Yesterday, we were treated to another preliminary injunction on a product due to patent trolling. Over the past few years, some companies have resorted to patent trolling instead of competing on merit, using frivolous and obvious software and design patents to block competitors - even though this obviously shouldn't be legal. The fact that this is, in fact, legal, is baffling, and up until a few months ago, a regular topic here on OSNews. At some point - I stopped reporting on the matter. The reason for this is simple: I realised that intellectual property law exists outside of regular democratic processes and is, in fact, wholly and utterly totalitarian. What's the point in reporting on something we can't change via legal means?
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Member since:2005-06-29
We can have a normal discussion the moment you stop putting all sorts of nonsensical words in my mouth that I have never said or alluded to. Tony, your perpetual weakness is coming up with verbose nonsense and thinking up things I never said without actually addressing anything said in the articles in question.
Nothing in your comment can be traced back to the article (New World Order? Negativity about the WTO? Completely ignoring the detailed explanation of why I use the term totalitarian in favour of your own simplistic bullshit?), and until you actually address the points raised, there's no point in replying.
Take your nonsense about my opinion on Android, for instance. Have you actually ever read anything I have written about Android or Apple products? You clearly have a very, very severe case of cognitive dissonance that you are trying to solve by amazing counts of selective perception, only remembering my negative comments about Apple and my positive ones about Android - completely blocking out the two opposites.
It's fascinating and disturbing at the same time.
Edited 2012-07-01 15:32 UTC
Member since:2009-08-22
Member since:2005-07-06
You're delusional, as usual, living in your small perception bubble. Apart from what Thom pointed out ...increased trade, how it enabled cities, is what brought also immense suffering, worked also to shorten life expectancy, by enabling spread of diseases.
Black Death (for just one example) wiped out half of Europe.
Read just the first section of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_trypanosomiasis#History (oh yeah, for a long time it was often slave trade ...which didn't really disappear). Similar with HIV pandemic.
Trade also wiped out many civilisations (by disease or otherwise)
Generally, it enables increase of number of people, but the proportion of them that's out of poverty seems to be not changing much at best - you need few essentially slaves for your comfy life (for example
http://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-haiti-minimum-wage-the-nat... ).
Also, trade is what brought this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Human_welfare_and_ecological_foot... insanity, what makes it possible... already causing what will be one of the most rapid extinction events in geological record, most of megafauna gone by the end of this century (you think we aren't part of global ecosystem, it won't impact us? And it would be really "funny" if in a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medea_hypothesis way)
It's entirely possible that no single human activity is responsible for more human deaths than trade. Please, please develop a sense of perspective.
Edited 2012-07-07 23:42 UTC
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"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance."According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.
Member since:
2009-08-22
There is a general tendency in web discourse such has these forums to debase language. Commercial decisions about how to design a product or deliver a service to customers is 'evil'. The way companies design their products is compared to the Nazis. And no we have the debasement of the term 'totalitarian'.
Leaving aside the New World Order paranoia about the system of international trade (remember that increased international trade has freed more people from poverty, increased life expectancy, and opened up free discourse more than anything else) we now have a system described as 'totalitarian simply because Company A (who has based much of it's phone/tablet related product line on copying Company B) has been sued successfully by Company B.
Please, please develop a sense of perspective. I know you really think Android is (absurdly) somehow more free or more ethical or just plain morally superior to Apple's iOS but this sort hyperbole just demeans the language and renders rational discussion almost impossible.
Leaving aside whether Samsung have or have not copied Apple do you think that in general companies should be free to lavishly copy other companies products with no restraint? I tend to think that such radical free market ideology leads to all sorts of dubious places and that we should accept that there has to be a limit to the copying of products. Where those limits should be is a tricky question worthy of debate, but such a debate is not helped by absurd exaggeration and where terms like 'totalitarian' or 'evil' are casually thrown around.