What are your reasons for running CyanogenMod on your Sensation?

 

Also, what battery life are you getting?

I'm undecided on my view about patents since I'm currently working in two areas.

 

One dedicated to making stuff for filing patents and the other purely for publication.

 

I much prefer the latter since I don't think the former will benefit me in terms of the patent(s) being licensed and making me £££, if it does then great but I don't enjoy it as much. I like doing research and having the chance to publish and let the world know about it, even if it isn't really of much interest to most of the scientific community, but that's the case with most research areas.

The problem is specifically with software patents, not patents in general (although I do think they last too long).

Someone who invents something should (if we're operating under capitalism) have that idea protected for a while both to reward them for their effort/insight and to protect any investment they made into developing it - they should (as they were originally intended) encourage creativity.

The (biggest) problem with software patents is that they allow for the patenting of ridiculously trivial things. They stifle, rather than promote, creativity and competition. Things like using a regular expression to retrieve data from the net and then present it in another form are patented... that's just one example of the hundreds of thousands of these things. I mean you've written code so you understand what a ridiculously trivial and general thing that is? Another example is Apple patented the idea of sliding something on a touchscreen to unlock it. A lot of this stuff has 'prior art' meaning it already exists out in the world and can't be patented because it's in the public domain (a good example being sorting algorithms which have appeared in text books for over 30 years). But when the patent's already been granted then proving it's in the public domain means a court battle with whichever rich company owns the patent.

So anyone who wants to code something now, something which does anything worth doing, is going to be infringing on hundreds of patents. And if your thing gets at all successful then the best that can happen is that the holders of those hundreds of patents will come demanding royalties. The worst is that, if you infringe on their business at all, they'll just shut you down with lawsuits.

Big businesses like MS and IBM are buying up companies, not because they want their products or tech but simply because they want their patents because they're an excellent way for big companies to make money and stamp out any competition.

And those massive companies will generally cross-license with eachother. Meaning they sign agreements that they can each use the other's patents with immunity. They don't want a patent war and these companies are generally not in direct competition with eachother, so they double up their portfolios.

Then endpoint of all of this is, of course, that only MS, IBM and Apple will be able to write software.

Aye, software/tech patents have gone too far in terms of the vagueness and how generic they are. What I've experienced so far in the patent world is a case of claiming the world and hoping the patent office don't cut too much of the ridiculous stuff out.

 

Some of the things claimed in the things I've been involved with really are just ideas/possibilities, and it will only be a case of proving these things /if/ the patent office cares enough or if there is a challenge on filing. Otherwise these things stand no matter how vague they are. It's something I've had to accept with patent work, so so bloody vague and claiming everything.

Because I prefer it to Sense and it literally does fly on the Sensation.

I haven't really tested the battery, not even on Sense. I've almost always got a charger or PC/laptop and USB cable to hand and often have my phone plugged in or syncing / tethered

I didn't use Sense on my Desire (Launcher Pro Plus) so maybe I should try it.

 

I was using a Sense 3.5 ROM (InsertCoin) but had issues, I installed it without realising Sense 3.5 wasn't actually released on the Sensation yet. Gone to a 3.0 ROM and don't like it anywhere near as much as 3.5 but it's far more stable, so hopefully it does come out on the Sensation soon.

Aye it's kinda fair enough in your work because, well, first of all you are actually creating something new. And more importantly there's a big cost to making these things. You're essentially kinda filling in a catalogue, right? And when someone wants a chemical to possibly do X thing they leaf through the catalogue, pick one and then use it for a fee. That's fine - they're just paying for a service.

Software is different in that it's just languages. It's covered by copyright anyway, it doesn't need patents. It's kinda like Tolkein patenting the idea of stories with wizards in.

To be honest I'm not totally sure how it works in terms of accessing the patent info, procedures etc. Though I'm fairly sure it costs to look at a patent even if you don't want to license the procedure which is a bit shit.

 

You only tend to be able to find out what the patent is for in terms of the end product, not how they got there which is obviously the important bit and more often than not the bit which is actually patented. Though you can patent composition of matter as well as method etc

 

I think there is more of a trend within Universities to go down the patent route with new discoveries/developments rather than open publication, whereas in the past that was more of an industry/business thing to do. No surprise really due to the lack of funding these days so if licensing patents out is a way to make the University money it makes sense. Personally it's hard to gauge which is better.

 

Patenting does, without a doubt, restrict scientific development.

 

There's been a number of patents that have been filed for genuinely useful/revolutionary products, one being carbon nanotubes, where the patent owners were charging far too much to license the patent and were only licensing to certain (and not many) companies so no advances were made in the area until the patent expired after about 10 years and the product became available for anyone to do anything with.

The whole system is a fucking mess really. Copyright and patents. Both originally intended to protect the individual author/inventor. Now it's just got fucking silly.

Coca-Cola has never been patented as they'd have to give up the recipe if they did.

 

Same for Aero (although in that case it's the method for making the bubbles).

 

EDIT: That was meant to be to ALL :(

It's fine, I understand.

Webos update released today. Seems to have same speed/responsiveness as overclocked webOS 4.02.

I caved in and installed the second Alpha release. So far, I've ignored it completely and watched a film on my telly. I suppose I should really install a few things on the tablet since I just risked voiding the warranty on it.