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Every day we see bat-shit-crazy lawsuits over patents and trademarks that have a huge impact on society, for no good reason but corporate greed. If the company
by dendory 15y ago
Every day we see bat-shit-crazy lawsuits over patents and trademarks that have a huge impact on society, for no good reason but corporate greed. If the company follows through it means any computer system that lists possible time zones would be at risk since the original data came from a source that this company bought. Not surprised one bit by this.
- jbooth 15y agoLook, these intellectual property companies are job creators. I'm sick of all you hippies who want free access to a timezone database. As long as they keep up the lobbying and donations, they're doing a lot more for the world than silly concepts I've never heard of like "unix" and "java".
- marshray 15y agoYeah, they teach us in business school that "time = money". Only a pinko commie would think that privately-owned intellectual property like this should be free.
- tomp 15y agoMafia and drug cartels create jobs as well. That doesn't mean they are good for the society, and that the people employed by them could not produce more value doing something else.
- jbooth 15y agoGuess I needed the snark tag. Thought the unix and java line would be a dead giveaway.
- aw3c2 15y agoI missed it too and so I downvoted your post. HN being a site full of entrepeneurs I often see concepts about society and rights where I feel sick in my stomach, so your post did not seem very unusual to me.
- wladimir 15y agoYes, I'm sorry I downvoted you too before I realized you were making a joke (no way to undo it, though I upvoted this post to make up for it). I guess it wasn't over-the-top enough, there are people that would mean that seriously, and defend copyright and patent trolls.
- lanstein 15y agoYou can't be serious.
- tomp 15y agoI wasn't :)
- sliverstorm 15y agoI'm sick of all you hippies who want free access to a timezone database Seriously. Who came up with the moronic idea that people somehow "deserve" to know what time it is?
- Duff 15y agoRight on! It is about time that computer users buck up and take some personal responsibility. It's not like you can just look up at the sky and figure out what time it is! The hard work of innovators who figure out complex issues like the time need to be compensated!
- Cushman 15y agoIt'd be funnier if it weren't so, so true.
- sliverstorm 15y agoIndeed. It's not like knowing what time it is, is not valuable. Just think of all the interviews you could make on-time! Of course, if you want to show up on time, on the correct day, you'll also need to license out access to our date server, in addition to the time server.
- kapitalx 15y agoWe can totally crowdsource time. If everyone inputs what time they think it is by looking at the sky, we could just take the average of all those inputs and know the absolute time [wisdom of the crowd]
- DenisM 15y agoKindly lay off sarcasm. I understand the temptation, but succumbing to it will cause HN to become a place for wenting anger. I mean just look at the thread of comments below yours. Is that what you want HN to be? Let's make it a place for civilized discourse instead... shall we?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- sliverstorm 15y agoI don't mind the occassional visit to sarcasm and humor on HN, especially when it is relatively high-brow, poignant, and relevant. Not that I would claim I always manage to instill poigniancy into my jibes.
- cosgroveb 15y agoIs satire, which often makes very heavy use of sarcasm, to be considered uncivilized?
- kelnos 15y agoIn this case it just wasn't funny. (Yes, I know, subjective, blah blah blah. I don't care.)
- moultano 15y agoUnless it's exceptionally good then we're better off without it. The problem with sarcasm is that it insulates you from having to make an argument yourself. All you have to do is mimic your opponent and make them sound ridiculous. It's almost inherently a straw man fallacy unless it is exceptionally careful. If you can't use sarcasm you're forced to state what you believe in positive terms, which makes for much more fruitful discussion. It's like the "passive voice" of argumentation. There are some cases where you just have to, but your writing gets better if you categorically avoid it.
- MrMan 15y agothere is no room for satire on HN.
- derleth 15y agoSarcasm and satire only work when you aren't saying something you might actually believe.
- jtwb 15y agoPublicly held corporations are greedy by definition. The objective of such a corporation is simply to make as much money for its owners as possible. Our laws create an environment where intellectual property abuse has proven to be a profitable venture. The solution is not to redefine corporations as non-greedy entities.
- kevinh 15y agoNot necessarily. Generally, the purpose of a corporation is, in fact, to maximize shareholder wealth, but all a corporation is supposed to do is to represent the interests of the shareholders, which do not have to be financially motivated. In theory, corporations are not solely profit-seeking. In practice, they tend to be.
- JamesPeterson 15y agoI'm not sure if this is an Australia-only thing - and I was under the impression that if was far from being so - but here the responsibility to shareholders of a corporation is solely fiscal. The reasoning behind this is that shareholder needs tend to differ. If shareholders wish to engage in philanthropy, the corporation is not the ideal (shared) vessel for doing so. Instead, individual investors may receive their asset's rent and choose to distribute their earnings as they please; management is employed to run the Corp and not make decisions for the shareholders' philanthropic activities.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- dendory 15y agoNot true. Corporations are supposed to bring long term value to share holders. In many cases we see lawyers go for a quick buck at the cost of a tarnished image, which is very debatable whether that's good long term.
- foxylad 15y agoExactly. Case in point: Google. Imagine if they started pulling stunts like this - the goodwill they depend on would evaporate overnight, the whole "I don't mind Google owning all my data because they aren't evil" balance would become paranoia about everything they touch, and they would lose billions. I believe that Microsoft's myopic focus on short-term profit at the expense of doing the right thing is one of the major causes of it's recent decline towards obscurity. In today's world of abundant choice, companies have to provide good products AND provide them ethically. Back on topic, look at what Astrolabe have done - taken something they probably couldn't make much money from anyway, and got the unix-derived world very pissed off with them. Their employees will feel down and it'll be harder to hire, and they'll have to endure snide remarks for years. I know I'd be selling their shares today, if I had any - I don't like investing in jerks. Instead, they could have come out and said "We're pleased to donate our IP towards this amazingly useful service", and got a pat on the back from the world. And I'm guessing most of their shareholders would have been happy their investment was making the world a better place.
- apaprocki 15y agoIn the end, this is Astrolabe, Inc. http://alabe.com/photogal.html http://alabe.com/photogal.html I don't think they are going to take the computerized world into the timezone dark ages. I suspect this will all be resolved reasonably, especially if companies who ship this data get involved (e.g. every *nix vendor, Oracle (Java), etc).
- microtherion 15y agoWell, as a company making its living from peddling Astrology, taking the world into the dark ages would arguably be in their self interest...
- dendory 15y agoActually I wouldn't be so sure. Very often it's the legal people who push for that stuff and the founders are told to not worry, everything will be fine, until they are left with a PR disaster.
- caf 15y agoIt seems likely that the interest of an Astrology company in historical timezone data is in being able to determine the precise position of the stars and planets in the sky at the moment of someone's birth (which obviously involves knowing what local timezone was in effect at that place and time). I am sure they see great value in being the only Astrologers who can do this, which means that they need to suppress access to this data.
- gcp 15y agoI am sure they see great value in being the only Astrologers who can do this, which means that they need to suppress access to this data. It's amazing to think that people might actually care about this kind of "accuracy" in Astrology, but unfortunately, you might just be right. Geez, maybe in a year or so, they're calling the other astrologers phonies because they can't possibly have the right data.
- jeza 15y ago