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> Change is needed. However, its not going to come from our government. Nor will it come from putting yet another sacrificial lamb on the pyre. > If Yahoo wer
by Jach 15y ago
> Change is needed. However, its not going to come from our government.
Nor will it come from putting yet another sacrificial lamb on the pyre.
> If Yahoo were to be awarded 50 Billion Dollars from Facebook, I think consumers may take notice. And don’t think that 50B should be an impossibility.
I don't think consumers would bat an eye. So long as facebook.com remains online, they won't care. If it goes offline, they'll migrate to Twitter, or back to MySpace, or Google. There is enough competition to Facebook right now that if they vanished overnight people wouldn't clamor for their return for very long.
> This is what patents are for, right ? To protect companies with original IP from smarter, faster, aggressive companies who catch the imagination of consumers and advertisers. What else could patents be for ?
At this point I suspect the author is just trolling. Nice job. It doesn't take much research to learn that patents were meant to encourage inventors to share the details of their inventions to Society, so that Society could benefit in X years instead of waiting X+delta years for the chance something gets reinvented and shared freely.
- chrisacky 15y agoI clearly got sarcasm, from that last quote. He was being facetious, if you missed that you probably missed the point of the article. It's a broken system and change needs to happen. After the quiet period for Facebook, they should really try and make aware the flaws of the patent system by explaining what each of these ten patents relates to. After reading the 5th obvious one, I stopped reading, so perhaps the next five were really innovative... But yeah, you totally missed the sarcasm in that sentence.
- Jach 15y agoPoe's Law strikes again. I guess I should have typed "I strongly suspect trolling". I went on, however, with the standard reply that patents were supposed to be about Society, not the individual inventors, because it needs repeating anyway.
- BrandonMTurner 15y agoYou are grossly underestimating the amount people would care if Facebook went offline. The world would freak out. People have memories of their lives tied up in the service with the combination of photos, friends, and messages. The pent up data generated over the years is truly meaningful.
- Jach 15y agoOh there would definitely be mourning of the lost data because people don't keep backups, but I really don't think it would last that long and I don't think the mourning would lead anywhere. When people don't even care that their loved ones die enough to donate to anti-death institutes, it's hard to imagine any major effects would happen if all their data disappeared.
- Arelius 15y ago> When people don't even care that their loved ones die enough to donate to anti-death institutes Err, what? Elaboration required.
- chrisrhoden 15y agoTrolling, nothing to see here. Move along.
- sciurus 15y agoI think he's being sincere. From http://www.thejach.com/about#sum http://www.thejach.com/about#sum "Can you sum up your core views in a short package so I don't completely misrepresent you when reporting second-hand? My real view is simple. I'm a transhumanist Singularitarian in the Good sense, or the Yudkowsky sense if you prefer. Anything that gets in the way of a positive Singularity is bad. [snip] Even though I'm an Anarchist you'll see me supporting national health care because there's a decent chance we'll get really long life this century and the less people who die the better."
- Jach 15y ago
- vibrunazo 15y ago> At this point I suspect the author is just trolling. Nice job. It doesn't take much research to learn that patents were meant to encourage inventors to share the details of their inventions to Society Isn't that a consequence of what he's saying? Patents are meant to encourage inventors to share. Yes. But how are patents suppose to achieve that? It encourages inventors to share by protecting others from executing the ideas faster and better. If you assume that the original inventor was always faster and better at executing his ideas. Then we wouldn't need patents to encourage inventors. They would share anyway because they wouldn't be afraid of the competition. So I don't think yours and his description are mutually exclusive. You're just completing his explanation.
- sciurus 15y ago> At this point I suspect the author is just trolling. It's sarcasm. The author knows this isn't what the patent system is intended for, but they think it is what the patent system has become.