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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 12 2012 @ 09:05 PM EDT |
Heh. Oddly enough, I can come pretty close. At least one
of the physicists responsible for ICBM targeting in the USA
believes, as a matter of faith, that the earth is flat. I
gotta wonder where those nukes would land. (and whether or
not, if they miss, that that would be a bad thing...) I
assume the guy passed a few psychological exams...so
reasonable may be assumed. I know he had an extremely high
security clearance and access to a lot of satellite data.
Well, I'm honestly a bit unsure about reasonable.
I understand the argument that software is maths and
therefore all software patents should be invalidated. I
just don't believe it actually matters. Feel free to
disagree - but I basically see it as a timewaster. That
argument's basically a matter of law and consistency
(precedent) generally trumps correctness. Judging by the
Supreme's opinions - they are unlikely to broadly invalidate
software patents. (I'm not a lawyer. Being wrong here would
be nice. If I'm ever substantially wrong here...I'll
celebrate and send some beer to groklaw...somehow.) And, as
lawyers, they would be wrong to do so. I have not found many
lawyers who support Groklaw's consensus here - mritsche is
probably an outlier in terms of being willing to listen and
I honor him for that. The other legal opinions I've read
essentially dismiss those arguments.* mritsche was
relatively extremely open and diplomatic. And, well, lawyers
do tend to shape precedent. Arguments in favor of
broadening invalidation criteria in productive ways are more
likely to be persuasive.
There's also the argument that software patents are just a
bad idea and shouldn't exist. I believe that this is true of
most software patents. The extreme argument - where anyone
who favors any software patents is uninformed or an
unethical, biased industry shill - seem unlikely to persuade
reasonable people. I disagree with that argument quite
strongly. For example, I believe that Goetz is a reasonable
and well-informed person.
Generally speaking though - a willingness to listen and
discuss other people's opinions without an immediate
assumption that any disagreement is a result of malice or
ignorance is sometimes a useful tool.
--Erwin
*Most of the legal articles I've seen, if they refer to
those arguments at all, completely dismiss them - with
prejudice. These are from people who are concerned about
the patent mess. Some of the attacks on mritsche I observed
are probably roughly as productive as someone in an asylum
screaming insults at the one psychologist willing to visit
their padded cell. (Sorry...bit aggravated by the flat earth
comment.) I mean, you're welcome to run with the 'maths'
argument, I just didn't see anything persuasive in the last
1000+ comments and I agree with mritsche that it won't fly.
I'll just wish you the best of luck.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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