EU software patent process restarted

[Asher]

Awww mommy, can Urban Ranger come back out to play?

For the record, here's the full context of Bill's quote:

"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. ... The solution is patenting as much as we can.

Funny how RMS left that part out.

RMS is a megalomaniac. He's a tool. He's praised as a genius by the Slashdot crowd, but he's completely out of touch with reality. He literally has cried when he sees computers sitting idle...

To him, OSS is his religion. As such, he's got blinders on when it comes to objectivity, and his sermons come in the form of essays, blog posts, and columns.

[Mr. Harley]

Ned - I never said the Dems favor the little guy? In fact, I specified that traditional Republicans of the Barry Goldwater stripe favored them. I also specified Clinton favored large busnisses. In fact that is my entire point - the constituency to push the idea in either party is lacking. In fact, to quote you -

During the Clinton admin, patent law reform to reduce abuses was championed by the Democrats and resisted by the radical right. Go figure.

Ned, the Democrats are not inherently evil. Nor or the Republicans. I wanted John McCain (I believe I mentioned that before), so I'm not exactly a, to quote a neocon coworker, a hippy pinko leftist. However, I am very much opposed to the current Republican national organization, a b*stard child of the Neocons and the Religious Right.

Dick Cheney's energy task force did nothing for small upstart energy companies, and largely ignored renewable energy and biodiesal. The FCC ownership changes have essentially forced small radio outlets to sell out, because the various conglomerate will squeeze them hard it the don't - ever hear of Clear Channel?

The Bush adminstration let Haliburton become a contract subletting company, skimming the cream off the top before small businesses could bid on the Irag and Afghanistan contracts. When divisions of Haliburton actually did the work, we got fraud and incompetency - google Brown & Root, you might throw in Uzbekistan.

The Bush adminstration has continued to favor the H-1B visa, little better than an indentured worker that undermines the salaries engineers and programmers in this country. It was Clinton and both the Dems and Republicans in congress little darling, and kept getting expanded with no debate. Understand that small businesses don't get these typically, it's the purvue of large corporations, hospitals (do those quality as small businesses ) , and some municipalities.

Ned, don't destroy your own credibility. You may firmly believe that large corporations, for example, are the only way for the US to compete in the global marketplace, and that government intervention to help them, a la Airbus, is the way to go. Fine, we can agree to disagree. But this stretching the interpretation of things whenever it is critical of the administration means you get no traction, and when you have a good idea it gets ignored due to your credibility issues - look at another recent thread where virtually EVERYONE (except Gioncarlo - great company ) piled on top of you.

The thing is, when you get off your support the Bush administration high horse, like earlier here, you have great ideas. If your motivation is just to stir the pot and be irritating, that's fine. But if you are trying to persuade, even to defend, it's not working. Defense is what I did for our soldiers on that thread about the rotating out party by MP's in Iraq that got too rambunctious. Some of the EU posters started to make typical anti-American statements (not all, some EU posters are our best friends IMHO) and I defended them in context, and I didn't get piled on. Stop knee-jerking every time someone is critical of this administration, Ned, they've made some whoppers of mistakes. Don't try to sugarcoat the policies, admit to the mistakes, show where some were inevitable i.e. BAD (best available data), and show what they've done right.

[Ned]

shawn, good post on the whole. But you also seem to have a problem in knee jerk distrust of the Bush administration. Most of my defense of Bush often involves the somewhat crazy assertions of the left that seem to have no basis in reality. Conspiracy theorism seems to be specialty of the left. It is amazing.

What you get from me is total honesty. I will criticize Bush and Republicans when I think he and they are wrong. I will praise Democrats when I think they are right. No one has a lock on perfection, and the parties seem to change position on basic issues over time.

On the patent reform issue, the way things broke in the '90s was a real shock to me. I had assumed that the Republicans would be there for patent reform. Instead, they blocked it. I was in shock then and am still in shock. I consider the leaders of the anti-reform Republicans to be little better than scum. Their formost leader was Dana Rohrbacher. Whenever I see this guy on the tube, I get angrier than hell.

The way the Republicans behaved during the debates then made me want to disassociate myself permanently from the party.

So there. Just one example where I strongly criticize Republicans when they are wrong.

[Ari Rahikkala]

Originally posted by Asher
To him, OSS is his religion. As such, he's got blinders on when it comes to objectivity, and his sermons come in the form of essays, blog posts, and columns.

Actually, as far as RMS is concerned, OSS is a crutch that must be thrown away eventually. There's a big ideological difference between free software and open source software, and RMS is on the side of the former...

Anyway, to the issue I was actually coming to post about here:

FFII's take
BusinessWeek's take

7 March 2005 -- The Council Presidency today declared the software agreement of 18 May 2004 to have been adopted

If you want to know more, go ahead and read those news stories.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Why post about a non-issue that hasn't occurred yet?

Was that post a non-issue now that the bill has passed?