I suppose it works for someone who's renting and on social security for their whole life after the judgement.
However if you want a bit more than that in your life, like a house, car, paying for your children's education at any stage, even a computer you own(!), oh and a job which pays more than minimum, then you might think twice about putting yourself in the firing line.
Or, as you say, live outside the patent-enforcing countries. Unfortunately it's not just the US. But it is mainly the US:-)
Would the research get done if the investment was not protected?
The question is loaded. Yes the research would get done, because there are other ways to protect investment and fund research than the current patent and licensing methodology.
In the UK, the NHS (national health service) is criticised for not paying £10,000/year for some expensive drugs that may save a person from cancer. The reason is that you can save a lot of other people from other things for that money.
But they do pay for some drugs at that cost. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that they pay for 1000 x £10,000/year drugs from some company.
Let's also say, because this is realistic, that the same drugs could be used on 100,000 people effectively instead, but the NHS cannot afford 100,000 x £10,000/year for the benefit likelihoods.
Research and testing are the reason for the high cost, as everyone points out.
Manufacturing costs are low for many of these drugs. This is obviously true from the low cost of generics as soon as patent protection expires, or in countries where patents are ignored or don't apply.
So, why can't the NHS pay the same company 2000 x £10,000 and have 100 times as much of the drug manufactured?
That would treat 100 times as many people, while providing the drug company with substantially more revenue. Everybody wins.
It would lead to more research than now, because of the increased drug company revenues.
So would the research get done if the investment was not protected at all? Perhaps not if there was literally no protection of any kind.
But it's clear as a bright day that the present system of private patents results in vastly more suffering and death than necessary (100 times as many deaths in this example, which is a realistic figure for expensive drugs which are cheap to manufacture).
Clearly, there is sufficient money, and sufficient organisational scale, to fund the same or more research and get those kind of drugs to vastly more people at the same time.
When that's not happening, the system is broken and should be changed.
Complete dismissal of private investment protection is probably not the answer; neither is motivating companies into keeping secrets to protect their research investments.
An independent body of medical economists and drug company auditors, having the power to enforce prices, and sometimes enforce the ability of generic manufacturers to play a part, in exchange for commitments to buy in large quantities, and required to follow sound, sustainable economic criteria when setting enforcements. That may be part of the answer.
Don't like big government? Before jumping to a gut conclusion, evaluate rationally in which scenario there is most benefit for each party. And when it's a win-win for all parties: the patients and the drug researchers and the drug company owners, it should be considered seriously don't you think?
Summary: Would the research get done if the investment was not patented and licensed as now?. Yes, it would. There is room for great improvement to everyone's benefit.
If you're looking for violations, check out all those little devices (routers, media players etc.) which link to uClibc without shared libraries...
uClibc is LGPL. When it's not a shared library, that conveyes certain rights to a relinkable form of the object code of all applications on the device, including proprietary apps.
I've never seen such relinkable object code of the proprietary apps offered, for download or in any other form. In other words, flagrant LGPL violations everywhere.
I often wondered what it did; thanks for clarifying.
(I won't be using the option, as I regularly have to kill and restart NetworkManager (the daemon) anyway, since it doesn't manage bluetooth 3g internet, which I use half the time. But it's nice to know the option exists.)
I don't know about Windows (don't use it, except in virtual machines:-)
But Linux hibernate is similar, it requires as much space as RAM to be reserved (in swap, doesn't need a separate file), but it won't use all the space if it can compress RAM contents when storing it.
Hibernate also compresses your RAM, and it's usually quite compressible.
The major delay is probably rotational disk seek times. After the login screen on Ubuntu Intrepid, I still have to wait ~10-15 seconds before I can launch anything from the desktop, while it's loading a few things onto the task bar, starting NetworkManager (the applet), loading menus and icons, etc. The disk is seeking heavily in that time, and I strongly suspect that's what makes those things slow.
Try booting from an SSD (flash replacement for hard disk at a decent speed, not the cheap USB ones). I don't have one, alas. I would be surprised if it doesn't boot much faster.
It takes time, physically, for devices to get from power and reset good to charging up all the little bits internally before expecting them to behave sensibly. It also provides time for devices to boot themselves logically - many of them have their own software to boot, and/or FPGAs to load up. PCI bus speed is irrelevant to that.
If PCI devices could just block a configuration request until their internal boot was ready, that would be better. But some PCI devices don't have any logic at all until they're booted - those with programmable logic interfaces direct to the bus. The boot delay makes it possible to build those without an extra chip in between.
I've often had useful web pages take 40 seconds or more to come up. It's annoying, it's relatively rare, but it would be very annoying if they didn't come up at all.
I've also had ping times in excess of 60 seconds. Ho hum, it's useful to know the machine is still there at least:-)
I use Gnumeric to open Excel spreadsheets that I'm occasionally sent, because OO.o calc doesn't display them properly and doesn't handle things like scrolling regions and locked ranges (in the sent file) properly. Also Gnumeric is noticably faster on my 2GHz dual core laptop - both for starting and when using it.
Since my job has nothing to do with spreadsheets, this is just occasional basic admin stuff sent my way, to my mind, that says OO.o calc is far from finished.
I wonder how it could have been if they had produced something like a "zope in a box" that was a single one shot package that got a full Zope with database running, kind of like rails, just a run a few commands and you made a database backed zope app... things could have been different, I remember jerking around with different python postgresql connectors trying to figure out which worked and which was supported..
I thought a key feature of Zope was that it had it's own built-in database, and that put quite a few people off it? I'm sure I've read comments on Slashdot to the effect that they would have used Zope more if it stored everything in a "standard" (read MySQL or PostgreSQL) database instead of the Zope one.
Which is a shame, as there are a lot of nifty things which are much easier with support from a specialised database.
Ever tried fitting a decent size processor and its cache onto an FPGA with room left?
Cheap available FPGAs have quite limited speed and logic capacity. I find they get interesting at around $500+ per chip, but then I like complex logic.
FPGAs are awesome for some things. For some things, they are much faster than CPUs.
But if you want to implement the equivalent of a modern CPU or GPU on one, forget it. If you want to make a mobile phone from scratch, forget it with FPGAs, aside from capacity/cost relationship, the power usage would also kill it.
For those things a fantasy processor manufacturing plant would be nice:-)
In basic economic theory, lower prices result from increasing supply or reducing demand.
Economic demand means a desire and willingness to pay for the work.
As you eloquently explain, the work is important but there is not the willingness to pay much for the work.
In other words, the hiring agencies would rather leave positions unfilled, and grandmothers suffering, than pay enough to fill all the positions and see all grandmothers treated well.
That is called low economic demand.
If people like you left those jobs behind, what would happen depends on what the hiring agencies would do in response. You can't generalise from what would happen if just one person (i.e. you) left. You have to analyse what would happen if lots of people didn't take those jobs - would the agencies offer higher salaries, or leave more positions unfilled?
No, but people who "know" Windows and can provide casual, free help are a lot easier to find than people who "know" Linux.
My mother and sister settled on Windows even though they knew of alternatives, because they knew a few local people who could theoretically help them out if they had questions with Windows, and didn't know of anyone who knew anything about Linux - except me. But I don't live near them, and I'm not interested in being long-distance tech support anyway.
In most cases, the resolutions available are returned by the monitor itself, over the DDC channel (on VGA, DVI and HDMI cables). The information block is called EDID.
Usually, if the monitor's native resolution and timing aren't in the detected list, it's because the monitor itself is sending faulty information, or because of using an old VGA cable which doesn't have the wires for DDC.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't plan to earn any wages ever?
I suppose it works for someone who's renting and on social security for their whole life after the judgement.
However if you want a bit more than that in your life, like a house, car, paying for your children's education at any stage, even a computer you own(!), oh and a job which pays more than minimum, then you might think twice about putting yourself in the firing line.
Or, as you say, live outside the patent-enforcing countries. Unfortunately it's not just the US. But it is mainly the US :-)
The question is loaded. Yes the research would get done, because there are other ways to protect investment and fund research than the current patent and licensing methodology.
In the UK, the NHS (national health service) is criticised for not paying £10,000/year for some expensive drugs that may save a person from cancer. The reason is that you can save a lot of other people from other things for that money.
But they do pay for some drugs at that cost. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that they pay for 1000 x £10,000/year drugs from some company.
Let's also say, because this is realistic, that the same drugs could be used on 100,000 people effectively instead, but the NHS cannot afford 100,000 x £10,000/year for the benefit likelihoods.
Research and testing are the reason for the high cost, as everyone points out.
Manufacturing costs are low for many of these drugs. This is obviously true from the low cost of generics as soon as patent protection expires, or in countries where patents are ignored or don't apply.
So, why can't the NHS pay the same company 2000 x £10,000 and have 100 times as much of the drug manufactured?
That would treat 100 times as many people, while providing the drug company with substantially more revenue. Everybody wins.
It would lead to more research than now, because of the increased drug company revenues.
So would the research get done if the investment was not protected at all? Perhaps not if there was literally no protection of any kind.
But it's clear as a bright day that the present system of private patents results in vastly more suffering and death than necessary (100 times as many deaths in this example, which is a realistic figure for expensive drugs which are cheap to manufacture).
Clearly, there is sufficient money, and sufficient organisational scale, to fund the same or more research and get those kind of drugs to vastly more people at the same time.
When that's not happening, the system is broken and should be changed.
Complete dismissal of private investment protection is probably not the answer; neither is motivating companies into keeping secrets to protect their research investments.
An independent body of medical economists and drug company auditors, having the power to enforce prices, and sometimes enforce the ability of generic manufacturers to play a part, in exchange for commitments to buy in large quantities, and required to follow sound, sustainable economic criteria when setting enforcements. That may be part of the answer.
Don't like big government? Before jumping to a gut conclusion, evaluate rationally in which scenario there is most benefit for each party. And when it's a win-win for all parties: the patients and the drug researchers and the drug company owners, it should be considered seriously don't you think?
Summary: Would the research get done if the investment was not patented and licensed as now?. Yes, it would. There is room for great improvement to everyone's benefit.
There's a huge difference between attacking specific scientific research, and attacking scientific research in general.
It is incorrect and disingenuous to call the former anti-science.
Not if they bomb green synagogues and pray in blue ones.
If you're looking for violations, check out all those little devices (routers, media players etc.) which link to uClibc without shared libraries...
uClibc is LGPL. When it's not a shared library, that conveyes certain rights to a relinkable form of the object code of all applications on the device, including proprietary apps.
I've never seen such relinkable object code of the proprietary apps offered, for download or in any other form. In other words, flagrant LGPL violations everywhere.
That is _such_ a poor name for the option.
I often wondered what it did; thanks for clarifying.
(I won't be using the option, as I regularly have to kill and restart NetworkManager (the daemon) anyway, since it doesn't manage bluetooth 3g internet, which I use half the time. But it's nice to know the option exists.)
I don't know about Windows (don't use it, except in virtual machines :-)
But Linux hibernate is similar, it requires as much space as RAM to be reserved (in swap, doesn't need a separate file), but it won't use all the space if it can compress RAM contents when storing it.
Over here, fast booting light bulbs are now only available on the black market!
Hibernate also compresses your RAM, and it's usually quite compressible.
The major delay is probably rotational disk seek times. After the login screen on Ubuntu Intrepid, I still have to wait ~10-15 seconds before I can launch anything from the desktop, while it's loading a few things onto the task bar, starting NetworkManager (the applet), loading menus and icons, etc. The disk is seeking heavily in that time, and I strongly suspect that's what makes those things slow.
Try booting from an SSD (flash replacement for hard disk at a decent speed, not the cheap USB ones). I don't have one, alas. I would be surprised if it doesn't boot much faster.
Suspend does work on my laptop.
But on the other hand, there is no Ubuntu kernel which simultaneously works with Bluetooth 3g broadband and can write to a CD on my laptop.
So I reboot mine just to change between working kernel feature sets quite often.
I also run out of battery quite often, when working in a cafe. Then I switch to a second battery, but that requires a reboot too...
How do you do that?
The point isn't PCI bus cycles, though.
It takes time, physically, for devices to get from power and reset good to charging up all the little bits internally before expecting them to behave sensibly. It also provides time for devices to boot themselves logically - many of them have their own software to boot, and/or FPGAs to load up. PCI bus speed is irrelevant to that.
If PCI devices could just block a configuration request until their internal boot was ready, that would be better. But some PCI devices don't have any logic at all until they're booted - those with programmable logic interfaces direct to the bus. The boot delay makes it possible to build those without an extra chip in between.
I've often had useful web pages take 40 seconds or more to come up. It's annoying, it's relatively rare, but it would be very annoying if they didn't come up at all.
I've also had ping times in excess of 60 seconds. Ho hum, it's useful to know the machine is still there at least :-)
Sometimes great games don't make any money due to inadequate marketing and distribution.
It's a complicated thing, making money even when you have a good game, even when reviews in magazines are quite positive.
I use Gnumeric to open Excel spreadsheets that I'm occasionally sent, because OO.o calc doesn't display them properly and doesn't handle things like scrolling regions and locked ranges (in the sent file) properly. Also Gnumeric is noticably faster on my 2GHz dual core laptop - both for starting and when using it.
Since my job has nothing to do with spreadsheets, this is just occasional basic admin stuff sent my way, to my mind, that says OO.o calc is far from finished.
I thought a key feature of Zope was that it had it's own built-in database, and that put quite a few people off it? I'm sure I've read comments on Slashdot to the effect that they would have used Zope more if it stored everything in a "standard" (read MySQL or PostgreSQL) database instead of the Zope one.
Which is a shame, as there are a lot of nifty things which are much easier with support from a specialised database.
Ever tried fitting a decent size processor and its cache onto an FPGA with room left?
Cheap available FPGAs have quite limited speed and logic capacity. I find they get interesting at around $500+ per chip, but then I like complex logic.
FPGAs are awesome for some things. For some things, they are much faster than CPUs.
But if you want to implement the equivalent of a modern CPU or GPU on one, forget it. If you want to make a mobile phone from scratch, forget it with FPGAs, aside from capacity/cost relationship, the power usage would also kill it.
For those things a fantasy processor manufacturing plant would be nice :-)
So long as the protocols can be distinguished, you can do it easily with a local proxy. I do it every day.
What happens when they block all encrypted content, and allow only plaintext or "secure" traffic to whitelisted sites?
They'd still track which sites you visited, and use the information in the same way. It's less detailed and valuable for them, but still of value.
As others have said, they're not modifying web pages, they're allowing site operators to send you Phorm-optimised advertising. https won't stop tht
That's what's meant by low demand.
In basic economic theory, lower prices result from increasing supply or reducing demand.
Economic demand means a desire and willingness to pay for the work.
As you eloquently explain, the work is important but there is not the willingness to pay much for the work.
In other words, the hiring agencies would rather leave positions unfilled, and grandmothers suffering, than pay enough to fill all the positions and see all grandmothers treated well.
That is called low economic demand.
If people like you left those jobs behind, what would happen depends on what the hiring agencies would do in response. You can't generalise from what would happen if just one person (i.e. you) left. You have to analyse what would happen if lots of people didn't take those jobs - would the agencies offer higher salaries, or leave more positions unfilled?
No, but people who "know" Windows and can provide casual, free help are a lot easier to find than people who "know" Linux.
My mother and sister settled on Windows even though they knew of alternatives, because they knew a few local people who could theoretically help them out if they had questions with Windows, and didn't know of anyone who knew anything about Linux - except me. But I don't live near them, and I'm not interested in being long-distance tech support anyway.
For some definitions of head.
Except they can.
In most cases, the resolutions available are returned by the monitor itself, over the DDC channel (on VGA, DVI and HDMI cables). The information block is called EDID.
Usually, if the monitor's native resolution and timing aren't in the detected list, it's because the monitor itself is sending faulty information, or because of using an old VGA cable which doesn't have the wires for DDC.
And sometimes it's not in your head, but your head can fix it anyway.