I read the part in Groklaw about discovery in SCO v. IBM. They spent a year in discovery to see if there was similar code and once the infringing code was revealed, the response from the judge was "Is that all ya got?" After some pretty detailed analysis and dissection of the code in court, I think the result amounted to 230 lines of code out of several million.
Since they couldn't find examples of literal copying, SCO really wanted to go after methods and concepts as if that was protected by copyright. And they might have done it if they had been more forthcoming. But they were always late, delaying discovery as much as possible out of fear that any code revealed would be code removed from Linux. In a sense, they wanted a permanent tax on Linux without revealing the code so that it couldn't be removed.
Since you write code and you appear to have greater ethics than SCO, you wouldn't do what SCO did in order to recoup your investment in your code. What SCO did was try to reach something far beyond copyright enforcement in any reasonable sense of what the law actually says. And that was without owning the copyrights.
Having said all that, I can say that I am too, opposed to plagiarism in Linux. But I am also fairly confident that plagiarism isn't a problem in Linux since the code is open for anyone to see, and vetted by hundreds if not thousands of other programmers.
The far more compelling case of copyright infringement will come out in the counterclaims that IBM has against SCO. Right now, that giant is sleeping, but when it wakes, it's going to keep Boise Schiller very busy.
I wonder if they are pursuing any of the advertisers that were advertising on those sites. If not, that's sort of like busting the illegal immigrants without going after the business that hired them.
I think the first mover advantage should be sufficient motivation. The discouragement comes from the embrace of the "winner-take-all" society we live in. Once these investors can let of setting up their own private monopoly or ATM, then they'll find other ways to invest their money, and that won't necessarily lead to a loss of R&D funding.
The basic assumption is that patents encourage innovation. I've met a couple of inventors. They weren't primarily motivated by getting a patent. They just wanted to see if it, whatever it is, would work. Inventors don't like doing patent searches, much less paying someone else to do them. They like to tinker.
The problem as I see it is a combination of a "winner-take-all" mentality coupled with an insane drive for security. Lose those two and everyone will be more interested in the truth.
I've been watching the debate from afar, making notes here and there. But the one thing that concerns me the most is this idea that "since this is a Christian nation, only Christians are protected under the Constitution." I've actually met people who think this way and I was shocked to find that they actually existed.
The Christians who are pushing their version of history seem to display a concern that we could easily go back to the days when Christians were a poorly treated minority, and they want to make sure that will never happen again. I think that the actions of the Texas School board also demonstrate a willful ignorance of what could happen in a one religion state. I only need to look at Iran to see what a one religion state could become.
Perhaps it is worth reading the 1st Amendment one more time.
...I agree. I'm fairly confident that quantum entanglement plays a significant if not defining role in the nervous system of all life forms. Now that I think about it, I think it plays a significant role in all metabolism. I can remember reading about enzymes and the process of RNA transcription for the first time. I was fascinated by how these molecules know what to do. Who is telling them what to do? I think we're getting closer to finding out with this discovery about photosynthesis.
...Plants are the smartest forms of life on this planet. They made the planet what it is today, and the pretty much own us as compost. On the other hand, I'd prefer to be a vegetarian.
What happens in the lab is a very special situation that allows us to observe naturally occuring phenomena. What rarely is mentioned in the articles about particle physics discoveries, quantum entangled photosynthesis being the exception, is that the phenomena that has been discovered is happening all over the place, all the time. The lab allows us to see what has already been going on for a long time. A great example is the discovery of the neutrino. Giant pools of water buried deep in a mountain laced with scintillators, allow us to detect the neutrinos. Yet, neutrinos are passing straight through us and the earth all the time from the fusion process in the sun.
I think that this discovery is the first in a long series to show that quantum entanglement has common uses by life, and that life can use it to its advantage.
I'm in agreement with you, and I wanted to point out something else along those lines. The article stated, "At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, the open paradigm is changing the way the world works." The open paradigm isn't changing how the world works. This *is* the way the world works. One look at life and we will see copying, reuse and improve all over the place. Right now some in business are collaborating because they can. But eventually, we'll collaborate because we have to. Some problems (environment, disease, hunger, etc.) will be so big that there won't be enough resources for a small bunch of proprietary solutions.
Jesse, thanks for the lesson in quantum computing. That was far more than I was asking for, and your effort is much appreciated. What I gather from your post is that the main benefit from Qbits is not necessarily only from miniaturization, but from the fact that the entire computation is performed within one single medium, the qbit. This appears to be so whether the qbit is a very small group of atoms or a single subatomic particle.
I was particularly interested in your characterization of information as "bulky". I am somewhat familiar with that characterization from another article I read not too long ago, probably within the last couple of years. It was an article on black holes and what happens to the matter within. The question was, if black holes lose any mass, does the matter disappear? The answer was no, because that would mean a loss of information. Information is conserved.
Then I noticed your brief discussion about causality. What I gather from that is that all matter is processing information. I remember reading about this idea years ago and have pretty much come to the conclusion that the Universe is one giant information processor. I like to call it the Universal Processor. Whenever I have a problem that is too big for my tiny little brain, I turn it over to the Universal Processor.
While some of your article was over my head, I did my best to understand it and I really appreciate you taking the time to explain it to us. Thanks.
Who is smart enough to figure out what is patentable and what is not? Are they really working for the patent office? Or are they gaming the system as required by their business model?
I really don't know. I'm more familiar with the 0s or 1s concept than I am with 0s AND 1s. In other words, I haven't really understood how being able to assume more than one state simultaneously in quantum computers is so much better than our binary computers that we have now.
The literature that I've read in the press seems unanimous in stating that quantum computers are going to be better than conventional computers. This is particularly evident with respect to encryption and searching. I am now beginning to wonder if it is even possible to explain it to a layperson like myself.
It's worth noting that this work was done on a lab table, so it hasn't been miniaturized just yet. But if/when they do that, then it would count, would it not?
Exactly. We had that with UTOPIA. Qwest sued UTOPIA to stop them from using their telephone poles. Qwest wanted to do discovery on 28,000 telephone poles - one at a time.
Who is smart enough to determine patent eligibility? And if anyone is smart enough to do so, would they be working for the patent office or gaming the system for their own benefit?
I'm not sure that anyone is smart enough to consistently draw the line between patentable or not. I think that is one of the problems that makes patents so difficult to manage to the point where they stifle innovation rather than encourage it.
With current technology, disclosure of patents is not such a big deal anymore. Reverse engineering is much easier with the tech we have now, and the idea can be communicated to the world very easily. It's gotten to the point where centralized design and innovation has become more expensive than networked collaboration. That makes patents obsolete. And without patents, manufacturers will be innovating just to stay ahead of their competition rather than resting on patents.
Slashdot Mirror
I read the part in Groklaw about discovery in SCO v. IBM. They spent a year in discovery to see if there was similar code and once the infringing code was revealed, the response from the judge was "Is that all ya got?" After some pretty detailed analysis and dissection of the code in court, I think the result amounted to 230 lines of code out of several million.
Since they couldn't find examples of literal copying, SCO really wanted to go after methods and concepts as if that was protected by copyright. And they might have done it if they had been more forthcoming. But they were always late, delaying discovery as much as possible out of fear that any code revealed would be code removed from Linux. In a sense, they wanted a permanent tax on Linux without revealing the code so that it couldn't be removed.
Since you write code and you appear to have greater ethics than SCO, you wouldn't do what SCO did in order to recoup your investment in your code. What SCO did was try to reach something far beyond copyright enforcement in any reasonable sense of what the law actually says. And that was without owning the copyrights.
Having said all that, I can say that I am too, opposed to plagiarism in Linux. But I am also fairly confident that plagiarism isn't a problem in Linux since the code is open for anyone to see, and vetted by hundreds if not thousands of other programmers.
The far more compelling case of copyright infringement will come out in the counterclaims that IBM has against SCO. Right now, that giant is sleeping, but when it wakes, it's going to keep Boise Schiller very busy.
I wonder if they are pursuing any of the advertisers that were advertising on those sites. If not, that's sort of like busting the illegal immigrants without going after the business that hired them.
Agreed. Where do we draw the line on patents? And who exactly, is smart enough to draw that line? Will there be anyone smart enough to watch him?
There are even *libertarians* who agree with you (I do, too). Imagine that! And that is despite what Ayn Rand had to say about IP.
I think the first mover advantage should be sufficient motivation. The discouragement comes from the embrace of the "winner-take-all" society we live in. Once these investors can let of setting up their own private monopoly or ATM, then they'll find other ways to invest their money, and that won't necessarily lead to a loss of R&D funding.
The basic assumption is that patents encourage innovation. I've met a couple of inventors. They weren't primarily motivated by getting a patent. They just wanted to see if it, whatever it is, would work. Inventors don't like doing patent searches, much less paying someone else to do them. They like to tinker.
I suppose someday, we'll read in the news that patents have a great social cost than benefit.
The problem as I see it is a combination of a "winner-take-all" mentality coupled with an insane drive for security. Lose those two and everyone will be more interested in the truth.
I've been watching the debate from afar, making notes here and there. But the one thing that concerns me the most is this idea that "since this is a Christian nation, only Christians are protected under the Constitution." I've actually met people who think this way and I was shocked to find that they actually existed.
The Christians who are pushing their version of history seem to display a concern that we could easily go back to the days when Christians were a poorly treated minority, and they want to make sure that will never happen again. I think that the actions of the Texas School board also demonstrate a willful ignorance of what could happen in a one religion state. I only need to look at Iran to see what a one religion state could become.
Perhaps it is worth reading the 1st Amendment one more time.
...I agree. I'm fairly confident that quantum entanglement plays a significant if not defining role in the nervous system of all life forms. Now that I think about it, I think it plays a significant role in all metabolism. I can remember reading about enzymes and the process of RNA transcription for the first time. I was fascinated by how these molecules know what to do. Who is telling them what to do? I think we're getting closer to finding out with this discovery about photosynthesis.
...Plants are the smartest forms of life on this planet. They made the planet what it is today, and the pretty much own us as compost. On the other hand, I'd prefer to be a vegetarian.
What happens in the lab is a very special situation that allows us to observe naturally occuring phenomena. What rarely is mentioned in the articles about particle physics discoveries, quantum entangled photosynthesis being the exception, is that the phenomena that has been discovered is happening all over the place, all the time. The lab allows us to see what has already been going on for a long time. A great example is the discovery of the neutrino. Giant pools of water buried deep in a mountain laced with scintillators, allow us to detect the neutrinos. Yet, neutrinos are passing straight through us and the earth all the time from the fusion process in the sun.
I think that this discovery is the first in a long series to show that quantum entanglement has common uses by life, and that life can use it to its advantage.
That is a pretty cool link. Thanks for the history.
I'm in agreement with you, and I wanted to point out something else along those lines. The article stated, "At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, the open paradigm is changing the way the world works." The open paradigm isn't changing how the world works. This *is* the way the world works. One look at life and we will see copying, reuse and improve all over the place. Right now some in business are collaborating because they can. But eventually, we'll collaborate because we have to. Some problems (environment, disease, hunger, etc.) will be so big that there won't be enough resources for a small bunch of proprietary solutions.
Jesse, thanks for the lesson in quantum computing. That was far more than I was asking for, and your effort is much appreciated. What I gather from your post is that the main benefit from Qbits is not necessarily only from miniaturization, but from the fact that the entire computation is performed within one single medium, the qbit. This appears to be so whether the qbit is a very small group of atoms or a single subatomic particle.
I was particularly interested in your characterization of information as "bulky". I am somewhat familiar with that characterization from another article I read not too long ago, probably within the last couple of years. It was an article on black holes and what happens to the matter within. The question was, if black holes lose any mass, does the matter disappear? The answer was no, because that would mean a loss of information. Information is conserved.
Then I noticed your brief discussion about causality. What I gather from that is that all matter is processing information. I remember reading about this idea years ago and have pretty much come to the conclusion that the Universe is one giant information processor. I like to call it the Universal Processor. Whenever I have a problem that is too big for my tiny little brain, I turn it over to the Universal Processor.
While some of your article was over my head, I did my best to understand it and I really appreciate you taking the time to explain it to us. Thanks.
Who is smart enough to figure out what is patentable and what is not? Are they really working for the patent office? Or are they gaming the system as required by their business model?
I really don't know. I'm more familiar with the 0s or 1s concept than I am with 0s AND 1s. In other words, I haven't really understood how being able to assume more than one state simultaneously in quantum computers is so much better than our binary computers that we have now.
The literature that I've read in the press seems unanimous in stating that quantum computers are going to be better than conventional computers. This is particularly evident with respect to encryption and searching. I am now beginning to wonder if it is even possible to explain it to a layperson like myself.
Good question, though. Sorry I can't answer it.
I think that explanation would be helpful since not all of us are as deep into math as you are.
interesting sig.
It's worth noting that this work was done on a lab table, so it hasn't been miniaturized just yet. But if/when they do that, then it would count, would it not?
A long, slow, painful death in the courts for liability from injuries from GMO food would be good.
So there. :)
Exactly. We had that with UTOPIA. Qwest sued UTOPIA to stop them from using their telephone poles. Qwest wanted to do discovery on 28,000 telephone poles - one at a time.
Agreed. Maybe Ron Paul would like to help on this.
Who is smart enough to determine patent eligibility? And if anyone is smart enough to do so, would they be working for the patent office or gaming the system for their own benefit?
I'm not sure that anyone is smart enough to consistently draw the line between patentable or not. I think that is one of the problems that makes patents so difficult to manage to the point where they stifle innovation rather than encourage it.
With current technology, disclosure of patents is not such a big deal anymore. Reverse engineering is much easier with the tech we have now, and the idea can be communicated to the world very easily. It's gotten to the point where centralized design and innovation has become more expensive than networked collaboration. That makes patents obsolete. And without patents, manufacturers will be innovating just to stay ahead of their competition rather than resting on patents.
The Age of User Innovation is upon us.
Yes, but now he runs the mobile division that was recently sold. God only know what "IP" he took with him.