A very friendly disagreement:
I for one welcome and am very interested in the topic of patents. I find=20
this thread not very off topic at all, in fact almost [EE] or perhaps=20
[TECK] but not quite. Many of us here make a living in the field of=20
technology, patents can be an important part of that. Any pertinent info=20
should be welcome.
Further, Bob's post is confusing to me since the ROE clearly state(d?)=20
that off topic posts are welcome. Or have those rules changed?

BUT, I do appreciate the hard work that our admins. do, cheers to you all.

Some digging brings me to:
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist :
"[OT] This label is for posts that are completely off the topic of=20
engineering/technology. The only things we don't ever want to see are=20
religious/metaphysical, sex, hate, or political messages.

I could almost see labeling this thread as political (since the USO is a=20
government institution) but not really. besides, that was not the complaint=
..


Looking forward,
Al Shinn

Thanks Bob! I'm sorry if the
> post appeared to be too far off topic. I thought the radio program would
> be of interest to engineers on the list since they are often asked by
> their employers to patent stuff. The program has an interview with a
> software engineer who holds patents that he believes are gobley goop,
> but the company attorneys wrote them up. I posted this to two lists. One
> is in an industry where a number of users are being sued for patents on
> very widely used technology. Some of those patents have been thrown out
> on re-examination. The other list (piclist) is a list of engineers, so I
> thought it would be of interest. Again, thanks for the comment. I'll try
> to stay more pic related. Harold
>> >I'm posting as an admin.
>> >
>> >This thread started poorly. One could almost say the original post -was=
-
>> >trolling. And it's going even further downhill.
>> >
>> >I could complain and whine about plenty of things that I find important
>> >but I don't choose to do it on the Piclist.
>> >
>> >Use the Piclist for what it is meant for - PICs and engineering.
>> >
>> >Thanks,
>> >
>> >Bob
>> >
>> >
--=20
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