Sotomayor worked as an intellectual property litigator prior to becoming a judge. However, her record on IP is actually pretty moderate and mixed. She's ruled in favor of copyright holders in a few cases, yet has limited the ability of big corporations to squash cybersquatters. Generally, her opinions have tended to be pretty narrow and focused on the case at hand. No telling where she'll go now that she has the power to decide broader law without being reversed.
That "gene patent" case that the ACLU is pursuing deals with a method for isolating certain genes from anybody's DNA for the purpose of testing for cancer. It's no different than a medical test for checking a blood sample for chemical markers that indicate certain diseases... nobody's "patenting your blood" there either. Method patents make sense in these contexts because the costs of FDA approval for such medical tests can run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, so without patents nobody would develop such tests and we would lack early diagnosis for those diseases.
The ACLU case is all about using a catchy (yet misleading) slogan for purposes of publicity and fundraising.
In the Federal Circuit opinion below, they held that a method patent must be tied to a particular "machine" or involve a "transformation" of some physical article. The "transformation" prong of that test left some interesting loopholes open for software patents, because they held that transforming REPRESENTATIONS of physical articles is good enough. When going through old cases, the court noted that a patent for x-ray medical software was okay because the data represented physical objects (i.e. human bones). However, patents for financial systems weren't patentable because dollars and cents aren't tangible articles.
However, the most interesting parts of the Federal Circuit's decision was that they almost completely declined to discuss the "machine" prong of the test at that time. It will be interesting to see what (if anything) the SCOTUS does with this. Specifically, the Federal Circuit said that a patent must be tied to a "particular" machine (so that the method could still be practiced on machines other than the one described). However, we don't really know much about what constitutes a "particular" machine. Up until Bilski, the Federal Circuit relied on "In Re Alappat"... which held that loading particular software onto a "general purpose" MAKES it a "particular" computer. The Bilski holding said that Alappat was now reversed... but in the discussion, they only talk about how other parts of that case were wrong.
So, is a general purpose computer "particular" enough when loaded with specific software, or not? That would be a very interesting question for the SCOTUS to answer.
Just as an aside... I know this is blasphemy on Slashdot, but not ALL method patents are bad. Method patents traditionally cover things like industrial processes and medical testing, things that actually do require innovation and/or substantial investment in FDA approval. The trick is in writing a rule that filters out crap from patents that actually do make public policy sense. It's harder than you might think to come up with a blanket rule that threads this needle.
I hated Office 2007's "ribbon" interface when I first saw it. However, after the first few days of using it, I found myself at least twice as productive when using it. Yeah, I know... it's a Microsoft idea, and therefore it's automatically bad. Except, it isn't. Everything I need is easier to get at with fewer clicks, and working properly with styles is finally a snap.
It's hard for me to take seriously people's snobbery toward the latest Microsoft UI designs, when so much of the open-source world is simply a direct rip-off of OLD Microsoft UI designs. OpenOffice is largely an MS Office 2000 clone, KDE started out as a beefier Windows 95 clone, and the new desktop menu in Gnome is a bastard stepchild of Vista and OSX. Up until very recently, innovation in UI design hasn't been an open-source strong point... and it would be nice to see more innovation rather than derivative work in this area. I look forward to seeing what the OOo community(*) comes up with.
(*) Just as I look forward to seeing what the "OOo community" IS under Oracle. Up until now, the community was basically "Sun".
Most buses have bike racks. I assume the guy's work was uphill relative to his house... or else he just didn't want to arrive at the office sweaty, but that wasn't an issue for coming home.
People are willing to pay for content in certain areas, particularly finance sources such as the WSJ or Economist, for three reasons... (1) such sources are based on a lot of exclusive research, and so much of their information can't easily be found elsewhere. (2) the nature of finance makes it worthwhile... if you're trading thousands to millions of dollars in securities or bonds, dropping $2 a week on useful information is awfully cost-effective. (3) the target market is pretty affluent and highbrow and thus less likely to blink over this sort of thing (the fact that you're not giving it away for free actually makes it look more prestigious and attractive).
However, these considerations fall apart when you turn to non-niche mainstream news. Looking at the "free" content aggregated by Google News... it's about 50% celebrity gossip, and 50% partisan political bickering with no insightful analysis behind anything. Thanks but no thanks... I'm not paying for any of that, and I doubt many others would either.
THAT is the main problem with newspapers' business models in the current climate. They are trying to compete with online sources by racing to the bottom, and dumbing down their content in hopes of reaching a wider audience. However, their main competitive advantage is in the highbrow market... which is increasingly alienated by this dumbing-down. Produce exclusive highbrow content that can't easily be found elsewhere, and you'll absolutely be in a position to charge. Write endlessly about Anna Nicole's "baby-daddy" and Britney Spears' breakdowns, and you shouldn't expect any revenue beyond advertising because you can find that trash anywhere.
Not to diminish your issue, but public-policy organizations (whether it's the ACLU or the EFF) only have the resources to handle specifically chosen cases, with the intent to draw publicity and influence wider policy. You shouldn't expect the ACLU to swoop in every time a cop finds weed in your car, or have the EFF drop everything and write a amicus brief when your landlord eavesdrops on a phone conversation.
You might try calling your local Legal Aid society, which DOES have the primary goal of helping individuals rather than making broader social statements. Better yet, you could drop your sense of entitlement, stop being such an insufferable freeloader, and pick up the phone to call an actual private attorney. You can almost always get a consulation on whether or not there's a legal action there before you pay anything.
Sigh... in the not-so-distant past, when the Slashdot community was oriented around open vs. proprietary discussions, Microsoft and Apple very much WAS considered to occupy the same basic space.
These days Slashdot is all about piracy, fads and rumors in social networking sites, and discussions about marketing. The occasional GPL vs. BSD/MIT/Apache flamewar still sprouts up, but mostly it's just fanboys praising or bad-mouthing various shiny objects on the basis of how "sexy" they are.
Apple sells "better" stuff, Microsoft sells "more" stuff. Other than that, yeah... they are pretty much the same thing.
They DID produce one really awesome open source web server (if you're one of the few Tcl/Tk fanboys out there). It's still quietly maintained by the open source community, and recently ported to the iPhone.
The business model for making money off support doesn't really change all that much when you use the GPL vs. whatever. If anything, you MIGHT get more business if your code uses a permissive license... because more companies are willing to adopt permissively-licensed products. I haven't really seen that play out anecdotally, though. I still think it's neither here nor there.
As for your claim that the GPL is "better" for standards and protocols... better for whom? It may be "better" for the creator in terms of giving him power to block proprietary derivative works. However, it will have less adoption in derived works precisely because it limits that flexibility (which, for a protocol or standard, is not better). This is the age-old heart of the GPL-vs-permissive debate... how to balance "freedom" for end-users vs. freedom for derivative works.
For an example of licensing a "standard", look at GTK vs. Qt. The Qt library follows your advice and uses the full-blown GPL, while the GNU-backed GTK library uses the more permissive LGPL. I note with irony that GTK is FAR more widely adopted, in both open and proprietary products, than the Qt library which follows RMS to the letter. The thing is, if you build your application around Qt you lose the flexibility to someday sell the thing without having to buy a commercial license. This reveals an unpleasant reality: that underneath all the Che Guevara and V for Vandetta ranting, many free software guys simply don't want to pay for stuff... yet they want to retain the right to get paid themselves.
Human nature is human nature... and even on free software's home turf, people are more reluctant to adopt a GPL'ed library or protocol than a permissive-licensed one.
If you're trying to get a protocol or "standard" of some kind as widely adopted as possible, then you should use a more permissive license (e.g. BSD, MIT, Apache). If you want people to embrace your product, yet then have to buy a license from you if they want to modify it in any proprietary way, you use the GPL.
It's basically a business question of whether you plan to make money DIRECTLY from the code (i.e. GPL), or whether you have ulterior motives for making money elsewhere (i.e. Apache). For examples of the latter, most of the largest permissive-licensed projects (Apache, Firefox, etc) are bankrolled by Microsoft competitors as a means to block Microsoft from having full monopoly power in a particular niche.
This really is a TIRED and boring flamewar. There simply is no "one license to rule them all". It depends on what you're trying to accomplish.
Why do geeks buy XBoxes and try to turn them into Linux PC's or media devices? Why do people jailbreak smart phones? It's because geeks are geeks, and the challenge is fun. As George Mallory would say, it's because they're THERE.
Secondly, even on a more practical note, the iPod is just a nice piece of hardware. I've dropped mine a thousand times and abused it repeatedly (err, non-sexually!)... and you just can't break the thing. I simply haven't found that kind of quality in competing devices, and I am certainly NOT an Apple fanboy by any stretch.
I put the RockBox operating system on my iPod (which still leaves you the ability to dual-boot into Apple's OS if you need to)... and now my iPod functions as a typical mass-storage player. I don't need iTunes, can just copy music files on and off like a USB stick, and have support for any format I'd want (e.g. OGG, Flac, etc). Combine that with the sheer quality of the hardware (my iPod has lasted three times longer than any previous player I've had), and I'm a happy geek. If other people want to port other OS's to the device, then that's awesome and more power to them.
You've made two posts in this thread, and the replies you've gotten for your effort in both cases are mostly, "Stop using monospace font... it cases me to completely ignore the content of what you just posted".
I don't think you understand how annoying and stupid this is. I don't know about other environments, but on Firefox under Ubuntu your font is too tiny to read even if I DID feel like it. The fact that you had to go out of your way in applying tags to get this result is insane. Just take the defaults.
The whole point of being a contractor is that "permanent" employees trade a ~25% pay cut for the illusion of job security. As a contractor, you make more money for doing the exact same job... so long as you're willing to keep your skillset competitive, and endure being looked down upon by the legacy-maintenance guys who are too lazy to keep their skillsets competitive.
If a company pays you extra money for 10 years, AND you're not having to look for new gigs, then who exactly is the chump?
Generally speaking, I very much prefer paper books too... and can't see ever switching over to a Kindle or any other sort of e-reader.
However, the one advantage that e-books have over the real thing is that I can't throw my feet up on my cubicle desk and read a paper book... but I CAN spend all day reading a PDF (and/or Slashdot), and it looks like I'm working.
Since I spend a quarter-to-a-third of my life sitting at the office, working jobs that involve 10% programming work and 90% being held up by inefficient management, time-fillers are an important part of my life. In a perfect world, I could just waste time openly and perhaps encourage management to get its organization together so I'd be less bored. In the real world though that would just get me outsourced, so I need to give the impression that I'm "heads down" and slaving away for my brilliant manager. E-books help.
The developed world has had DECADES to build up moral authority on this issue, and utterly blew it. Now, efforts on our part to shame the developing world for pollution or inefficient energy use sound spiteful and hypocritical.
WHO is the large target audience for these small screened, underpowered computers?
Two words... "battery life".
It's small, cheap, can be carried around like a paperback book, and does not require me to haul around an AC adapter and find somewhere to plug in. End... of... discussion.
As for processing power, if all you're doing is web browsing, email, and MAYBE some spreadsheet / word processing... then anything beyond late-90's CPU power is superfluous. If you want to compile code or do raytracing, then a netbook probably isn't for you. However, with the basics tasks for which most people use their netbooks, the modern CPU improvements that really matter are in the realm of battery power consumption.
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Sotomayor worked as an intellectual property litigator prior to becoming a judge. However, her record on IP is actually pretty moderate and mixed. She's ruled in favor of copyright holders in a few cases, yet has limited the ability of big corporations to squash cybersquatters. Generally, her opinions have tended to be pretty narrow and focused on the case at hand. No telling where she'll go now that she has the power to decide broader law without being reversed.
That "gene patent" case that the ACLU is pursuing deals with a method for isolating certain genes from anybody's DNA for the purpose of testing for cancer. It's no different than a medical test for checking a blood sample for chemical markers that indicate certain diseases... nobody's "patenting your blood" there either. Method patents make sense in these contexts because the costs of FDA approval for such medical tests can run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, so without patents nobody would develop such tests and we would lack early diagnosis for those diseases.
The ACLU case is all about using a catchy (yet misleading) slogan for purposes of publicity and fundraising.
In the Federal Circuit opinion below, they held that a method patent must be tied to a particular "machine" or involve a "transformation" of some physical article. The "transformation" prong of that test left some interesting loopholes open for software patents, because they held that transforming REPRESENTATIONS of physical articles is good enough. When going through old cases, the court noted that a patent for x-ray medical software was okay because the data represented physical objects (i.e. human bones). However, patents for financial systems weren't patentable because dollars and cents aren't tangible articles.
However, the most interesting parts of the Federal Circuit's decision was that they almost completely declined to discuss the "machine" prong of the test at that time. It will be interesting to see what (if anything) the SCOTUS does with this. Specifically, the Federal Circuit said that a patent must be tied to a "particular" machine (so that the method could still be practiced on machines other than the one described). However, we don't really know much about what constitutes a "particular" machine. Up until Bilski, the Federal Circuit relied on "In Re Alappat"... which held that loading particular software onto a "general purpose" MAKES it a "particular" computer. The Bilski holding said that Alappat was now reversed... but in the discussion, they only talk about how other parts of that case were wrong.
So, is a general purpose computer "particular" enough when loaded with specific software, or not? That would be a very interesting question for the SCOTUS to answer.
Just as an aside... I know this is blasphemy on Slashdot, but not ALL method patents are bad. Method patents traditionally cover things like industrial processes and medical testing, things that actually do require innovation and/or substantial investment in FDA approval. The trick is in writing a rule that filters out crap from patents that actually do make public policy sense. It's harder than you might think to come up with a blanket rule that threads this needle.
I hated Office 2007's "ribbon" interface when I first saw it. However, after the first few days of using it, I found myself at least twice as productive when using it. Yeah, I know... it's a Microsoft idea, and therefore it's automatically bad. Except, it isn't. Everything I need is easier to get at with fewer clicks, and working properly with styles is finally a snap.
It's hard for me to take seriously people's snobbery toward the latest Microsoft UI designs, when so much of the open-source world is simply a direct rip-off of OLD Microsoft UI designs. OpenOffice is largely an MS Office 2000 clone, KDE started out as a beefier Windows 95 clone, and the new desktop menu in Gnome is a bastard stepchild of Vista and OSX. Up until very recently, innovation in UI design hasn't been an open-source strong point... and it would be nice to see more innovation rather than derivative work in this area. I look forward to seeing what the OOo community(*) comes up with.
(*) Just as I look forward to seeing what the "OOo community" IS under Oracle. Up until now, the community was basically "Sun".
Most buses have bike racks. I assume the guy's work was uphill relative to his house... or else he just didn't want to arrive at the office sweaty, but that wasn't an issue for coming home.
People are willing to pay for content in certain areas, particularly finance sources such as the WSJ or Economist, for three reasons... (1) such sources are based on a lot of exclusive research, and so much of their information can't easily be found elsewhere. (2) the nature of finance makes it worthwhile... if you're trading thousands to millions of dollars in securities or bonds, dropping $2 a week on useful information is awfully cost-effective. (3) the target market is pretty affluent and highbrow and thus less likely to blink over this sort of thing (the fact that you're not giving it away for free actually makes it look more prestigious and attractive).
However, these considerations fall apart when you turn to non-niche mainstream news. Looking at the "free" content aggregated by Google News... it's about 50% celebrity gossip, and 50% partisan political bickering with no insightful analysis behind anything. Thanks but no thanks... I'm not paying for any of that, and I doubt many others would either.
THAT is the main problem with newspapers' business models in the current climate. They are trying to compete with online sources by racing to the bottom, and dumbing down their content in hopes of reaching a wider audience. However, their main competitive advantage is in the highbrow market... which is increasingly alienated by this dumbing-down. Produce exclusive highbrow content that can't easily be found elsewhere, and you'll absolutely be in a position to charge. Write endlessly about Anna Nicole's "baby-daddy" and Britney Spears' breakdowns, and you shouldn't expect any revenue beyond advertising because you can find that trash anywhere.
Not to diminish your issue, but public-policy organizations (whether it's the ACLU or the EFF) only have the resources to handle specifically chosen cases, with the intent to draw publicity and influence wider policy. You shouldn't expect the ACLU to swoop in every time a cop finds weed in your car, or have the EFF drop everything and write a amicus brief when your landlord eavesdrops on a phone conversation.
You might try calling your local Legal Aid society, which DOES have the primary goal of helping individuals rather than making broader social statements. Better yet, you could drop your sense of entitlement, stop being such an insufferable freeloader, and pick up the phone to call an actual private attorney. You can almost always get a consulation on whether or not there's a legal action there before you pay anything.
Sigh... in the not-so-distant past, when the Slashdot community was oriented around open vs. proprietary discussions, Microsoft and Apple very much WAS considered to occupy the same basic space.
These days Slashdot is all about piracy, fads and rumors in social networking sites, and discussions about marketing. The occasional GPL vs. BSD/MIT/Apache flamewar still sprouts up, but mostly it's just fanboys praising or bad-mouthing various shiny objects on the basis of how "sexy" they are.
Apple sells "better" stuff, Microsoft sells "more" stuff. Other than that, yeah... they are pretty much the same thing.
For shame, Taco...
They DID produce one really awesome open source web server (if you're one of the few Tcl/Tk fanboys out there). It's still quietly maintained by the open source community, and recently ported to the iPhone.
Great! Now you just have to "monetize" it...
The business model for making money off support doesn't really change all that much when you use the GPL vs. whatever. If anything, you MIGHT get more business if your code uses a permissive license... because more companies are willing to adopt permissively-licensed products. I haven't really seen that play out anecdotally, though. I still think it's neither here nor there.
As for your claim that the GPL is "better" for standards and protocols... better for whom? It may be "better" for the creator in terms of giving him power to block proprietary derivative works. However, it will have less adoption in derived works precisely because it limits that flexibility (which, for a protocol or standard, is not better). This is the age-old heart of the GPL-vs-permissive debate... how to balance "freedom" for end-users vs. freedom for derivative works.
For an example of licensing a "standard", look at GTK vs. Qt. The Qt library follows your advice and uses the full-blown GPL, while the GNU-backed GTK library uses the more permissive LGPL. I note with irony that GTK is FAR more widely adopted, in both open and proprietary products, than the Qt library which follows RMS to the letter. The thing is, if you build your application around Qt you lose the flexibility to someday sell the thing without having to buy a commercial license. This reveals an unpleasant reality: that underneath all the Che Guevara and V for Vandetta ranting, many free software guys simply don't want to pay for stuff... yet they want to retain the right to get paid themselves.
Human nature is human nature... and even on free software's home turf, people are more reluctant to adopt a GPL'ed library or protocol than a permissive-licensed one.
If you're trying to get a protocol or "standard" of some kind as widely adopted as possible, then you should use a more permissive license (e.g. BSD, MIT, Apache). If you want people to embrace your product, yet then have to buy a license from you if they want to modify it in any proprietary way, you use the GPL.
It's basically a business question of whether you plan to make money DIRECTLY from the code (i.e. GPL), or whether you have ulterior motives for making money elsewhere (i.e. Apache). For examples of the latter, most of the largest permissive-licensed projects (Apache, Firefox, etc) are bankrolled by Microsoft competitors as a means to block Microsoft from having full monopoly power in a particular niche.
This really is a TIRED and boring flamewar. There simply is no "one license to rule them all". It depends on what you're trying to accomplish.
You insensitive clo... oh, I'm ashamed of myself.
Why do geeks buy XBoxes and try to turn them into Linux PC's or media devices? Why do people jailbreak smart phones? It's because geeks are geeks, and the challenge is fun. As George Mallory would say, it's because they're THERE.
Secondly, even on a more practical note, the iPod is just a nice piece of hardware. I've dropped mine a thousand times and abused it repeatedly (err, non-sexually!)... and you just can't break the thing. I simply haven't found that kind of quality in competing devices, and I am certainly NOT an Apple fanboy by any stretch.
I put the RockBox operating system on my iPod (which still leaves you the ability to dual-boot into Apple's OS if you need to)... and now my iPod functions as a typical mass-storage player. I don't need iTunes, can just copy music files on and off like a USB stick, and have support for any format I'd want (e.g. OGG, Flac, etc). Combine that with the sheer quality of the hardware (my iPod has lasted three times longer than any previous player I've had), and I'm a happy geek. If other people want to port other OS's to the device, then that's awesome and more power to them.
Sheesh... I can't imagine people's behavior online seriously being influenced by some silly "rating" system.
Oh, and by the way... copyright is evil, I support socialism, Microsoft sucks, just kidding I support libertarianism, and OMG ponies!
You've made two posts in this thread, and the replies you've gotten for your effort in both cases are mostly, "Stop using monospace font... it cases me to completely ignore the content of what you just posted".
I don't think you understand how annoying and stupid this is. I don't know about other environments, but on Firefox under Ubuntu your font is too tiny to read even if I DID feel like it. The fact that you had to go out of your way in applying tags to get this result is insane. Just take the defaults.
The whole point of being a contractor is that "permanent" employees trade a ~25% pay cut for the illusion of job security. As a contractor, you make more money for doing the exact same job... so long as you're willing to keep your skillset competitive, and endure being looked down upon by the legacy-maintenance guys who are too lazy to keep their skillsets competitive.
If a company pays you extra money for 10 years, AND you're not having to look for new gigs, then who exactly is the chump?
Sorry! [ducks]
Yes, I realize that it's kdawson... but still.
Generally speaking, I very much prefer paper books too... and can't see ever switching over to a Kindle or any other sort of e-reader.
However, the one advantage that e-books have over the real thing is that I can't throw my feet up on my cubicle desk and read a paper book... but I CAN spend all day reading a PDF (and/or Slashdot), and it looks like I'm working.
Since I spend a quarter-to-a-third of my life sitting at the office, working jobs that involve 10% programming work and 90% being held up by inefficient management, time-fillers are an important part of my life. In a perfect world, I could just waste time openly and perhaps encourage management to get its organization together so I'd be less bored. In the real world though that would just get me outsourced, so I need to give the impression that I'm "heads down" and slaving away for my brilliant manager. E-books help.
The developed world has had DECADES to build up moral authority on this issue, and utterly blew it. Now, efforts on our part to shame the developing world for pollution or inefficient energy use sound spiteful and hypocritical.
You may be right... but you're also wrong.
Or, more to the point, one that doesn't look "sexy"! (whatever that means)
... or maybe a Tata Shuffle, with the steering controls obnoxiously embedded in some earbuds?
Two words... "battery life".
It's small, cheap, can be carried around like a paperback book, and does not require me to haul around an AC adapter and find somewhere to plug in . End... of... discussion.
As for processing power, if all you're doing is web browsing, email, and MAYBE some spreadsheet / word processing... then anything beyond late-90's CPU power is superfluous. If you want to compile code or do raytracing, then a netbook probably isn't for you. However, with the basics tasks for which most people use their netbooks, the modern CPU improvements that really matter are in the realm of battery power consumption.