Break-even patents

One of the problems with the existing patent system is that the clock starts ticking towards expiry of the patent as soon as the patent is filed, despite the fact that the inventor may need to invest significantly more time before the resulting product can be commercialised.

Whilst not wanting to extend patent protection by an arbitrary amount, one solution would be to give the inventor a choice at the point of filing between a standard 20-year patent, and a break-even patent.

A break-even patent would last until the inventor recovered all costs associated with the original invention an commercialisation, subject to the following criteria:

• The cost and revenue information would be required to be published
• The financial reports would have to be audited by an independent auditor, the fees of whom would not be costs counted towards the break-even
• The inventor must take reasonable steps to commercialise (e.g. accepting offers of support for further development and commercialisation). A key feedback mechanism is that a potential purchaser of the technology could file to have the patent invalidated if the inventor is not progressing with development him or herself, or willing to licence.
• The patent application costs would not count towards the break-even

Gamification of showering

Showering may well lend itself well to gamification. Firstly, it's possible to get some metrics on what you're doing: time spent; flow rate; temperature. And there's also an objective that people can identify with: shower for shorter to save water and energy, which is good for the environment and good for your wallet.

How might a shower gamification system look? As mentioned, there need to be sensors. A proximity sensor to see that someone had entered the shower, a flow rate sensor, a temperature sensor and perhaps some kind of way to detect who the showerer is without too much hassle (near field sensor to wrist band or smartphone, voice recognition, image recognition, etc).

There needs to be a (touch) screen and a speaker in order to provide visual and audio feedback to the showerer (whilst also playing music, or displaying the news). As the person gets in, the timer starts, and the combination of time, flow rate and temperature are combined to give an overall score.

Scores are compared against the showerer's personal bests, but also against a family leaderboard, custom leaderboards that the showerer joins (e.g. friends / colleagues), and perhaps local, national or global leaderboards.

Gamers Against Real Violence

I struggle to reconcile my enjoyment of computer games that are often violent with my rejection of real world violence in all but the most extreme of circumstances. This issue doesn't appear to me to be fully resolved by the gaming industry either.

I suggest the creation of a not-for-profit organisation, provisionally titled "Gamers Against Real Violence", to facilitate the gaming industry's response to this issue.

The mission statement of this organisation would be something along the lines of:

We make, play and enjoy computer games that are violent, and that may even glamorise, glorify or trivialise violence. However, we a steadfast in our condemnation of real-world violence. We look forward to the day that violence only exists in fictional media, and we will support causes to this end.

Developers would be allowed to display the GARV logo and mission statement on splash screen before and after games, and on box art etc, if they are members of GARV.

Members would be required to take action to the stated aims of the organisation, for example by donating to relevant charities (e.g. Amnesty International), sponsoring independent research to explore the impact of violent gaming, supporting rehabilitation, etc.

Scoreboard system

Outlined below is an idea for a scoreboard/leaderboard system for a PvP (player vs player) type game. It would work for games like chess and for team first-person-shooters, and potentially also for soccer (although it doesn't lend itself well to seasons).

The system is designed for players joining at any point into an established leaderboard, much like in online PvP computer games.

• When a player first starts they get 100 points.
• Each game you win you take 10% of your opponent's points.
• Hence, no player can go below zero.
• For games that are purely skill-based (no luck or pay-to-win), it is very quick to rise to the top of the leaderboard, just challenge and win against players with high scores.
• To stop players at the top only challenging / accepting challenges from weak players, a player cannot challenge another player if he/she has unanswered challenges and challenges must be accepted in order.
• To avoid players stalling for time, games can time out, with a penalty to both players in excess of the 10%

It would be possible for a person at the top of the leaderboard to just stop playing any more games, and thereby keep their score. However this would just serve as an incentive for other people to out-do  them.

Siri Full Metal Jacket crossover

The current iterations of intelligent personal assistants like Siri are fairly reactive. You ask them a question, they respond. But the future generations, and the ones I will be intrigued to experiment with, will be proactive. They will push information your way. They will remind you of things.

And the step beyond that is the intelligent personal assistant that challenges you. One that tells you off for eating too much, or for slacking off, or for not going for a run. And we'll be able to "skin" them too, so I can have Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (of Full Metal Jacket) calling me a "puke" and "maggot", and pushing me to exercise harder.

Supermarket app

Supermarket A produces an app such that enables customers shopping at any other supermarket to scan the items (or perhaps the till receipt) when shopping at any other store. The app the calculates to price difference to shopping at Supermarket A and gives a discount (potentially an amount related to the difference) which can be claimed from a future shop at supermarket A.

The advantage to the supermarket is the data and the discount incentive to shop with them. The advantage to the customer is the discount.

Obligation not to publish

It seems to me that it could be argued that there is an obligation (potentially even a moral one) not to publish if what you are publishing is not adding novel content to the sum total of human knowledge. Any publication that adds content that is not novel, increases that total amount of content, without increasing the total value of the content, and as such dilutes value in the body of human knowledge. This dilution makes it harder for people to find the right information - effectively an inefficiency in society.

I fully acknowledge that through this blog I am probably failing to fulfil this obligation.

An interesting aspect to this thought is the challenge of establishing whether any content is novel. The existing sum total of human knowledge is not readily searchable for a number of reasons: not all is digitised; not all is in a language the searcher is familiar with; much that is digitsed is behind a paywall (especially books); and, notably, an idea that is equivalent may be expressed in materially different ways that would be hard for a searcher to identify.