Nathan Myhrvold Live Q&A

Last week we announced that co-founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures, Nathan Myhrvold, had agreed to do a live Q&A. Earlier today we posted a few of his answers, but now's your chance to hear it directly from him. Mr. Myhrvold will be answering your questions below until 12:30 PDT. Please keep it to one question per post so everyone gets a chance. Update: 04/03 19:41 GMT by S : 12:30pm PDT has come and gone, and Mr. Myhrvold has to move on. Thanks for the answers! Here's a link to his user page if you'd just like to read his responses.

Better funding for the USPTO?

[Anonymous Coward]

In your responses earlier today, you said, "The patent office has had funding issues. In recent years Congress has raided the patent office fees and taken them to spend elsewhere rather than let them be used to improve the patent office."

How do you think additional funding could be best spent? A friend of mine is a patent lawyer for a private firm, and he tells me they have a massive advantage over the USPTO workers because they're highly specialized and they work for companies who can afford to hire talent. Would boosting USPTO salaries help? Do they need better infrastructure?

Re:Better funding for the USPTO?

[NMyhrvold]

Short answer is hiring more patent examiners in topics that are overloaded. Longer answer is better IT infrastructure and other things. In Congress this issue is known as "fee diversion" - diverting patent fees from the patent office to other purposes

What should everyone know about cooking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr. Myhrvold:

I have some thoughts on your patent activities, but a) it's complex, and b) probably nothing you haven't heard before or that would suddenly make you repent and start your life over ;)

So instead, I'd like to hear about cooking. I enjoy cooking, but I realize I'm a duffer, and keep finding small improvements from random sources (YouTube, relatives, friends, books) of the "why didn't I think of that?" variety. Is there any advice that you think the average non-cook should hear based on your non-conventional approach?

Re:Dinosaur Project

[NMyhrvold]

I think what you mean is that I wrote a paper many years ago (1997?) that showed through computer modeling that sauropod dinosaurs (i.e. apatosaurus) could whip their tails and crack them like bullwhips. The crack is actually a sonic boom! So they were the first creatures to break the sound barrier (not Chuck Yeager). The paper has been pretty widely accepted in the paleontology community. I have been meaning to build a physical model (not full scale) to test it empirically, but have been busy with other tihngs, including other dinosaur projects.

Re:Let's get down to the core of the issues...

[NMyhrvold]

Well, it turns out that there were horse sized birds at many points in the past - particularly the elephant bird of madagascar, the moa of new zealand and the "terror birds" which lived in ancient south america. Also, ancient (several millions years ago) horses were pretty small - some probably did have goose-sized ponies.... They were mean, so I would much rather face duck sized horses.

Why you?

[Beefpatrol]

Why do you think Slashdot chose you over other for a live Q&A?

Court education?

[Anonymous Coward]

As patents become more complex and arcane (or at least about inventions that are more complex and more arcane), do you think we can expect the judicial system to accurately evaluate their validity? There have been cases recently where justices and jurors have clearly been in over their head with regard to understanding how patented software claims work, and software isn't getting any simpler. Hardware, too, is becoming difficult for hobbyists to comprehend, yet we expect a few weeks of testimony to make people competent to judge patent validity. If you don't think it's a problem at this point, do you think it will be in the future?

Re:What should everyone know about cooking?

[NMyhrvold]

This isn't an easy question to answre quickly, but here goes... First, there are a lot of cool new books on scientifically inspired cooking besides my books. Science of Cooking (by cook's illustrated), and Cooknig for Geeks are two examples. Ideas in Food is acool blog and they also have books that are relevant. Second, buy a digital thermometer - they are like $20 for a cheap one and $70 for the best ones. You need to understand tempertaures. A digital scale is the second thing I recomment - it is much easier to weigh ingredients than using cups and spoons.

update...

[darue]

any comment on developments regarding the geoengineering patent?

Future Tech?

[Anonymous Coward]

Given how much you deal with new inventions, what tech do you see taking the world by storm in the next 5-10 years? Will wearable computing make as big of a mark as smartphones? How about autonomous cars?

food world and software patent world

[waddgodd]

Since you've lived in both the food world and the software patent world, can you draw any parallels between cooks and their recipes and software engineers and their code WRT IP law and tradition?

Re:update...

[NMyhrvold]

We have several geoengineering ideas that we have invented and filed patents on. The patents are making their way through the system, and some have issued. However we only filed for the patents so that we *might* have some say in how this technology is used. THe big issue for geoengineering is that there is virtually no research funding. I would not want to deploy any system without doing lots of reseach, but so far this is not an area that has been funded by the government. Menawhile essentially zero progress has been made toward making sufficient cuts in CO2 emission. So current course and speed we will have a climate problem. Climate scientists differ as to whether that problem will be serious in 5 years, 20 or 100 years but it will occur. I think that society will procrastinate until things get bad, and at that point geoengineering will be the only way to prevent serious enviornmental damage. But we'll see...

Giving it all up?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to your wikipedia page you like nature photography. Have you ever considered embracing your inner Thoreau and giving it all up to live a simpler life in the woods?

Re:Future Tech?

[NMyhrvold]

Metamaterials is one area that we are into very deeply that I think will have huge application. Look it up - it is very cool.