By the way, does anyone know how painful is it to get Mysql working for Python apps. Installing MysqlDB on Python was painfully excruciating process on Snow Leopard.
I seriously think that most of the copyright folks dont get what is information law and policy. Especially, in Europe. People still think "bits" as "atoms". I guess it will take at least a decade to bring significant change in the way they think as old guard will be leaving the post.
I love all the websites! Flashy and totally original. Anyways, its interesting to see lot of people were referring to Internet as "cyber space", which was prevalent during those days. Surprisingly, nobody refers to Internet as cyberspace now a days.
Except they do. At the moment, search results on Twitter are largely polluted with the article in question, but you can still see plenty of everyday folk using the term. News outlets still use it all the time, and it's something a regular news.yc reader should see quite often:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aycombinator.com+cybers...
Sure, the word 'cyberspace' is used everywhere these days, but I don't think it carries the same meaning it did back then. Virtual reality was "becoming" a thing of the present in 1995, and whenever the word cyberspace was used, it seemed to mean "sure, you're stuck in 2d now, but just wait a few more years and you'll be totally immersed in a 3d cyberspace." I guess I'm a little nostalgic about the old "cyberspace" :)
I remember being in junior high school and first hearing about "the information superhighway" and I was both confused and intrigued. I think it was a few years before I connected "information superhighway" and "internet" as being the same thing.
"So what do these patent trolls do that is so wrong? Apparently, the answer is that patent trolls do not manufacture the technology that is embodied by the patents that they seek to enforce. But is this really wrong? The answer to this should be a resounding ‘No’. Consider the names of some individual inventors who ultimately formed companies to exploit their ideas, yet initially manufactured nothing: Westinghouse (air brake), Ford (car), Gillette (razor), Otis (elevator), Goodyear (synthetic rubber), Kellogg (grain harvester), DuPont (gun powder), Owens (glass) and Fermi (neutronic reactor). This list represents just a few of the individuals who, in most cases, worked alone and without corporate support, yet created not just new inventions, but whole new industries that today employ millions of people."
"Apparently, the answer is that patent trolls do not manufacture the technology that is embodied by the patents that they seek to enforce."
This is a strawman. The issue isn't that patent trolls are generally NPE's. The issue is that they seek to leverage dubious and obvious patents that never should have been granted in the first place. By capitalizing on the overburdened USPTO's tendency to grant patents by default, they are retarding innovation in the industry and leeching profits off companies who are doing nothing but implementing obvious solutions to problems.
I agree with you and I feel the same! As a co-founder, I recently did risk analysis for next iteration of our product; for everything we had risk mitigation strategy in place. But for "getting sued"; we will be screwed and shut down the business (if its hundreds of thousands dollar claim)
Well, before Google started with Chrome you could say that was true, they were doing impressive things with WebKit. I am not counting commits and their weight now, so hard to tell how it is today.
