Rants & Raves
__Gadfly on the Wall __
"Patent Upending" (Wired 8.06, page 208) was an excellent commentary on the dismal state of today's Patent and Trademark Office. It's great to see a patent critic like Greg Aharonian featured prominently - without the trashing and out-of-context quoting the PTO's doubters, me included, usually receive.
__John D. Trudel
jtrudel@gstis.net __
Evan Ratliff's story about Greg Aharonian, the patent buster, seems to promote Aharonian's business without looking very critically at him. After subscribing to his Patnews for a year and a half, I asked to be taken off the list when he sent a lengthy diatribe about the crimes of Christianity that went back to the Inquisition. He uses his newsletter as a personal platform that offends many - a fact you mention but don't emphasize.
Aharonian has frequently posted letters from critics - often patent attorneys more knowledgeable about the subject than he is - and then publicly lambasted them. Ratliff paints his subject as leading the good fight against insurmountable odds, never allowing for the possibility that Aharonian simply doesn't get it, or that he might be just another Silicon Valley opportunist.
Most of the simplistic solutions Aharonian offers for our patent system would only let him do his job more easily - hardly the Patent and Trademark Office's mission. Very few articles show the complex connections between the PTO's constitutional and statutory requirements, its recent "quasi-privatization" (patent examiners are now on a quota system), and international intellectual-property agreements. Despite its problems, our current patent system is still one of the best in the world.
__Stephen Funk
slfunk@voyager.net __
__Creative Instruction __
"The Wired Index" (Wired 8.06, page 229) made me wonder: How would these 40 companies look ranked by market cap per employee? To find out, I put together a spreadsheet. On average, the Yahoo! per-employee contribution to market cap is more than $31 million. Vodafone and Cisco aren't that far behind, at $23 million and almost $22 million per employee, respectively. Compare that with Marriott International's market cap per employee of $51,000, and you get an incredible gap.
By another statistical measure, these 40 companies make up about 25 percent of the total market cap of all 9,000 listed companies in the US. I wonder if these disparities will continue.
__Eric Stattin
ericstatin@aol.com __
__A Tale of Two Cities __
Christopher Dickey knows well what he is talking about in "Go To: Paris" (Wired 8.06, page 155); for an American, he has little prejudice against the French. But he is a bit naive: He seems to think mentalities are changing in France and that a new era of entrepreneurs is now emerging from the dark ages of French capitalism.
France's old patterns of doing business have made a comeback these days, and big companies are doing their best to stifle competition, with help from the government. Dickey is right to say that former finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn was a scapegoat: He was an embarrassment to the real French corporate culture, which says, "Kill the competition but pretend you love it." If you do so, you'll always get the blessing of the political establishment and the media.
__Jacques-Francois Racine
infobs@yahoo.com __
__Cracking the Affy Genome __
Brian Alexander's "Biopoly Money" (Wired 8.06, page 279) was outstanding! It really captured the culture at Affymetrix. I used to work there, and Alexander hit the nail on the head, describing eloquently the company's basic dilemma of dominating its niche without upsetting its customers.
__David Traylor
dtraylor@pacbell.net __
__Frequency Modulation __
As the owner of an Internet-only radio station, I especially enjoyed "Radio Active" (Wired 8.06, page 320). The more press that webcasting and LPFM broadcasting receive, the more awareness there will be about options other than the one-size-fits-all pabulum the corporate radio stations broadcast over public airwaves.
However, many Internet-only webcasters pay more than $15,000 a month these days for the top-quality, bufferless bandwidth to reach thousands of simultaneous listeners. And the cost of streaming, unlike land-based radio, goes up with each additional listener. Until broadband prices plummet, the transformation of Web radio to a "robust new medium" will probably have to be undertaken by big corporations, not the radio pirates described so glowingly in the story.
__Wanda Atkinson
wanda@3wk.com __
You describe Doug Brewer, aka Craven Moorehead, as a "free-speech rebel." On page 323, he is shown wearing a swastika pin and a Nazi eagle badge. I wonder what kinds of free speech they symbolize.
__Michael Schubart
michael@schubart.net __
__Threat Assessment __
Due to common misunderstandings about Mosaic-2000 ("UltraViolencePredictor 1.0," Wired 8.06, page 124), a threat-assessment method currently being tested in schools around the nation, I would like to take this opportunity to clarify the system.
Mosaic-2000 is not "profiling." Profiling is a hypothetical construct of an unknown or unidentified person, such as when FBI profilers theorize that a wanted serial killer will turn out to be a male Caucasian in his thirties who likes fast cars, or when an airline theorizes passengers who look a certain way might be hijackers.
Mosaic-2000 is the opposite of profiling in that it is always applied to an actual known individual, and it always explores actual behavior and circumstance. Mosaic-2000 does not explore age, appearance, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic level, or any other demographic feature; profiling almost always does. I am a vocal opponent of profiling and a strong proponent of threat assessment - and the two are nearly direct opposites.
__Gavin de Becker
Gavin de Becker Incorporated
Los Angeles, California __
"UltraViolencePredictor 1.0" was quite interesting. Gavin de Becker has done a great thing in unveiling Mosaic-2000, which identifies potentially threatening children. All schools should be aware of this system and take advantage of its remarkable potential to stop a child from going off the deep end - using it could save lives. $100 a month? I think it's worth every penny!
__Paul Dale Roberts
silhouet9@aol.com __
__Sticky Sites __
Let me see if I've got this straight: A supposedly bright, hip guy convinces studio execs to join the Internet revolution, and we get ... Divorce Court ("You Oughtta Be in HTML," Wired 8.06, page 184)? Excuse me: Divorce Court with chat rooms. Now that's revolutionary.
Hollywood's top guns may be destined for the tar pits; unfortunately, it looks like most of the people dragging them into the Internet age will join them there.
__Nancy Jane Moore
nancyjane@earthlink.net __
__Undo __
Traffic Control: The Netherlands' national airport is Amsterdam Airport Schiphol ("Exploring the Unmaterial World," Wired 8.06, page 306). ... A Bit Off: Nokia's GPRS handsets ("The Wired Index," Wired 8.06, page 229) will provide initial data rates faster than 9 Kbps. ... Clean Up: OurHouse ("Venture Capitals," Wired 8.07, page 258) did not receive funding from divine interVentures.
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