Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward 26130 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Dec 2009
It's more the public sector amateurism combined with VC slime-ball approach that many of the university IP offices are taking, and the inability to get a straight answer out of any of them.
You work in a university, you get a new contract saying the university now owns all your IP.
So that means I can't contribute to an open source project?
Yes, erm well no, erm we will get back to you.
Does this new policy have anything to do with Microsoft paying for your new building ?
No, erm well erm ....
You want me to list work that was done at a previous institute but was published after I moved here - on your department rankings? How does this square with them owning the IP?
I want to attend a conference. The funding body will only pay for the travel if I am presenting a paper. If I present a paper you can't patent anything in it. So I need approval from the IP office before I can say anything in case they want to patent it. And they will respond in 6months.
It was the reason Watson (of Watson and Crick) resigned from the original HGP - http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v405/n6790/full/405983b0.html
On the other hand if my lab had patented DNA itself (along with the electron, and neutron and the atomic nucleus) we might be better funded.
Even people who don't want everything for free might be a little annoyed when they "the people" pay for something like the human genome project and find that one of the universities in the project was patenting all the genes it found - even without knowing what they were for.
So when a later researcher discovers that the gene predicts breast cancer they are prevented from working on it because university A "owns" it, and when they publish the research nobody else can make a test using the gene.
Patent troll = company that paid me for my patent and then tries to market it.
University = I pay taxes to fund a researcher to work on a problem. University then owns IP and patents it, University's IP exploitation office then stops me using it. Ironically they also stop the researcher who had the idea using it themselves.
One of the reasons I stopped working for universities is the quarterly rounds of slick-suited IP specialists going through the lab demanding a list of anything patentable and forcing ever more restrictive contracts on your ownership of any ideas you have.
>The US needs a loser pays system.
They already do for civil cases like patents.
The problem is that the troll can just create a paper company that owns only the single patent, if it loses it goes bankrupt since the patent is worthless anyway.
But Sony/Apple/IBM against a lone inventor can just put armies of their internal lawyers onto a case so that the legal costs are $1M/day. They can then ask that the judge force the nasty inventor to put up some guarantee against being able to pay their costs if he/she loses.
Lone inventor can't do this and judge throws out case.
" official National Hero Simon Weston OBE."
Sailor on a warship that got hit by a bomb which failed to go off - yet the warship still burnt to the ground and sank. Operated by an organisation which failed to plan to fight fires, failed to have adequate backup systems to fight fires, failed to have fire protection for crew of a ship which is designed to have bombs dropped on it.
Obviously an inspiration for anyone managing an IT company - but not sure about the motivational aspect for the workers.
It can also be drafted to fight in future wars against China.
A German colleague in the office is trying to work out how to get out of USA for the birth - without having to sit around on leave for 3months (airlines generally won't let you fly in 3rd trimester) - so that the baby isn't automatically property of uncle sam.
> H1B employers can't give lower wages to H1B holders
They can however create a new job description which happens to only be filled with H1B holders, Unscrupulous on-shore off-shorers can also do things like withhold rellocation or accommodation fees for H1B to officially pay more than US but effectively pay them half as much.
H1B is the worst possible solution to skilled immigration. It is only available to mega corps with armies of lawyers (try getting an H1B place for your first startup employee) keeps the employee in slavery to a single employer and is hard to move to citizenship.
It's a lot quicker, cheaper and easier than in most of europe. A single form, a single director and 20quid to get a solicitor to witness it. Unlike in France where it can take 20years and marrying the mayor's daughter to get the right licence.
Or the US where as soon as you start a company you will receive daily frivolous lawsuits which you have to waste time and money dealing with. And the IRS who will send you totally incomprehensible forms and when you phone them will quote a 10min disclaimer about how they are unable to advise you and then read you exactly the same small print on the form in front of you. However much you don't like paying tax the Inland Revenue are generally helpful to small businesses.
You can sell in 20+ countries with a single set of technical, legal and financial regulations. In the US we have to have a different customs agent for air and sea freight because Houston's airport and Houston's container port are in different "cities" and the regulations are different !
Joseph Bazalgette DID build London's sewers, he had the idea, lobbied for it, did the experiments, hand drew 1000s of plans, checked and commented on 10,000s of documents and oversaw pretty much every brick. His great grandson made far more money by making crap TV programs.
One of them was "digitally enabled"
I would much prefer they were automatic than being directly controlled by must US security guards or Police.
ps. When I visited certain US aerospace corporations in the 80s they had patrolling green painted jeeps with large guns mounted on the back and men in green uniforms sitting in them. I very much doubt the guns were single shot.
>The size of the item he stole is absolutely irrelevant, the fact is, he was a repeat offender.
The problem is that the state prosecutor gets to decide if the 3 strikes rule applies.
Poor black person steals a 3rd slice of pizza = 25 years
Rich white person runs 3rd insider trading scam and nets 3rd fortune = suspended sentence.
And my phone is from Motorola, they're American.
But the circuit board, battery and all screen is all built by the lowest bidder in China.
I wasn't saying anything specific about Chinese manufacturers but old time power electrical engineers over built things, like old style telephone system engineers. Consumer electronics designers and manufactures - not so much.
>Why would a smart meter explode and not a regular one?
The old ones were designed by proper electrical engineers who worked in the power industry and built stuff to last for decades.
The smart meters are built by the lowest bidder in China who could produce a document which said they were designed to IEC123-XYZ and built by an engineer who had a vague idea it meant to leave 2mm between power traces and the case but isn't sure.
The UK govt can't say it's insecure without the public demanding that Chinese made kit is all ripped out of every govt/police/school/hospital which might cost a few quid - and be followed by a Chinese ban on Downton Abbey tea-towels or whatever it is we export to China
... this is a mining machine.
It's designed for the capitalist alternative system - which is dig up coal to dig up steel to make BMWs and then lend people the money to buy them and then bailout the banks when the people didn't pay the loans back.
An alternate theory is that the Germans have learned from their mistakes and next time they invade a country they intend to dig it up and take it back with them.
Another sillier theory is that they are strip mining the low quality lignite from half the country to burn to make electricity so they can close all their nuclear power stations to keep the Greens happy - but nobody believes that.
