Miscellany
by uber
I’m currently vacillating on the Palin choice. She still seems like a cynical, slightly ridiculous choice of Bush in a skirt. On the other hand, while progressive pundits tut manfully and talk about the more honorable choice of Biden, there’s little comfort in claiming the moral high-ground from second place (again).
In the interim, I have a few fun internet things to post. None of them is a post of its own, but together, they might be nice.
Irish Lawyer Fergus O’Rourke points to interesting figures from the Economist, that explore the details about the mind of the Irish electorate.It seems that Europe is still popular in Ireland, and the final analysis seems to point to the notion that the case was simply not made for the treaty. It points to the fact that there is a clear need for an Irish political body which is pro-Europe, but more skeptical than our current parties.
Techdirt has an article on university patents and how they have harmed basic research. It’s an area of considerable interest to me, especially as I am moving towards a big research project. There is huge pressure in Ireland to get IP income out of research, but it seems to me that since most of the IP goes to startups, and that very few patents anywhere make money, the restrictive nature of the current model *is* hurting innovation. On the other hand, patents can work. The University of Nottingham has MRI (I think) machnes to thank for being differentiated financially from a whole slew of Universities in the UK.
You probably missed Hug a Developer Day, if you did, shame on you. Code Monkeys are people too.
Ok, I know everyone is sick of the election already, so I held these to the end: Hating Obamawith Gerard Baker in the Times. McCain is a lying liar by Krugman in the NYT.
Comments
How did I miss ‘Hug a Developer Day?
Every word is true though! I share their pain
The TechDirt article seems to assume the alternative to the current patent system is free and open sharing of technology and techniques. I don’t think that’s the case at all. Without some way of protecting IP, researchers will instead sit on whatever new and awesome technique they’ve come up with, or they’ll sell their secrets to a company. If you roll things back to the way they were, I predict you will see zero change in basic research.
I think whoever wrote that article (and the ones it links to) has an axe to grind, and they’re scapegoating IP legislation. If there has been a decline in fundamental research in America, it has been because there is no money for it. Not because researchers have been filing patents. Nearly all the basic research in this country is funded by government grants, and the funding for these grants has been severely cut as a result of idiots running the government and increasing anti-science sentiment. Groups must turn to industry for lucrative collaborations, and industry has wildly different goals. It is not the patent system’s fault — coincidence is not causality.
That said, Ireland’s social and economic climate is very different from America’s. I think you have to be very careful about dropping lessons from one system straight into the other, even if the anti-IP folks are completely correct about the effect that American legislation had on basic research.