery and threatened with jail (I think) or else she should marry the rapist. I am not sure, if it was Saudi Arabia or a neighboring country, but such a thing just makes me ill!)

The same thing happened to me. KDE3 was one of the best desktops. Then things where going downhill, at least from my perspective.

There was also Kmail, once a very usable tool for me (I think, the best version also came with KDE3). Then after the update (I guess with KDE4) there where some bugs on receiving eMail that happened again and again. It was nasty (I still can't get it, how they managed to kill the simple POP3 handler) but I could use my mail still. After that with the next update came a version that did not manage to import my old mailboxes that I had managed with Kmail for years. They simply killed this once good application for me! Just for gimmicks. Today I use webmail, though I don't like it. Also they managed to cripple KDE4 more and more ... The desktop applications did not do what was documented and they fixed bugs, that did not exist, thus removing or crippling once valuable options ... There was also a bug filed for that, but the developers just did not listen.

Now I use another desktop, but I fear, one day I also need to kick this one, since I see similar behavior -- adding or removing features, complete rewrites, just because it is a nice mind-game or in fashion. I also where thinking to use a really old desktop that nobody uses anymore, just to be free from feature-creep and fashion-ism. I need the computer to work with, not playing mind-games and update-platformers!

When the software business was young, software was not patent-able at all. And that was good so, because if it where in the same degree as today, I guess we all would still have DOS on our desktops or worse.

Just think, quicksort would have been patented. Or binary trees, or arrays.

The horror scenario that you give is just a bad example that could have been constructed by patent attorneys.

Of course you can not just rip-off the software of a competitor, because the software itself is copyrighted.

We all are profiting from the fact, that many things in the software world are just not patented. Because in the knowledge world and more so in the software world, nobody just sits on his island and makes something totally new ... everybody depends on the work of others.

The patent system taken to extreme: Only a handful companies dominate the market and nobody else can do anything anymore. As much I understood, in the hard disk business we have this situation already -- three to five big corporations dominating the market, because they own the key patents.

The problem is deeper. The USPTO just does not want to ask further questions.

The reason: It is funded from granted patents. If patents are not granted, the funds are down. And no director will like it to say at the end of the year, that US companies are less innovative than in the last year -- or worse, less innovative than ... (name a country).

I also have my information from real patent attorneys.

This little example just shows, how distorted the whole patent system has already become. (and it is not the only example)

Most of today's patents don't contain any valuable knowledge that could be useful for the public. Also the invention does not. <irony>So it is not that bad.</irony>

Of course, there are some patents that could contain some valuable information, but today's patent attorneys are drilled to hide any valuable information from public.

I would say, that the USPTO is naturally not interested in such stuff. They will have all possible explanations, but never tell you the one true thing: The USPTO is earning more money on successful patents than on neglected ones.

Maybe some clever patent attorneys already have the opposite. Some encryption tool:

  <Obvious-little-Idea> => <Converter> => <Awesome-sounding-invention>

But some reason seems to exist, that makes all those companies paying a stack of money.

Even if all internet users do so, I think the companies trust to get some credibility by owning such domains.

Very fair, indeed!

New gold-rush ahead?

The list feels to me at the first look very similar to the patent system -- everybody is just pitching "their" claims. First come, first money, first served. The others will stay with the "pack": <longname>.com or <evenlongername>.de.

Luckily I managed to block much of the spam I got before, so I don't see the current spam behavior. But some years ago, there well existed some non-viagra style spammers that just put dubious unsubscribe links inside. I never tried myself, but was warned that they use the information against you. I would guess, that verified eMails have a greater value ... but it also might be negligible now, since with bot-networks spammers don't need to care if they send 1 billion or 10 billion eMails ...

Problem here is that particularly such "unsubscribe" links where used in the past (and still are, I guess) to reassure spammers that somebody is there. Because one problem spammers have is the quality of the addresses they have. Many spammers use lists from dubious sources and a big number of addresses are invalid. So, if they get an "unsubscribe", they know which addresses are better and can deliver more spam to it ...

So many don't dare to use such links and rather click on spam.

The only solution could be some "trusted" functionality that goes via the own mail provider of the receiver. But of course the mail provider can not simply send information to the sender of the eMail .... So the thing gets complicated. As much I learned, for spam clicks there is something like that available ... some kind of trusted feedback chain that gives information to trusted senders, that some mails where labeled as spam. Thus those senders can (indirectly) adopt their eMail campaigns.

Just asking: Is this some kind of weird humor?

Can anybody tell the story of this in short words?

I am fearing, that those predicted times will come up, but that somebody would name his product after a product that in a science fiction story was made out of human bodies, is really a little beyond my comprehension. Some kind of self-irony, perhaps? Or reverse marketing?

By the letter, the situation might be better. But I don't think that in effect it is so much better.

How could one say, that something is "offensichtlich" (apparently) not usable in the business of the company. With any bigger company and when you take the software business and you program something for your own, you are caught. Which type of software related invention would "apparently" not be usable for (e.g.) Microsoft?

I have also spoken with German lawyers about that topic and what they told me, was not so rosy.

What is meant by "fair" compensation? I doubt very much, that this is regulated in detail and in effect the compensation will be what your employer says. For employee-inventions you also get some compensation ... and that should be fair too, I guess? But it is not, what I know. The compensation that regularly is given to the inventors inside a company get a fraction of the patent filing costs (in the US and also counting lawyer costs). I doubt that that could be counted as "fair", when the lawyers get more from the invention than the inventors.

Understandable reaction, when it can be seen how people that wanted to have all the newest features in their product (newest TSL features in this case) shoot themselves into their foot while others that stayed longer with the old (proven) version where save ...

That is one reason for the popularity of Debian: (at least in the past) they did not jump on any new bandwagon immediately. Other distributions have much newer software, but also the newest bugs.