There's no way you can attribute generations of cultural change entirely to the technology of the television. That is ludicrous. A WHOLE LOT of other things happened too, ya know.
If you look at the people who succeed in our society, it's generally those whose parents kept them away from a lot of this technology in those core years.
[citation required].
I would love to see ANY data on this, whatsoever. Are you talking about people like Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Steve Wozniak, or.. ANYBODY? They were immensely successful, and hey, they all used computers at a young age! So, I call shenanigans, sir.
TFA isn't just about kids playing videogames though, they're talking about all technology in general. The internet, iPads, iPods, iPhones, etc. I'll agree that videogames do have a way to go, but the majority of AAA video games are aimed at the 18-30 male market, not kids. (contrary to popular belief?) Because Nintendo targets children more, they've always been hesitant to include online multiplayer and have been the slowest to adapt. The games industry just needs better multiplayer experiences for children.
When I was a kid, I went to an experimental school where they let all us kids have laptops, we could even take them home. Mind you, this was the 90s, so that was unbelievable at the time. And I loved it. I remember playing with emails and the command line and feeling like a hacker, and kid pix was mind blowing.
Now I'm a software engineer.:) I think my early experience with technology was extremely beneficial, I've always had an aptitude for computers. On the other hand, I can't see any way in which introduction to computing at a very young age held me back. I had an NES when I was really young, and can't imagine it somehow being damaging to development. I played with my friends and it was interesting to get to play with technology and think about the possibilities.
Who says kids have to be either overloaded by technology or wisely preparing for the future? How about a third option, like, kids aren't overloaded, they're fine, but they aren't necessarily "preparing", they're just doing what is fun and what is practical. They're KIDS, relax! Just let them play. Luddites need to calm down.
Does Television cause Autism? Everybody used to be so in arms about letting kids watch too much TV, it'll rot their brains out. Now we grew up and we all watch TV, but ooh, videogames and the internet will rot your brain! Its just society adapting to itself as always, you've got the early-adopters and you've got the naysayers.
Is there a video? I just see two articles that very barely even explain the idea being covered. I don't see a video, just a picture. I don't think the author knew what he was talking about, he seems to be confusing rendering time and production time, (much as he confused percents and multiples ). They certainly don't go into any detail on how this increase is achieved, other than "we're working with Intel and we have written a new software"
So your suggested fix is... instead of young inventors selling their patents to big corp, they should donate them to free software, and hope to get some donations in return? Hm. Thats gonna be a tough sell.
But then that creates a new problem, 'how do we speed this up?', and then what if THAT problem has an obvious solution? Its not enough to say, well, this one is a different problem, so it must be more complicated.
Not to mention that this depends upon the original shadow volume algorithm... and if that was patented, this would not be patented. But I guess allowing that patent would be too broad? See, where do you draw the line? It doesn't make sense. Algorithms are math, they shouldn't be patentable.
True, but it wasn't used in real-time whatsoever until '91, like I said.
and then likely in simple and experimental uses. Trying to improve the algorithm would be premature optimization.
before then real-time graphics rendering wasn't feasible, especially not lighting.
Besides, this all just comes down to a billion variables. Maybe people weren't interested in this subject for awhile. Maybe the right people weren't working on it. Maybe in 2 years nobody came up with anything, but in 9 years somebody would have. That doesn't mean it took somebody 9 years to develop.
Look at math. Some solutions took centuries for the right mathematician to come along and solve the problem. But they don't get a patent on it because it isn't a work of creativity that they made them self, it is a description of a process which already exists in the world. Other mathematicians necessarily NEED that algorithm to continue the work of math, it isn't a single element, but rather each takes the ideas of the previous and uses them to prove further things. Algorithms are very similar. Donald Knuth said all of this much better than I ever could:
http://progfree.org/Patents/knuth-to-pto.txt
"Congress wisely decided long ago that mathematical things cannot be
patented. Surely nobody could apply mathematics if it were necessary
to pay a license fee whenever the theorem of Pythagoras is
employed. The basic algorithmic ideas that people are now rushing to
patent are so fundamental, the result threatens to be like what would
happen if we allowed authors to have patents on individual words and
concepts. Novelists or journalists would be unable to write stories
unless their publishers had permission from the owners of the
words. Algorithms are exactly as basic to software as words are to
writers, because they are the fundamental building blocks needed to
make interesting products. What would happen if individual lawyers
could patent their methods of defense, or if Supreme Court justices
could patent their precedents?"
This is a patent. It has very little to do with the implementation or how difficult the implementation is. That is irrelevant. What is the question, is how hard is this IDEA, this INNOVATION, to come up with, and to develop and R&D? The idea here is very simple, beyond obvious. Anyone given the tools of software development working on UI would come to the EXACT same conclusion. Please trust me on this, it is indeed trivial. We are talking about using something that already existed to do something that already existed. The original content here is very close to 0.
I am not at ALL suggesting that everything developed with patents would be developed without patents, or that we should. I don't want to have that argument, it would take too long. Patents have done good and bad.
I AM suggesting that THIS ALGORITHM, and indeed all algorithms, by their mathematical nature, are inherent to the world and therefor should not be patent-able, as with mathematical formula which are merely describing a phenomenon inherent to the universe, not creating a work of art or a process of ingenuity. Some mathematical formulas are very complicated, some take a lifetime to develop or discover. And yet math is not patentable. This algorithm did not take a lifetime to discover. So why should an algorithm be given so much protection when math is not?
In fact, allowing patents on mathematical formula would not protect math, it would massively stifle it. One NEEDS certain algorithms to build upon them and make proofs, you simply cannot get around using a certain math formula, it is inherent to what you are doing. Algorithms work the same way. It would be like allowing authors to trademark individual words instead of whole stories, thus crippling the ability for other authors to do work.
True, but the college kid is not able to leverage the power of the patent nearly as much as a corporation can, and a single patent by itself is fairly weak, but companies have taken to the practice of collecting whole "portfolios of patents" to do battle with each other.
Maybe. Who says? Where's your proof? Maybe nobody was interested in it. Maybe somebody could have developed it 5-7 years earlier, but didn't. We don't know. Like I said though, this isn't applicable until real-time rendering of lighting and shadow is an issue, which really wasn't the case in the 90s. Games still used drop shadows and pre-caluclated lighting. Half-life just came out in '98 and was fairly state-of-the-art, and had no such shadows or stencil techniques. Working on this algorithm even then would be somewhat ahead of its time. Doom 3 wasn't released until '04.
1. So? Maybe you were working for months and months to come up with the technique, and maybe they were also working for months and months to come up with the technique. Independent invention doesn't say anything about whether the idea is obvious - it merely means that two people were working on it simultaneously.
2. Both the patent act prior to the AIA and the newly reformed statutes include procedures for what to do when two inventors independently invent and apply for the same patent... and the answer is not "neither gets it". Congress certainly doesn't think that it's obvious.
Fair enough, maybe obvious is the wrong word. But still, if two people both get done at the same time, giving the one who got done atomically by a day or two on years of development a patent and monopoly on the item while the other party has to pay the first party is just wrong. Maybe you say somehow they share a patent, but then what about if somebody else is done a week later as well? How long does the window stay open? Either way it doesn't help things. I understand that if I don't want to have to re-do something somebody else did, that would be wasteful. But why cant I just choose, myself, between either writing it myself, or paying the company to licence their software? Why does the algorithm need so much protection? Their product is already protected. The science and math should be open, not restricted. Mathematical formula are not patentable for a very good reason, and algorithms are the same way. Algorithms can be converted from any language into Haskell (turing-complete) and then from Haskell it has been demonstrated they can be converted directly to lambda calculus. So that seems like a gigantic failure on the patent office's part.
3. If the first guy publishes, then the second guy doesn't have to waste his time working on the same thing. So Carmack independently came up with the same idea, months and months later? That's a lot of wasted effort. He could've been working on the next technique, rather than duplicating the same work of the first guy. Patents, by encouraging public disclosure, reduce this amount of wasted effort and thus encourage innovation.
You know what works for encouraging public disclosure and reducing the amount of wasted effort even better? Open-source. And look, Carmack is open-sourcing the software! And look, he's being PREVENTED by a PATENT. Hrm.
It obviously wasn't 'obvious' or someone should have come up with the optimization years earlier.
When, before computers existed? Obviously some conditions are necessary before anybody cares about this, you need real-time rendering to be a big deal that is commonly used, you need shadow volumes to matter and be feasible to calculate in real-time, so that means you need advanced 3D gaming to be a big deal, and you need video card hardware that can handle the rendering (so this really would have appealed to nobody pre late 90s, aka, exactly when it was developed. Huh.)
The idea that Archimedes would have written an algorithm on shadow volumes is laughable. That does not make fast rendering shadow volumes genius or groundbreaking.
That's what patents do, create a scramble to invent as fast as possible and run to the patent office. The downside is of course that the innovation is locked up in a patent the next 20 years. You can argue that this is wrong but that's roughly the way it's worked since Edison and Bell, there's nothing special related to software here.
The "scramble" you speak of isn't worth the cost of locking out algorithms for 20 years. People are already "scrambling" on their own, making good software and selling it is plenty incentive already. Having a copyright on the software is good enough. You can get out first, you can get market recognition, you don't need to have a monopoly on the underlying algorithm. Its massive overkill that is going to hamstring development and turn companies like Microsoft into patent trolls that don't produce anything of their own. They now make more money from Android fees and litigation than they do from Windows Phone.
There is something special related to software. Algorithms can be converted to lambda calculus; they are mathematical formula. Mathematical formula are exempt from patentability for a reason; they are not your own creative solution, but rather exist inherent to the universe, they are part of the space we all exist in, and you are merely describing a method, not creating a work of art or a novel invention.
Under the conditions of obtaining a patent, Creative has already released all the details necessary to reproduce the process/algorithm/whatever. So the whole notion of "this is preventing the information from getting out to the public" is wrong. It's already on public record.
Yes, of course. I can go read it, and find out how to reproduce it, but then I can't actually USE it unless Creative says I can.
However, if I was able to come up with it on my own, without their help, I still wouldn't be able to use it without their permission.
Yes, I understand the basic theory on how patents work. When it comes to software algorithms I reject that answer and I feel it does more harm than good.
"Public record" Doesn't matter. Oh look, we can go read the algorithm! How fun! Uh, unless you can use it, that is useless. And you're at Creative's mercy.
What matters is if I can write the app I thought of and sell it for a few bucks on the app store without getting my pants sued off.
Ah, yeah. appreciate the quote, trying to get concrete details rather than here-say. I guess it was called "Carmack's Reverse" because he's like a half-celebrity. We still don't know if he was at that conference of if he spoke to someone who did, but there is certainly reasonable doubt. However,
That said, it looks like a fairly straightforward and relatively obvious modification of an existing algorithm. If the patent office required patents to be reviewed by domain experts, it would have been rejected.
Oh, I know. I agree. I'm talking theoretical here, what should be, rather than what is.
Certainly he should cover his ass here, they did it first, they got the patent successfully, and yeah, his own lawyers are saying rewrite it, so he's rewriting it. As the law currently is, he wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
I'm just saying that, as a software developer, this scares the shit out of me.
Do you have a citation on it being presented at a conference?
From TFA, "John Carmack had independently conceived a similar algorithm to what's covered by the patent, which he created in the year 2000 while working on Doom 3. " Thats all it says. Other pages mention that it is known as "Carmack's Reverse" because HE popularized the technique at a conference. So, which was it?
My problem isn't that he may or may not have stolen it. My problem is it really doesn't matter. Looking over this algorithm, I feel like any software engineer tasked with improving the speed of drawing shadow volumes with stencils would eventually consider this as a potential solution. Its inherent to the design space, and its not all that groundbreaking or genius. Its just taking existing software concepts and applying them. You shouldn't get ownership of an algorithm just because you used it first. Software can be reduced to lambda calculus, and mathematical formula are not patent-able. Software algorithms shouldn't be either.
I'm not saying you can't have a copyright licence on your software. Go ahead. Its just the idea that nobody else can even use that ALGORITHM that bothers me. If people steal your source code, then by all means you should be protected.
You're right, warsow is Quake2. My bad! Still, proves that something comes from open sourced Id technology, proves the point, just older:P
And snap, you're also right, cube is its own engine. I guess I was looking at open source engines awhile back and got it confused? Thanks.
That said, TONS of open-source projects were started using the Quake 3 source code, so I don't see how at least something won't come from this.
Have you seen Cube or Sauerbraten or Warsow?
or whether patents should be issued for software in the first place.
I really gotta say, in cases like this it seems so insanely obvious that this should NOT be patent-able. Someone else came up with the EXACT same technique very shortly thereafter or simultaneously, without reading your patent or any of your work? If it really is just an incremental update, nothing novel but taking existing ideas and tying them together, it seems the opposite of innovative; it seems to me this algorithm was inevitable. If not these people, somebody would have very shortly thereafter discovered it. So why do we make such a big deal about who got there first? How does forcing everybody to licence a technology from that person that they could feasibly develop on their own, Chinese clean-room style, HELP innovation?
It doesn't. Software patents do not help. They hurt. Companies like Microsoft buy tons of patents from college kids for pennies and then sit on them with no intention of actually using the patent described, just so they can litigate or strong-arm other companies into paying fees. Free money! This actually HELPS monopolies (I know ragging on MS is the oldest joke in the/. book, but seriously, they're doing some real harm to the industry. Its not just MS, but they're a big nasty troll right now, and they have enough money they shouldn't need to resort to tactics like this.)
I mean, think about it. Carmack developed this algorithm. Now he's trying to open source it and share it with the world for free. AND A PATENT IS PREVENTING THIS. Show me how patents "help protect innovation and creativity." This is so backwards it hurts.
You're not listening to me. I admitted I didn't have prior art and didn't want to have that argument from the start. I'm trying to talk about the nature of allowing these patents in the first place. And I want to respond to your other points with the exact same things I already said. Did you skim it?
Slashdot Mirror
If you look at the people who succeed in our society, it's generally those whose parents kept them away from a lot of this technology in those core years.
[citation required]. I would love to see ANY data on this, whatsoever. Are you talking about people like Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Steve Wozniak, or.. ANYBODY? They were immensely successful, and hey, they all used computers at a young age! So, I call shenanigans, sir.
TFA isn't just about kids playing videogames though, they're talking about all technology in general. The internet, iPads, iPods, iPhones, etc. I'll agree that videogames do have a way to go, but the majority of AAA video games are aimed at the 18-30 male market, not kids. (contrary to popular belief?) Because Nintendo targets children more, they've always been hesitant to include online multiplayer and have been the slowest to adapt. The games industry just needs better multiplayer experiences for children.
:) I think my early experience with technology was extremely beneficial, I've always had an aptitude for computers. On the other hand, I can't see any way in which introduction to computing at a very young age held me back. I had an NES when I was really young, and can't imagine it somehow being damaging to development. I played with my friends and it was interesting to get to play with technology and think about the possibilities.
When I was a kid, I went to an experimental school where they let all us kids have laptops, we could even take them home. Mind you, this was the 90s, so that was unbelievable at the time. And I loved it. I remember playing with emails and the command line and feeling like a hacker, and kid pix was mind blowing. Now I'm a software engineer.
Who says kids have to be either overloaded by technology or wisely preparing for the future? How about a third option, like, kids aren't overloaded, they're fine, but they aren't necessarily "preparing", they're just doing what is fun and what is practical. They're KIDS, relax! Just let them play. Luddites need to calm down.
Does Television cause Autism? Everybody used to be so in arms about letting kids watch too much TV, it'll rot their brains out. Now we grew up and we all watch TV, but ooh, videogames and the internet will rot your brain! Its just society adapting to itself as always, you've got the early-adopters and you've got the naysayers.
TFA says nerf and sponge balls only. Its pretty sad. :(
Is there a video? I just see two articles that very barely even explain the idea being covered. I don't see a video, just a picture. I don't think the author knew what he was talking about, he seems to be confusing rendering time and production time, (much as he confused percents and multiples ). They certainly don't go into any detail on how this increase is achieved, other than "we're working with Intel and we have written a new software"
Bad news article is bad.
So your suggested fix is... instead of young inventors selling their patents to big corp, they should donate them to free software, and hope to get some donations in return? Hm. Thats gonna be a tough sell.
But then that creates a new problem, 'how do we speed this up?', and then what if THAT problem has an obvious solution? Its not enough to say, well, this one is a different problem, so it must be more complicated.
Not to mention that this depends upon the original shadow volume algorithm... and if that was patented, this would not be patented. But I guess allowing that patent would be too broad? See, where do you draw the line? It doesn't make sense. Algorithms are math, they shouldn't be patentable.
True, but it wasn't used in real-time whatsoever until '91, like I said.
and then likely in simple and experimental uses. Trying to improve the algorithm would be premature optimization.
before then real-time graphics rendering wasn't feasible, especially not lighting.
Besides, this all just comes down to a billion variables. Maybe people weren't interested in this subject for awhile. Maybe the right people weren't working on it. Maybe in 2 years nobody came up with anything, but in 9 years somebody would have. That doesn't mean it took somebody 9 years to develop.
Look at math. Some solutions took centuries for the right mathematician to come along and solve the problem. But they don't get a patent on it because it isn't a work of creativity that they made them self, it is a description of a process which already exists in the world. Other mathematicians necessarily NEED that algorithm to continue the work of math, it isn't a single element, but rather each takes the ideas of the previous and uses them to prove further things. Algorithms are very similar. Donald Knuth said all of this much better than I ever could:
http://progfree.org/Patents/knuth-to-pto.txt "Congress wisely decided long ago that mathematical things cannot be patented. Surely nobody could apply mathematics if it were necessary to pay a license fee whenever the theorem of Pythagoras is employed. The basic algorithmic ideas that people are now rushing to patent are so fundamental, the result threatens to be like what would happen if we allowed authors to have patents on individual words and concepts. Novelists or journalists would be unable to write stories unless their publishers had permission from the owners of the words. Algorithms are exactly as basic to software as words are to writers, because they are the fundamental building blocks needed to make interesting products. What would happen if individual lawyers could patent their methods of defense, or if Supreme Court justices could patent their precedents?"
This is a patent. It has very little to do with the implementation or how difficult the implementation is. That is irrelevant. What is the question, is how hard is this IDEA, this INNOVATION, to come up with, and to develop and R&D? The idea here is very simple, beyond obvious. Anyone given the tools of software development working on UI would come to the EXACT same conclusion. Please trust me on this, it is indeed trivial. We are talking about using something that already existed to do something that already existed. The original content here is very close to 0.
I am not at ALL suggesting that everything developed with patents would be developed without patents, or that we should. I don't want to have that argument, it would take too long. Patents have done good and bad.
I AM suggesting that THIS ALGORITHM, and indeed all algorithms, by their mathematical nature, are inherent to the world and therefor should not be patent-able, as with mathematical formula which are merely describing a phenomenon inherent to the universe, not creating a work of art or a process of ingenuity. Some mathematical formulas are very complicated, some take a lifetime to develop or discover. And yet math is not patentable. This algorithm did not take a lifetime to discover. So why should an algorithm be given so much protection when math is not?
In fact, allowing patents on mathematical formula would not protect math, it would massively stifle it. One NEEDS certain algorithms to build upon them and make proofs, you simply cannot get around using a certain math formula, it is inherent to what you are doing. Algorithms work the same way. It would be like allowing authors to trademark individual words instead of whole stories, thus crippling the ability for other authors to do work.
True, but the college kid is not able to leverage the power of the patent nearly as much as a corporation can, and a single patent by itself is fairly weak, but companies have taken to the practice of collecting whole "portfolios of patents" to do battle with each other.
Maybe. Who says? Where's your proof? Maybe nobody was interested in it. Maybe somebody could have developed it 5-7 years earlier, but didn't. We don't know. Like I said though, this isn't applicable until real-time rendering of lighting and shadow is an issue, which really wasn't the case in the 90s. Games still used drop shadows and pre-caluclated lighting. Half-life just came out in '98 and was fairly state-of-the-art, and had no such shadows or stencil techniques. Working on this algorithm even then would be somewhat ahead of its time. Doom 3 wasn't released until '04.
I said it was a laugh, didn't say anything about the serious fiscal implications!
:)
Some good points though.
1. So? Maybe you were working for months and months to come up with the technique, and maybe they were also working for months and months to come up with the technique. Independent invention doesn't say anything about whether the idea is obvious - it merely means that two people were working on it simultaneously.
2. Both the patent act prior to the AIA and the newly reformed statutes include procedures for what to do when two inventors independently invent and apply for the same patent... and the answer is not "neither gets it". Congress certainly doesn't think that it's obvious.
Fair enough, maybe obvious is the wrong word. But still, if two people both get done at the same time, giving the one who got done atomically by a day or two on years of development a patent and monopoly on the item while the other party has to pay the first party is just wrong. Maybe you say somehow they share a patent, but then what about if somebody else is done a week later as well? How long does the window stay open? Either way it doesn't help things. I understand that if I don't want to have to re-do something somebody else did, that would be wasteful. But why cant I just choose, myself, between either writing it myself, or paying the company to licence their software? Why does the algorithm need so much protection? Their product is already protected. The science and math should be open, not restricted. Mathematical formula are not patentable for a very good reason, and algorithms are the same way. Algorithms can be converted from any language into Haskell (turing-complete) and then from Haskell it has been demonstrated they can be converted directly to lambda calculus. So that seems like a gigantic failure on the patent office's part.
3. If the first guy publishes, then the second guy doesn't have to waste his time working on the same thing. So Carmack independently came up with the same idea, months and months later? That's a lot of wasted effort. He could've been working on the next technique, rather than duplicating the same work of the first guy. Patents, by encouraging public disclosure, reduce this amount of wasted effort and thus encourage innovation.
You know what works for encouraging public disclosure and reducing the amount of wasted effort even better? Open-source. And look, Carmack is open-sourcing the software! And look, he's being PREVENTED by a PATENT. Hrm.
It obviously wasn't 'obvious' or someone should have come up with the optimization years earlier.
When, before computers existed? Obviously some conditions are necessary before anybody cares about this, you need real-time rendering to be a big deal that is commonly used, you need shadow volumes to matter and be feasible to calculate in real-time, so that means you need advanced 3D gaming to be a big deal, and you need video card hardware that can handle the rendering (so this really would have appealed to nobody pre late 90s, aka, exactly when it was developed. Huh.)
The idea that Archimedes would have written an algorithm on shadow volumes is laughable. That does not make fast rendering shadow volumes genius or groundbreaking.
That's what patents do, create a scramble to invent as fast as possible and run to the patent office. The downside is of course that the innovation is locked up in a patent the next 20 years. You can argue that this is wrong but that's roughly the way it's worked since Edison and Bell, there's nothing special related to software here.
The "scramble" you speak of isn't worth the cost of locking out algorithms for 20 years. People are already "scrambling" on their own, making good software and selling it is plenty incentive already. Having a copyright on the software is good enough. You can get out first, you can get market recognition, you don't need to have a monopoly on the underlying algorithm. Its massive overkill that is going to hamstring development and turn companies like Microsoft into patent trolls that don't produce anything of their own. They now make more money from Android fees and litigation than they do from Windows Phone.
There is something special related to software. Algorithms can be converted to lambda calculus; they are mathematical formula. Mathematical formula are exempt from patentability for a reason; they are not your own creative solution, but rather exist inherent to the universe, they are part of the space we all exist in, and you are merely describing a method, not creating a work of art or a novel invention.
Under the conditions of obtaining a patent, Creative has already released all the details necessary to reproduce the process/algorithm/whatever. So the whole notion of "this is preventing the information from getting out to the public" is wrong. It's already on public record.
Yes, of course. I can go read it, and find out how to reproduce it, but then I can't actually USE it unless Creative says I can. However, if I was able to come up with it on my own, without their help, I still wouldn't be able to use it without their permission.
Yes, I understand the basic theory on how patents work. When it comes to software algorithms I reject that answer and I feel it does more harm than good.
"Public record" Doesn't matter. Oh look, we can go read the algorithm! How fun! Uh, unless you can use it, that is useless. And you're at Creative's mercy.
What matters is if I can write the app I thought of and sell it for a few bucks on the app store without getting my pants sued off.
That said, it looks like a fairly straightforward and relatively obvious modification of an existing algorithm. If the patent office required patents to be reviewed by domain experts, it would have been rejected.
Yeah, thats my thought exactly. :)
Oh, I know. I agree. I'm talking theoretical here, what should be, rather than what is.
Certainly he should cover his ass here, they did it first, they got the patent successfully, and yeah, his own lawyers are saying rewrite it, so he's rewriting it. As the law currently is, he wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
I'm just saying that, as a software developer, this scares the shit out of me.
Do you have a citation on it being presented at a conference? From TFA, "John Carmack had independently conceived a similar algorithm to what's covered by the patent, which he created in the year 2000 while working on Doom 3. " Thats all it says. Other pages mention that it is known as "Carmack's Reverse" because HE popularized the technique at a conference. So, which was it?
My problem isn't that he may or may not have stolen it. My problem is it really doesn't matter. Looking over this algorithm, I feel like any software engineer tasked with improving the speed of drawing shadow volumes with stencils would eventually consider this as a potential solution. Its inherent to the design space, and its not all that groundbreaking or genius. Its just taking existing software concepts and applying them. You shouldn't get ownership of an algorithm just because you used it first. Software can be reduced to lambda calculus, and mathematical formula are not patent-able. Software algorithms shouldn't be either.
I'm not saying you can't have a copyright licence on your software. Go ahead. Its just the idea that nobody else can even use that ALGORITHM that bothers me. If people steal your source code, then by all means you should be protected.
You're right, warsow is Quake2. My bad! Still, proves that something comes from open sourced Id technology, proves the point, just older :P
And snap, you're also right, cube is its own engine. I guess I was looking at open source engines awhile back and got it confused? Thanks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Tech_3#Uses_of_the_engine Actual examples of the open sourced quake 3 code:
ioquake, urban terror, temulous
If you want a good laugh, chart that next to AAPL
And this helps innovation somehow?
Oh no, not at all. This helps the rich get richer. What, you thought government was looking out for you?
That said, TONS of open-source projects were started using the Quake 3 source code, so I don't see how at least something won't come from this.
Have you seen Cube or Sauerbraten or Warsow?
or whether patents should be issued for software in the first place.
I really gotta say, in cases like this it seems so insanely obvious that this should NOT be patent-able. Someone else came up with the EXACT same technique very shortly thereafter or simultaneously, without reading your patent or any of your work? If it really is just an incremental update, nothing novel but taking existing ideas and tying them together, it seems the opposite of innovative; it seems to me this algorithm was inevitable. If not these people, somebody would have very shortly thereafter discovered it. So why do we make such a big deal about who got there first? How does forcing everybody to licence a technology from that person that they could feasibly develop on their own, Chinese clean-room style, HELP innovation?
/. book, but seriously, they're doing some real harm to the industry. Its not just MS, but they're a big nasty troll right now, and they have enough money they shouldn't need to resort to tactics like this.)
It doesn't. Software patents do not help. They hurt. Companies like Microsoft buy tons of patents from college kids for pennies and then sit on them with no intention of actually using the patent described, just so they can litigate or strong-arm other companies into paying fees. Free money! This actually HELPS monopolies (I know ragging on MS is the oldest joke in the
I mean, think about it. Carmack developed this algorithm. Now he's trying to open source it and share it with the world for free. AND A PATENT IS PREVENTING THIS. Show me how patents "help protect innovation and creativity." This is so backwards it hurts.
You're not listening to me. I admitted I didn't have prior art and didn't want to have that argument from the start. I'm trying to talk about the nature of allowing these patents in the first place. And I want to respond to your other points with the exact same things I already said. Did you skim it?