February 09, 2003
A company
Lately I've been thinking of a lot of ideas, taking on the role of inventor. Reading about computer security problems, I come up with weird ideas to solve them. Of course, a lot of things are just applications of existing technology so they'd make cheesy patents (although I guess technically legal ones). But I figure if I don't register them, someone evil might, right?
I think I'm going to start a company. It will be a technology patent holding company, the purpose of which will be to actually spark innovation. Here is how I plan to do it. Does it sound like a good idea?
The company grabs these "stupid," patents and uses them as a weapon against the Enemy (namely, greedy corporations that bully small companies/people with their stupid patents and the DMCA and whatnot).
Licenses will be granted in two ways.
If a company is a charity or non-profit, they can obtain a "free" license for the duration of the patent (they'll have to pay some tiny amount for the paperwork and processing).
If a company is for-profit, they can do one of two things:
1) They can pay the holding company an (exorbitant) amount for a standard license
2) They can obtain a "free" license if the product our patent is used in contains at least one patent that the licensee company owns. They then have to make an identical license policy for all their owned patents used in the product (that is, they must make all patents available to non-profits for "free," or to for-profit companies under an identical structure). If the licensee company chooses this option, they will still have to pay some small paperwork fee.
It's like a BSD style patent license. Ideas want to be free, right? Well now if you give away your ideas to others, you can use someone's free idea yourself.
Yay. Anway IANAL so I don't know how to enforce the licensing for patents, or how to "protect the company from itself" as it were. Ideas?
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Hiking Mount Whitney, 2007 
Spring Break in West Virginia, 2005
New Year's in Paris, 2003-2004
Coming to America, 2003
Protesting in Berlin, 2003
Prague Bier-Tour, 2002
Dresden, 2002
Recent Reading
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Stealing the Network
I first bumped into the Stealing the Network series when reading the exploits of Joe Grand, one of the book's many hacker authors.
The 'Stealing the ...' series of books follows a rather disparate group of computer hackers as they help a former NSA spook (many of them unwittingly) gather the money he needs to retire.
The stories themselves are not fantastic fiction. The writing is uneven and choppy, the characters are stereotypical and not very well thought-out. What is fascinating about this book series is the technical accuracy of the exploits (at some points *too* accurate, with screen shots and step-by-step instructions).
It's a great series to read if you're a system administrator, or just getting into the wonderful field of computer security.
Rated 
by reid
on March 06, 2011
by reid
on March 06, 2011
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Close to the Machine
Ellen Ullman is one of those authors that somehow avoided my radar. Until now...
Close to the Machine is less a book than a collection of loosely related personal anecdotes from Ellen's time as a very rare thing -- a successful female bisexual independent computer programming consultant.
In the course of her work and relationship life, she learns hard lessons about programming, running a business, being lonely, and loving the wrong people. I found it particularly poignant being a crypto-nerd with difficult times in relationships and a more-or-less NDA'd, secret work life.
This book is a must-read for anyone into running their own business, programming, or anyone dating a person that is a business-a-holic or programmer.
Rated 
by reid
on November 23, 2009
by reid
on November 23, 2009
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The Long Trip Home
I had the joy of dining with the author in Florida. We went to a little Brazilian BBQ where he spoke with our waitstaff in (what I can only assume was) flawless Portugese.
Brian Wyllie spent 1969-1971 living in Brazil working for the Peace Corps. His recent book outlines his trip back to the United States via Bolivia, Peru, and the Carribean chain, by way of bus, train, and sailboat. The format comes spattered with observations from the modern day, and makes me think, "this must be what John McPhee's journal looks like."
The trip sounded like a fantastic one, but I was left wanting more detail...where did the gun (being snuck through customs in a variety of places, no doubt) come from? And how did Geneve's hair smell? Alas, we'll have to wait for another book to find the answers.
Rated by reid
on April 16, 2009
by reid
on April 16, 2009
the problem is that usually the minimum legal fee for the succesful prosecution of a civil tort case involving patent/copyright infrigement is something like $100,000 (US dollars); somebody like, I don't know MS or Cisco probably spends that much on coffee filters every month whereas it would probably take me 10 years to save that much money
Posted by: Jason on February 10, 2003 07:45 PM