Thank you for saving me the trouble of posting that very comment. Despite all our wishing that better code will win, Linux is running into the fact that Microsoft has declared competition on the desktop illegal.
And what's more, they enforce their laws more stringently than the US does.
I wish it weren't true, but the fact is that MS must be pushed out of its desktop monopoly by antitrust enforcement.
Is it simpler to believe that a mix of salts causes both the IR spectrum and the visible coloration, or is it simpler to believe that some bacteria cause it?
We've never seen life off the Earth, but we've also never seen a lack of life in livable conditions on Earth.
We've never seen bacteria having an effect on another celestial body's spectrum, but we've never seen the combination of salts (even on Earth) that could cause this spectrum either.
I would grant that it doesn't meet Sagan's more stringent requirement that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."
In the Constitution, the founders, products of the book-powered Enlightenment, naturally gave a special monopoly (copyright) to writers to give them a weapon with which to fight entrenched cultural interests. These monopolies only granted a fighting chance, however, as the capital required to publish was always greater than the resources of writers. So the Copyright Monopoly was created, and was reasonable, because publishing was expensive.
But, a few decades ago, technology made it possible for certain publishers (studios) to beat the creators -- analog recording (film and vinyl) required a studio not only to make copies, but to produce the work in the first place. The creator was stuck in the bind of having to have a studio to be heard and seen. The studios used this advantage to force creators of music and movies into a work-for-hire situation. The Copyright Monopoly was no longer reasonable, it now gave the creator no help. The beginnings of the cultural wasteland of the 20th Century were set.
About the same time, Congress found it necessary to ration speech by granting a monopoly over the airwaves to licensed broadcasters. The balance that held up for the first few decades was that the broadcasters did not produce the works they broadcast, and they were not consolidated. The Broadcast Monopoly was created, and was reasonable, because there was no other way to get broadcasting done, but to make it a public utility.
But then, starting a couple decades ago, the studios bought out the broadcasters, who after all were a competitive medium. So now the studios had both the Copyright Monopoly and the Broadcast Monopoly. Suddenly, the Broadcast Monopoly was a very bad idea, as it was not a public utility, but a private pipe for pumping the publishers' content. The cultural wasteland accelerated, and the political process was poisoned by the need to go through the broadcasters to get to the people.
Then you get the web. The web doesn't need the Copyright Monopoly, since publishing is cheap. The web doesn't need the Broadcasting Monopoly, as everyone can broadcast without interference. And finally, the web takes the uncopyable analog advantage away fromthe studios, so creators don't need them any more.
So the "problem" created by the web is only a problem in that it means that the power of the studios now serves no public interest, and only remains because of the obsolete legal monopolies they enjoy.
Doesn't this mean that our politics and culture won't be restored to health until these monopolies are not only contained where they are, but eliminated?
And further, how do we perform these miracles from within the system that's been corrupted?
The author presents essentially two pieces of evidence:
the historical migration of free software development from US to worldwide, and
the fact that being a programmer in the US has become a good gig lately
then jumps to the conclusion that this means that US programmers weren't altruistic, merely opportunistic (worked for universities before, corps now).
But he doesn't examine other areas:
the US/Europe ratio may be declining over time, but the US hacker/US population ratio has likely been increasing -- overall free software activity in the US has certainly not been overrun by the lure of proprietary software's lucre.
the appearance of free software predated widespread online use in US -- maybe the story will be the same elsewhere. That is, is the situation in Hungary today similar to US in 1984 -- only the hackers are online, so the hacker/online ratio is very high?
But I think the main flaw in his argument is inflating ESR's gift-economy rationale (which I suppose he does so purposely to puff up the importance of his conclusion). Even ESR isn't so much saying that free software hacking is completely without regard to economic conditions, but that it's an unexpected response to these conditions (hence post-industrial).
I'd claim, and I think ESR might agree, that free software is an efficient means of production (shared resources), niche penetration (scratching itches), and market penetration (network effect) made possible by BOTH the economic (free time + university grants + young single contributors) AND cultural (want props + want to contribute + crave technical knowledge) situations of hackers.
In other words, the fact that hackers could do some coding for free without starving, and that they were wont to do so, ran into the happy accident that doing so could produce some really good shit.
This would explain the experience of the 1990's -- unbelievable growth in free software and simultaneous insane (literally:-) growth in economic opportunities for programmers.
The author's argument might lead one to believe that open source would wither and die if the corporate world paid programmers well enough. The simultaneity of the dot-com boom and the Linux boom deny that.
I'll grant to the author that the European countries present an economic situation more favorable to free software. In fact, I'd amplify the fact by saying that European government support for free software has largely economic motivations -- they don't want to lose to MS/Sun/Oracle/IBM any longer.
But this fact may support a post-industrial thesis as well -- workers in northern European countries enjoy more free time and have a better safety net than US workers -- so they have less to lose from partaking in a little free coding.
This is the crucial distinction: a post-industrial explanation for free software contributions doesn't put them outside of the economic situation -- it relies on the coders having the opportunity to engage in non-economic activity.
That still leaves intact two "revolutionary" conclusions from the history of free software -- that significant production can occur outside of the wealth motive (if the survival motive has been taken care of and the infrastructure exists), and that that production can (in the case of software) be more efficient in creating use value than a wealth-driven model.
What will MS baseball-like coercive tactics be? You mean what have they been?
The messages baseball is sending to Minnesota are "if you don't give in, they're'll be no team" and "because, a stadium is the solution to all that's wrong with your team"
Microsoft's messages are "if you don't give in, the economy will be ruined" "because, MS dominance is the one thing that can save the tech industry".
Of course, both are lying about the fact that their greed got us in the spot -- baseball's refusal to embrace revenue sharing is the real reason for the revenue disparities among teams, and fear of MS caused both a lack of innovation in the now-decimated PC industry and a squandering of tech capital in the unprofitable areas outside of MS influence -- dot-coms.
What happened to the dot-com investors is not at all unlike what's happening to the "small-market" teams: trying to compete in a lucrative sector, but forced to only play in the unprofitable backwaters, serve as "subcontractors" to the bully, and hike costs to compete with the bully, the teams and dot-coms were losers before they started.
Mind you, both the dot-coms and the small-market owners were also blinded by greed, but it's the public that paid the price.
What price will Gates ever pay? Or Steinbrenner?
Well it's possible that they are each strangling their own golden goose (MS the software industry, and MLB baseball itself), but it's taking its time dying.
In either case, I'd like to the goose live, and I think the bullies have to be stopped to let it happen.
I understood the consequences, in my case being that Gore would win Minnesota by a little less, and a third voice might gain some legitimacy and federal cash. Perfectly pragmatic (unfortunately it didn't come to pass).
Those consequences were not, by the way, that Gore lost. He did that his own corrupt self.
Pragmatism is necessary, but then assuming that "we can never challenge proprietary software" would have seemed pretty pragmatic before GNU, wouldn't it?
A deplorable fact which, when combined with the fact that this judge is a Clinton appointee who seems perfectly willing to roll over for MS, makes one wonder if "right" and "left" have been replaced by "for sale" and "not for sale".
As a Minnesotan who applauds Hatch for both stances, and would gladly cross the street to spit in either Gates' or Selig's eye, I must offer my congratulations.
Ironically, the Twins are being singled out because Minnesotans refused to buy a forced upgrade -- a stadium.
Oh, I think he just tossed that in to give us TWO things to talk about.
However, there is an association between tool-making skills and language skills, that being the ability to think abstractly. To become a good toolmaker, one must transfer skills and designs to new situations -- new materials, new uses, new toolmakers. Which means being able to consider the tools and designs as separate from their manifestation in any single artifact. What are those separated abstractions, and how are they remembered, recalled, reused, refined, and passed on? Isn't something that performs as a language required?
Also, the questions of "when did language emerge" and "when did bone tools emerge" are parallel in that they're versions of: "how far do cultural adaptations lag physical adaptations? and is there a lag at all?" Did shorter palms and bipedalism allow us to stumble across toolmaking, or did a toolmaking culture make these post-ape adaptations advantageous? Similarly, did the restructuring of our throat and vocal chords (bipedalism at play again) allow a richer language, or did a precursor language afford an advantage to those with the new physiology?
This find is another in a pattern that turns the usual "now that we could walk and sing and thread a needle, we learned all sorts of cool stuff" on its head, into "early needs to walk and sing and thread a needle helped select for advanced versions of these traits."
Logically, does it make any sense that natural selection would lead to our amazing cultural capacities if culture itself wasn't an element of selection?
When there's a monopolist, there's a way. MS product activation is an anticompetitive feature because it raises barriers to retaining Windows while changing your original hardware platform, which is at least an opportunity, and often a requirement, to adopt an additional OS platform. Linux may be free, but if I need to pay for an MS OS in order to get enough disk space to run it, would I still consider dual-booting to Linux a free upgrade?
Remember, MS' monopoly is based on a few simple facts:
Windows runs on the dominant PC hardware platform (x86).
The network effect of a large user base makes it hard to interact with others without using (or interoperating with) Windows.
Windows comes pre-installed on almost every x86 system sold.
Product activation, by essentially charging you a tax to upgrade hardware, and by giving you only the choice of cutting yourself off from Windows users, makes it more likely that you'll remain tied to the hardware platform that tied you to Windows in the first place.
It's really the final recognition that Microsoft's monopoly makes it the world's dominant PC hardware vendor, and the OEMs are just subcontractors.
While I agree wholeheartedly with your feelings on overbroad patents, to answer your question: what's wrong with old-patent-plus-one-bit patents? I'd say that they are evidence of the fact that our patent system has become an expensive, elaborate joke.
If a company has enough resources and enough of a stake in an area of technology, they can pepper the patent office with enough variations and guesses and might-work-somedays to leave others with the choices of: do the same, stay out of the field, or take your chances.
Sometimes, they'll take a shot at a big home run, which gives the overbroad patent, and sometimes they'll look at someone else's home run attempt and find a little room for improvement. The fact is that neither patent is worth as much to the public as the applicant hopes to get out of it.
I agree that your IC patent example is silly, and is a counterincentive to those who would put capital behind technology development. Isn't a patent that adds that millionth transistor just as silly, and a counterincentive to someone who would like to establish a new venture in the field?
Anyone still reading wants to know what the answer is, and I'm not sure, but I think the only way out is for the PTO to treat a patent grant as a damn special thing that occurs to the rare, deserving breakthrough. Maybe there should be a limited number of patent grants?
The PTO also needs to avoid punishing those who don't apply for patents (boy I bet that farmer from Ur is rolling in his grave over the wheel patent!), since that seems to just encourage the defensive-patent peppering.
As it stands, I'm having a hard time seeing how patents really serve to protect inventors or reward capitalists much.
Here are questions that jump in to my mind on reading this:
Is there a problem with patenting of electronic circuit designs that's similar to the familiar problems of patenting algorithms, processes, and genetic materials?
Namely, are there too many patents for devices that don't have proven, unique, new, and specific utility, and that don't necessarily require inventive insight?
Are we giving "same as the last design, just add this component" electrical device patents?
Is this how IBM, Motorola, and Intel compile such impressive numbers of patents granted?
It certainly seems like this could be the case. Seriously, I'm curious about info/opinions on this.
Ah, but another theme of 1984 was the success of tyranny by simply wearing out the opposition, making the struggle just plain too much hard work for the average individual. So, eliding words may not make it impossible to express their inherent ideas, but it does mean that the slow process of invention or recapture must start over.
If I had to reinvent my car every morning before work, I'd show up even later!
All the same, I'm still in the "this is more amusing than threatening" camp.
Although it does remind us that almost all published writing makes its way through MS Word at some point these days. Frightening.
But the fact that the code can be forked presents a much more real accountability mechanism than "don't like our x86-based desktop OS? buy someone else's. Ha-ha!" A credible fork that does respond to user needs raises the possibility of the original project withering into irrelevance.
If you think it doesn't happen, I'd give the examples of Minix-to-Linux, gcc-to-egcs-to-gcc dropping its code in favor of egcs, and X11-to-XFree86. Minix was more a case of adopting an orphan, but in the case of gcc and X, an important and widely-used code base was successfully wrested from the control of its original developers by the community.
Also, since the free software world relies on open reimplementable-for-free standards, it's common for new competitive projects to take "share" from established ones. Witness GNOME development after KDE's head start, the proliferation of mail servers despite sendmail's dominance, the rise of ssh to replace telnet, the quick spread of Konqueror use, etc. All of these projects were started because some users didn't like the "dominant" project, but the relevant standards (X, POSIX, SMTP, HTML) allowed alternative implementations that wouldn't be crippled by incompatibility.
Free software has, from its first project (GNU emacs) been about developing alternatives to the dominant software available. That sounds like people power to me.
Slashdot's been a fun little ride, and like many other things, peer moderation was a sexy little idea, just unfortunate in that it pretty much disintegrated into ugly mob rule groupthink.
With the unfortunate result of favorable moderation for crap like this.
It may seem obvious to you and I, but if it were so obvious to most consumers, MS wouldn't have 95% of desktops locked up.
And some of EPIC's remedies are that Microsoft label its dog vomit correctly.
And then there's: "You can't sell confections containing a whole frog." "They're clearly labelled -- Crunchy Frog." or somesuch -- an illegal (according to EPIC, I don't know the laws enough to say), harmful product shouldn't escape regulation just because it's so labelled (which XP isn't).
Exacerbating the sophistication of attacks and the abundance and susceptibility
of targets is a shrinking time-to-exploit. The window of opportunity between
vulnerability discovery and widespread exploitation, when security fixes or
workarounds can be applied to protect systems, is narrowing. This is, in part, due
to the large existing code-base of attack tools than can be used to develop new
tools as exploits are written for newly discovered vulnerabilities. Another element
causing this trend is a trend toward non-disclosure within intruder communities.
Rival groups will often keep new exploits and attack tools private to gain some
advantage over other rival groups. Tools that are exposed to outside groups
often become obsolete through competitive analysis and are quickly modified,
making the lifetime of many attack tools very short. Anti-forensics techniques are now
commonly employed in the design of intruder tools in an attempt to increase
the lifetime of the tools by limiting the ability of others to determine the function of
and defense against an attack tool. Thus, when public awareness of an exploit
method or attack tool does rise, the method or tool is often already in some
degree of widespread use."
In other words, the bad guys love the practice of not sharing info on vulnerabilities.
A corollary of this is that closed source code is a gift to these guys.
Don't like that your Firestones blow and cause your Explorer to flip? Don't buy them. All those suckers who died due to inadequate knowledge of their tires had it coming.
It's called protecting the public, and if the FTC won't do it, isn't it time someone sued them to force it?
Of course, I assume that's EPIC's intent if FTC doesn't act, and why they're going through these known-to-be-futile actions.
My god, this whole article is like some kind of special troll trap! Maybe Slashdot is going to delete the accounts of anyone modded up on the thread... (are you listening, Taco?)
What do I do with all this crap? Do I start posting reasoned replies? That would be troll-feeding, and might take hours. Do I mod them all to hell? Not really fair, since they asked for anti-OSS, but they're all so, so... WRONG!
It's like having my eyelids forced open to watch the XP launch or something!
Aaaaaugghh!
Quick, click on the Science section! Ah, that's better...
Okay, suppose the following were all true (not bloody likely, but suppose):
The RIAA only hacked the machines of the guilty.
The RIAA only destroyed material that infringed on their copyrights.
The RIAA breaks no laws doing so.
Then what harm do you have left? The RIAA acting as its own little police force/judicial system!
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for saving me the trouble of posting that very comment. Despite all our wishing that better code will win, Linux is running into the fact that Microsoft has declared competition on the desktop illegal.
And what's more, they enforce their laws more stringently than the US does.
I wish it weren't true, but the fact is that MS must be pushed out of its desktop monopoly by antitrust enforcement.
So if I submit "grok" I can add it to my resume as a publication?
But which argument does the Razor favor?
Is it simpler to believe that a mix of salts causes both the IR spectrum and the visible coloration, or is it simpler to believe that some bacteria cause it?
We've never seen life off the Earth, but we've also never seen a lack of life in livable conditions on Earth.
We've never seen bacteria having an effect on another celestial body's spectrum, but we've never seen the combination of salts (even on Earth) that could cause this spectrum either.
I would grant that it doesn't meet Sagan's more stringent requirement that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."
I also agree there's only one way to be sure...
In the Constitution, the founders, products of the book-powered Enlightenment, naturally gave a special monopoly (copyright) to writers to give them a weapon with which to fight entrenched cultural interests. These monopolies only granted a fighting chance, however, as the capital required to publish was always greater than the resources of writers. So the Copyright Monopoly was created, and was reasonable, because publishing was expensive.
But, a few decades ago, technology made it possible for certain publishers (studios) to beat the creators -- analog recording (film and vinyl) required a studio not only to make copies, but to produce the work in the first place. The creator was stuck in the bind of having to have a studio to be heard and seen. The studios used this advantage to force creators of music and movies into a work-for-hire situation. The Copyright Monopoly was no longer reasonable, it now gave the creator no help. The beginnings of the cultural wasteland of the 20th Century were set.
About the same time, Congress found it necessary to ration speech by granting a monopoly over the airwaves to licensed broadcasters. The balance that held up for the first few decades was that the broadcasters did not produce the works they broadcast, and they were not consolidated. The Broadcast Monopoly was created, and was reasonable, because there was no other way to get broadcasting done, but to make it a public utility.
But then, starting a couple decades ago, the studios bought out the broadcasters, who after all were a competitive medium. So now the studios had both the Copyright Monopoly and the Broadcast Monopoly. Suddenly, the Broadcast Monopoly was a very bad idea, as it was not a public utility, but a private pipe for pumping the publishers' content. The cultural wasteland accelerated, and the political process was poisoned by the need to go through the broadcasters to get to the people.
Then you get the web. The web doesn't need the Copyright Monopoly, since publishing is cheap. The web doesn't need the Broadcasting Monopoly, as everyone can broadcast without interference. And finally, the web takes the uncopyable analog advantage away fromthe studios, so creators don't need them any more.
So the "problem" created by the web is only a problem in that it means that the power of the studios now serves no public interest, and only remains because of the obsolete legal monopolies they enjoy.
Doesn't this mean that our politics and culture won't be restored to health until these monopolies are not only contained where they are, but eliminated?
And further, how do we perform these miracles from within the system that's been corrupted?
The author presents essentially two pieces of evidence:
:-) growth in economic opportunities for programmers.
the historical migration of free software development from US to worldwide, and
the fact that being a programmer in the US has become a good gig lately
then jumps to the conclusion that this means that US programmers weren't altruistic, merely opportunistic (worked for universities before, corps now).
But he doesn't examine other areas:
the US/Europe ratio may be declining over time, but the US hacker/US population ratio has likely been increasing -- overall free software activity in the US has certainly not been overrun by the lure of proprietary software's lucre.
the appearance of free software predated widespread online use in US -- maybe the story will be the same elsewhere. That is, is the situation in Hungary today similar to US in 1984 -- only the hackers are online, so the hacker/online ratio is very high?
But I think the main flaw in his argument is inflating ESR's gift-economy rationale (which I suppose he does so purposely to puff up the importance of his conclusion). Even ESR isn't so much saying that free software hacking is completely without regard to economic conditions, but that it's an unexpected response to these conditions (hence post-industrial).
I'd claim, and I think ESR might agree, that free software is an efficient means of production (shared resources), niche penetration (scratching itches), and market penetration (network effect) made possible by BOTH the economic (free time + university grants + young single contributors) AND cultural (want props + want to contribute + crave technical knowledge) situations of hackers.
In other words, the fact that hackers could do some coding for free without starving, and that they were wont to do so, ran into the happy accident that doing so could produce some really good shit.
This would explain the experience of the 1990's -- unbelievable growth in free software and simultaneous insane (literally
The author's argument might lead one to believe that open source would wither and die if the corporate world paid programmers well enough. The simultaneity of the dot-com boom and the Linux boom deny that.
I'll grant to the author that the European countries present an economic situation more favorable to free software. In fact, I'd amplify the fact by saying that European government support for free software has largely economic motivations -- they don't want to lose to MS/Sun/Oracle/IBM any longer.
But this fact may support a post-industrial thesis as well -- workers in northern European countries enjoy more free time and have a better safety net than US workers -- so they have less to lose from partaking in a little free coding.
This is the crucial distinction: a post-industrial explanation for free software contributions doesn't put them outside of the economic situation -- it relies on the coders having the opportunity to engage in non-economic activity.
That still leaves intact two "revolutionary" conclusions from the history of free software -- that significant production can occur outside of the wealth motive (if the survival motive has been taken care of and the infrastructure exists), and that that production can (in the case of software) be more efficient in creating use value than a wealth-driven model.
Pretty, but what does Brouwer propose as an alternative? That it's all a dream, Alice?
Of course the journey towards understanding is unending. Maybe some of us just enjoy the ride, and find value in what we discover along the way.
What will MS baseball-like coercive tactics be? You mean what have they been?
The messages baseball is sending to Minnesota are "if you don't give in, they're'll be no team" and "because, a stadium is the solution to all that's wrong with your team"
Microsoft's messages are "if you don't give in, the economy will be ruined" "because, MS dominance is the one thing that can save the tech industry".
Of course, both are lying about the fact that their greed got us in the spot -- baseball's refusal to embrace revenue sharing is the real reason for the revenue disparities among teams, and fear of MS caused both a lack of innovation in the now-decimated PC industry and a squandering of tech capital in the unprofitable areas outside of MS influence -- dot-coms.
What happened to the dot-com investors is not at all unlike what's happening to the "small-market" teams: trying to compete in a lucrative sector, but forced to only play in the unprofitable backwaters, serve as "subcontractors" to the bully, and hike costs to compete with the bully, the teams and dot-coms were losers before they started.
Mind you, both the dot-coms and the small-market owners were also blinded by greed, but it's the public that paid the price.
What price will Gates ever pay? Or Steinbrenner?
Well it's possible that they are each strangling their own golden goose (MS the software industry, and MLB baseball itself), but it's taking its time dying.
In either case, I'd like to the goose live, and I think the bullies have to be stopped to let it happen.
I understood the consequences, in my case being that Gore would win Minnesota by a little less, and a third voice might gain some legitimacy and federal cash. Perfectly pragmatic (unfortunately it didn't come to pass).
Those consequences were not, by the way, that Gore lost. He did that his own corrupt self.
Pragmatism is necessary, but then assuming that "we can never challenge proprietary software" would have seemed pretty pragmatic before GNU, wouldn't it?
Someone has to be the wild-eyed idealist.
A deplorable fact which, when combined with the fact that this judge is a Clinton appointee who seems perfectly willing to roll over for MS, makes one wonder if "right" and "left" have been replaced by "for sale" and "not for sale".
As a Minnesotan who applauds Hatch for both stances, and would gladly cross the street to spit in either Gates' or Selig's eye, I must offer my congratulations.
Ironically, the Twins are being singled out because Minnesotans refused to buy a forced upgrade -- a stadium.
Does that make the Saints=Linux in this analogy?
Oh, I think he just tossed that in to give us TWO things to talk about.
However, there is an association between tool-making skills and language skills, that being the ability to think abstractly. To become a good toolmaker, one must transfer skills and designs to new situations -- new materials, new uses, new toolmakers. Which means being able to consider the tools and designs as separate from their manifestation in any single artifact. What are those separated abstractions, and how are they remembered, recalled, reused, refined, and passed on? Isn't something that performs as a language required?
Also, the questions of "when did language emerge" and "when did bone tools emerge" are parallel in that they're versions of: "how far do cultural adaptations lag physical adaptations? and is there a lag at all?" Did shorter palms and bipedalism allow us to stumble across toolmaking, or did a toolmaking culture make these post-ape adaptations advantageous? Similarly, did the restructuring of our throat and vocal chords (bipedalism at play again) allow a richer language, or did a precursor language afford an advantage to those with the new physiology?
This find is another in a pattern that turns the usual "now that we could walk and sing and thread a needle, we learned all sorts of cool stuff" on its head, into "early needs to walk and sing and thread a needle helped select for advanced versions of these traits."
Logically, does it make any sense that natural selection would lead to our amazing cultural capacities if culture itself wasn't an element of selection?
When there's a monopolist, there's a way. MS product activation is an anticompetitive feature because it raises barriers to retaining Windows while changing your original hardware platform, which is at least an opportunity, and often a requirement, to adopt an additional OS platform. Linux may be free, but if I need to pay for an MS OS in order to get enough disk space to run it, would I still consider dual-booting to Linux a free upgrade?
Remember, MS' monopoly is based on a few simple facts:
Windows runs on the dominant PC hardware platform (x86).
The network effect of a large user base makes it hard to interact with others without using (or interoperating with) Windows.
Windows comes pre-installed on almost every x86 system sold.
Product activation, by essentially charging you a tax to upgrade hardware, and by giving you only the choice of cutting yourself off from Windows users, makes it more likely that you'll remain tied to the hardware platform that tied you to Windows in the first place.
It's really the final recognition that Microsoft's monopoly makes it the world's dominant PC hardware vendor, and the OEMs are just subcontractors.
While I agree wholeheartedly with your feelings on overbroad patents, to answer your question: what's wrong with old-patent-plus-one-bit patents? I'd say that they are evidence of the fact that our patent system has become an expensive, elaborate joke.
If a company has enough resources and enough of a stake in an area of technology, they can pepper the patent office with enough variations and guesses and might-work-somedays to leave others with the choices of: do the same, stay out of the field, or take your chances.
Sometimes, they'll take a shot at a big home run, which gives the overbroad patent, and sometimes they'll look at someone else's home run attempt and find a little room for improvement. The fact is that neither patent is worth as much to the public as the applicant hopes to get out of it.
I agree that your IC patent example is silly, and is a counterincentive to those who would put capital behind technology development. Isn't a patent that adds that millionth transistor just as silly, and a counterincentive to someone who would like to establish a new venture in the field?
Anyone still reading wants to know what the answer is, and I'm not sure, but I think the only way out is for the PTO to treat a patent grant as a damn special thing that occurs to the rare, deserving breakthrough. Maybe there should be a limited number of patent grants?
The PTO also needs to avoid punishing those who don't apply for patents (boy I bet that farmer from Ur is rolling in his grave over the wheel patent!), since that seems to just encourage the defensive-patent peppering.
As it stands, I'm having a hard time seeing how patents really serve to protect inventors or reward capitalists much.
Here are questions that jump in to my mind on reading this:
Is there a problem with patenting of electronic circuit designs that's similar to the familiar problems of patenting algorithms, processes, and genetic materials?
Namely, are there too many patents for devices that don't have proven, unique, new, and specific utility, and that don't necessarily require inventive insight?
Are we giving "same as the last design, just add this component" electrical device patents?
Is this how IBM, Motorola, and Intel compile such impressive numbers of patents granted?
It certainly seems like this could be the case. Seriously, I'm curious about info/opinions on this.
http://www.jabber.com/about/contact.shtml
info@jabber.com
Muphys' Law
Ah, but another theme of 1984 was the success of tyranny by simply wearing out the opposition, making the struggle just plain too much hard work for the average individual. So, eliding words may not make it impossible to express their inherent ideas, but it does mean that the slow process of invention or recapture must start over.
If I had to reinvent my car every morning before work, I'd show up even later!
All the same, I'm still in the "this is more amusing than threatening" camp.
Although it does remind us that almost all published writing makes its way through MS Word at some point these days. Frightening.
But the fact that the code can be forked presents a much more real accountability mechanism than "don't like our x86-based desktop OS? buy someone else's. Ha-ha!" A credible fork that does respond to user needs raises the possibility of the original project withering into irrelevance.
If you think it doesn't happen, I'd give the examples of Minix-to-Linux, gcc-to-egcs-to-gcc dropping its code in favor of egcs, and X11-to-XFree86. Minix was more a case of adopting an orphan, but in the case of gcc and X, an important and widely-used code base was successfully wrested from the control of its original developers by the community.
Also, since the free software world relies on open reimplementable-for-free standards, it's common for new competitive projects to take "share" from established ones. Witness GNOME development after KDE's head start, the proliferation of mail servers despite sendmail's dominance, the rise of ssh to replace telnet, the quick spread of Konqueror use, etc. All of these projects were started because some users didn't like the "dominant" project, but the relevant standards (X, POSIX, SMTP, HTML) allowed alternative implementations that wouldn't be crippled by incompatibility.
Free software has, from its first project (GNU emacs) been about developing alternatives to the dominant software available. That sounds like people power to me.
With the unfortunate result of favorable moderation for crap like this.
It may seem obvious to you and I, but if it were so obvious to most consumers, MS wouldn't have 95% of desktops locked up.
And some of EPIC's remedies are that Microsoft label its dog vomit correctly.
And then there's: "You can't sell confections containing a whole frog." "They're clearly labelled -- Crunchy Frog." or somesuch -- an illegal (according to EPIC, I don't know the laws enough to say), harmful product shouldn't escape regulation just because it's so labelled (which XP isn't).
Can be found on page 14:
"Time-To-Exploit Is Shrinking
Exacerbating the sophistication of attacks and the abundance and susceptibility of targets is a shrinking time-to-exploit. The window of opportunity between vulnerability discovery and widespread exploitation, when security fixes or workarounds can be applied to protect systems, is narrowing. This is, in part, due to the large existing code-base of attack tools than can be used to develop new tools as exploits are written for newly discovered vulnerabilities. Another element causing this trend is a trend toward non-disclosure within intruder communities. Rival groups will often keep new exploits and attack tools private to gain some advantage over other rival groups. Tools that are exposed to outside groups often become obsolete through competitive analysis and are quickly modified, making the lifetime of many attack tools very short. Anti-forensics techniques are now commonly employed in the design of intruder tools in an attempt to increase the lifetime of the tools by limiting the ability of others to determine the function of and defense against an attack tool. Thus, when public awareness of an exploit method or attack tool does rise, the method or tool is often already in some degree of widespread use."
In other words, the bad guys love the practice of not sharing info on vulnerabilities.
A corollary of this is that closed source code is a gift to these guys.
Don't like that your Firestones blow and cause your Explorer to flip? Don't buy them. All those suckers who died due to inadequate knowledge of their tires had it coming.
It's called protecting the public, and if the FTC won't do it, isn't it time someone sued them to force it?
Of course, I assume that's EPIC's intent if FTC doesn't act, and why they're going through these known-to-be-futile actions.
My god, this whole article is like some kind of special troll trap! Maybe Slashdot is going to delete the accounts of anyone modded up on the thread... (are you listening, Taco?)
What do I do with all this crap? Do I start posting reasoned replies? That would be troll-feeding, and might take hours. Do I mod them all to hell? Not really fair, since they asked for anti-OSS, but they're all so, so... WRONG!
It's like having my eyelids forced open to watch the XP launch or something!
Aaaaaugghh!
Quick, click on the Science section! Ah, that's better...
*Silent* film at eleven.
Okay, suppose the following were all true (not bloody likely, but suppose):
The RIAA only hacked the machines of the guilty.
The RIAA only destroyed material that infringed on their copyrights.
The RIAA breaks no laws doing so.
Then what harm do you have left? The RIAA acting as its own little police force/judicial system!
There is no moderate version of this proposal!
Unbelievable.