Comments on: Ideas for sale

By: fledgling otaku

fledgling otaku — Tue, 20 May 2008 13:04:54 +0000

well, I agree about Hamas, Mussolini, et al, but how are they related to Myhrvold? Who has Myrhvold shot and killed? I’m not being willfully ignorant here, I just don’t grok the objection. I understand that the story is one sided so show me the other side.

By: Author

Author — Tue, 20 May 2008 04:58:01 +0000

It would be great if it all wasn’t just a big cover-up story.

Look, Mussolini made trains run on time. His detractors say the didn’t, but he did (by killing commie strikers who prevented the trains from running on time). Hitler built wonderful roads. Hamas and Hezbollah run hospitals. Nothing of it makes any of them worth admiration whatsoever.

By: fledgling otaku

fledgling otaku — Mon, 19 May 2008 22:12:52 +0000

I really don’t see this as insidious, especially since Myhrvold is not taking someone else’s ideas or engaging in patent litigation (like RAMBUS from a few years back). The process here seems focused on bringing ideas to implementation and some of them are pretty exciting, especially the nuclear one. Others, like the subcutaneous xray one, are almost obvious in hindsight.

Corporate group think is not what the process is about, either. There, you have a bureaucracy, here you have a focused group of experts. In the former you end up with an echo chamber, in the latter a cross-pollination.

The article may be propaganda of sorts but it made its case rather well. Maybe I am missig something but it hardly seems a theft or an exploitation, but rather a systamatic approach to problem solving.

By: Steven Den Beste

Steven Den Beste — Sat, 17 May 2008 00:28:32 +0000

Having worked for many years as a development engineer in several different disparate industries, I can tell you something most people don’t know: ideas are easy. There are lots of ideas out there. Ideas aren’t actually worth very much.

The father of us all, Edison, said that invention was 2% inspiration, 98% perspiration. Implementation is the tough part, and that doesn’t require genius.

By: Bear

Bear — Fri, 16 May 2008 23:21:31 +0000

“A scientific genius is not a person who does what no one else can do; he or she is someone who does what it takes many others to do. The genius is not a unique source of insight; he is merely an efficient source of insight.”

I highly doubt that the above quote to be anything more than pure fantasy.

For if it were truth, corporate America would be in much, much better shape with its current top-heavy, committee-driven, butt-kissing, over-paid management. Time and time again I have witnessed brilliant ideas be drowned and ignored while a group of normally intelligent people parade around with the lowest common denominator as if it were the golden idol of group-think.

[cough]automotive-industry[/cough]

To counteract the above coherent thought, I give you…
“ma-ma-my chipolte! ma-ma-my chipolte! MY-MY-MY-WOW!!!!!”

By: Author

Author — Fri, 16 May 2008 19:41:13 +0000

There are no words to express my disgust and, not to put too fine a point on it, hate of Myhrvold and his despicable scheme. Aside from traditional patent trolling and packet racket, Myhrvold also tries to establish a more subtle rent-seeking scheme by buying enough patents to jump-start a “marketplace”. It was a miracle that Novell donated patents covering Mono to OIN instead of selling them to Myhrvold. Others (e.g. hacking on things other than Mono) are not going to be so lucky, so Myhrvold is a major net detriment to innovation. The propaganda articles like the one you linked claim the opposite; not unexpected.