Hardware Hacker Proposes Patent and Education Reform To Obama 134
ptorrone writes "In a welcome turn of events, President Barack Obama spoke directly to the patent troll problem and the need for more comprehensive patent reform yesterday in a 'Fireside Hangout' — a live question and answer session (video) hosted in a Google+ hangout. The President was responding to a question by the prominent electrical engineer and entrepreneur Limor 'Ladyada' Fried of Adafruit Industries, who in 2009 won an EFF Pioneer Award for her work with free software and open-source hardware."
Obama talks a lot but never delivers (Score:3, Insightful)
This is exactly the same thing he promised in 2008 .... and NEVER delivered. He didn't even discuss it for 4 years.
Re:and he proposed what... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, he's basically just Bush plus gay rights minus gun rights. Same economic and military policies, just a few changes in "culture war wedge issues" to give the illusion of choice in the elections.
Re:Blablabla (Score:4, Insightful)
That, to be clear, is because (like the last Obama-Google+ copout that I remember hearing of (and seeing, in that case) [huffingtonpost.com]) this is a mutual promotional vehicle for the President and Google's social network.
If it were an actual exercise in journalism or even executive-branch outreach, there'd be more tough questions from the people, more focused answers from POTUS, and less "Look at us, we're YouTube and this is a Google+ hangout! GOOGLE PLUS!!!"-ness. It's grand puffery all around, even by propaganda standards.
Perhaps that was the only way Obama and Larry Page would let YouTube get the former to say anything, but I suspect that I didn't miss much when I missed this.
"Trolls" Are Misdirection (Score:5, Insightful)
[Obama] describes patent trolls as "a classic example," of the problem, and that "they don't actually produce anything themselves."
Whether a bad patent is wielded by a producer or a holding company does not change the fact that it should never have been granted. If we kill the trolls, we will still be left with the runaway, wasteful patent litigation over bad patents by companies that do produce things.
The problem is not production. The "patent troll" hobgoblin is misdirecting the patent backlash that should be directed at a patent system that is too powerful. We are getting bad patents because we grant them too easily and give too much enforcement power to those who hold them. That is every bit as true of the mobile patent wars between producers as with the network service patent wars of the trolls.
The "patent troll" misdirection is harming our ability to fix the actual problem.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So much for the guns (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey look, you live in the right country for you, have the right president for you, and you have the right issues for you. Oh wait, I mean problems. You have the right problems for you. Glad you're happy with your problems.
However, as an outsider, I'll let you in on a little secret. With all of the wars, and all of the droughts, and all of the torture, December's shootings remain the most embarassing thing on the planet at this time.
You're losing what little respect the rest of the world has for you. And this after mortgage problems how long ago?
I'm looking at your last 13 years. I see terrorism, huge financial issues, loss of privacy, loss of civil rights, enormous expenses, loss of jobs, budget cuts to major exploration, mass shootings, recessions, pollution, miscounts, immigration issues, and mass corporate fraud. Oh yeah, and low-quality education. And also a lousy patent system.
I don't know what to tell you. I put the patent system at the end.
Re:Obama talks a lot but never delivers (Score:4, Insightful)
3 AC comments in a row saying basically the same thing.. I suggest /. to display the (large) area from where come the AC comments based on IP ...
I'm in Canuckistan (the Western part, but not too West). I saw nothing wrong with what they wrote. Obama's always talked a great game, but they're always platitudes. He's never shown the least lick of intention of actually carrying through on stuff that he says.
I'm sure he does have a personal agenda, but you'll never learn what it is just by listening to him.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So much for the guns (Score:5, Insightful)
More children choke to death each day than have ever died in all school shootings, combined.
Seriously.
And better, there is NOTHING to you could do to stop an activity like a school shooter. NOTHING. No law, no amount of money, no defense you can erect around the school. If a guy is determined, he will succeed.
Meanwhile, you'll drop $40000000000 per school and still fail. You'd save more kids by banning hotdogs.
Re:and he proposed what... (Score:3, Insightful)
But guns, along with cars, Clorox and kitchen implements are dangerous and there are a lot of people out there who should not be entrusted to anything more deadly than a straw.
See, this is my problem with this whole argument. We're arguing about how we can best prevent assholes and idiots from doing shitty or stupid things. Why aren't we even talking about how we can best make more assholes into people who give a fuck, and more idiots into people who think occasionally? Instead of finding new ways to prevent citizens from themselves, let's make citizens better people. Not by some bullshit subjective measurement either; let's just give them more facts and more tools (logical ones) so that they can make better decisions on their own.
Oh shit, we can't have that, they might refuse to run the maze...
Re:Obama talks a lot but never delivers (Score:3, Insightful)
oh you naive child. Nothing has been reformed in healthcare. NOTHING has been reformed in healthcare. what has changed is that now people with children still can't afford healthcare, but the insurance companies are going to go from filthy rich to filthy richer with their state enforced kleptocracy.