Time Running Out on Kid Email: We hear about a lot of less-then-wonderful things being done "in the name of the children!", but this one's pretty good, actually. E-mail can get a child in over their head pretty quickly; my sister recently got in over her head, and she's 18! Still, while the ideas good, the government really should stop passing laws that they don't already know how to enforce; odds are, if they can't figure out how to enforce it today, they aren't going to figure it out anytime soon.
Time Running Out on Kid Email: We hear about a lot of less-then-wonderful things being done "in the name of the children!", but this one's pretty good, actually. E-mail can get a child in over their head pretty quickly; my sister recently got in over her head, and she's 18! Still, while the ideas good, the government really should stop passing laws that they don't already know how to enforce; odds are, if they can't figure out how to enforce it today, they aren't going to figure it out anytime soon.
iCraveTV Out For The Count: "Groups representing the TV, film and sports industries have forced Canada's iCraveTV.com to permanently close its Web site, ending any possibility it will resume showing TV programs without permission, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters said." Goodbye, ICraveTV.
There will be counterexamples, of course, that's the nature of statistics. I'm wondering if there's a trend. I hope some larger weblogs pick up the survey and help people participate without seeing this analysis first.
Unfortunately, my sample is too small to say anything, and I am uncomfortable pointing out examples, as that might be percieved as an attack ('Your opinion on the Amazon patent is wrong because you are ignorant of the software industry' is a rather unpolite tack to take.). So, take that for what it's worth I supposed.
As I cruised the weblogs for the opinions of people regarding the Amazon patent, I thought I noticed a correlation between the person being in the computer field in a more-or-less professional manner, and thinking the Amazon patent is bad. It seemed to me that those who worked in the computer industry were likely to think the patent is wrong (and the more they worked, the stronger the dislike), while those who worked in other industries tended to think there was nothing wrong with it.
Please participate in the survey before reading this, because I don't what to skew the results.
If you're reading this, please participate in this survey; I'd like to write about it later today, if the results come out the way I think they will from wandering around the weblogs.
The software domain is small... how many e-commerce implentations are there that won't infringe on parts of the Amazon patent, even if they aren't "one-click"? Answer: Quite possibly none. If there are some, it's pure luck. As I mention below, you can't hardly avoid infringing on patents as an underclassman in a computer science program! I don't think that's a problem in very many industries that are being used for comparision.
On Deciding... Better has a comparision of software patents to his domain, pharmaceuticals. While the comparision is instructive, I would point out that the are what, billions? trillions? of possible molecules that might be useful for treatment? Finding one is an arduous task, because the domain is gargantuan.
I'll put this up top where you might actually read it. The fundamental reason I object to the Amazon patent is the domain of software techniques is vanishingly small compared to almost anything else. The number of possible programs is large, but these aren't patents on a program, they are patents on ideas, and there are not a lot of those, and few of those are non-obvious.