This is a real problem, and some of its seriousness is a result of the decades-long history of software patenting. If it seems like people like me are over-reacting, consider why I'm coming from first, and try to see the big picture. Amazon is providing the biggest target to come along in years, and it's as good a time as any to educate the public about this abstract issue.

In fact, with a particularly strict reading of software patents, one can hardly get an education and fulfill the programming assignments given to students without tripping over a patent or three. For instance, looking at the above linked examples page, I notice that I infringed on Patent #5,175,857, in my second Computer Science class I took. ("Quicksort implemented using a linked list of pointers to the objects to be sorted.") A college sophomore did it all by his lonesome. Either I'm a genius (along with a good 5 or 6 other people in my class who did it the same way... lotsa geniuses for one class, don't ya think?), or it's not that non-obvious.

And that's the real problem; you can't write a significant program without stumbling over patents; clearly, they can't all be that non-obvious!

Since that's the way we all seem to be communicating naturally, why fight it when you can enable it?

However... I have a habit of making public announcements in the hope that I will be that much more inclined to follow through. If all goes as planned, within the next couple of weeks I should have ready something that will prototype a method of providing reverse links for us webloggers. Basically, it will automate what you see at Carpe Diem today, where he has to manually list those who pointed at his site and provide links.

Unfortunately, I'm really freakin' busy and won't be able to update this today.

Why, oh why, do the large assignments always bunch up, surrounded by periods where none of my classes have much of anything to do? (Rhetorical question, I know the answers.)

Karl Martino reports on Echelon stuff in the discussion group. Great timing, I'm too busy today to hunt that out on my own.