If universities want to increase their numbers for women in CS, they need to recruit at the following venues:
* Anime conventions * Math clubs * Furry conventions * Gaming conventions * Rennaisance festivals (look for the "less hot") * Scifi movie openings (camping on the pavement)
Generally, girls with purple capes talking about polyamory... That's what you're looking for.
I think the biggest problem you mention is the cost of litigation, and although there are some things in patent law that could be changed to help with that - claim construction issues and interlocutory appeals - it's really a problem in almost all litigation where there's a corporation versus an individual, or someone wealthy versus someone who's not.
I think notice pleading and extended discovery are largely to blame...
Did the word 'incentivize' brand me as an elitist? I guess I should have said "make people want to do stuff" instead.
In all seriousness though, I disagree. I think that you can take a clear and educated look at IP law and see both problems and great improvements over the past. You raise some examples of what you see as problems. I think some of those are, and some are debatable.
But for instance, take a look at the application of prosecution history estoppel by the Federal Circuit. Even if you follow every last regulation by the Patent Office now, you may still be unable to enforce your patent if you unreasonably delay prosecution. They have responded to a real problem there.
Take a look at the change from the old 'invention' standard to the nonobviousness standard. People can quibble now about how strictly it's applied, but it's head and shoulders above what we had before. Do you really want judges just waving their hands and saying something does or doesn't have a 'spark of invention' or would you rather they actually have standards and tests that allow them to determine that something was obvious? The latter is clearly preferable.
In the copyright area we have worse problems in my opinion, but take a look at the Lexmark case. No more use of the DMCA to lock up printer cartridges.
I'm certainly not saying everything is peachy. But I would like to see discussions framed without heavy assumptions.
The message may be represented numerically in order to store it in a computer, but it's a message nonetheless. This word must be interpreted in light of the specification which (although I haven't read it) probably makes it clear that 'message' means a real-world communication, not an arbitrary number.
This is a key distinction, as it makes this process relevant to our world. It means encrypting emails or voice conversations rather than purely transforming arbitrary numbers.
Basically, the inputs and outputs of a patentable software algorithm must usually be representations of real-world entities in order to be patentable, or produce a concrete result.
In other words, the patented method usually must have a concrete application.
Not really. It requires a message. What follows is the broadest claim in the patent. If they hadn't required an actual message it probably wouldn't have issued...
----------- 23. A method for establishing cryptographic communications comprising the step of:
encoding a digital message word signal M to a ciphertext word signal C, where M corresponds to a number representative of a message and 0 = M = n-1 where n is a composite number of the form n=p*q where p and q are prime numbers, and where C is a number representative of an encoded form of message word M,
wherein said encoding step comprises the step of:
transforming said message word signal M to said ciphertext word signal C whereby C [is congruent to] Me (mod n) where e is a number relatively prime to (p-1)*(q-1).
Ultimately, everything is just atoms, so one could argue that the law shouldn't treat explosives and milk differently - they're both just collections of atoms in different configurations...
What matters and should matter to the law are the properties of things as they are perceived and used by people everyday in our society, not their ultimate nature.
Are slashdotters so unoriginal that they will let language like this story header's go by with nary a comment? This story is just dripping with assumptions and unjustified bias.
Do you want a discussion or a rantfest? The article brings up some good issues, but assumes from the outset that many policies are "bad" only because it seems to be common sense. Common sense is a good guide sometimes, but shouldn't always be taken as unassailable. There are many counterintuitive effects in the operation of economic incentives.
This header frames the article in such a way as to draw unthinking rants against IP policy, rather than a decent discussion. This is one of the reasons so many have stopped reading slashdot.
To give the author of the article some credit, at least he admits that "IP is a good thing" near the end. It is.
The goal of IP law has always been to find a way to incentivize innovation without unduly burdening society. If you learn about all the equitable doctrines involved in copyright and patent law, you'll see it's true. There is a real effort to be fair and equitable.
There are many problems in the operation of the system, as well as in some of the copyright legislation, as with all aspects of government. But framing the dialog in this way is not productive...
I've said this before here and I'll say it again. Even though all you coders know you want to throw out that ancient spaghetti codeded system and start all over, you can't and you know it. It's often there for a reason and needs to be respected as something that works, for good or for ill. It may need to be refactored, but not trashed.
That is the proper approach to law as well, and I'd like to see some responsible recognition of that in slashdotter circles.
Because without engaging them, and developing significant trade that's beneficial to them, we have no way other than WAR to wield influence against them.
By bringing them into the global economy, we nurture their reliance on cooperation. We create a new way to peacefully resolve disputes - by trade sanctions and withholding of foreign direct investment.
These incentives are fundamental to keeping China on the good track now - they are keenly attuned to the international investment community, what they want in terms of the rule of law, stability, and international standards, as well as to potential loss of trade rights with the US....
Of course, a lot of it is also about greed. But where is the boundary between greed and the rightful desire to benefit and grow through trade with a country not yet up to our standards? Not to mention the benefit to the Chinese people that has come from all of this...
You're right - in a democracy, it's up to the interested parties to lobby to sustain their own jobs.
Workers in the west are for the most part able to lobby for protections if they wish, and it's quite possible they'll get them.
So it's not quite true that they have to accept this. They could fight it, and really, that's what democracy is all about... You might disagree with it, or think it's theoretically 'wrong' to pursue a goal of protectionism, but it's clearly not wrong from the subjective point of view of a coder trying to make a living, and getting shafted.
By percentages of the population, I'm pretty sure China and India would come out way down the scale - there are just too many people in poverty yet with _zippo_ knowledge of mathematics...
That is not to say anything, of course, about the quality of those who do....
Not only that, but also note that he received verbal 'ok' that the code would remain his.
This could constitute a waiver of their ownership of that code under his agreement with the company, depending on the situation. It might be hard if the agreement contains a merger clause, but not strictly impossible.
That's not the problem, as you suspected. The problem is that answering lots of email makes you think about what other people are thinking about. It makes you reactive to some extent rather than proactive about your own agenda.
If Knuth or anyone else knows what they want to do, what they want to create, and simply need time to do it, then email can often be a hindrance rather than a help.
Your argument is somewhat correct, but it hinges on what's a congrete and tangible result.
Under State Street, a price is a concrete and tangible result. I happen to agree.
It's really ironic to me that many slashdotters would be unable to see the tangible nature of many digital objects now. OS paradigms have begun to stabilize. We know what forms files, music, applications take in software. These are clearly tangible and manipulable objects to most users at this point.
At some point you have to admit that manipulating song files on a computer really no different than manipulating physical disks, in the sense that both are _subjectively_ concrete tasks manipulating concrete objects. Such digital content should for all intents and purposes be treated as tangible and concrete, in my humble opinion.
This applies to FFII's rhetoric just as well. It's not based on logic or empirical evidence as much as on the fundamental libertarian-hacker emotional dislike of authority.
I had this problem as well. The way to slowly solve it (it's not easy) is to start to see what you really want your life to be like. Once you start to see the consequences of failing to do the things you don't want to do, it may take a lot of effort, but you will start to see that you really do want to get those things done.
I started by setting very short-term goals. What I want to do in half an hour. I wrote down my goal, e.g. number of pages to read, and then tried to meet it. I checked my progress every half-hour, and wrote my result. Sometimes, I did it by the hour... This helped a great deal, because it kept me thinking that these were each small steps I could do, and they led to the result I knew I needed to get done...
It also made me feel more proactive, and prevented me from losing track of time when I zoned out. I knew I had to check my progress every half-hour...
You are incorrect. Chanting won't save you. Shrink-wrap and click-wrap licenses have been legally tested, and they're usually going to be upheld by courts in the U.S. Ask any lawyer familiar with the situation...
Let's say you would never buy windows, so you pirate it thinking they don't lose anything. Of course, you're breaking the law, but you don't care because you think that since you're smarter than our society (which elects the representatives who make the laws in a democratic system) should simply be able to ignore the law.
So your friend, who would have bought windows notices you have it. He says "hey, what are you doing with a copy? You said you'd never buy it." You say "shit, man... I just pirated it because they're not losing anything..."
What is your friend going to think?
1. He's still going to happily buy a copy himself. 2. He's never going to pay that price for it now, because he'd feel he was getting gypped. 3. He's going to get a copy from you, and you aren't quite the moral pillar you thought you were, so you'll give it to him.
It probably won't be #1.
Why? Because now the _value_ of the product has gone down. It's gone down because its scarcity has gone down, and because of what is basically price competition.
Would you say that government enforcement of other property rights are also anti-capitalistic? That's simply an absurd argument.
Property rights are the foundation of trade, which is the foundation of capitalism. Whether they are in real property or intellectual property... How are innovative processes and products to be valued and traded without some sort of propertization?
You all really need to think about this some more...
If someone else takes a job that I would have gotten otherwise, I can meaningfully say that they 'took' my job. But for them, I would have the job. This isn't such a hard concept to grasp.
It has nothing to do with whether the job 'belongs' to someone or not. It only has to do with who gets the job.
Capitalism is changed every day by regulations. 'Capitalism' is not just 'working' when a law is passed to prohibit foreign labor, or when a law is passed to explicitly allow or promote a certain type of foreign labor, which is the case here. This is about who wins the regulation war, not some high-minded utopian ideal of capitalism...
It's blatantly clear to most people who've been in the business that this doesn't actually happen. Back in '98-'00 I saw most immigrants I worked with starting with about 40k, whereas the Americans were starting with closer to 50k, this at one particular software company.
This provision of the law is difficult to enforce, and has clearly been subject to systemic violations.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed.
If universities want to increase their numbers for women in CS, they need to recruit at the following venues:
* Anime conventions
* Math clubs
* Furry conventions
* Gaming conventions
* Rennaisance festivals (look for the "less hot")
* Scifi movie openings (camping on the pavement)
Generally, girls with purple capes talking about polyamory... That's what you're looking for.
Some good points.
I think the biggest problem you mention is the cost of litigation, and although there are some things in patent law that could be changed to help with that - claim construction issues and interlocutory appeals - it's really a problem in almost all litigation where there's a corporation versus an individual, or someone wealthy versus someone who's not.
I think notice pleading and extended discovery are largely to blame...
Sorry - where I said prosecution history estoppel, I meant to say prosecution laches.
Did the word 'incentivize' brand me as an elitist? I guess I should have said "make people want to do stuff" instead.
In all seriousness though, I disagree. I think that you can take a clear and educated look at IP law and see both problems and great improvements over the past. You raise some examples of what you see as problems. I think some of those are, and some are debatable.
But for instance, take a look at the application of prosecution history estoppel by the Federal Circuit. Even if you follow every last regulation by the Patent Office now, you may still be unable to enforce your patent if you unreasonably delay prosecution. They have responded to a real problem there.
Take a look at the change from the old 'invention' standard to the nonobviousness standard. People can quibble now about how strictly it's applied, but it's head and shoulders above what we had before. Do you really want judges just waving their hands and saying something does or doesn't have a 'spark of invention' or would you rather they actually have standards and tests that allow them to determine that something was obvious? The latter is clearly preferable.
In the copyright area we have worse problems in my opinion, but take a look at the Lexmark case. No more use of the DMCA to lock up printer cartridges.
I'm certainly not saying everything is peachy. But I would like to see discussions framed without heavy assumptions.
The message may be represented numerically in order to store it in a computer, but it's a message nonetheless. This word must be interpreted in light of the specification which (although I haven't read it) probably makes it clear that 'message' means a real-world communication, not an arbitrary number.
This is a key distinction, as it makes this process relevant to our world. It means encrypting emails or voice conversations rather than purely transforming arbitrary numbers.
Basically, the inputs and outputs of a patentable software algorithm must usually be representations of real-world entities in order to be patentable, or produce a concrete result.
In other words, the patented method usually must have a concrete application.
Not really. It requires a message. What follows is the broadest claim in the patent. If they hadn't required an actual message it probably wouldn't have issued...
-----------
23. A method for establishing cryptographic communications comprising the step of:
encoding a digital message word signal M to a ciphertext word signal C, where M corresponds to a number representative of a message and 0 = M = n-1 where n is a composite number of the form n=p*q where p and q are prime numbers, and where C is a number representative of an encoded form of message word M,
wherein said encoding step comprises the step of:
transforming said message word signal M to said ciphertext word signal C whereby C [is congruent to] Me (mod n) where e is a number relatively prime to (p-1)*(q-1).
It doesn't matter what it 'ultimately' is.
Ultimately, everything is just atoms, so one could argue that the law shouldn't treat explosives and milk differently - they're both just collections of atoms in different configurations...
What matters and should matter to the law are the properties of things as they are perceived and used by people everyday in our society, not their ultimate nature.
Pure mathematics and laws of nature cannot be patented.
Software is not these things. It is code that performs a function for a user like a machine, and does i/o that is relevant to the real world.
Are slashdotters so unoriginal that they will let language like this story header's go by with nary a comment? This story is just dripping with assumptions and unjustified bias.
Do you want a discussion or a rantfest? The article brings up some good issues, but assumes from the outset that many policies are "bad" only because it seems to be common sense. Common sense is a good guide sometimes, but shouldn't always be taken as unassailable. There are many counterintuitive effects in the operation of economic incentives.
This header frames the article in such a way as to draw unthinking rants against IP policy, rather than a decent discussion. This is one of the reasons so many have stopped reading slashdot.
To give the author of the article some credit, at least he admits that "IP is a good thing" near the end. It is.
The goal of IP law has always been to find a way to incentivize innovation without unduly burdening society. If you learn about all the equitable doctrines involved in copyright and patent law, you'll see it's true. There is a real effort to be fair and equitable.
There are many problems in the operation of the system, as well as in some of the copyright legislation, as with all aspects of government. But framing the dialog in this way is not productive...
I've said this before here and I'll say it again. Even though all you coders know you want to throw out that ancient spaghetti codeded system and start all over, you can't and you know it. It's often there for a reason and needs to be respected as something that works, for good or for ill. It may need to be refactored, but not trashed.
That is the proper approach to law as well, and I'd like to see some responsible recognition of that in slashdotter circles.
Why?
Because without engaging them, and developing significant trade that's beneficial to them, we have no way other than WAR to wield influence against them.
By bringing them into the global economy, we nurture their reliance on cooperation. We create a new way to peacefully resolve disputes - by trade sanctions and withholding of foreign direct investment.
These incentives are fundamental to keeping China on the good track now - they are keenly attuned to the international investment community, what they want in terms of the rule of law, stability, and international standards, as well as to potential loss of trade rights with the US....
Of course, a lot of it is also about greed. But where is the boundary between greed and the rightful desire to benefit and grow through trade with a country not yet up to our standards? Not to mention the benefit to the Chinese people that has come from all of this...
"It is not up to us to sustain it for you."
You're right - in a democracy, it's up to the interested parties to lobby to sustain their own jobs.
Workers in the west are for the most part able to lobby for protections if they wish, and it's quite possible they'll get them.
So it's not quite true that they have to accept this. They could fight it, and really, that's what democracy is all about... You might disagree with it, or think it's theoretically 'wrong' to pursue a goal of protectionism, but it's clearly not wrong from the subjective point of view of a coder trying to make a living, and getting shafted.
By percentages of the population, I'm pretty sure China and India would come out way down the scale - there are just too many people in poverty yet with _zippo_ knowledge of mathematics...
That is not to say anything, of course, about the quality of those who do....
Because of the doctrine of prosecution laches.
Except as a tool for communication - to engage with a live teacher remotely.
Not only that, but also note that he received verbal 'ok' that the code would remain his.
This could constitute a waiver of their ownership of that code under his agreement with the company, depending on the situation. It might be hard if the agreement contains a merger clause, but not strictly impossible.
That's not the problem, as you suspected. The problem is that answering lots of email makes you think about what other people are thinking about. It makes you reactive to some extent rather than proactive about your own agenda.
If Knuth or anyone else knows what they want to do, what they want to create, and simply need time to do it, then email can often be a hindrance rather than a help.
Your argument is somewhat correct, but it hinges on what's a congrete and tangible result.
Under State Street, a price is a concrete and tangible result. I happen to agree.
It's really ironic to me that many slashdotters would be unable to see the tangible nature of many digital objects now. OS paradigms have begun to stabilize. We know what forms files, music, applications take in software. These are clearly tangible and manipulable objects to most users at this point.
At some point you have to admit that manipulating song files on a computer really no different than manipulating physical disks, in the sense that both are _subjectively_ concrete tasks manipulating concrete objects. Such digital content should for all intents and purposes be treated as tangible and concrete, in my humble opinion.
This applies to FFII's rhetoric just as well. It's not based on logic or empirical evidence as much as on the fundamental libertarian-hacker emotional dislike of authority.
I had this problem as well. The way to slowly solve it (it's not easy) is to start to see what you really want your life to be like. Once you start to see the consequences of failing to do the things you don't want to do, it may take a lot of effort, but you will start to see that you really do want to get those things done.
I started by setting very short-term goals. What I want to do in half an hour. I wrote down my goal, e.g. number of pages to read, and then tried to meet it. I checked my progress every half-hour, and wrote my result. Sometimes, I did it by the hour... This helped a great deal, because it kept me thinking that these were each small steps I could do, and they led to the result I knew I needed to get done...
It also made me feel more proactive, and prevented me from losing track of time when I zoned out. I knew I had to check my progress every half-hour...
You are incorrect. Chanting won't save you. Shrink-wrap and click-wrap licenses have been legally tested, and they're usually going to be upheld by courts in the U.S. Ask any lawyer familiar with the situation...
It is a loss because of more complex reasons.
Let's say you would never buy windows, so you pirate it thinking they don't lose anything. Of course, you're breaking the law, but you don't care because you think that since you're smarter than our society (which elects the representatives who make the laws in a democratic system) should simply be able to ignore the law.
So your friend, who would have bought windows notices you have it. He says "hey, what are you doing with a copy? You said you'd never buy it." You say "shit, man... I just pirated it because they're not losing anything..."
What is your friend going to think?
1. He's still going to happily buy a copy himself.
2. He's never going to pay that price for it now, because he'd feel he was getting gypped.
3. He's going to get a copy from you, and you aren't quite the moral pillar you thought you were, so you'll give it to him.
It probably won't be #1.
Why? Because now the _value_ of the product has gone down. It's gone down because its scarcity has gone down, and because of what is basically price competition.
Would you say that government enforcement of other property rights are also anti-capitalistic? That's simply an absurd argument.
Property rights are the foundation of trade, which is the foundation of capitalism. Whether they are in real property or intellectual property... How are innovative processes and products to be valued and traded without some sort of propertization?
You all really need to think about this some more...
If someone else takes a job that I would have gotten otherwise, I can meaningfully say that they 'took' my job. But for them, I would have the job. This isn't such a hard concept to grasp.
It has nothing to do with whether the job 'belongs' to someone or not. It only has to do with who gets the job.
Capitalism is changed every day by regulations. 'Capitalism' is not just 'working' when a law is passed to prohibit foreign labor, or when a law is passed to explicitly allow or promote a certain type of foreign labor, which is the case here. This is about who wins the regulation war, not some high-minded utopian ideal of capitalism...
It's blatantly clear to most people who've been in the business that this doesn't actually happen. Back in '98-'00 I saw most immigrants I worked with starting with about 40k, whereas the Americans were starting with closer to 50k, this at one particular software company.
This provision of the law is difficult to enforce, and has clearly been subject to systemic violations.
This is bullshit. What kind of learning do you think they do in South Korea? Hands on? Hell no, it's rote learning all the way.