In the U.S., mathematical algorithms are by statute excluded from patentability.
However, software algorithms are, by a decision of a judge.
There are no rules for distinguishing whether an algorithm is a mathematical algorithm or a software algorithm, except by who pays the lawyers the most money.
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist; that conviction has been upheld on appeal, and the Supreme Court has declined to review the case, so the current judgement stands.
That's winning?
Oh, yeah. It's Microsoft, so they can argue with a straight face that their punishment shouldn't be punitive.
Sure there's a network effect. Compare the availability of Linux x86 binaries vs. Linux other-architecture binaries. Look at the performance hit when one emulates one processor architecture on another (intel on SPARC, intel on PPC, PPC on intel, etc.)
Athlon an PIV are the same processor architecture, but different on the bus/motherboard/chipset. Fortunately, AMD has enough market share that vendors will support their bus.
Let's see what happens when Hammer goes head-to-head with Itanium (and UltraSPARC, and IBM Power). Whichever one wins the larger share of the 64-bit customer market will have a growing advantage over the next two decades.
When did Yellow Dog Linux support the NuBus PowerPC machines (6100, 7100, and 8100)? When I put my 6100 back into its box, the only Linux it could run was MkLinux...
Because they're a monopolist that abuses their monopoly position. The trial court said that, the appeals court said that, and the supreme court, by refusing to hear the case, concurred.
Microsoft wouldn't make as much money if you could choose to not buy their products. So any vendor who gives customers the choice to not pay for Microsoft products will be punished. Microsoft signed a consent decree saying they wouldn't do this any more back in (IIRC) 1993, but they've kept on doing it.
Another alternative is for the owners of the wetland that gets filled in to compensate the users of the water, both people and critters, for its decline in quality.
That's a real loss that the property owners want to foist onto other people, to line their own pockets.
As much as people love to hate Microsoft, I can't fault them for bundling IE. It's a logical decision. I realize it basically drove Netscape out of business...but the real question is, what business? The Internet Browser shouldn't be a product bought and sold in the marketplace. It's a very basic product at its heart, and should be included with PCs to begin with.
Ahhh, but PCs did not have browsers included with them. Then a group of individuals had an idea, a useful tool. They innovated. They did something new. And they were crushed by Microsoft.
Wnat incentive is there for the next group of people to do something new? Or are you happy with a world where the only PC innovations come from Microsoft?
As a company, it makes a lot of sense to try to stop people from using your products
I doan theeenk so.
What galls me most about the media oligopoly is that they think they have a right (and congress is, sadly, too eager to oblige) to have the general public shoulder additional costs so that the media oligarchs can easily apply their existing business models to new media.
Re:Not too serious...
on
SSSCA Hearing
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Yes, but when you have a high enough percentage of people disobeying the law, you have (1) a bad law, and (2) a lost cause.
Not to mention the creation and sustainance of new criminal organizations, and increases in police (-state) powers to combat them. Think Al Capone during prohibition. The current war on the constitution.
If stupid laws make everyone a criminal, then the authorities can detain, arrest, and convict whoever they find unpleasant.
Start with www.talkorigins.org, or read talk.origins on usenet.
The challenge is to pin down what creationists mean by "flood theory". Or to get them to explain how their theory of a recent global flood fits with evidence of hundreds of thousands of annual varves in the Green River basin in the western USA, or similar numbers of annual layers detected in the ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica. Or the civilization in Egypt, that kept annual records during the middle of the global flood, and didn't notice any more standing water than usual.
Evolution is science. If you think parts of it are wrong, all you have to do is to produce objective evidence that you are right and science is wrong. Write it up, and submit it to other scientists who will check your work and see if you really are right. If your claims pass that test, then you are in.
The major constraint on teaching science is the number of days in the school year, the number of hours in the day, the amount of material that scientists have uncovered so far, and the capacity of young minds. I do not know why you object to students being "conditioned" to "believe" what science says is so. Remember, the results of science have been tested. Is it brainwashing to condition students to believe that George Washington was the first elected President of the United States of America under the Constitution of 1787? Or is it sophistry?
The tactics of creationism seem to be using the political process to force their notions into the public school science curriculum, or when they can't do that, to force evolution, and astronomy, and any other science they choose out of the public school science curriculum. At the same time, they offer to the public what those educated in science recognize as a pack of lies.
Behe doesn't adequately answer Orr's criticism. Orr shows how natural selection can evolve into an "irreducibly complex" system. Behe's reaction is to say that said systems are not irreducibly complex -- but ignores the fact that they meet his definition.
As S. J. Gould has said, museums are full of transitional fossils.
Archaeopteryx is a wonderful transitional fossil. 14 skeletel features found in reptiles, and not in any modern birds. One distinguishing feature in common with modern birds, shared by no modern reptile. (flight feathers).
See also the Therapsid series.
Your intuition is not quite right, and the relative scarcity of transitional fossils led Gould et al to propose Punctuated Equilibrium as an explanation.
You would do well to learn the difference between theory and fact, and to understand how theories change. When Einstein refined Newton's notion of mechanics, it did not keep F=ma from being a useful approximation to the truth in most circumstances. 50 or 100 years from now F=ma will continue to be a useful approximation. Just as evolution's "Descent with Modification" or "mutation and selection".
As I understand it, creation"ism" is the application of scientific evidence to the account of creation in scripture.
If only this were true. The problem is that flood geology was shown to be false by the end of the 18th century. Yet the creationists keep on pretending that the science of geology has not refuted their literal (mis-)interpretation of the bible.
The only way for a species to stop evolving is for it to go extinct.
Humanity continues to evolve. Every generation is a little bit different from the last.
The selection pressures have changed. The ability to resist bacterial infection isn't nearly as important as it used to be, because we have antibiotics (possibly only a little while longer...)
And the ability for ideas to pass from one group to another, one generation to another, is more important now. Look at the idea of "democracy"; at the dawn of the 20th century, there was much debate about its merits vis a vis other forms of government.
That you don't buy it is your problem. The Apple ads ran in 1984-1986, when you had Windows 1 and Windows 2. When you had to deal with jumpers or DIP switches to install a serial port.
Those two companies have, in fact, dominated their environments by pointedly focusing on the non-technologically adventurous middle-class and busy business executives and workers and by presenting themselves not as cool but as reliable and accessible.
Microsoft succeeded, not so much by meeting the customer's needs, but rather by making it as difficult as they could to make another choice.
Windows produced error messages when run over DR-DOS instead of MS-DOS
Per-processor licensing
MS-Office file format changes
Stupid Windows keys on keyboards. Can you buy a keyboard today without ringing Microsoft's cash register?
What hardware do you own? Price a new iMac vs. a dell beige box with a flat panel screen. Same RAM, same Hard Drive, same ports, cheapest intel processor. Which costs more? The Dell.
Save desk space. Save money. Use BSD Unix with a slick user interface. Buy a Mac.
Slashdot Mirror
You slipped a couple of decimal places. 10 cents per kwh, not .10 cents. So burning 300 watts of electricity costs $21.60 per month, not $0.22.
Apple made an ergonomic keyboard, and I bought one, in 1994. Years before Microsoft.
All you need is proof, and a few hundred thousand for the lawyers to show the proof to the court.
Plus risk that the decision will go against you anyway.
In the U.S., mathematical algorithms are by statute excluded from patentability.
However, software algorithms are, by a decision of a judge.
There are no rules for distinguishing whether an algorithm is a mathematical algorithm or a software algorithm, except by who pays the lawyers the most money.
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist; that conviction has been upheld on appeal, and the Supreme Court has declined to review the case, so the current judgement stands.
That's winning?
Oh, yeah. It's Microsoft, so they can argue with a straight face that their punishment shouldn't be punitive.
Sure there's a network effect. Compare the availability of Linux x86 binaries vs. Linux other-architecture binaries. Look at the performance hit when one emulates one processor architecture on another (intel on SPARC, intel on PPC, PPC on intel, etc.)
Athlon an PIV are the same processor architecture, but different on the bus/motherboard/chipset. Fortunately, AMD has enough market share that vendors will support their bus.
Let's see what happens when Hammer goes head-to-head with Itanium (and UltraSPARC, and IBM Power). Whichever one wins the larger share of the 64-bit customer market will have a growing advantage over the next two decades.
When did Yellow Dog Linux support the NuBus PowerPC machines (6100, 7100, and 8100)? When I put my 6100 back into its box, the only Linux it could run was MkLinux...
Because they're a monopolist that abuses their monopoly position. The trial court said that, the appeals court said that, and the supreme court, by refusing to hear the case, concurred.
Microsoft wouldn't make as much money if you could choose to not buy their products. So any vendor who gives customers the choice to not pay for Microsoft products will be punished. Microsoft signed a consent decree saying they wouldn't do this any more back in (IIRC) 1993, but they've kept on doing it.
Another alternative is for the owners of the wetland that gets filled in to compensate the users of the water, both people and critters, for its decline in quality.
That's a real loss that the property owners want to foist onto other people, to line their own pockets.
It's easier to build a "successful software company" when you're OK with breaking the law.
As much as people love to hate Microsoft, I can't fault them for bundling IE. It's a logical decision. I realize it basically drove Netscape out of business...but the real question is, what business? The Internet Browser shouldn't be a product bought and sold in the marketplace. It's a very basic product at its heart, and should be included with PCs to begin with.
Ahhh, but PCs did not have browsers included with them. Then a group of individuals had an idea, a useful tool. They innovated. They did something new. And they were crushed by Microsoft.
Wnat incentive is there for the next group of people to do something new? Or are you happy with a world where the only PC innovations come from Microsoft?
And Hollywood was afraid of VCRs. Look at how the VCR has ruined Hollywood!
As a company, it makes a lot of sense to try to stop people from using your products
I doan theeenk so.
What galls me most about the media oligopoly is that they think they have a right (and congress is, sadly, too eager to oblige) to have the general public shoulder additional costs so that the media oligarchs can easily apply their existing business models to new media.
Yes, but when you have a high enough percentage of people disobeying the law, you have (1) a bad law, and (2) a lost cause.
Not to mention the creation and sustainance of new criminal organizations, and increases in police (-state) powers to combat them. Think Al Capone during prohibition. The current war on the constitution.
If stupid laws make everyone a criminal, then the authorities can detain, arrest, and convict whoever they find unpleasant.
Start with www.talkorigins.org, or read talk.origins on usenet.
The challenge is to pin down what creationists mean by "flood theory". Or to get them to explain how their theory of a recent global flood fits with evidence of hundreds of thousands of annual varves in the Green River basin in the western USA, or similar numbers of annual layers detected in the ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica. Or the civilization in Egypt, that kept annual records during the middle of the global flood, and didn't notice any more standing water than usual.
Evolution is science. If you think parts of it are wrong, all you have to do is to produce objective evidence that you are right and science is wrong. Write it up, and submit it to other scientists who will check your work and see if you really are right. If your claims pass that test, then you are in.
The major constraint on teaching science is the number of days in the school year, the number of hours in the day, the amount of material that scientists have uncovered so far, and the capacity of young minds. I do not know why you object to students being "conditioned" to "believe" what science says is so. Remember, the results of science have been tested. Is it brainwashing to condition students to believe that George Washington was the first elected President of the United States of America under the Constitution of 1787? Or is it sophistry?
The tactics of creationism seem to be using the political process to force their notions into the public school science curriculum, or when they can't do that, to force evolution, and astronomy, and any other science they choose out of the public school science curriculum. At the same time, they offer to the public what those educated in science recognize as a pack of lies.
Behe doesn't adequately answer Orr's criticism. Orr shows how natural selection can evolve into an "irreducibly complex" system. Behe's reaction is to say that said systems are not irreducibly complex -- but ignores the fact that they meet his definition.
As S. J. Gould has said, museums are full of transitional fossils.
Archaeopteryx is a wonderful transitional fossil. 14 skeletel features found in reptiles, and not in any modern birds. One distinguishing feature in common with modern birds, shared by no modern reptile. (flight feathers).
See also the Therapsid series.
Your intuition is not quite right, and the relative scarcity of transitional fossils led Gould et al to propose Punctuated Equilibrium as an explanation.
You would do well to learn the difference between theory and fact, and to understand how theories change. When Einstein refined Newton's notion of mechanics, it did not keep F=ma from being a useful approximation to the truth in most circumstances. 50 or 100 years from now F=ma will continue to be a useful approximation. Just as evolution's "Descent with Modification" or "mutation and selection".
As I understand it, creation"ism" is the application of scientific evidence to the account of creation in scripture.
If only this were true. The problem is that flood geology was shown to be false by the end of the 18th century. Yet the creationists keep on pretending that the science of geology has not refuted their literal (mis-)interpretation of the bible.
The only way for a species to stop evolving is for it to go extinct.
Humanity continues to evolve. Every generation is a little bit different from the last.
The selection pressures have changed. The ability to resist bacterial infection isn't nearly as important as it used to be, because we have antibiotics (possibly only a little while longer...)
And the ability for ideas to pass from one group to another, one generation to another, is more important now. Look at the idea of "democracy"; at the dawn of the 20th century, there was much debate about its merits vis a vis other forms of government.
Coffee is traditionally served hot. McD's served traditional coffee.
Did a McDonalds employee place the cup where it could spill on Ms. Liebeck's loins? Or did she?
How the jury found McD's 80% liable for Ms. Liebeck's choice of coffee holder mystifies me. Much of this country's legal system mystifies me.
That you don't buy it is your problem. The Apple ads ran in 1984-1986, when you had Windows 1 and Windows 2. When you had to deal with jumpers or DIP switches to install a serial port.
It was reality. You're too young to remember.
Internet Explorer was origionally a "rebadged" Spyglass Mosaic, which was a licensed version of NCSA Mosaic.
Excel derived from Lotus's spreadsheet, 1-2-3.
And Word is another gift from Apple, as Word for Windows traces back to Word for the Macintosh, which Microsoft did as an "improvement" on MacWrite.
Microsoft succeeded, not so much by meeting the customer's needs, but rather by making it as difficult as they could to make another choice.
Windows produced error messages when run over DR-DOS instead of MS-DOS
Per-processor licensing
MS-Office file format changes
Stupid Windows keys on keyboards. Can you buy a keyboard today without ringing Microsoft's cash register?
What hardware do you own? Price a new iMac vs. a dell beige box with a flat panel screen. Same RAM, same Hard Drive, same ports, cheapest intel processor. Which costs more? The Dell.
Save desk space. Save money. Use BSD Unix with a slick user interface. Buy a Mac.