[karajorma]

How about one is a death ray and the other provides drinks

[aldo_14]

Getting the 2 confused would be a bit dodgy in social situations, though.

"Fancy a drink?"
"Sure"
"AAAH! My eye!"

[vyper]

Sounds like what would happen if it was a bit chilly.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by vyper
Sounds like what would happen if it was a bit chilly.

Hmm.

You have a good point there.

Perhaps the purpose of male nipples is to allow us to cut through sheets of ice in winter, thus being able to fish.

[Wild Fragaria]

Anyhow, let's get back to the more serious topic.

Originally posted by WMCoolmon
There was a similar article on /.

What really struck me was this comment:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A major part of the problem is that profit is more important than innovation. Pure, unadulterated research for the sake of discovering new and better ways of doing things or even just learning something new is pretty much dead.

How many corporations have scaled back or even eliminated their R&D departments because they won't turn a profit next quarter?...

...When you get to college... how many professors actually teach science and how many spend all of their time seeking new grants to ensure the university can afford a new football stadium?

 

Fund cut happen more 'severely' in the academic field in the recent years and causes a lot more the 'side-effects' in the research labs.

Because of it, the grant applications have got tougher and more compatative every year.  The whole process of getting your research project funded and started has gotten complicated and very political because of the money issue.  Some departments and institutions even face out scientists who can not bring money in on time.  The research faculties are give a certain time frame to bring in certain amount of money.  If they fail, game over.

I often feel disgusted by how people (some scientists) treating each other in the field.  What's worse is that some of them have really learned how to bluff to survive.

[karajorma]

I think it's a shame that blue-sky research is getting such a short thrift not just in America but all over the world.

Sometimes the stuff you discover from doing science for science's sake ends up being more useful than directed research simply because you end up looking at things a new way.

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by karajorma
I think it's a shame that blue-sky research is getting such a short thrift not just in America but all over the world.

Sometimes the stuff you discover from doing science for science's sake ends up being more useful than directed research simply because you end up looking at things a new way.

The damage done by CFCs to the Ozone layer is a brilliant example of that. he people who discovered it were trying to understand the atmosphere on Venus, and ended up halting a problem that might well have caused massive damage to the earth and the people on it.

[aldo_14]

I'm not sure it's a new trait, sadly.  I remember reading about the story of the guy who discovered the massive damage tetraethyl lead (lead added to engine fuel) did (Clair Patterson); even in the 40s, his research was beset by opposition from the major companies manufacturing t.l; they withdrew funding, offered his university (Caltech) funding for a chair if they sacked him, the suppossedly neutral US Public Health Service cancelled a research contract, and even excluding him from a 1971 national research council panel on atmospheric lead when he was unquiestionably one of the worlds expert.

(Lead, incidentally, is a powerful neurotoxin which has symptoms like brain damage, blindness, kidney failure, cancer, hallucinations, palsies, etc; it was legal in the US in solder for food tins until 1993 - so the tl being created by the Etyhl corporation - a joint enterprise between General Motors, Du Pont and Standard Oil - was causing massive lasting damage to public health)

Despite the almost immediate serious symptoms of their workers, the Ethyl company launched a long policy of denial - one excuse was that their workers probably went insance from 'working too hard'.

Paterson thankfully perservered and managed to help create the Clean Air Act of 1970, and later the ban leaded petrol in 1986 (which led to a rapid 80% lead drop in Americans).  He also has the distinction of helped establish the date of the Earth from his work in 1953.

Incidentally, the guy responsible for use of tl was one Thomas Midgely (who once demonstrated the 'safety' of it at a press conference by holding a cup under his nose for 60 secods - omitting that he'd recently been seriously ill with lead poisoning).  In 1929 he set out to develop a stable, no-flammable, non-corrosive and breathable gas for use in refrigerators (the gases used then were dangerous; a leak from a fridge at a hospital in Cleveland had recently killed 100 people).

What was his new wonder gas?

Chlorofluerocarbon.

[Kosh]

Originally posted by Wild Fragaria
Anyhow, let's get back to the more serious topic.



Fund cut happen more 'severely' in the academic field in the recent years and causes a lot more the 'side-effects' in the research labs.

Because of it, the grant applications have got tougher and more compatative every year.  The whole process of getting your research project funded and started has gotten complicated and very political because of the money issue.  Some departments and institutions even face out scientists who can not bring money in on time.  The research faculties are give a certain time frame to bring in certain amount of money.  If they fail, game over.

I often feel disgusted by how people (some scientists) treating each other in the field.  What's worse is that some of them have really learned how to bluff to survive.

Makes me ssssooooo glad I got out of all of that.......

[Ace]

Originally posted by Wild Fragaria
Fund cut happen more 'severely' in the academic field in the recent years and causes a lot more the 'side-effects' in the research labs.

Because of it, the grant applications have got tougher and more compatative every year.  The whole process of getting your research project funded and started has gotten complicated and very political because of the money issue.  Some departments and institutions even face out scientists who can not bring money in on time.  The research faculties are give a certain time frame to bring in certain amount of money.  If they fail, game over.

I often feel disgusted by how people (some scientists) treating each other in the field.  What's worse is that some of them have really learned how to bluff to survive.

The campus I'm at primarily focuses in on research. Believe me on the horror stories I've been hearing and witnessing.

A) Vague Laws- NAGPRA for example is a great idea to prevent grave robbing, but a vague law that means any pre-Colombus body (yes even a Viking) is called a 'Native American.' It doesn't matter if the body doesn't link to any current populations, or if it's evidence of populations before the current Native Americans. This is a case where a well intentioned "liberal" law screws with good science. Don't even get me started though on the reactionary crap being banned by the current administration. (not allowing a nucleus to be transferred into a donor cell because the mother's egg organelles are damaged out of the fear that 'two mothers' [which is a silly notion since only one woman is carrying the child and will wind up raising it, the other was simply an egg donor] will destroy society despite the fact that the nucleus carries all inheritable traits, after a single cell division the differences won't matter save different mitochondria, etc.)

B) Grants- In order to have research conducted, you wind up having to find corporate or state sponsors who see value not in the research itself but in the 'products' from it. A prime example is the ethnobotanical work I'm involved in. The actual research, despite its importance to things such as diet (looking at the foods they ingest and comparing to the health of the physical remains does more for nutrition than any longitudinal studies we can do right now) what matters is the image recognition software being developed to sort through hearth samples can be used for 'anti-terrorism.'

C) Grants- Teachers having to take time away from classes in order to get grants for field work. Once again, pure research is shunted by sponsors instead for work that can determine how we can create marketing campaigns in India (in the case of ethnography). As opposed to say being able to record data on cultures that are being destroyed by urbanization, anthropologists are being used as market researchers.

[Osiri]

My only real comment was that patent laws are not so bad... yet.  If you have heard you should know what I am talking about.  The current system in the US is a first to invent system.  This means if I concieve of the next hydrofusion power plant that allows the entire US power grid to be run from one power plant and I work to perfect it for the next 5 years before filing my patent application that is perfectly okay.  I might notice a major flaw in my original conception and fix it and I will still be entitled to the patent.(assuming it is novel nonobvious and I'm not stupid enough to publish a complete (enabling as the USPTO would say) description of my invention more than a year before I file)

Here comes the bad news.  There is currently a bill to move us to a first to file system.  This would mean that if in the above scenario I am working hard to perfect the invention and someone else comes along after I have been working on it for 3 years and files a patent application that may not be as good (it might even be halfbaked) if that application discloses my invention, the newbie will get the patent and I get left with nothing.  Now notice, his idea could be at a level I was at 3 years ago.  I am 3 years more advanced and even if I have nonobvious improvements over his patent, I am likely to have to get his permission(by license with a hefty fee I'm sure) to produce whatever I now have.  

Now who is truly disadvantaged?  You guessed it.  The small inventors are shoved even more out of the way.  Why you may ask.  Even now they have less funds and less man power and that makes it harder to be the first inventor right.  Well now if they can conceive of the idea first, they are on equal footing to perfect it for filing.  If the bill passes, they will have to compete to perfect it before a bigger corporation with 15-20 times the researchers.  Impossible...  What is thier other option?  File a crappy patent application that is likely to not protect thier idea even if the USPTO allows it to mature to patent.  

What is the bills justification?  Major corporations(why don't we just hand them the power) are complaining that since the rest of the world is a first to file system they are disadvantaged in the rest of the world.  The honest truth is that they are simply trying to gain even more ability to steal other peoples ideas.  I mean thats all fair game right.  The only upside to the whole mess is that patents are in place so that knowledge will be distributed to the public and a first to file system will help that right?  The reason I would say Bull:censored: :censored: :censored: :censored:  to this is that once a application is filed you cannot add new ideas or material (called new matter).  So if in thier rush on the office to file they forget something, don't see a improvement or change, or simply don't write it well they are !!!! f***ed out of luck.

The end result?  We will see the crappy shoddy patent applications that the whole first to invent system was there to prevent.  Further the whole idea of rewarding ingenuity will be out the window.  We will be rewarding whoever can run to the Patent and Trademark office first.  

Does anyone disagree with me?  

Oh and plus from my POV it will suck because I just learned all the rules of the first to invent system and now I will have to learn all the rules of the new first to file system.  But trust me if I thought first to file was a good thing I would not care.  I just don't think that we should forget that the patent is a tradeoff.  Inventors disclose thier conceptions to the public and we give them the exclusive rights to it for between one and two decades.  Not very long on a historical scale.  

Oh I just realized how dumb I am being.  Even under the current system a hydrofusion power plant would likely be subject to a secrecy order in which case you simply have to wait for the government(corporations) to use your idea before they basically tell you that your idea has been stolen whoops taken by the people and you are not getting your patent.  Or something to that effect.  


Anyhow now I'm bored.

[aldo_14]

I'm more concerned at the recent tendency (wll, not so much recent as more publicised recently) to patent prior art.  Like Microsoft with the 'IS-NOT' operator, for example.

[Osiri]

You have less to worry about there than you think.  A patent is meaningless until a court enforces it.  If it is truly a patent of prior art and not a nonobvious advancement of the old IS-NOT operator, then it is truly a waste of Microsofts money because all they have done is spend tons of money on toilet paper.  Courts invalidate patents constantly.  It's just what they do.  

Microsoft will not be able to enforce that patent.   The patent and trademark office allows far too many patents that are prior art.  If they never did there would be no need of a court to be involved.

Now don't misunderstand me.  I no more think the system is perfect than you but still.  If I were a software/hardware company faced by a infringement suit by Microsoft over the use of the IS-NOT operator in general I would simply laugh in thier face and take thier patent and wipe my BLEAP with it.  

Actually there is a way to file for ex parte reexamination which I am extremely surprised no one has.  Could you post a link to something regarding this decsion.  I would be very interested in it.

[aldo_14]

The problem is, how many small businesses can even afford to fight a court battle over it?  One of the greatest dangers to the likes of MS is the small, flexible organisation that can rapidly innovate and take up market niche space; the threat of legal action would, I imagine, be very effective in coercing companies to 'co-operate'.

And perhaps more importantly, it's a very good way to target Open Source.

This is a very good example of the general idea; http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/11/_redhat_microsoft_patents/

(I can't find the link for IS-NOT justnow)

[Osiri]

You're right.  Small companies cannot afford to fight those huge legal battles.  But they can file ex parte reexamination requests.  The jist of one of those is for a small fee you can submit your own prior art publications(in the case of an IS-NOT patent, a simple textbook from 1990s or  before would more than suffice) and the patent office will have a new examiner completely reexamine the patent.  These are fast-tracked to avoid the whole infringement problem.  If you submit the correct prior art that speaks directly to the claims, there will be no choice for the patent office but to either reject the patent or narrow it to a point where it cannot protect anything about the invention.  

Now open source on the other hand, open source is in a bit of a bind.  If I patent a new novel nonobvious IS-NOT operation, the open source is not allowed  to use it anymore than a commercial company.  Patents not only protect the commercial sale of an invention but the right to use, distribute, or even make it for your own use.  

After reading the article, I agree that it has much truth.  The problem is that it is not the patent office's fault.  The patent office mostly runs prior art checks off of prior patents and patent applications.  The problem is computer software has not been patented for that long.  There is not a rich background of software patents for the office to look at.  Many of the examiners are far from experts in computer science.  The end result is that the office does not catch a prior art publication(magazines, textbooks, learned treatises, etc) and allows a patent on something completely known in the art.  

The solution... Any patent that Microsoft secures should immediately be looked into by the entire open source community.  If the Linux community thinks Microsoft is doing this wrongfully it should band together.  Once you find a pertinent piece of prior art you only have to submit it and the patent office will have to reexamine the Microsoft Patent.  Then, if everything works out, Microsoft has to pay out the BLEAP on appeals and other things.  

The problem is not the system.  It is that the PTO may be a little lazy.  A public outcry might help with that.  BUT Wonderful Mr. Bush will probably just do nothing for science as usual.  God who the BLEAP actually voted for that BLEAP BLEAP BLEAP BLEAP BLEAP moron.  Could we please have a candidate that can count to 10 without using his fingers.  Maybe one who can run a foreign relations department.  

I hope people someday realize that the president is supposed to mostly stay out of affairs like social legislation and the like.  His is supposed to be our one voice to the world.  The one who brings peace, understanding, and good trade relations.  Not the one voice telling the world it can kiss our collective asses.   He is supposed to facilitate the making of treaties not the blatant violation of them.  

The rest of the world does not hate us for our success.  It hates us because of our bigotry, arrogance, and our stupidity.  Where does it get that impression of us.  Ladies and Gentlemen, the president of the United States George Jr.

He is like Bush 2.0 except made by Microsoft.  He is gauranteed to have bugs.  They need almost daily updates on him to keep him from pushing the little red button.  Last week Cheaney was cheering him on as the Secret Service was desparately trying to keep him from pushing it while they updated his software.  We are not safe folks.

[aldo_14]

If the PTO is not properly assessing or validating software patents, of course it is at fault.  The system, after all, does not just constitute the methods of evaluating patent applications, but both the methods and their implementation.

[Osiri]

No you misunderstand.  It is not really a lazy examiner at fault.

It is because they are overworked and do not have the time resources or even access to all of the different sources they would need to correctly run a prior art search on software.  

They search everything they have.  They compare it to everything they have.  Even if an examiner is completely sure that a IS-NOT operator existed previously they will not be able to cite that art because it is not in front of them.  The examiners can only use thier own knowledge in the most extreme of circumstances where something is a perfectly known part of the art.  (in reality I would say a IS-NOT operator is extreme but who can say that every examiner is brilliant)  The other benefit of reexamination is that a completely new patent examiner will examine the patent.

The PTO is properly assessing the patent applications exactly like it does the other applications.  The problem as I said was that there is not a wealth of prior art for them to look at.  It might be out there on a University Computer Science Department Thesis library but the PTO may not have access to that.  

Do you understand what I mean?  The "inventor" may know they are trying to get a broader patent than they deserve but they certainly are not going to tell the PTO if they can help it.  They have a duty to disclose but underhanded practitioners are not going to disclose unless they are relatively sure they cannot get away with nondisclosure.

I had post this long message for president Bush but it got lost and now I am too tired to write it.  

Bush needs to tell his commissioner to get off his ass and pay out the money to have the resources of the patent office Software technology group updated or added to.  

Bush won't because the corporations don't want that.  

Bush is not the patriot he acts like.  He has no clue of what a patriot is.  A patriot does not trample on the Constitution he swore to uphold.  

The patriots of our history fought hard for our freedom that he is taking away from us.  The founders, from the Constitutional Congress to the leaders of the Civil War, to the Heros of the Civil Rights Movement would roll over in thier graves if they knew he was compromising our privacy, detaining people without a trial in prisons not fit for a sewer rat, and trying to amend our constitution on a whim.

Of course you all elected him on his wonderful platform of stripping gays of a right to marry that effects no one but the gays, banning stem cell research that could cure enumerable diseases and save innumerable lives because it supports abortion, and fighting the bad terrorists by taking away the freedoms that you completely take for granted.  (this only applies to morons who voted for Bush)  By the way, how many of you realize that Cheaney's own daughter is a lesbian.  

You will never see the errors of your ways until you try to exercise some freedom that you don't even realize your messiah has taken away and get thrown in jail or fined.  

Junior is so busy instating his religion and shoving it down our throats that he is neglecting foreign affairs.  Does anyone else understand that the president is not supposed to base his administration on social legislation.  He is supposed to be our collective voice.  He is supposed to promote peace, goodwill and even better trade relations.  Instead he is too busy telling the rest of the world to kiss our collectivve asses.

The rest of the world does not hate us because of our riches and our success.  It hates us because of our bigotry, arrogance, and stupidity.  Where do they get that impression.  Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the President of the United States Junior.  We are becoming the most backward society on earth.  We aren't yet.  But we will be when we "elect" Junior to be our king.  We will then bow before the village idiot.  And I will never be able to write something like this.

Oh ya, and that stupid law that sets a cap on medical malpractice.  You saps actually believe that huge medical malpractice suits are the problem do you?  No, your doctor charges out of the ass for two reasons.  

1: He wants of money.
2: He also has to pay out the ass to his medical malpractice carrier.
Result:  doctors !!!! load + carriers !!!! load = More money than I will ever see.

The carriers will not lower thier rates even if the judgments are capped.  If you are under the wonderful TX law which caps it at $200,000 or so, a surgeon can pay that out of pocket without blinking.  THE POINT OF PUNATIVE DAMAGES WAS TO PUNISH NEGLIGENT DOCTORS AND IN SOME CASES BANKRUPT THEM TO PREVENT THEM FROM MAKING THE SAME MISTAKES.  The person whose family member is dead is not greedy.  The only way to get justice is to hit the doctor where it hurts.  To do that you have to exceed his insurance coverage.  That used to be in the millions.  If you don't go over that the doctor is not being punished.  We are because his insurance carrier will bill him more for coverage which he will translate to us but they will still do that anyway.  

Wow, I have issues huh.

That is my advice to the president. KISS MY ASS.

[Osiri]

Sorry, just to clarify, what I am saying about the patent office is that they are not incorrectly assessing and thier methods are not the problem.  It is thier resources and the relative youth of software patent practice.

[aldo_14]

That is still a problem with the system.  If there's not the resources to thoroughly examine patents properly, then they should stop, state that they don't have the resources, and do a smaller number of patents, more correctly.  It's not their fault if they are underfunded, but it is their fault if they don't compensate for that.  If big businesses are being denied patents (or timely patents, rather) because of resource shortages, then they'll put pressure on the funders to provide more resources (and we all know it's the big companies who de-facto control the US government, thanks to campaign funding and lobbyists).

There's a lot of patents you can find in software that only require the most basic background to notice are prior art, anyways; one's that spring to mind is the obvious IS-NOT, Oracle trying to patent steps to convert SGML to another markup, and Amazon trying to patent the basic business methods used for internet sales transactions.

[Osiri]

Okay, first, the patent office cannot simply slow down and do a smaller number of applications.  That is out of the question.  There is already like a 2 - 3 year wait from filing to getting the patent.  If they do not keep up with the influx they will be buried under a sea of applications and the whole patent system will be stuck.  Once they get to a certain backlog point there will be no point to even filing a patent becasue once someone has used a invention for a certain amount of time before a patent is granted there is a equitable argument if I have been using a invention for 5 years and it is now patented I cannot be stopped.  

That and with the way technology is moving now it is almost worthless to get a patent because by the time 2 years passes for it to mature the hardware or software it regarded is completely worthless.

The patent office must do what it is doing.  Talk to congress or the president about increasing the funding so they can hire more examiners and expand thier search technologies.  

Like I said though, those patents that are being used that are not really patentable art will be invalidated.  The courts loved smacking Microsoft around last time didn't it.  It would love the chance to do it again.  

Plus as far as software goes it may not be that most examiners are doing bad jobs as far as examining.  It is simply that the searches don't turn up the results they need to reject the applications.