Hasta La Gadget!

After five years of debate and a 117-4 vote, New Zealand’s Parliament has passed a bill that says computer programs are not considered inventions and are therefore ineligible for patents. However, the phrasing of the bill is flexible enough to provide some leeway. Since “products or processes” are understood to be patentable inventions, software that is integral to the implementation of a process designed to improve hardware can be included in the terms of a patent application. The text of the bill, intended to replace the outdated Patents Act of 1953, states, “Protecting software by patenting is inconsistent with the open source model, and its proponents oppose it. A number of submitters argued that there is no ‘inventive step’ in software development, as ‘new’ software invariably builds on existing software.” You can come to your own conclusions on the matter by checking out the bill at the source link below.

Filed under: Misc, Software

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Via: Ars Technica

Source: New Zealand Parliament, Patents Bill 235-2

At a conference at Stanford University today, Winston & Stawn’s Vice Chair of Intellectual Property Michael Brody spoke about patent trolls during a presentation, detailing the harm they present to companies and numbers related to them from the past few years. Although patent trolls target a variety of companies, Apple, HP, and Samsung have become […]

We know that texting and driving can lead to unintended consequences and is generally speaking a big no-no, and if you’re looking for a way to teach your kids that texting and driving at the same time is not a good idea, perhaps this video game might be of some use to you. Basically Holden Link has designed a video game in which the gamer has to attempt to reply text messages while driving around a race track. The entire thing is simulated on the computer, so fret not as the only accident that will happen is on the computer where no one will die or get injured.

To make things more “challenging”, the game also has a 10 second timer in which you are asked to reply the message, after which it tells you that you are “rude” for not doing so, although admittedly it is pretty rude not to mention dangerous to text and drive at the same time, but we think you get the drift. The game itself is free of charge so if you’d like to take it for a spin, hit up Holden Link’s website for the download. In the meantime you can get an idea of what the game is about by checking out the video above. What do you guys think? Is this an effective method to teaching society about the dangers of texting and driving?

SMS Racing Simulator Teaches You The Danger Of Texting And Driving original content from Ubergizmo.

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