The cost to society could well be the end of 'freelance' programming completely.
Is it worth it? No way.
Software doesn't *need* patent protection. If I make a piece of software that does something cool, assuming I keep the source nobody can see it anyway. If it's sufficiently obvious that someone else implements it the next week then tough - it was obvious. Deal with it.
If it isn't obvious, then someone is going to have to work damned hard to replicate it and they deserve their reward too.
If they do it better then that's the real world. Improve your own product or go and flip burgers.
Sounds like you've bought into the 'small inventor' myth.
If you make an engine that burns fuel 100% clean, patent it, the first company that sees the patent will take the idea off you and for good measure probable sue you for breaking some obscure patent of their own.
Unless you've got a ton of cash you won't be able to defend the patent and you're SOL (a good patent lawyer will in fact tell you this. Patents are not for those who can't afford to defend them).
If you don't patent it of course, then you can keep it secret, and maybe make some money before someone reverse engineers it and puts you out of business.
Case in point. Happy Birthday.. You don't hear it much anymore. How much royalties has it generated?
Happy Birthday is patented? I hear it every couple of days... it's just as common as ever.
Case in point. GIF You don't see many of them anymore on the web.
You're winding us up, right?
Case in point. SCO Are they rich defending their IP? If they win, will a BSD or other open source replace Linux without the infringement? We are all waiting for SCO to die before they can grow their extortion racket.
This one is the only real one... BSD infringes anyway (in SCO terms they think they own the rights to Unix and anything vaguely related or derived from it - even MS infringe but they've paid their blood money to SCO).
In paper contracts, if you modify it, send it back for countersigning and the other party countersigns it without reading - well they shouldn't have hired cheap lawyers (I've done this many times...)
For example you could modify the EULA then send it to them along with an "I agree to this EULA, I need you to countersign to make it legal" they may well do the same.
However in the UK the EULA probably isn't binding anwyway (we have no DMCA, and the legal status of these things is unclear - some have been held to be invalid in the past as they're not true contracts) and things like the right to reverse engineer are enshrined in european law and can't be removed (in a limited sense, by licensed users and for interoperablity only, but it's far from the lockin hell that is US law).
It was a scientist that said it - he took the theory as far as being able to predict eruptions months in advance, by plotting the paths of earthquakes (which in the region he was studying tended to 'cascade' triggering each other.. somewhere in greece I think).
Seemed pretty convincing to me - he came up with a theory, proved it fitted the facts, then used it to predict a future event that wasn't supported by the other evidence.
Whether the theory has since been disproved I don't know - this was last year and science moves quickly.
There's also the unwarranted assumption that just because you didn't buy the PC with windows, you're pirating it.
I have MSDN Universal, which give me 10 XP, win2k, win2003, etc. not to mention the multilingual stuff - if I was mad enough I could buy dozens of machines, all with valid licenses (my last workplace worked entirely like that, although we had on MSDNU for every 3 developers).
In the UK we have a slightly different version, called Criminal Injury Compensation.
So if you get burgled, and get hurt in the process, you can claim £££ off the state. If the criminal gets injured, they get zip because they weren't injured by someone committing a crime against them (this gets complex when you do something stupid eg. try and kill the criminal, since you're committing a crime for which they can claim compensation, plus you go to jail of course....).
Personal injury isn't covered by law and we've got quite a few ambulance chasers now - universally loathed and a few have themselves been assaulted around here for 'canvassing' outside the local shopping centre. I've developed a knack of making them follow me through the door then closing it rather rapidly...
Method 1 is novel, but probably wouldn't produce enough of a course change to matter... we'd still die (remember we're unlikely to spot an asteroid until it's way too a late for minor course changes to make a difference).
Method 2 plain wouldn't work. Asteroids aren't solid objects so they can absorb a lot of shock, plus if you managed to break it up all the little bits would have the same total velocity as the original asteroid... death by a thousand cuts.
Lots of people by Xeons to play games. What to you think the P4EE is?
64bit software runs faster on the amd64 than 32bit software - any slowdown due to larger instruction size (negligable since the 64bit data path can read more data in parallel anyway) is more than offset by the vastly increased number of registers.
They're not sweating too hard... the latest XP 64 bit beta is still mostly 32 bit software, and it doesn't even have the.net runtime (apparently they're having trouble porting it... you'd have thought they would have written it to be 64bit compatible from the start, but this is MS we're talking about here).
They've actually started doing this kind of stuff to treat leukemia.
Take some healthy cells from the person. Nuke them with radiation until they're nearly dead (the theory being the illness dies faster than the person), then re-introduce the healthy cells you stored earlier. Essentially 'wipe and reinstall' of the immune system.
You can bet the software to 'verify' the IDs will be Windows only though.
For this to even be remotely ethical it would have to be a binary 'over 16'/'under 16' flag. Any other information is just unwarranted - there are strict laws about who can find out stuff like that.
At our local Train station they just invested in about 50 (possibly more.. didn't count) displays, which are bolted to lampposts etc. and are about 10 feet off the ground.
They display text (yellow on blue, at about 20x15 resolution) 24/7. The page updates maybe once every 3 or 4 minutes.
Every single one of these displays is run from a separate Windows XP installation. Some gimp at the Train company was suckered into paying for licenses for all of them.
They don't even use terminal services FFS!!! At least if they did that it might be *slightly* excusable.
Every day one or two of them will bluescreen, or put up a bizarre dialog box (the one in the ticket office has a large dialog complaining about something to do with the serial port, which obscures 2/3 of the screen, so you can't see anything on it anyway. It's been like that for weeks - yes they spent a shitload on unneccessary hardware/licenses then couldn't afford to hire an admin...).
Slashdot Mirror
The cost to society could well be the end of 'freelance' programming completely.
Is it worth it? No way.
Software doesn't *need* patent protection. If I make a piece of software that does something cool, assuming I keep the source nobody can see it anyway. If it's sufficiently obvious that someone else implements it the next week then tough - it was obvious. Deal with it.
If it isn't obvious, then someone is going to have to work damned hard to replicate it and they deserve their reward too.
If they do it better then that's the real world. Improve your own product or go and flip burgers.
Sounds like you've bought into the 'small inventor' myth.
If you make an engine that burns fuel 100% clean, patent it, the first company that sees the patent will take the idea off you and for good measure probable sue you for breaking some obscure patent of their own.
Unless you've got a ton of cash you won't be able to defend the patent and you're SOL (a good patent lawyer will in fact tell you this. Patents are not for those who can't afford to defend them).
If you don't patent it of course, then you can keep it secret, and maybe make some money before someone reverse engineers it and puts you out of business.
Case in point. Happy Birthday.. You don't hear it much anymore. How much royalties has it generated?
Happy Birthday is patented? I hear it every couple of days... it's just as common as ever.
Case in point. GIF You don't see many of them anymore on the web.
You're winding us up, right?
Case in point. SCO Are they rich defending their IP? If they win, will a BSD or other open source replace Linux without the infringement? We are all waiting for SCO to die before they can grow their extortion racket.
This one is the only real one... BSD infringes anyway (in SCO terms they think they own the rights to Unix and anything vaguely related or derived from it - even MS infringe but they've paid their blood money to SCO).
Sensible people already have..
Best to ignore patents, otherwise you get triple damages because you knew about them.
Since this ruling means there aren't any at all any more in the US we're ahead on that score :)
It depends on how you offer it to them.
In paper contracts, if you modify it, send it back for countersigning and the other party countersigns it without reading - well they shouldn't have hired cheap lawyers (I've done this many times...)
For example you could modify the EULA then send it to them along with an "I agree to this EULA, I need you to countersign to make it legal" they may well do the same.
However in the UK the EULA probably isn't binding anwyway (we have no DMCA, and the legal status of these things is unclear - some have been held to be invalid in the past as they're not true contracts) and things like the right to reverse engineer are enshrined in european law and can't be removed (in a limited sense, by licensed users and for interoperablity only, but it's far from the lockin hell that is US law).
Probably not, unless it was about to go anyway, in which case you couldn't be sure it was the mortar that did it.
A mortar is a mere pinprick compared to the forces withing an active volcano.
It was a scientist that said it - he took the theory as far as being able to predict eruptions months in advance, by plotting the paths of earthquakes (which in the region he was studying tended to 'cascade' triggering each other.. somewhere in greece I think).
Seemed pretty convincing to me - he came up with a theory, proved it fitted the facts, then used it to predict a future event that wasn't supported by the other evidence.
Whether the theory has since been disproved I don't know - this was last year and science moves quickly.
Watch out for the strange, blue lava...
There's also the unwarranted assumption that just because you didn't buy the PC with windows, you're pirating it.
I have MSDN Universal, which give me 10 XP, win2k, win2003, etc. not to mention the multilingual stuff - if I was mad enough I could buy dozens of machines, all with valid licenses (my last workplace worked entirely like that, although we had on MSDNU for every 3 developers).
In the UK we have a slightly different version, called Criminal Injury Compensation.
So if you get burgled, and get hurt in the process, you can claim £££ off the state.
If the criminal gets injured, they get zip because they weren't injured by someone committing a crime against them (this gets complex when you do something stupid eg. try and kill the criminal, since you're committing a crime for which they can claim compensation, plus you go to jail of course....).
Personal injury isn't covered by law and we've got quite a few ambulance chasers now - universally loathed and a few have themselves been assaulted around here for 'canvassing' outside the local shopping centre. I've developed a knack of making them follow me through the door then closing it rather rapidly...
I'm a saaaaad panda.
Not a lot really. We don't really have the technology.
We wouldn't get months probably. Days, perhaps. If we're really unlucky, hours.
That would make one hell of a slashdot headline while it lasted, though.
Method 1 is novel, but probably wouldn't produce enough of a course change to matter... we'd still die (remember we're unlikely to spot an asteroid until it's way too a late for minor course changes to make a difference).
Method 2 plain wouldn't work. Asteroids aren't solid objects so they can absorb a lot of shock, plus if you managed to break it up all the little bits would have the same total velocity as the original asteroid... death by a thousand cuts.
IAX2 has this... not sure about SIP though.
Lots of people by Xeons to play games. What to you think the P4EE is?
64bit software runs faster on the amd64 than 32bit software - any slowdown due to larger instruction size (negligable since the 64bit data path can read more data in parallel anyway) is more than offset by the vastly increased number of registers.
They're not sweating too hard... the latest XP 64 bit beta is still mostly 32 bit software, and it doesn't even have the .net runtime (apparently they're having trouble porting it... you'd have thought they would have written it to be 64bit compatible from the start, but this is MS we're talking about here).
You really think there's anything secret in Area 51? The whole planet knows where it is.... hardly the best place to keep secrets.
Area 52, on the other hand...
They've actually started doing this kind of stuff to treat leukemia.
Take some healthy cells from the person. Nuke them with radiation until they're nearly dead (the theory being the illness dies faster than the person), then re-introduce the healthy cells you stored earlier. Essentially 'wipe and reinstall' of the immune system.
£150 for a radio??? They're taking the p*ss. Call me back when it's £15.
I just recorded it off the satellite broadcast, but could have ripped it off DTT just as easily (using the PC would have meant no loss in quality).
USB keys are usually just FAT filesystems.
You can bet the software to 'verify' the IDs will be Windows only though.
For this to even be remotely ethical it would have to be a binary 'over 16'/'under 16' flag. Any other information is just unwarranted - there are strict laws about who can find out stuff like that.
... or 40 year old slashdot poster
But "She had a token proving she was 18" is very probably a valid defence....
At our local Train station they just invested in about 50 (possibly more.. didn't count) displays, which are bolted to lampposts etc. and are about 10 feet off the ground.
They display text (yellow on blue, at about 20x15 resolution) 24/7. The page updates maybe once every 3 or 4 minutes.
Every single one of these displays is run from a separate Windows XP installation. Some gimp at the Train company was suckered into paying for licenses for all of them.
They don't even use terminal services FFS!!! At least if they did that it might be *slightly* excusable.
Every day one or two of them will bluescreen, or put up a bizarre dialog box (the one in the ticket office has a large dialog complaining about something to do with the serial port, which obscures 2/3 of the screen, so you can't see anything on it anyway. It's been like that for weeks - yes they spent a shitload on unneccessary hardware/licenses then couldn't afford to hire an admin...).