Sunday, February 11, 2007

Paradise Lost

My commenting wings have been clipped-off at Patently-O. I can no longer soar with the other commenting angels there and deposit my 30 cents worth of silver tongued-attitude. What to do?

Cry?
Beg for forgiveness?

Or write an epic comeback worthy of Milton from my own little private hell spot? Truthfully, I'm not going have time for writing epics of the caliber of Paradise Lost.

This is just going to be a small, underwater vent hole from Hades.

5 comments:

Step Back said...

Wow Dennis, I had barely gotten this Google account going this afternoon and you already spotted it. I suppose some automated program that crawls the net and sees references to your site? (I haven't even had a chance to figure out how to turn commenting on here yet.)

Anyways. I just happened to be looking at the Public PAIR record for Professor Noveck's issued patent: 6,823,363. Alas there is no file image. The case went to final rejection plus the filing of an Appeal Brief. What does that say regarding a "crisis" in patent "quality"? I don't know. At the moment I'm not even sure what the definition of a "chat" is or whether all the "preferred embodiments" (plural?) are adequately disclosed in their "preferable" coding languages.

More interesting, I wonder how Professor Noveck would feel if a hyena pack of uncredentialed Internet critics started having a go at her patent for starters. Maybe we should all engage in hindsight to detemine how obvious and un-"worthwhile" her invention is? Is that a good idea? I'm not so sure. What if she had to spend money defending her patent? What if the attacks went on with no end in sight, draining her of her financial ability to protect her "property"? Is that the way we should treat inventors? Does Noveck qualify as a "troll"? Has she immediately put her invention into practice, or is she just lurking out there, waiting under a dark bridge for some poor, unsuspecting and "good" software writer to fall into her spider's web? Hmmm. It's probably not a fun experience when the tables turn and the troll hunter becomes the hunted. Is that the kind of society we want to live in? I hope not.

Anonymous said...

... testing ... OK ... looks like commenting is now enabled.
--steppy :-)

Anonymous said...

Step Back, It looks like this could be an interesting site. You can use the site technorati.com to get an update when another blog has linked to yours. Also, are you worried that readers will think that your are actually my secret identity?

Dennis

Step Back said...

How could people believe you and I are one and the same person given my extreme accent?

(After a while people will learn to see the distinct writing styles and ideation patterns.)

Why did you cut off my commenting privileges?

Was this an intentional way to force a design around?

Step Back said...

Dennis: Note from this post for example by Mr. Slonecker that readers are starting to "step back", to pay attention to the gratuitous injections of inflamtory words into scholarly articles, and to wonder "why" such words like "troll" and "crisis" and "quality" and "reform" are constantly being repeated in works that are supposed to be objective analyses by trustworthy academicians.

I am not Slonecker and I am somewhat disappointed that he, among other Patently-O readers are not digging deeper and stepping back even further to see the bigger pattern.

But at least they have started. At least a flicker of critical thinking has been ignited in their heads.

Suddenly they are paying attention and asking "why". Why is this being done on a cross the board basis?