Well, maybe so. But I stand by my disappointment at the lack of knowledge about patents around here. We don't understand patents, but we're mad as hell about them!
Yes. As for the effect on the community... well, are you just talking about the way that patents make software developers feel? Because obviously developers would know more about that than I do. But it's also not a particularly relevant question--patents are what they are, and the way they make you feel doesn't really matter.
Well, that may be. But almost all of the posts you see around here decrying them are just steeped in ignorance. Titles like "Microsoft has patented <whatever the title of the patent is>. Software patents have to go." When the reality is that they have merely applied for a patent (not gotten one granted), and it's actually something really narrow if you read the claims.
Stuff like that does not fill me with humility and make me think, hey, maybe these folks are right and I'm the one who doesn't know what he's talking about. Because I do know what I'm talking about. There are defensible arguments for why software patents may not be a good thing... but you don't see them here. You don't often see anything well-reasoned, just a bunch of groupthink.
No, I don't. I just get annoyed at all the misinformation that gets repeated about patents in general and software patents specifically.
The discourse around HN is generally of a pretty high level, and it's disappointing to see people just blindly accepting the party line: software patents bad, I don't know how to read a patent and that's ok, and anyone who disagrees is just stifling innovation.
Rabble rabble rabble. I hate this attitude: I don't understand software patents, and I'm not going to take the time to learn about them, therefore they need to go.
That's kind of my point. The title means nothing. The abstract means almost nothing. The figures mean almost nothing. Have a look here for a brief guide to reading a patent, written for nonlawyers. http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/09/how-to-read-a-patent-...
Have you actually read them? Read the claims? They're software patents, so plenty of folk will hate them just based on that... but they really are not poorly drafted patents.
He's trying to write this up as a neat hack ($300 for an hour of work? where do I sign up?), but all he's really done is waste a lot of other people's time to exploit a silly loophole. I wonder how many man-hours the bank spent moving and counting 300 pounds of coins, not to mention how much tax money was spent shipping the damn things to him. What an unproductive waste.
"It's funny how often we hear patent system supporters tell us that if you haven't actually gotten a patent for your invention, it's perfectly reasonable for someone else to go and patent it instead."