Hope for Patents

I just got back from a vacation with some good friends. So I'm in a pretty good mood. I don't have a rant for you today. Instead I stumbled across an article over at Ars Technica that basically says the Supreme Court made a ruling that equates to you can't patent common sense.

More specifically you can't patent anything that would seem obvious to someone with ordinary skill in the field that the patent is being applied for. While there is no word on rather this will immediately invalidate 80% of our current patents, or rather each one will have to be fought and beat in a court. Nonetheless, this sets a precedent, and one that was originally intended when patents were devised.

Three cheers for innovation and to the employment offices for all the greedy patent farmers.

Human Apathy

Weekend Edition by HumanFission

I am a friend of Icenode and will be a guest writer on The Daily Rant. From what I've been told I will post mostly on weekends. Enjoy.

While many of the "rants" you've seen here focus on some specific point of idiocy that has drawn the public eye, mine are more general. You see, I (and those who know me can generally back this up) just dislike people in general. Individuals are fine; people however, suck.

My point of view is constantly reinforced by my particular dealings with said people on a day-to-day basis. I work in an industry that exposes me to mankind in all of its…"glory" and while I had thought I had become desensitized to the larger failings of Man, I am continually proven wrong, many times on the most basic of things.

This would bring me to the "meat" of my rant, actually. Why is it that while technology advances, the ability for the general populace to understand and use that technology seems to be decreasing at an alarming rate? If you were to ask random people (and I have), they will tell you that it is the complexity of this new technology, that it is becoming harder to use as it evolves, out of shear design. The problem is these same people are the ones who fail to apply the very basics of common sense to a problem when it arises. Things as simple as checking power, putting in batteries, or reading instructions elude them when the object of their technological desire fails to react exactly how they expected. These same people, after bypassing any sort of logical problem-solving cries of mercy coming from the active parts of the brain, will sit and wait on a phone, sometimes for hours, to make someone else tell them what to do. Let's recap that for a moment, because it's important. After ignoring any efficient or logical steps, these people will sit and waste away on a phone…so someone else can tell them what to do.

This isn't an anomaly. It's the standard in today's time. What is going on here? Have people really become so lazy, so accustomed to someone else doing all the work that they have simply given up? I think the answer is a resounding "yes". It's not that people have grown less intelligent, thus causing some sort of comprehension problem, it's that they have grown lazy, and that has generated a degree of apathy that is staggering in its magnitude. When these people are presented with options they could have done themselves within minutes or even seconds of discovering the problem, many, if not most, not only become angry, but lash out at those who pointed out the simplistic solutions that were overlooked. These people seek to defend their actions by passing the blame to someone else, blind to the fact that many times, this sort of argument is nothing more than humorous in its complete lack of application.

Our culture, specifically in America, but perhaps spreading to the entire population of the globe, is becoming "Fiercely Apathetic". What's worse, the very technology that generates the response detailed here is the same technology that facilitates such apathy. There's a reason the Bible says the meek shall inherit the earth; they're the only ones who are going to know what's going on before long.

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid

In what will be a continuing theme with my rants on how stupid people are getting, I present to you this article http://www.dailyrecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007703130391 as evidence. To sum up the article, Melanie McGuire performed Google and MSN searches on how to commit murder. She did this research on multiple computers and just days leading up to the methodical murder of her husband. Where it seems he was drugged, shot, dismembered, stuffed into several suitcases, and then threw into the Chesapeake Bay.

America its time we pause for a moment and quit worrying about declining test score averages across the nation. I won't argue the need for proper education, but I believe its time we take a step back and teach our society about "Common Sense" again. Its no long common, which is the problem to begin with. Until we take a step back and relearn as a society the basics of how to function in this world, I don't think we will have much progress trying to press forward with more advanced education. I want you to understand that I in no way condone murder, I simply am using this news headline to show how an "educated" person living in society still fails to show any signs of what I like to call intelligence.