Never going to happen; too much investment. Not without something resetting the whole patent system all at once.
And hey, I’m not actually opposed to all patents. H.265 - if you put tens of millions into compression research, or hundreds of millions into database scaling research at PlanetScale, a temporary exclusivity period makes sense.
95% of software patents don’t reach that level.
I think some of the bad rap also comes from technology advancement. Amazon’s 1-click Checkout patent is notorious; but nobody talks about how much of an accomplishment that technology was in 1997. It actually was very impressive when that patent was granted, particularly in getting the credit card networks to agree to the security design.
Because of the nature of software patents the investment is worthless anyway.
One of the biggest problems with software patents is that they're unreasonably broad or ambiguous and then the claims read on arbitrary software the authors of which have never even heard of the patent.
Another is that companies purposely patent interfaces that are needed for compatibility, and then the patent isn't needed because it's so great, it's needed to interoperate with existing systems and thereby offers no ability for competitors to design a better alternative because better is different is incompatible. You have to license H.264 even if you build something better yourself -- or you've already licensed H.265 -- because you still have to be able to interact with media and clients that use H.264.
Then as between large companies, they all need each others' patents and just end up cross licensing everything. All the effort is for nothing because it just cancels out.
As between large companies and small companies, the large companies can sue the small one, but the small company probably doesn't have any money anyway and the suit makes the large company look like a bully and creates PR losses that likely outweigh any benefit from filing the suit. The small companies, on the other hand, can't sue the large ones because the large company would just file counterclaims and (at best) force the same cross-licensing that exists between large companies. So that's worthless.
Which leaves the only entities that really like software patents: Patent trolls. Eliminating them is a major economic benefit of eliminating software patents.
> Then as between large companies, they all need each others' patents and just end up cross licensing everything. All the effort is for nothing because it just cancels out.
As you explain in the next paragraph, that creates a moat the protects the large companies from the small ones.
They compete against each other but they also collectively defend their own kind.
You're describing another major benefit of eliminating software patents.
Even large companies don't actually benefit from that because their suppliers and companies in complementary markets do the same thing, and you lose any time any of those companies can maintain a moat with which to extract rents out of your own market.
These are deadweight economic losses. They hurt everybody to benefit the company doing them, but even that company is suffering a net loss because of all the companies doing it back to them. Yet they still do it because it's a tragedy of the commons, unless you remove the mechanism that enables it, i.e. software patents.
H.265 is a great example of software patents going wrong. As it was the first MPEG video standard created after the rise of widespread commercial video streaming, all the patent owners involved wanted to be able to get as much money as possible from the streaming companies. Because of this, we went from the relatively reasonable H.264 licensing terms (pay one patent pool a per-device licensing fee, capped at a total royalty payment of $14 million) to H.265 being covered by three separate patent pools. Between all of them you have to pay royalties on decoding hardware, software, and per-item encoded, and some of the pools don't have caps on royalties. Additionally, some major patent holders aren't in any pools and you have to work out deals with them individually. Here's a summary of the H.265 licensing situation: https://www.slashcam.de/images/news/HEVC-Patent-Pools-14134_...
The result is that H.265 hasn't gotten much commercial adoption (the one major use is 4K Blu-Ray). Instead, most major streaming and tech companies have been pushing AV1, which doesn't have licensing fees and takes a "mutually assured destruction" approach to patent enforcement (the AV1 patent license states that if any patent holder tries to sue an AV1 user for patent infringement, they automatically lose the rights to all AV1 patents, opening them up to a countersuit).
In an ideal world, all intellectual property would become public domain after 10-15 years, including all research, schematics, wire diagrams, source code, marketing materials, etc. When you go to the various offices to get your IP recognized you must also submit various materials and continue to do so for the life of your property rights.
Again though, in an ideal world. In reality any major changes to something like copyright would probably get you killed even faster than judges who are hard on drugs. The most that we, the people, can do until there’s some amount of backbone in our various countries is to remove ourselves from the primary market wherever we can. For instance, I have been on a successful Nintendo boycott for the last 8 years, and it’s been even longer for Disney. I buy anything I want secondhand or pirate it directly, I don’t pay into SaaS but use alternatives, and I feel a lot happier being ungovernable in this way.
Patents already require that all information be available, for someone similarly invested in the craft, to be able to completely reproduce the invention.
That doesn’t require an implementation - but that mirrors our regular patent office, which does not require physical functioning prototypes to demonstrate.
Have you filed or read any software patents? Many are so vague that they do not embody any significant "idea" or contribution, and are mostly just a hindrance to actual innovation. And some are just plain stupid, like the patent to average two integers without overflow.
Like the parent said, a compromise could be "source or GTFO". But even that seems of questionable value.
The shit show gets to the point where many companies file patents defensively. They'll file a patent just in case their competition does it first, even if they have nothing to show for it. And this naturally affects smaller companies disproportionately because they do not have the funds to pay lawyers (there is a hilarious interview on Youtube of a small startup CEO that explains how his company spends more on lawyers than engineers.)
So tl;dr, we'd probably be better off without software patents altogether.
A wiki specifically on the topic written by non-lawyers is interesting; but I don’t see why it should be considered an unbiased list of ideas. Sometimes the status quo is imperfect but okay.
Why did you specify “non-lawyers”? Did you mean to imply that something written by lawyers would be unbiased? And where did I ever claim that this was unbiased? It’s the “End Software Patents Wiki”; it’s about as biased as it gets. But I thought you wanted arguments, so I linked it. If you want to dismiss them without reading them, that’s up to you.
I don't understand what people mean when they say things like CSS has gotten more complex. It's not like anyone is realistically expected to commit the entire spec to memory.
Documentation is plentiful when a person needs to use an unfamiliar feature, so it's not like it is even necessary to keep everything you use at the top of your mind. And just like anything else, if you use is often, you'll naturally learn it.
Plus, things like flex and grid have made having to remember a ton of old hacks unnecessary, so it has actually gotten markedly easier to use.
I wasn’t really expecting this to be people’s first exposer to the drama. Should have added the backstory, but yeah there is a whole drama revolving around the WPConf.
It's not just urban areas. It is a scourge that plagues literally every corner of the world. There is nowhere in the city, the suburbs, small towns, or the middle of nowhere where you aren't subject to industrial levels of noise pollution generated by motor vehicles that have been intentionally and illegally modified to make as much noise as possible.
It used to just be motorcycles and sports cars. But it's now the most basic pickup trucks, family sedans, SUVs, and anything else that explodes fuel to move.
The total and complete lack of enforcement of existing noise pollution laws is the number one cause of the spread of this.
I had this problem – near 24/7 noise – but moved 20 miles west to a suburb that has speed bumps and significantly less through traffic. The average dBs outside went from ~65 to ~45. Maybe in the US, at least, the issue is that the quiet urban/suburban places are much more expensive than the loud places and so are relatively inaccessible?
Though, now that I think about it, the depths of New York City will be both very expensive and very loud.
I live in a place that was very similar to what you describe. In the last couple years it's become as bad as where I moved from some days.
A lot of it is the surrounding areas have been surrendered to the noise makers and residents in my town are friends with them and they come and go as they please at all hours, unhindered by law enforcement.
But dismayingly, more of the residents are getting louder themselves for whatever reason. The worst part is they by and large follow the speed limit but are still insanely loud so the police just look at it like I'm just annoyed and need to get over it.
It's truly the easiest thing to catch. I can't fathom why there's so little interest at any level of government to tackle this problem.
The first moves are being made on this. A couple of cities have just started trialing noise detection systems for loud vehicles. I’d like to see this rolled out more, especially in cities where a single asshole on a motorbike can disturb tens of thousands of people in minutes.
Not for complete but for beginners lightly familiar with programming it is overall not difficult to teach the basics, often easier than to stubborn seniors who want to do it their way only :)
var start = "commtext c00\">";
var end = "</div>";
using var http = new HttpClient();
var page = await http.GetStringAsync("https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41425416");
var commStart = page.IndexOf(start) + start.Length;
var commEnd = page.IndexOf(end, commStart);
Console.WriteLine(page[commStart..commEnd]);
OK, I'll need to see a source on increased pollution. I really doubt that a motorcycle is putting out more pollution than an average American-size vehicle. For example, my sport bike gets 59MPG, and I've owned multiple bikes that got >100mpg. Even without a catalytic converter, how is that more pollution than a single commuter driving in a truck or SUV getting 20MPG and likely shedding more road and tire particulate due to the increased weight.
Edit: although the noise thing is valid, I'm perpetually annoyed with the "loud pipes save lives" crowd, that's obnoxious.
Does that include motorcycles that have illegal aftermarket exhaust systems with all emission controls removed in an effort to make them as loud as possible? This accounts for about 80% of them, so it's irrelevant how they function by design.
They might have to be that way to buy them new from the factory.
But the moment it belongs to you and even before you leave the lot, you can have illegal aftermarket exhaust systems installed that not one governing body in the United States, nor most of the rest of the world, will come close to enforcing any noise or emissions laws against.
I had a 13900K blue screen at random for almost a year. Anything that used more than a certain amount of cores would either crash or blue screen, which was irritating considering I built the machine in part so I could do simulations and renders in Blender. I was also unable to use dual channel RAM. It just wouldn't POST no matter what settings I used.
I went through 3 motherboards hoping it was that, and not the insanely expensive CPU that would be a pain to RMA. But as it turns out, the RMA process was very quick and painless once I provided my troubleshooting history. But due to it being my main computer that I make my money with, I had to buy another processor to fill the 2 week gap between sending the old one and receiving the new one.
I probably spend $1500 or more on this problem, and by the sounds of it, my troubles might not be over.
Similar story here. 13700KF, no OC, had the machine put together 18 months ago at a respectable shop (Central Computers for those in the bay). I had regular stability issues and blue screens to the point I took it back to the shop after three months - they couldn't find anything wrong. Took it in again at nine months with increasing frustration - nothing. Probably should have taken it again three months ago when I was playing the new Helldivers and that would crash the machine every other time I joined a game, but by that point I was pretty exhausted by the whole thing (and the game had other, unrelated bugs that had me looking elsewhere).
Odds are good I won't be bothering with Intel hardware or recommending it to others for the next decade or more - this has been a flatly terrible experience (and I'll note the irony of finally deciding to spend on a "dream build" and this being the result).
Exact same story here, spent 4-5k on my build with a 13700k which has blue screened hundreds of times in video games (R6, Hogwarts Legacy, Cyberpunk) over the last year (to the point that I don't even play competitive tournaments now).
I did all sorts, switching from Windows 11 to 10, buying new memory (twice!!), countless days debugging, updating my bios, etc.
I'm relieved to finally have found the cause, but my goodwill for intel is burnt.
Do you know what the general fix is, is it just a BIOS update?
I have the same chip but have never had issues, but I also noticed it's thermal properties were a bit of a mess when I ran some benchmarks after putting the build together, so I slightly undervolted it in BIOS. Performance wise I never noticed any difference but it stays nice and cool.
Not that this excuses anything, or is even a real fix for the issue , who knows. I wish I'd gotten a thread ripper instead and will be getting an AMD when I build a new system again.
I began to suspect that it was the processor after I started doing Blender renders and either Blender would crash 100% of the time or I would get a BSoD, which I though was basically impossible on modern computers. The real sign was that dual channel RAM didn't work, but I refused to believe it was the processor. It was so expensive, I didn't want to entertain the idea that I would have to buy another.
A "solution" I had was to lower the amount of cores Blender could use to 12, instead of all of them, which was annoying, and that still only lowered the number of crashes, not stopped them. These crashes were bad too, in that they corrupted project files almost every time.
I basically did everything possible, with little success. All it did was make my computer slow to a crawl and still crash at random.
I don't know what I'm going to do next computer. AMD is seemingly having similar problems, so it's not like I can realistically switch with any confidence. I go close to 10 years between upgrades, so hopefully the landscape will look better then.
Unless you explicitly set your clock speed/voltage, it's overclocking, I can almost guarantee it. There has been extreme carelessness from MOBO manufacturers on top of Intel's problems.
Whenever I see a post like this, I wonder why the poster didn't just return the non-working part to the vendor they bought it from. This might be my US bias, but very few vendors put it on the customer to prove a certain level of testing and diagnostic activities; if the customer says it didn't work, the customer gets their money back. If you're not sure if it's the motherboard or the CPU or... return it all, and try again. No?
I may have been able to return it to Newegg, but return shipping is hit or miss as to whether you have to pay for it and I was honestly so frustrated with the whole fiasco that I just wanted to go directly to the source for a replacement that I knew(??) would work. Getting a replacement from Newegg might have just been another from the same lot.
As for having to prove I did ample troubleshooting, the last thing I wanted was to mail it in and have it returned because they couldn't find anything wrong with it, which has happened to me with other things in the past.
