Darren New wrote:
>> So... Tell me again how no one is making this absurd argument?
> 
> OK. Nobody said it's a new machine. They said it's an improved machine.
> 
> If I figure out how to add color to TV broadcasts, have I not simply 
> improved the television?
> 
Semantics. Seriously, try that one on something with firmware. Do you 
patent the firmware, which isn't the *machine*, or the machine you load 
it into? Both? Issue a new patent for every "improved" version of the 
firmware? There is a difference between building something that is an 
improvement, and making "trivial" improvements, which amount to the 
equivalent of sticking a new poster in the paster stand out front of 
your theater. Its hardly *at all* relevant whether its a sheet of paper, 
if your "poster" is a display screen, and you updated it to show new 
content, or even do something with it that it didn't before. The "data" 
is still independent of the bloody container, at least for *most* 
things. Yet, the moment you can't "see" the result of the change, like a 
movie poster in a digital display, it becomes now "data", but 
"improvement"? WTF? I am betting that your terminal's non-obvious design 
didn't involve taking an "existing" one, and just adding software, did 
it? Had to design a new one that would accept such software?

Anyway, the whole thing is a bloody mess, because, as with my poster 
example, it gets damned fuzzy as to when software stops being "data" and 
suddenly becomes "improvement", and therefor can be/requires patent. 
Where is that line exactly? Oh, and remember, we are using the patent 
judges definition of "obvious" not the one you or me would, when looking 
at two identical digital posters, which just happen to contain different 
data... ;)

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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