rbarooah

46 ms·

421.
by rbarooah 15y ago
Fair points. You did come off as a hater, but not now that you've explained what you were thinking. I'm very sympathetic to then negative effects of NPEs and of patents in general inhibiting smaller players. On the other hand, I think ther
422.
by rbarooah 15y ago
Fair enough, but by that logic you can say any business that provides services that the poor can afford is 'helping the poor'. Bing helps the poor the same way google does, Apple helps the poor by selling music by the track, etc. Zynga he
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by rbarooah 15y ago
Ok, but that has nothing to do with Google+ does it, or is it somehow a Google+ feature?
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by rbarooah 15y ago
Is this just a hype title, or did they do something different to what people are doing all the time using wikis?
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by rbarooah 15y ago
How does google help the poor?
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by rbarooah 15y ago
That's the theory of why they might be good in principle. I think the original poster was asking for real examples of how they have been good in practice.
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by rbarooah 15y ago
I think it's fair to say that Xerox seriously undervalued their IP, but that was a well documented failing of their management who didn't see the potential that Jobs did in personal computing. Arguably we're fortunate that he struck this de
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by rbarooah 15y ago
I think this is pretty accurate, however there is a potential structural problem: entry level, or low level jobs in general don't pay people enough to invest time or resources in improving their skills - certainly not for longer term shifts
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by rbarooah 15y ago
What exactly is more 'open web' about Google+ than Facebook? It seems to be focussed on keeping you on Google properties - not linking different sites together. It seems to me that twitter are the ones supporting the open web now.
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by rbarooah 15y ago
Right because Lodsys also transformed the landscape of the mobile industry by selling a revolutionary new device that everyone else is competing with.
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by rbarooah 15y ago
This argument is based on repeating an easily debunked falsehood. Apple did not 'copy wholesale the fundamental ideas of the Mac UI'. They paid Xerox for a license to commercialize the technology via a stock deal, and then they spent signi
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by rbarooah 15y ago
The law already deals with vague definitions. It really wouldn't be too hard to write something that erred on the side of making it somewhat hard to prove that you were practicing.
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by rbarooah 15y ago
Does anyone think that a legislation preventing NPE's from suing for patent infringement would be practical? They'd still be able to hold them - just not sue. It seems like something that large corporations as well as independents could ge
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by rbarooah 15y ago
What you say doesn't in any way contradict the main point, except your unsubstantiated claim that it's automatically good for society. Competing against a $0 product (which is essentially subsidized by corporate salaries) is likely to incre
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by rbarooah 15y ago
Patent pools are no defense against trolls.
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by rbarooah 15y ago
How does that even makes sense? If I make an open-source heart rate monitor, doesn't that benefit people who want heart rate monitors, hurt people who make for-pay heart rate monitors, and divert my resources away from solving anyone elses
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by rbarooah 15y ago
Right, but is legal martyrdom going to change things?
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by rbarooah 15y ago
The argument is that this lowering of the cost works against independent developers in favor of already large corporations who have other advantages to rely on (such as large marketing budgets, etc.) The point is not that value isn't create
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by rbarooah 15y ago
I agree that we shouldn't stop building stuff because of this worry. Sadly we know by example that not everyone who gets hit by trolls has money for a defense.
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by rbarooah 15y ago
I like they idea, but I don't see how it reduces the risk. If someone has a valid patent, you're still in trouble.
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by rbarooah 15y ago
Neither an LLC nor liability insurance will stop your business being destroyed and years of your life being wasted if a troll decides to target you. Would you suggest an LLC for each product so that they can only be attacked individually?
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by rbarooah 15y ago
I couldn't agree more. People sometimes seem to clone stuff because they think they're 'sticking it to the man', when in fact they can only do this because they work for a corporation during the day. And the 'man' they are sticking it to
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by rbarooah 15y ago
Right - there's probably nothing to stop a 'tragedy of the commons' occurring, and money is fungible so they can just do something else with it when the cash cow dies.
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by rbarooah 15y ago
Why doesn't Apple get credit for their huge investment in Webkit which was crucial (by Google's own admission) for both Chromium and Android? I'd argue that the difference in perception is down to PR. Apple does little to make itself look
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by rbarooah 15y ago
Both can be true. It really might be unprofitable to be an indie developer (after factoring in the risk and cost of litigation), while simultaneously being clearly 'time to lobby for intervention'. Also, the risk/reward of lobbying for int
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by rbarooah 15y ago
The trolls could easily wipe out all indie developers without any problems, because they'd still have the large corporations to feed off.
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by rbarooah 15y ago
It's not particularly corny, and it's hard to disagree about not giving up in principle. That said, human political systems can and do lead to sustained bad results. In my mind, 'things working themselves up' really means, 'someone finds a
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by rbarooah 15y ago
What do you mean by 'moving forward', and what do you expect to happen that's going to change things in the longer term?
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by rbarooah 15y ago
Is that what you'd advise people to say to the judge?
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by rbarooah 15y ago
The implication is that products for which there is a demand won't come to market. It might not be easy, but society is harmed if we make it artificially harder to respond to market demand.

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