Posts by Mark 29

British troops get nifty techno-gunsights

@Sarah Bee

Do you count as a soft object?

Paris, because she's been chucked lots of times

Brit inventor wants prison for patent crims

@Infernoz and Steve

Trevor can hardly be called a patent troll; he's a genuine inventor of the old school, with a number of practical inventions to his name and your comments that his products are expensive and less reliable simply reflect the fact that version 1.0 of a product is intrinsically going to be less reliable, with less features and less well engineered than version 2.0. I'd say he's second only to James Dyson in his application of simple ideas to old problems.

That said, I still believe the patent system to be anachronistic, and agree that Trevor is raving to demand criminal penalties when patents, often deliberately worded in a barely comprehensible fashion, are unknowingly breached.

There does need to be some form of global patent system, and there does need to be a high quality of review before patents are granted. In software, where the development cycle is so rapid, patents should be of very limited duration (say 5 years) - just enough to give someone a head start in the market, or they should not exist at all.

Boffins in 'let's create black holes in the lab' jape

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn,

Squids? Black holes? The return of the Old Ones is nigh!

100 freetards an hour join Pirate Party UK

Prepare for Boarding, me hearties!

@Fraser/ Anonymous: They do not necessarily need a complete agenda, just an issue on which to campaign. St Joanna of Lumley would probably get elected anywhere she chose without a complete agenda for supporting the Gurkhas and kicking Gordon Brown in the political nuts.

I wrote to Dave "Vote for Me" Cameron on the issue of copyright, and won't be voting Conservative as a result of their response.

Copyright in terms of its duration, has become an obscenity. If I invent a drug which saves the world from AIDs or Pandemic 'flu, I get 20 years of patent protection to get rewarded. I do not see why musicians and publishers should get longer, especially as only the fractional percentage of extremely successful artists get any significant benefit after this time.

I also suspect that they'll reduce or strictly limit penalties with respect to "not for profit" infringement. Cassette tapes used to be regularly swapped and copied amongst friends, yet record and CD sales didn't disappear, and only commercial copiers were pursued and punished. I see no reason why the same should not happen in the digital age

Daily Mail launches McKinnon campaign

More important matters....

@Sarah: I will have to make myself a cup of tea and settle in for this scintillating discussion which I've only witnessed 32 times this year

Darjeeling, Earl Grey or any teabag from Tescos?

milk or lemon?

one lump or two?

Facebook knuckle-raps Intel, AMD

Give and Take

What I do see here is a common problem; that Facebook seems quite happy to use open source applications such as PHP and MySQL without making contributions in terms of development to it. A major company like Facebook should have the resources to target the problems in the Open Source products they're using and contribute modifications to solve their own problems.

Judge says IBM dude gets the Dell (job)

Not really surprised

Non-compete agreements are rarely held to be valid as they restrict employment. This one also sounded as though it were worded in a format which prevented him working anywhere in the world, which is generally another no-no. The only way they can be reasonably enforced is if he was being paid "gardening leave" money as compensation.

Behind Microsoft's IE-free, Windows-for-Europe ploy

Its very strange

I always thought that the original action was about the fact that Microsoft browsers and Media Players were part of the Windows Operating system, and the problem was that there were so many hooks (some undocumented) between them that putting a new browser or media player in was incredibly difficult (or damn near impossible).

Even as a fan of Linux and Firefox, I am finding removing IE entirely a little extreme. I believe that Microsoft should be free to release any software it wishes with its operating system all interfaces required to replace that software with alternative defaults are fully documented, in advance. I believe the EU insisted that IBM document its release interfaces 6 months prior to release in another settlement, and that would seem to be a good option here.