If you're a reporter and a really good storyteller, which he definitely is, your reporting drive better be really, really good. At my most cynical, I would say that Gladwell writes non-fiction because it suits his style and makes for better stories, but that might be going too far.
The problem isn't really NPEs. If it makes sense to have patents, then it probably makes sense to have a market in patents. The problem is mostly low-quality patents and the fact that the patent system is a poor fit for software.
The way the US patent system works compared to other countries is that it's closer to copyright (though not quite copyright): any crappy idea can be patented as long as there's no prior art. The burden of proof is on those who own the patent and those who want to challenge it on court. The Bureau registers everything and then lets the businesses fight in courts.
This approach gives the US an advantage on the international patent market too: an American patent holder has the priority rights in other countries where it wishes to register the same patent.
All this kind of makes sense - kind of - but in practice there seem to be a lot of crappy patents with prior art that remain unchallenged and sometimes even confirmed in courts despite prior art.
This is what's broken. 1-click checkout shouldn't have been registered not because it's crappy but because there were web sites doing something very close or even similar under a different name. Those businesses either never bothered, were too small or went out of business by the time Amazon could be challenged in courts. I believe there are many more examples like this.
Someone has to take the burden of identifying prior art. The PTO doesn't seem to be interested, it's just extra work for them which as a govt. agency they tend to minimize. Businesses that could present prior art can be too small or even out of business by the time a patent is registered.
I believe it's a matter of some additional regulations but because I'm not a lawyer I can't really say how to fix this system.
Yes, but the chariot originated as a military vehicle. Fast transportation was provided by horses, while bulk transportation was provided by boats, wagons, or, in China, a vehicle commonly called a "wheelbarrow", though it's very unlike the common modern device by the same name. The chariot, by virtue of holding two men, allowed an archer to travel at the speed of a galloping horse, while also protecting them to some extent from the arrows, axes, and swords of others.
It was an unbeatable battlefield combination for centuries, and the accounts of Bronze Age battles—in Hatti, Egypt, India, and China—are basically accounts of battles between chariot formations.
My question was that while this particular chariot seems like it might have been used for ceremonial purposes, was that true for all chariots? The military context is interesting, but its surely only part of the picture.
To put it a different way, after its military significance faded, was it actually relegated to purely ceremonial uses or was it a popular means of transportation?
Neither! Chariot racing was a popular sport from Homeric Greece (≈01200 BCE, during the heyday of the military chariot itself) through to Classical Greece, Imperial Rome, and Byzantium until at least 00600 CE, for instance, and that's neither "purely ceremonial" nor "transportation". I think the closest modern analogy is horseback riding, which is done almost entirely for recreational and ceremonial purposes nowadays, but is a popular hobby among the wealthy and the rural.
But, unlike horseback riding, chariots were never a practical means of long-distance travel. They have no suspension, they have no seats, they have no cargo space, and they don't stay level. At any time period, if you're traveling all day in a chariot, it's because the chariot is in one place and you want it to be somewhere else, perhaps for a battle or a race. If you and the driver just wanted to get there yourselves, you'd just ride the horses and leave the chariot back home in the stable.
Yes, it's just 600 CE! It's not the notation historians use; it's just a bit of thought-provoking fun. It also has the advantage of really pissing off the kind of mindless conformists who beat up gay people, hackers, and anybody else who seems "odd" or "queer"! See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26291173.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1361045568663945216.html