Software patent reform just died in the House

Why? Because it was inoculation against bogus argument. It covered basic logic, logical fallacies, and gave students a solid footing in resisting and debunking nonsense in argument, advertising, and other communication. Really an invaluable life skill.

That's an interesting comparison. One could argue that advertising is far worse than pornography, in the sense that pornography is usually being purposefully sought out when one is exposed to it, whereas advertising is often intrusive info-pollution, going out of its way to expose us to strongly-biased and/or manipulative rhetoric.

I would definitely distinguish it from porn in that heavy sexuality is way too able to psychologically scar someone at a young age -- but learning that the Barbie in the commercial isn't as much fun to play with as the girls in the ad made it seem isn't a bad thing.

I feel like some people in Silicon Valley have this weird investment in the word "innovative." They have this need to justify making tons of money while essentially working in the advertising business. So they label every little engineering advancement "innovation" utterly diluting the word. But why is that necessary? There is nothing wrong about working in the advertising industry, or making a bunch of money selling people entertainment.

But, comparing Facebook to IBM (or even Microsoft) is absolutely laughable. IBM is pushing the boundaries of semiconductor manufacturing, designing new CPUs, building artificial intelligence, etc.

Google does innovate (Glass, cars, etc), but they don't make any money doing so.

Not sure if naive or ignorant.

> IBM has 12 research laboratories worldwide and, as of 2013, has held the record for most patents generated by a company for 20 consecutive years.[15] Its employees have garnered five Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, ten National Medals of Technology, and five National Medals of Science.[16] Notable inventions by IBM include the automated teller machine (ATM), the floppy disk, the hard disk drive, the magnetic stripe card, the relational database, the Universal Product Code (UPC), the financial swap, SABRE airline reservation system, DRAM, and Watson artificial intelligence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM

Yes. You seem to be implying that this concept is strange or ridiculous, and I don't understand why.

I don't know what your definition of 'intangible' is, but people I idolize are doing some tangible, visible work.

Good deeds don't erase past bad deeds. No amount of charity with a fortune you earned being bad makes you a good person or absolves you of past wrongs.

For a reference of this kind of History effect, compare the common man views of Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. They shared the same period in History, and worked in the same field (the electricity boom). Edison was the astute businessman with shady tactics but also with public success. Tesla, a brilliant scientist, produced the still unchallenged fundamentals for electricity transmission and for AC electric motors. Which one is considered the epitome of innovation? The shady acute businessman.

It is also similar to Google warning about the patent issues with H.264 while pushing WebM and then later (through Motorola) asking for exorbitant licensing fees for H.264 patents, from Microsoft and Google. They got fined over the FRAND abuse by the courts.

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2013/09/06/apple-google-motorol...

Hate the game, not the players.

While American politics is often seen as pay-to-play, especially after the 'Citizens United' decision by the Supreme court, it's important to differentiate situations where there is almost-direct financial ties from situations where it is more a question of political pressure. If some people (i.e. the tech-consuming public) elected to pressure our representatives more than large companies, this bill could have turned out very differently.

You think it doesn't happen in your country? You can rest assured your government is full of corrupt shitbags too, just like the US. There's overt corruption, covert corruption, and lots of degrees in between.

This is in part because they have a heavy patent culture, perhaps due to their legacy as a machines company.

This is what tech companies spent in Q3 2013, maybe someone else can post IBM's stats but Microsoft's spending doesn't look all that high to me.

Google 3.4M

Microsoft 2.2M

Facebook 1.7M

Apple 0.97M

Amazon 0.78M

I think the real story is how cheap the lobbying costs are.

What I completely fail to understand with all the Snowden revelations and stories like this is that Silicon Valley tech folks have enormous salaries and high disposable income.

If they would actually contribute some of that to a PAC or to the EFF, it would be way more productive than sitting in Starbucks sipping a $5 latte and posting "Not going to get the Xbox from M$. Getting a PS4 for $400 + games for $60 each instead! That's going to teach them! And Bill Gates sucks despite helping the poorest people in Africa and India!" from their latest MacBook or iPad Air on HN articles such as these(you can see those posts below).

I guess gathering HN karma feels better and is cheaper than actually trying to make a real difference on issues that people seem to write emotional posts about.

Having seen a lot of such issues and discussions from my Slashdot days, my prediction is that nothing will come out of it except a lot of hot air discussion.

Rather, you should focus your ire and spending practices on the congress people that agreed to leave the CBM out of the legislation. They care more about what you think or care about.

Or give your money to folks like the EFF that will use their lobbying power to counterweight these other folks.

    3M
    Adobe Systems
    Boston Scientific
    Dolby Laboratories
    The Dow Chemical Company
    DuPont
    Fairchild Semiconductor
    Fairfield Crystal Technology
    General Electric
    IBM
    IEEE-USA
    Johnson & Johnson
    Microsoft
    Procter & Gamble
    Qualcomm
    Xerox Corporation

Insinuating that they may be a paid shill is truly obnoxious behavior.

To be fair, I don't think the author's a shill. But I've been following him since he wrote for Ars (and he's also on HN sometimes), so I can tell he certainly has drunk some Kool-aid, and it has a slight Google flavor. He interned there after all, so that may explain why Microsoft was highlighted in the headlines. 

But notably, he also is (or was) a "scholar" at the Cato Institute, which believes in "limited government and free markets" and seems to have anti-IP leanings. Unsurprisingly the author's articles (even this one!) often uncritically cite the works published by academics like James Bessen, which like to paint a "sky is falling" situation with respect to US IP policies, even though these works have time and again been strongly called into question by other academics. Given that he's a scholar himself, I'd be surprised if he's unaware of that, but his articles only ever present one side.

So the Kool-aid may have other, stronger flavors as well, but he's definitely drunk some.

This comment was brought to you by the year 2006 and the letter Q.

Ubuntu has continues to improve in polish, stability and usability since then. There's no reason for you not to start making the jump now.

My recommendation is to start by replacing the applications on your Windows machine with cross-platform FOSS equivalents, if you haven't already. That way, the OS transition will be a lot easier because you will already be familiar with the software.