Fine but then you're leaving open the possibility for others to get a cert for your domain.
56 karma · joined June 29, 2015
[1] HTTPS as a ranking signal: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/08/https-as-ranking-s...
Just to be clear, this is equivalent to saying don't bother with SSL for your blog or cat-sharing site (because without pinning someone else can get a cert for your blog/cat-sharing site).
> the ability for sites with low security requirements to opt out of HPKP.
opt out?! It's off by default.
> Remember, the threat model for HPKP isn't fraudsters or trolls; it's state-level adversaries.
Again, by saying HPKP is only for high security sites (now you're saying only for those threatened by state-level adversaries) you are essentially saying SSL is useless for everything less.
When I disagree with your overall sentiment that patents have no value - then the technicalities ARE important. Regardless, I'll take the fact you feel the need to take the battle to new ground as a win and we'll move on.
> 1. They're the source off all kinds of innovation and startups that wouldn't otherwise happen.
"all kinds of innovation" - never said anything like that. I said patents incentivize investment into innovation. Big difference.
> Most funding is by taxpayers.
Well, I disagree with "most". Perhaps some but not most. In my experience, plenty of innovation comes from small entities. If this is not the case then why do larger players continually acquire the small companies? sometimes it's for other reasons but I suggest that at least some of the time it's for their innovations.
> "Private parties won't invest in things without patent protection? "
ok, clearly you are not reading what I'm writing. If you are referring to my "patents incentivize investment" then how is that equivalent to "won't invest without patent protection"?!
> So, alleged benefits of patents are a lie, esp in software space.
You are all over the place. Earlier you said patent holders win 100% of the time (which in a free market would mean investors would eventually be drawn in and invest in whatever it took to get these magical things called patents) and now you're saying the benefits are a lie?
> "2. They're primarily a tool to maximize profits of companies, small or large, that contribute almost nothing in innovation or features."
Of course they contribute nothing - they are merely pieces of paper. You don't create the innovation in the patent application itself!
> "Plus, most suits are coming from groups that produce nothing: acquire patents from someone for cheap, then sue anyone actually building anything. "
An innovator can no longer approach a larger player with an improvement to one of their products. The larger players have learned their most optimal business strategy is to weed out the majority by ignoring them until an infringement suit is brought. Many small players don't/can't - hence optimal strategy for larger player.
Is it fair for the larger players to do this? Morally, probably not. But large corporations have fiduciary duty to maximize profits to their shareholders - so from the shareholders perspective it is.
However, from the small player standpoint, they need to do what they have to - and often they realize that selling off their patent assets to another entity is their best option. Call it troll if you like but in reality they are more leveling the playing field by carrying out the IP enforcement that is difficult for the small innovator to do themselves. Either way, a patent is a patent and it matters not who owns it.
> "So, net effect is that patents are hurting innovation. "
For non-innovators or copycats that might be true, but for innovators that is patently false.
> "Surveys show they rarely ever read a single patent."
And then they act all surprised when they are slapped with an infringement trial :-) "But officer I did not see the sign".
> "That doesn't mean we actual innovators should stop fighting monopolies mostly issued to non-innovating, big companies and small companies that sue instead of sell products."
So the innovators aren't getting the patents while the non-innovators are? Please, give it a rest.
> "A patent is a legal monopoly. A monopoly by definition and style will lead to higher prices than competitive segment with many players innovating"
Monopolies encourage investment - in this case, investment into patents means investment into innovation means investment into R&D.
> "Or existed but don't count in a "first-to-file" system that favors patent holders."
This was introduced in the last patent reform (AIA). 2 steps forward and 1 back - or 1 forward and 2 back?
When you're using it as you did to try to make the point that the patents were overly broad - then of course it matters!
> "but also wants to shut them down"
It's called leverage - the small player needs to gain leverage to affect a better outcome. Both sides do it, don't kid yourself.
> "Nobody used their patents or invention to build their products."
When you're not researching others prior art then you're reinventing the wheel. Not optimally efficient.
> "What are you talking about? You can't sell 50LOC"
Oh yes you can.
> "How do you create a voice over IP product without infringing a patent that claims to cover any transmission of voice over any data channel?"
Again, you are (deliberately?) representing patents as overly broad. I just showed you that the others patents were not as broadly covering ALL "end-to-end crypto" but yet you continue with these insane notions?
> "Most patents are filed by (a) big companies that sue small players for infringement or (b) Universities that sell patents to big companies that sue small players for infringement."
That's not addressing my point. I said patents enable small players to innovate and find success - your point about who's filing more does nothing to address my point. ...in fact:
> "The smaller companies, independent or academic spinoffs, often get acquired by big players"
further directly proves my point. The smaller players were able to find success - as you said by being acquired.
> "Most studies of effect on patent system shows this to be the case."
Except you just pointed out the small players are acquired. Not all studies are 100% correct. In fact, in the patent world there are many purposely misleading studies.
> "Your claim about small businesses is a legend. That is, it's mostly a myth but with occasionally success stories to give it what little truth it has."
Or perhaps due to NDA's etc you don't hear about the small business successes.
> "Patents don't create innovation"
I hope I never said that because I completely agree. I would say something more like patents supply incentive to innovate but by themselves don't create anything but pieces of paper.
> "Patents then just restrict competition and drive prices up."
Same old tired line. If it drives prices up then generally it will lure investors to invest - and to invest in patents requires investing in innovation - investing in innovation means R&D.
> "And in courts that rule in favor of patent-holder almost 100% of the time?"
How long does it take for you to get a hint? ~15 years of patent reforms, numerous SCOTUS cases, POTUS trying to get involved, etc. So much money and effort spent yet patent-holders still winning. Do you honestly believe that one more reform bill or one more President or one more SCOTUS ruling will finally be the end? Whether I'm morally right or you're morally right - perhaps you are better off to face reality than keep bucking the trend. Hope is not a strategy.
Couple of things seriously wrong in this statement alone:
1) I seriously doubt you can describe the patents as "end-to-end crypto". If you are going to broadly describe something rather complex in 4 words then I would suggest "Apple’s VPN on demand function" as a better example. Similar #num of words yet suddenly significantly narrower isn't it. However, even that doesn't scratch the surface, looking at the titles of the patents in trial provides a better glimpse that this is more than just simply "end-to-end crypto":
6,502,135 - Agile network protocol for secure communications with assured system availability
7,418,504 - Agile network protocol for secure communications using secure domain names
7,490,151 - Establishment of a secure communication link based on a domain name service (DNS) request
7,921,211 - Agile network protocol for secure communications using secure domain names
Are you starting to understand that this isn't merely "end-to-end crypto" or do we need to go into the Claims and how to properly begin to evaluate patent property boundaries?
2) I don't have the time to replay the entire infringement trial, but it seems to me you believe this trial was unjust or resulted in an improper outcome. I highly doubt that Apple had incompetent lawyers or did not have enough resources. The court and jury disagrees with your assessment.
> Unfortunately, that works better for the bigger players.
Measured by market cap, Apple is the worlds biggest corporation. VirnetX is not small, not tiny, but rather miniscule in comparison. Is this is fight between 2 big players? No. Did the bigger player win? No.
> There's allegedly over 200,000 patents that can cover smartphones in some way.
Proves my point in previous post - small players don't have to re-invent the kitchen sink (in this case smartphones) but rather should focus on some small innovation (e.g. a VPN on demand feature - except translate to something of tomorrow - these patents are from 10-15 years ago). Find that 50 LOC - not re-invent 500k LOC. For now, the only pitfall is that larger players still believe they are better off to fight later in court rather than license now from the inventor when they find a new innovation. Blackberry learned 10 years ago, maybe Apple will learn today, and hopefully others will learn from their lessons.
Patents enable the small player to innovate and find success.
In contrast, your examples: 1) have nothing to do with China, 2) suggest that two wrongs make a right.
sure but this needs to be balanced with performance UNTIL then
Stop right there. There are plenty of examples for storing blobs in a datastore - images and videos are 2 prime examples.
I think what you should say is in a SQL database. Google's AppEngine with their datastore makes it dead easy and with high performance to store&retrieve things like images and videos.
It all depends on the data, but if it's not simple, then serialized JSON values would generally incur performance hit for search operations. Breaking out the data into separate columns could be better indexed.
If you're copying, then there is never an end to the low hanging fruit. Never.
> Hopefully they are reaching their Walkman moment.
To reach a Walkman moment they first have to invent a Walkman. Hope is not a strategy.
Or is China now caring about IP because they have seen that it's more profitable to the innovator rather than after-the-fact-copycat.
The bigger question is whether they can become the innovator. In some instances, they have indicated they might but overall I'm not sold that they can.
I never understand this self-defeatist mentality. One represents a democracy while the other represents a communist dictatorship. If you trust them so much why not just move there and become a citizen :-) I mean, I hear there's lot of jobs have moved there the past ~decade.
No longer true, over the past ~decade, quality of patents issued has dramatically improved. Most patents are actually very narrow. Just look at the sheer quantity that are issuing (in software in particular) - everyone is coming up with something different.
> And even if you don't actually infringe on the patent, you better have a couple of years and a few $100k-$millions to dedicate to the court battle to prove that.
Or before recklessly entering a market, evaluate the landscape. Do you have something new to offer, can you yourself protect your innovations, narrow down your product scope to minimize encroachment on others property, etc...
Think less about building the whole kitchen sink and more on being the best at some tiny improvement (texture of the handles, connectors to the pipe to minimize leakage, etc...). Think writing the perfect 50 LOC that others would want to use rather than building 50k LOC. The less code you ship, the more you've minimized your patent infringement risk (along with proper evaluation of competitors protect at the outset). Additionally, if you've found that 50 LOC that nobody does yet and others want to use, then you've likely also found something valuable to patent yourself. BECOME the innovator rather than sued by the innovator.
Business requires managing risks, patents are but a small factor if properly handled.
Generally, patents are derived from R&D which is where innovation directly comes from so it is "related". At the very least this is true in Microsoft's case.
Regarding anti-competitive - it's only anti-competitive if someone else attempts to COPY the innovation. They are free to innovate and come up with an ALTERNATIVE. The more alternatives, the more choices for consumers. If you want to copy then sure - patents block, but if you want to innovate then patents can provide incentivizes to carry that out.
From what I can tell, ARM started 30+ years ago and sold physical chips. I am missing when they morphed into mainly selling chip designs - and how were they able to make such a transition without the publicity of lawsuits.
Then start with fining large corporations who each hold numerous patents that do not ship a corresponding "viable product" for.
There are numerous publicly traded stocks of companies that are mainly patent holding entities: Acacia (ACTG), Finjan (FNJN), Inventergy (INVT), MARA, Wi-lan (WILN), Hopto (HPTO), etc...
But where does the whole troll definition end - many mid-large corporations have patents that they do not practice or not embodied in any product - so aren't they trolls too? even if they haven't explicitly threatened legal action with those patents - competitors view those patents as implicit threats. So why not label them as trolls too? At the end of the day, every patent holder can be considered a troll in some way - so the definition of a troll really comes down to: patent troll = patent holder.
It's a balancing act between a patent that is worthwhile to own yet still novel+non-obvious. Overly broad means prior art exists that can be used to invalidate. If none could be found then it means patent is valid.
You seem to be suggesting that cost should be a deciding factor in whether to protect creative work. I disagree that there is a difference here between copyrights and patents.
1) In the tech industry, calculating the "cost" would be anything but straightforward. What would be allowed and what wouldn't? The players are not even comparable - what would stop a large corporation to include their HR, legal departments, and executive team as part of their "R&D costs"? Whereas, a small software startup with 1-3 members getting paid ramen noodles would be hard pressed to properly chalk up a tiny fraction of the costs the large corporation. The large corporation would have no problem showing that "project X cost $1million+ in R&D costs" while the startup would be in $thousands or $tens of thousands. If anything, one might argue that the OPPOSITE of cost would be better indicator - I see more innovation deserving protection from small startups creating things in a weekend than large corporations pushing some new technology developed over years using teams of people and resources.
2) There exist numerous examples where traditional artists create works in relatively short time. How many times have we read about an artist who wrote a song in an afternoon or even an hour? In those cases, the "R&D" costs of creating the song or painting would surely be considered small (if not tiny) when compared to tech R&D. It's contradictory to suggest that creative works protectable by copyrights at times with lower "costs" should be more protectable than tech protectable only by patents.
This hints at part of the problem - simply not enough resources. It's not that OpenSSL folks are slow or lazy (absolutely far from it) - but rather they've got tons on their plate already.
One day (hopefully) corporations will recognize that everyone can benefit by helping open source (either providing resources or $funding).
[1] https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
IMHO, dropping tidal gauges mid-data, ignoring annual, tidal, and multi-decadal trends are things that should not be so easily dismissed.
"The alarmistic claim originates from riding the positive phase of the inter-annual, decadal and multi-decadal oscillations typical of the sea levels over a cherry picked short time window of 10-15 years, neglecting what was measured before 1994 by another tide gauge in pretty much same location, and also neglecting what has been measured in the same tide gauge since 2009.
Short records do not permit to clear the trend of the inter-annual, decadal and multi-decadal oscillations [4-8]. In the Solomon Islands there is no tide gauge long enough to infer a proper trend. However, the information available permits to dismiss the alarmist claim of 7-10 mm yr-1 rate of rise."
2) statistically not enough data for trends in sea levels:
"Also including Honiara II, starting from December 1974 the rate of rise is +2.81 mm yr-1. The time window is now 42 years long, still insufficient, but certainly more reasonable. Considering 60-70 years of data are needed to start understanding a trend in sea levels, very likely these +2.81 mm yr-1 are still an overestimation of the relative rate of rise."
[1] https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/05/10/busted-claim-data-sho...