Interesting Links for 30-09-2012

[andrewducker]

• Don Draper with an iPhone? Candid behind-the-scenes photographs capture the stars of Mad Men on and off set
  (tags: photographs MadMen )
• The Case for Abolishing Patents (Yes, All of Them)
  (tags: patents )
• Little-known sexual orientations (I laughed)
  (tags: relationships sex )
• If you are Neil Gaiman the internet will make sure you don't forget your

Comments

[strawberryfrog]

Hm. I myself am straight, but a large percentage of my partners have been bi. I've never had a problem with this, but I may have to re-evaluate here.

[andrewducker]

Most my my partners have also been bi. It wasn't deliberate though, or something I even knew before starting a relationship with all but one of them.

Not that there's anything wrong with sexual preferences, so long as they don't stop you seeing the person through them.

[strawberryfrog]

In my case also, not deliberate and often not known.

I meant to say "re-evaluate my own category in light of new vocabulary", not "re-evaluate not having a problem with it". It's perfectly fine.

[andrewducker]

I wouldn't take the language entirely seriously - and the list clearly gets sillier as it goes along.

[strawberryfrog]

the car article seems interesting at a glance ... but is there a link to a story about this that doesn't go to the daily mail?

[andrewducker]

Possibly. If you find one feel free to post it here :->

[major_clanger]

Having scanned through that patents paper, a better description would be "Americans suggest the abolition of the US patent system, because it isn't like there's any other patent system in the world we could compare it with to see if it could be fixed." Like so much other work by US legal academics (especially in IP or technology law) it assumes that the US legal system is the only one on Earth. For heaven's sake, there's even a quote on page 10 that refers to 'the US patent system' which is followed on by discussion of 'the patent system' as if the US one is the only one.

Gah. I'm having flashbacks to the geek law conference in Edinburgh a couple of years ago where a US academic went on and on about the problems of misuse of personal data in the USA while all the Europeans present were visibly thinking 'So pass a Data Protection law like we have!'.

[andrewducker]

FWIW I'm not convinced that patent abolition is a good thing. I just think it needs to be proportional to the amount of time/money necessary to invent the thing in the first place, and balanced against the public good for spreading it as widely as possible.

So absolutely fine with medical patents and ones for physical devices (where there are frequently high R&D costs), absolutely not fine with software patents, which are 99% "It's a business process, done with a computer!"