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Courgette meets a dangerous (Red) BendCourgette meets a dangerous (Red) BendPosted Nov 2, 2009 22:58 UTC (Mon) by proski (subscriber, #104)In reply to: Courgette meets a dangerous (Red) Bend by socket Parent article: Courgette meets a dangerous (Red) Bend It's actually a good question for a job interview. How would you implement a binary patch algorithm? What would you do to reduce the patch size? I imagine a good applicant would come with a similar idea, perhaps without implementation details. Of course, it will take some effort to implement and validate the idea, but it should be much easier than validating e.g. a drug or a rocket engine.
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Courgette meets a dangerous (Red) Bend Posted Nov 3, 2009 8:58 UTC (Tue) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]
> It's actually a good question for a job interview. How would you implement a binary patch algorithm? What would you do to reduce the patch size? I imagine a good applicant would come with a similar idea, perhaps without implementation details.
Or for the patent office? Like finding twenty people "skilled in the field" with no knowledge of the patent, and ask them to sketch a solution to the problem with fifteen minutes time at their disposal?
Courgette meets a dangerous (Red) Bend Posted Nov 3, 2009 13:40 UTC (Tue) by gbutler69 (guest, #54063) [Link]
Ask 100 RANDOM software developers that have a college degree and 5 years of experience for
a solution to this problem. I highly doubt more than 3 or 4 would come up with this idea in a reasonable amount of time. No, it is not OBVIOUS. If you think it is, you are either lying to yourself, or you are the 3 or 4 % exceptional of the 100 who would come up with this idea.
Courgette meets a dangerous (Red) Bend Posted Nov 3, 2009 14:49 UTC (Tue) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]
>Ask 100 RANDOM software developers that have a college degree and 5 years of experience for a solution to this problem. I highly doubt more than 3 or 4 would come up with this idea in a reasonable amount of time.
Wouldn't that be an answer as well? I can't say that I'm a fan of patents in general (software or otherwise), but at least it would be a more honest test of whether it fits within the current rules.
Courgette meets a dangerous (Red) Bend Posted Nov 4, 2009 11:47 UTC (Wed) by ebiederm (subscriber, #35028) [Link]
My reaction when I read about Courgette the first time was interesting someone got around to implementing that.
The usage in Courgette also seems to be an independent reinvention.
Perhaps I have missed some detail but this seems like a battle over
Courgette meets a dangerous (Red) Bend Posted Nov 5, 2009 6:51 UTC (Thu) by nevyn (subscriber, #33129) [Link]
Maybe true, but a better question is if only 3-4 people came up with the idea (out of your "random" 100) ... does that qualify it for being patentable? Is the bar of "obvious" really so low that you could realistically expect 1000s of people to be able to independently invent it at google/MS/IBM/etc.
Yes. Posted Nov 5, 2009 13:16 UTC (Thu) by gbutler69 (guest, #54063) [Link]
Obvious to me would be at least 30% - 50% of those polled skilled in the art would come up
with the idea and method in a reasonable amount of time. Everything is Obvious in hind-sight. Think about even simple things like the derivation of the quadratic equation. Once you know it, it is obvious. For *most* people though, it is not obvious until shown. Now, admittedly, this is not the kind of thing that is patentable (mathematical algorithms being specifically excluded from patent protection) but, it does demonstrate the point I'm trying to make.
Frankly, I think the only problem with patents is that they are awarded for too long (at least in
Patent Law, like all other laws, is nothing but an agreement between all the members of the
Honestly, we all must learn to take more control over the laws of our society instead of just
Sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling at the top of your lungs, "NA NA NA NA" won't
I know that I often find myself frustrate, angry, and even bordering on wanting to lash out
Besides, in 5 or 10 years we're going to run out of oil and then the whole world-wide economy
Re: Yes. Posted Nov 6, 2009 5:15 UTC (Fri) by nevyn (subscriber, #33129) [Link] Obvious to me would be at least 30% - 50% of those polled skilled in the art would come up with the idea and method in a reasonable amount of time. Well, personally, I would disagree ... if 3-4% of a random sample in an "art" would come up with the idea, when asked to solve a problem, then I fail to see why 1 person/entity should be able to stop upto 9 million people from using it (assuming every .us person could be taught said "art", that'd be 9 million). Patents aren't supposed to be a lottery, they are supposed to solve the problem of sharing when only a very small number of people would ever be able to solve a problem. Thus it's worth giving you a monopoly as an incentive to share. When you are anywhere close to 1%, you are saying at least 1 person in any public company could find the solution ... that's just not rare, IMO. Of course atm. patents seem more like if less than 99% of a random sample would come up with it, then it's patentable. So it's all academic. Honestly, we all must learn to take more control over the laws of our society instead of just bitching about them. If you can convince enough people you are right, you can win. Do you have any examples of that working?
Courgette meets a dangerous (Red) Bend Posted Nov 12, 2009 17:54 UTC (Thu) by tbrownaw (guest, #45457) [Link] Ask 100 RANDOM software developers that have a college degree and 5 years of experience for a solution to this problem. I highly doubt more than 3 or 4 would come up with this idea in a reasonable amount of time. No, it is not OBVIOUS. Would the solution to FizzBuzz be obvious under this test? Or how to expand (from=1/1/2000; to=1/3/2000) into [(when=1/1/2000), (when=1/2/2000), (when=1/3/2000)] with SQL? This second one is actually an interview question here, I'd guess the candidates we get (with degrees and mostly 5+ (some supposedly 15+) years experience) have a (probably low) single-digit percent hit rate. Does this mean that a solution should be patentable?
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