An interesting piece of story from NPR about current state of affairs in the patent world – patent trolling. Something from the article that brings out the essence of the issue in the buzz created by various tech companies suing one another.
“…All the big tech companies have started amassing troves of software patents — not to build anything, but to defend themselves. If a company’s patent horde is big enough, it can essentially say to the world, “If you try to sue me with your patents, I’ll sue you with mine.”
It’s mutually assured destruction. But instead of arsenals of nuclear weapons, it’s arsenals of patents….”
More of the article here: [The Link]
Audio podcast from thisamericanlife.org: [Audio Podcast]
The study of quantum mechanics has helped to explain a number of strange physical phenomena and is a tool for scientists to study the world at the smallest scale. For decades there’s been a healthy amount of skepticism about the role of quantum mechanics in biological processes. Recent scientific findings, though, are pointing to quantum mechanics’ important role in various fundamental functions of life on Earth. Nature News published a story summarizing the latest in the study of quantum biology, including speculation about what it could all mean in understanding the living world and how it could benefit man made technology of the future.
xkcd sums it up nicely.