I have absolutely nothing to say in support of executive pay rises. It's the closest thing I can think of to legalised theft, to give oneself a payrise of 70% and then turn to the employees and say "Sorry, we can't afford 3%".
And so, in conclusion, who are we to say these executives do not deserve exorbitant pay rises?
Friday, October 28, 2011
Saturday, October 15, 2011
The ninety nine percenters
A protest group has been gathering steam in recent weeks. First in New York, and now in other global financial centres from London to Sydney, Taipei to Johannesburg, the ninety nine per centers have been running a campaign to occupy Wall Street. So what's this all about?
Money. Or the lack of it. Particularly in the United States, there are increasing numbers of working poor, who find that their living standards are continually being driven down. They turn on their television sets to hear that the corporate rich are receiving 20% returns on investment and 50% increases in pay packets, and wonder what’s gone wrong with capitalism.
Unfortunately, the truth is that nothing has gone wrong with capitalism. It’s working as intended. But capitalism in its purest form, as economists seem to want and as the richest parts of society love, is dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest capitalism. It’s about winners and losers, and there will always be more losers than there can be winners.
Western society needs to stop, take a deep breath, and consider its goals and ambitions. Do we want a society divided utterly between masters and chattel, where the ninety nine per cent barely scrape by while the one per cent are lords of all they survey? Or do we think that all people should be valued for their contributions, and act accordingly?
The situation is not the same throughout the capitalist world. The United States is a paragon of pure capitalism, and its ninety nine percent suffer accordingly. Russia is similar. But few countries seem to be immune from the taint of unbridled capitalism, as even China comes to the party.
To change, and look towards a more equal world that recognises all contributions, requires government will. It requires governments, and more precisely politicians, to be prepared to go against their financial backers to re-establish some ground rules. It requires tax rates that are fair and progressive, increasing based on the ability to pay and without the myriad loopholes that exist in modern tax regimes. Change needs rates of pay for company board members and chief executives to be tied to the rates of pay of their staff. If a chief executive receives a 50% raise, then so should the person pushing levers on the factory floor. Most importantly, change requires guts.
But if nothing is done, then there may come a day that the ninety nine percent turn to violence. That would be a sad day.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Patently crazy - how patents are failing consumers
Please note that this article uses general terms and definitions in areas, and should not be relied upon for specific advice regarding patents.
These are a few suggestions, there are many things that can be done to improve our system of patents. I encourage reader comment, and you should consider contacting your local political representative to present further thoughts on patent law reform.
Introduction
How do you protect inventors from the shameless copying of their ideas? It’s a problem that’s been with society for centuries, and has increased in scope as technology has made that copying easier.
To encourage creativity, society has developed two solutions that work in parallel. Copyrights are designed to protect the creator of an original work. The author of a book holds copyright in that book, and can assign their copyright to someone (a publisher, a movie maker). Generally, one doesn’t need to register that right, it is automatically given. If you want to republish this blog, you need to ask me as the copyright holder. I should also note that I intend to publish a separate article addressing how copyright operates in the modern world.
The other method of protecting creativity is the patent, and it operates slightly differently to copyright. Patents aim to protect inventors, by granting them exclusive use of their invention for a specified period. From Wikipedia, “The term patent usually refers to an exclusive right granted to anyone who invents any new, useful, and non-obvious process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, and claims that right in a formal patent application[1]”. A patent must be applied for, and generally proof must be supplied regarding the originality of the invention. In some cases, where effectively the same item has been invented simultaneously, it is necessary to show priority – who got there first.
The history of invention and of patents
People have been inventing for millennia, and for the majority of that history the only benefit to inventing was being the first to market. As soon as one person invented a telescope and published the details of how to make it, anyone could go ahead with it.
This gradually changed, as inventors sought the advantages association with invention and as problems were put to inventors to solve. So for instance, governments sponsored the development of a required technology by issuing an exclusive licence to the creator. These exclusive rights were offered along-side, or alternatively to, prizes for specific inventions.
Eventually patent offices were formed to review, record and manage applications for patents. The breadth of patents was expanded to include processes (or methods), detailing how to achieve an end. Patents can also be developed that rely on other patented objects or processes. In the world of modern technological innovation, one product may involve dozens of patented inventions, with the associated need to obtain permission (licence) from the patent-holder to use their patented invention. This licence is often subject to the payment of royalties, or a bulk amount.
Current patent law provides for an inventor to benefit from his, her or its invention for a period of time (20 years in Australia and the United States).
Very importantly, you don’t need to present a working model of your patent to obtain protection.
You can’t patent ideas, you can patent processes
Okay, this is where patent law gets a bit weird and complicated, and I’m relying in part on an article in IP Watchdog[2] for the information I present here. You can’t protect your own ideas with patent law. You can protect them to a limited extent with copyright law, which stops others from reprinting what you’ve written. Copyright law doesn’t stop anyone applying your ideas, though.
What you can patent is a process. So for instance, you can patent the idea that someone could shop on the web via a process of looking at items, clicking to put them in a “basket”, going to a “checkout” etc. Once that process has been documented in detail, you can apply for a patent for an original process (actually – sorry, it’s already been done so it’s no longer original and unique).
Trouble up ahead
There’s trouble in patent land, unfortunately, on a few fronts.
Patents are registered with a patent office. The patent office is required to examine the patent to ensure it meets the legal requirements, but with enormous numbers of patents applied for are often unable to detect that a process is not original or unique.
Once registered, a patent can be enforced unless a court strikes it down (for instance on the grounds that it is not original or not unique). Unfortunately, to get a patent struck down costs a great deal of time and money. So a company or individual can own a great deal of patents that have never been exhaustively examined, and use these to claim royalties or compensation from people or companies that have unknowingly breached the patent. It often costs more to appeal against the patent than it does to pay out the amounts demanded. So people pay.
Patents are often extremely broad in nature. This can serve for or against the holder. In the case of Apple and Samsung regarding the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, the public perception is that Apple appears to be defending a patent that defines a “tablet” so broadly that any potential competitor in that market space is unable to develop a competing product. This can be risky, as the entire patent may be struck down once the case is presented in court. If successful, though, Apple may well be able to corner an entire segment of the portable computing market for years to come.
Another company that appears to be attempting to enforce extremely broad patents is Lodsys LLC[3]. It holds four patents, and has claimed that a large number of small companies and individuals that have developed applications for Apple’s iOS are operating in breach of its patents. It has also subsequently sued several larger companies for breach of patents.
There are companies that buy large numbers of patents with the sole business purpose of collecting royalties. These seek to identify infringers and collecting money from them. It has been suggested that some companies in this business have deliberately targeted smaller companies, as they are less likely to have the capacity to defend themselves against any claim and instead will simply pay a royalty.
What’s the problem?
The problem with patents, as described, is they are not encouraging and protecting innovation.
A company whose sole business is purchasing a patent from the inventor and then searching for anyone who’s breaking it isn’t serving consumers. It is increasing the costs of inventions that in many cases have been developed independently.
A patent that’s too broad can devastate an entire industry sector, as appears to be playing out in the market for tablets. Instead of patenting something that is entirely unique and new, patents are increasingly broad descriptions that eliminate competition.
A patent that describes something that doesn’t yet exist (hasn’t been successfully built) stops innovation in its tracks by telling the rest of the world that this area of development is off limits.
Patents on genes have been popular in recent years. What? Who’s been inventing genes? Well, nobody – and fortunately courts are beginning to see that and strike down those patents. But the problem goes further, as companies patent naturally occurring products, in many cases that have been used for centuries by native populations, for use in pharmaceuticals.
Twenty years is a long time in some industries. In the computer and electronics industries, several product cycles have been and gone in that time. But a patent may still be active from the first generation of a product that continues to relate to a part that’s used in the fifth generation. That is, patent law doesn’t consider the pace of change and adapt its timeframes to that pace.
The solution?
Society (governments, citizens and corporations) need to revisit the purpose of patents and rewrite patent law to better match that purpose. With that in mind, I have the following proposals:
1. Strengthen the role of patent offices, and fund them adequately. It is clear that one of the failings of the current patent system is due to the lack of time available to review each and every patent;
2. Separate treatment of patents held by individuals or small businesses from those held by large corporations. It is clear that a patent law that is the same for all doesn’t treat all fairly. This separation of how patent-holders are treated will become clearer in my other recommendations;
3. Place the onus on the large corporation that owns a patent to prove that it has been broken or is valid, rather than on the defendant. That is, don’t let the law say that a large enterprise can effectively bully a smaller one into paying protection money;
4. Place the onus on the large corporation that breaches a small enterprise or individual’s patent to defend itself. This is similar to my third recommendation – we need to recognise where power lies and protect against that power;
5. Use it or lose it (for large corporations). Either apply the patent yourself, in your own products, or lose the right to the protection of patent law. This would prevent patents being a business unto themselves, which defeats the purpose of encouraging innovation;
6. Award patents only when the invention can be clearly demonstrated. This prevents a pie-in-the-sky approach to patent application;
7. Remove patent protection of processes. You call it a process, I call it an idea. It doesn’t fit within the patent system. If processes really need protection, find some other form;
8. Establish patent categories, with different lengths of protection. A patent for a new computer chip doesn’t need the same length of protection as that for a new mouse trap – the computer industry moves a lot faster than the mouse trap industry;
9. Simplify the patent registration and appeal processes. It needs to be possible for an inventor to register their patent cheaply and easily. Similarly, once said inventor discovers that they may have stumbled into territory covered by someone else’s patent they need to be able to appeal where necessary; and finally
10. Get rid of the idea of “first to conceive/first to register”. As patent law stands at the moment it does not recognise that two people can independently invent the same thing. This doesn’t reflect reality, where in fact the same invention has been made separately many times in history (the transistor radio is just one example). Law should recognise reality.
[2] “Protecting Ideas: Can Ideas be Protected or Patented”, by Gene Quinn. Accessed at http://ipwatchdog.com/2010/11/23/protecting-ideas-can-you-patent-an-idea/id=13495/ on 9 October 2011.
Monday, October 3, 2011
How to deal with that vampire
Background
Their strengths
In a society that seems to be obsessed by vampires and stories about vampires, it becomes increasingly important to separate the myth from the... well - to make clear to the reader what they should and shouldn't trust in vampire lore.
Yes, vampires have a few key things over humanity, and these need to be spelt out to save the reader from relying upon apocryphal stories and anecdote when facing their own death (or worse) at the teeth of a vampire. Listed below are all of those vampiric advantages you may have heard of, as well as details about whether they can be reliably believed.
- Superhuman strength. You've heard it said that vampires possess superhuman strength. Stephen King, one of modern documenters of vampiric habit, made clear in his tale of 'Salem's Lot[1] that vampires are incredibly strong. This has been supported by other writers on the subject, including Anne Rice on the occasion that she interviewed a vampire[2]. Do not attempt to resist a vampire by strength alone, you will fail.
- Cunning and intelligence. In many ways the intelligence of vampires has been overstated. While King made clear that his vampire had learned cunning from a long lifetime of survival, Rice detailed the not-so-lucky: the vampires that were barely human and had lost much of their intelligence. Bram Stoker’s tale[3], while clearly relying on second- and third-hand accounts, leans towards a high degree of intelligence in his subject but this may be heightened by the environment in which Stoker wrote – 19th century Ireland tended towards crediting a wide range of supernatural phenomena and bestowing upon them extraordinary powers.
- Difficulty of destruction. I choose the word destruction rather than death, as vampires are already considered to be undead and thus on the “other side” of death. All reasonable accounts indicate that vampires are extremely difficult to kill. They can be discommoded, certainly. A vampire whose limbs have been removed can be considered largely ‘armless. But that vampire will remain in a kind of life until totally robbed of its essence, as documented below.
- Night vision. Again, this is a belief that is more due to allegory than fact. Vampires do not have superhuman night vision. However, they do spend their time (not their “lives”, as they are undead) in the dark and so their eyes tend to develop some acuity at night. But a vampire who has been turned from a human with poor eyesight will not magically overcome that defect.
- Abnormal patience. To be honest, I’m not sure why this belief has come into existence. Clearly some people think that with an extraordinarily long life vampires will develop patience to match. Documentary evidence makes clear that this is not the case. Were vampires patient, they would simply wait in hiding for human curiosity to wane. The events that so often bring down their destruction could be avoided entirely. Fortunately for humanity, the impatience of vampires often proves ruinous.
- A mesmeric personality. Unfortunately for humanity, it is exceedingly difficult to say no to a vampire. Those few who have done so and survived generally tell of being captivated by the vampire’s eyes, but somehow being distracted and noticing less alluring aspects of the creature of the night. Vampires are indeed hypnotically persuasive (again, Stephen King makes this clear), but if your mind is distracted from them in any way you are likely to be able to identify problems with the scene. These include seeing how large the polite gentleman/lady’s teeth are, questioning why you should feel so happy about letting a stranger into your house at 2am, or realising that you are late for an appointment. Such distractions are (fortunately) the bane of a vampire’s existence. It should also be noted that the vampiric personality is only fully effective in a one-to-one situation. Vampires attempting to charm someone with a friend appear to find the task of focussing on both exceedingly difficult, and generally fail.
Weaknesses of a vampire
As in their strengths, vampires have varying degrees of weakness. Again, I seek to make clear that not all of the weaknesses listed here are real weaknesses – as I list perceived weaknesses I will make clear which can be relied upon.
1. A lust for the virtuous maiden. Somehow there has arisen a belief that every vampire lusts for virgins, and any other blood is second rate. I think this has come from a connoisseurs’ club, which I understand was in operation early last century. My sources advise that vampires in this club pursued the least plausible of sources to gain their meal. This led them to seek virgins of both the male and female persuasion, as the most difficult to procure. There does not seem to be any evidence that the blood procured from virgins is of better quality, and I understand that the club lost members steadily in the 1970s with the rise of the “nerd” as the primary source of virgin blood.
2. An asexual (un)life. No sex please, we’re vampires is in fact true. The trouble for vampires is several-fold. Firstly, in surrendering their lives they also surrendered hormonal drives. A vampire lusts for nothing but his or her meal. Secondly, you’re never going to get a rise out of a vampire. His implement of affection just doesn’t get the blood supply upon which it would rely in such a moment. However, vampires do use sexual attraction to lure targets. The vampire does possess a mesmeric personality,
3. Weak flesh. This is something that Quentin Tarantino documented in his tale of the Mexican clique, From Dusk till Dawn[4]. In that movie, vampires were fortuitously easy to dismember, as they seemed only half-baked. Unfortunately, I think only Tarantino can tell us where he heard of this, as there appears to be no other source that documents this vampiric abnormality.
4. Religion and religious symbols. As the Church has sought to paint vampires as creatures of the devil, so it has also claimed the ability to protect against them. Unfortunately, those who rely on religious symbols for their salvation tend to lose in any struggle with a vampire. I am aware that the literature disagrees with this assessment, but the word on the street is that vampires have no special disgust for religion and its icons.
5. Garlic. Many consider garlic to be a strong protection against vampires, but again the literature is against this belief. I understand it arose in the centuries BCE (before common era), when garlic was seen as a cure-all. This belief may also have been encouraged by “garlic breath”, on the assumption that vampires, as well-dressed and mannered individuals, would not like to have the bad breath resulting from dining on someone who had ingested or was wearing garlic. While garlic does have some beneficial effects on one’s health, repelling vampires is not one of them.
6. Sunlight. This is a vampire’s biggest bugbear – they do burn very easily and very fast. I understand that vampires regularly make attempts to foil the effects of sunlight on them, but sunscreens (even with high SPF factors) have so far failed to assist. Sunlight is the only reason vampire numbers are not of plague proportions.
To destroy a vampire
Remember, you are not killing a vampire. It is already undead, all you can do to it is make sure it can no longer cause harm.
Many methods have been suggested for killing vampires, but the most common theme is the most correct. The vampire’s heart must be destroyed. Other than that, additional details are optional. A stake through the heart is fine. So is a sword, assuming it is not just a rapier. It is important to note that a hole in the heart does not constitute total destruction. So rapiers, and bullets, are out of the question. If you have the opportunity to open the vampire’s chest and remove its heart, that will suffice. Unfortunately, most methods for heart destruction tend to be at close range and it is extremely dangerous to be close to an angry vampire. (Why angry? Well, wouldn’t you be somewhat peeved if someone proposed to rip your heart out of your chest?) If you are going to attempt to kill a vampire, bring friends and preferably a chainsaw: messy but effective both in offence and defence.
The other alternative for vampire destruction is sunlight. This is the preferred method, as you may be able to expose a vampire to sunlight without exposing yourself to close-quarters combat. If all else fails, demolish the house in which a vampire resides, then remove the lid from their coffin. This is possibly the most effective means of vampire disposal.
What if it comes back?
If you have destroyed the heart or exposed the vampire to sunlight (noting that it must be fully exposed for an adequate period – you’ll know it’s enough when you have a pile of ashes) it will not come back. But it may have friends. So – be careful. And good luck.
Oh, and one last thing. Turning into bats? Utter nonsense, just a link with the habit that the vampire bat has of sucking blood.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)