For one thing, you don't always have to see the patent to get the idea. Just ripping off the UI and features of Windows or other MS software (as Linux does rampantly) will probably get you a bunch of infringement.
This is natural - who would ever have thought that MS et al. would not go on the offensive once Linux started to become popular?
This raises an interesting question to me -- whether Linux might not have been much better off sticking to a smaller niche, and not cultivating popularity among average users.
That's not extortion. That's called an offer of a legal settlement.
Do you think it would be more efficient to have MS simply sue all those it thought it could make a case against? Of course not. It's much better for everyone if those who think they'd lose simply pay up, and only those who think they'd win refuse the deal and force MS to sue or not.
I should clarify that the group theory article linked to is actually readable, but it doesn't provide much in the way of examples or information that would help me use group theory elsewhere. Most other articles I've looked at are pretty incomprehensible.
First, I don't think people are talking about the general population reading an article on group theory. I think people here are probably talking about engineers or undergrads reading the article.
Your post shows that you have a strong mental block regarding explaining mathematics. An explanation is not the same thing as a theorem or a proof. A definition for a person is not the same thing as a definition whose purpose is a theorem or proof.
Your focus is far too geared towards providing the technical support for mathematical propositions. An encyclopedia is not generally _for_ that. It is for explaining the subject to humans. As an analogy, I might say that an article on encryption should not be providing code to do the encryption except as a footnote. It should be providing an explanation of what it is and how it works, for human readers.
You say that "[a] non-technical rendition of the definition sounds nice in theory, but in practice, what would this be?" because you are thinking about a technical definition. A human definition would explain what it is and does without regard to too many details, and probably would use simple examples to show the point.
Any other subjects that would have to be mastered prior to understanding the subject at hand should be pointed out at the outset. This is not hard. "The reader should have a reasonable grasp of X before reading the following."
I have studied math through multivariable calculus, differential equations, and linear algebra, and most of the articles on wikipedia are pretty useless to me, even for subjects I could easily have taken next in undergrad if I had wanted to, like group theory.
Yes, it is unreasonable. I have a degree in CS from CMU, and studied ECE as well. Most engineers go up to differential equations and linear algebra, but may or may not study group theory.
I am one of those people, and I am interested in learning about group theory, but don't remember what an automorphism is, and of course don't know the definitions of different types of groups, because that's precisely what I'm interested in learning about.
The article should explain the subject beginning with basics.
I love freedom as much as you do. But that doesn't mean I'm stupid.
You seem to argue that there is no downside whatsoever to giving terrorists free reign. Let terrorists do whatever they like, because otherwise, we'll lose some freedom. This is too extreme to fall within common sense. It is blind allegiance to the ideology of freedom without thinking rationally about the benefits and detriments of the variety of things we can do to reduce the possiblity of terrorism.
We must rationally weigh proposed programs in terms of their benefits and detriments. In this case, I think I agree that RealID is going too far, especially when it's imposed by the federal government without consideration for States' budgets. But that doesn't mean it's crazy to try to identify people who are here but shouldn't be.
Terrorists can, in fact, take away our freedom. They can do so by threatening certain events or locations, forcing us to expend massive resources moving people and attempting to mitigate potential damages. They can easily cause us to cancel our largest sports games, or reroute and ground aircraft. These things surely screw up our plans and impact our freedom. Not to mention that those who were in the towers on 9/11 are mostly very not free right now.
Anger at people who would take away your freedom is NATURAL. I feel it as well. Heck, it's even more natural for libertarian-inclined geeks. I believe knee-jerk reactions like yours stem from that feeling. But. You can't throw out the baby with the bath water. You can't reject all defensive measures that reduce freedom, including those that might save you without being too onerous.
I tend to think that the solution is some real border control, combined with giving cops the ability to reasonably inquire into peoples' background when they act suspiciously or can't speak English. Use some smart profiling to reduce the burden on society as a whole. That's just my opinion.
Not too far from the truth, at least as far as I'm concerned. I went there from 94-98. There were about 10 girls out of 110 students in CS. By the time we graduated, there were about 6, I think. A bunch of people (not just girls) switched out to ECE for something easier. It was hard.
We had our share of smelly people. One was really bad and only slept like every 3rd night. I slept very little, but did shower. I hacked an asshole's machine and messed with his head a bunch. I also messed with my friends who usually had X set up to accept any command to open a window or play a sound, usually from alt.tasteless or whatever.
I think it was great that the people there really wanted to be there, and brought all their varied experiences with them. Toward the end, people showed up who wanted money. They switched to teaching the intro and data structures classes in Java instead of C/C++. Luckily, I got the old-skool experience. I don't like a lot of these changes...
BTW, I met my wife there. She was actually hanging around our dorm.;) And not even a CS student. When I met her I had a shaved head, was wearing a yukata, and was tossing a plaster penis back and forth with a friend.
Somehow, I knew you would say that.;) But it wouldn't be hard for them to pay people more than you make as a TA/RA, etc. Maybe they could at least get some grad students for short periods of time.
AP = advanced placement. It's a high school class teaching a subject for which there's an "AP" test you can take, which will give you university credit for the course. So it's basically a university-level class in high school.
How about having grad students teach younger kids, and let the Profs actually teach their classes? The professors could still use their students as TAs...
The potential for bad behavior is real. Don't you think that big corporations might flood applications with prior art references, whether applicable or not, in order to delay and increase the expense of an application detrimental to them?
This is very simple. It's because violence, in the form of struggle, fighting for good against evil, heroism, tragedy, etc., has always been a public part of exciting story-telling. Love and the stories surrounding it is very public as well, and there is no shying away from wholesome love stories in American culture.
Sex, on the other hand, is just considered private in our culture. Sex has less to do with the love story than the feelings and context leading to love. Sex is what people in love do after they go home and close the door, and the story ends for the viewer. At least, that's what's considered wholesome -- keeping private things private, and public things public.
Violence, fighting, etc., simply don't make us feel, emotionally, an urge for privacy. We feel comfortable sometimes talking about sex with close friends, for example, but not with our parents or in our workplaces, because it's a private and personal matter...
Yes, this is a cultural difference with Europe, but I don't think it's usually 'repression'. It's just a preference for most people, like not discussing feces at the dinner table.
The reason FOSS will _have_ to be a grassroots movement is because it's not about making money, which is why people own and operate and work for corporations.
This is also the reason it will always be a backwater movement, like anarcho-communists or Larouchers, which 99% of people will fail to understand or agree with.
It appears that all the report says is that they can make money by patenting _small_ innovations, so they don't necessarily want to make _big_ innovations. This does NOT imply that the patent system _discourages_ big innovations (in fact, it would imply that it does encourage them because patent protection is working), it just means that it may not _encourage_ them enough over small innovations.
Small innovations are almost always less risky and usually more predictably profitable than big ones, in any field, at any time, with or without a patent system. Thus, if innovations all get equal patent protection, the same will apply to patented innovations.
This says nothing about the patent system, except to suggest that maybe it could be further tweaked to achieve more 'big' innovations rather than small ones. But as another poster has already implied, the patent system is about getting marketable inventions that _consumers_ want, not necessarily the big R&D goals for humanity, which may or may not be marketable.
Minister essentially says "the writer of free software gives it away, so I don't want to promote this as a business model in Thailand."
Slashdotters say "Minister's using free software. Oooh..."
This is a completely non-responsive to his point. Of course he's going to consider using apache because it's free. He just doesn't want to expend Thailand's resources writing free things for other people.
If it's so surprising that someone wants to get something in return for his work, there's something wrong with you.
Blaming problems on the fact we have too many laws is like blaming problems with *nix on the alleged fact that it has too much code. Laws not only restrict action, but also make new things possible, solve problems, etc.
Ideally, laws should be exactly as complex as they need to be, no more, no less. The only way to achieve this is through a slow evolution, which is what we try to do.
Slashdot Mirror
For one thing, you don't always have to see the patent to get the idea. Just ripping off the UI and features of Windows or other MS software (as Linux does rampantly) will probably get you a bunch of infringement.
This is natural - who would ever have thought that MS et al. would not go on the offensive once Linux started to become popular?
This raises an interesting question to me -- whether Linux might not have been much better off sticking to a smaller niche, and not cultivating popularity among average users.
I'm sorry, but your post doesn't make any sense. Obvious patents have never been valid. If a court finds they're obvious, that means they are invalid.
What the SC said, essentially, is just that the obviousness test needs to be a bit less strict.
Or pay a tiny amount of money to get a license.
Is it extortion to ask someone to buy a ticket to attend your concert, or be sued for the ticket cost?
(No, of course not.)
That's not extortion. That's called an offer of a legal settlement.
Do you think it would be more efficient to have MS simply sue all those it thought it could make a case against? Of course not. It's much better for everyone if those who think they'd lose simply pay up, and only those who think they'd win refuse the deal and force MS to sue or not.
Yes! Microsoft is as bad as McCarthy for persecuting innocent Americans! They're fascists!
Um, you're attempting to associate completely unrelated political events to a business spat, in order to justify emotional outrage.
Ignored a shift in IP law? By asserting their patents are infringed? I don't think the Supreme Court said you can't infringe a patent anymore.
I should clarify that the group theory article linked to is actually readable, but it doesn't provide much in the way of examples or information that would help me use group theory elsewhere. Most other articles I've looked at are pretty incomprehensible.
First, I don't think people are talking about the general population reading an article on group theory. I think people here are probably talking about engineers or undergrads reading the article.
Your post shows that you have a strong mental block regarding explaining mathematics. An explanation is not the same thing as a theorem or a proof. A definition for a person is not the same thing as a definition whose purpose is a theorem or proof.
Your focus is far too geared towards providing the technical support for mathematical propositions. An encyclopedia is not generally _for_ that. It is for explaining the subject to humans. As an analogy, I might say that an article on encryption should not be providing code to do the encryption except as a footnote. It should be providing an explanation of what it is and how it works, for human readers.
You say that "[a] non-technical rendition of the definition sounds nice in theory, but in practice, what would this be?" because you are thinking about a technical definition. A human definition would explain what it is and does without regard to too many details, and probably would use simple examples to show the point.
Any other subjects that would have to be mastered prior to understanding the subject at hand should be pointed out at the outset. This is not hard. "The reader should have a reasonable grasp of X before reading the following."
I have studied math through multivariable calculus, differential equations, and linear algebra, and most of the articles on wikipedia are pretty useless to me, even for subjects I could easily have taken next in undergrad if I had wanted to, like group theory.
Yes, it is unreasonable. I have a degree in CS from CMU, and studied ECE as well. Most engineers go up to differential equations and linear algebra, but may or may not study group theory.
I am one of those people, and I am interested in learning about group theory, but don't remember what an automorphism is, and of course don't know the definitions of different types of groups, because that's precisely what I'm interested in learning about.
The article should explain the subject beginning with basics.
I love freedom as much as you do. But that doesn't mean I'm stupid.
You seem to argue that there is no downside whatsoever to giving terrorists free reign. Let terrorists do whatever they like, because otherwise, we'll lose some freedom. This is too extreme to fall within common sense. It is blind allegiance to the ideology of freedom without thinking rationally about the benefits and detriments of the variety of things we can do to reduce the possiblity of terrorism.
We must rationally weigh proposed programs in terms of their benefits and detriments. In this case, I think I agree that RealID is going too far, especially when it's imposed by the federal government without consideration for States' budgets. But that doesn't mean it's crazy to try to identify people who are here but shouldn't be.
Terrorists can, in fact, take away our freedom. They can do so by threatening certain events or locations, forcing us to expend massive resources moving people and attempting to mitigate potential damages. They can easily cause us to cancel our largest sports games, or reroute and ground aircraft. These things surely screw up our plans and impact our freedom. Not to mention that those who were in the towers on 9/11 are mostly very not free right now.
Anger at people who would take away your freedom is NATURAL. I feel it as well. Heck, it's even more natural for libertarian-inclined geeks. I believe knee-jerk reactions like yours stem from that feeling. But. You can't throw out the baby with the bath water. You can't reject all defensive measures that reduce freedom, including those that might save you without being too onerous.
I tend to think that the solution is some real border control, combined with giving cops the ability to reasonably inquire into peoples' background when they act suspiciously or can't speak English. Use some smart profiling to reduce the burden on society as a whole. That's just my opinion.
LOL.
;) And not even a CS student. When I met her I had a shaved head, was wearing a yukata, and was tossing a plaster penis back and forth with a friend.
Not too far from the truth, at least as far as I'm concerned. I went there from 94-98. There were about 10 girls out of 110 students in CS. By the time we graduated, there were about 6, I think. A bunch of people (not just girls) switched out to ECE for something easier. It was hard.
We had our share of smelly people. One was really bad and only slept like every 3rd night. I slept very little, but did shower. I hacked an asshole's machine and messed with his head a bunch. I also messed with my friends who usually had X set up to accept any command to open a window or play a sound, usually from alt.tasteless or whatever.
I think it was great that the people there really wanted to be there, and brought all their varied experiences with them. Toward the end, people showed up who wanted money. They switched to teaching the intro and data structures classes in Java instead of C/C++. Luckily, I got the old-skool experience. I don't like a lot of these changes...
BTW, I met my wife there. She was actually hanging around our dorm.
Somehow, I knew you would say that.
AP = advanced placement. It's a high school class teaching a subject for which there's an "AP" test you can take, which will give you university credit for the course. So it's basically a university-level class in high school.
How about having grad students teach younger kids, and let the Profs actually teach their classes? The professors could still use their students as TAs...
In any case, let's drop the PC crap. B.C. and A.D. are proper and standard, regardless of whether you're Christian or not.
The potential for bad behavior is real. Don't you think that big corporations might flood applications with prior art references, whether applicable or not, in order to delay and increase the expense of an application detrimental to them?
What in the world does ACE mean?
This is very simple. It's because violence, in the form of struggle, fighting for good against evil, heroism, tragedy, etc., has always been a public part of exciting story-telling. Love and the stories surrounding it is very public as well, and there is no shying away from wholesome love stories in American culture.
Sex, on the other hand, is just considered private in our culture. Sex has less to do with the love story than the feelings and context leading to love. Sex is what people in love do after they go home and close the door, and the story ends for the viewer. At least, that's what's considered wholesome -- keeping private things private, and public things public.
Violence, fighting, etc., simply don't make us feel, emotionally, an urge for privacy. We feel comfortable sometimes talking about sex with close friends, for example, but not with our parents or in our workplaces, because it's a private and personal matter...
Yes, this is a cultural difference with Europe, but I don't think it's usually 'repression'. It's just a preference for most people, like not discussing feces at the dinner table.
The reason FOSS will _have_ to be a grassroots movement is because it's not about making money, which is why people own and operate and work for corporations.
This is also the reason it will always be a backwater movement, like anarcho-communists or Larouchers, which 99% of people will fail to understand or agree with.
Completely agree, and furthermore:
It appears that all the report says is that they can make money by patenting _small_ innovations, so they don't necessarily want to make _big_ innovations. This does NOT imply that the patent system _discourages_ big innovations (in fact, it would imply that it does encourage them because patent protection is working), it just means that it may not _encourage_ them enough over small innovations.
Small innovations are almost always less risky and usually more predictably profitable than big ones, in any field, at any time, with or without a patent system. Thus, if innovations all get equal patent protection, the same will apply to patented innovations.
This says nothing about the patent system, except to suggest that maybe it could be further tweaked to achieve more 'big' innovations rather than small ones. But as another poster has already implied, the patent system is about getting marketable inventions that _consumers_ want, not necessarily the big R&D goals for humanity, which may or may not be marketable.
Minister essentially says "the writer of free software gives it away, so I don't want to promote this as a business model in Thailand."
Slashdotters say "Minister's using free software. Oooh..."
This is a completely non-responsive to his point. Of course he's going to consider using apache because it's free. He just doesn't want to expend Thailand's resources writing free things for other people.
If it's so surprising that someone wants to get something in return for his work, there's something wrong with you.
This reminds me of a a good paper by Ilya Somin of George Mason Law School re voter ignorance.
d =457760
d =916963
Here are a couple:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_i
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_i
Blaming problems on the fact we have too many laws is like blaming problems with *nix on the alleged fact that it has too much code. Laws not only restrict action, but also make new things possible, solve problems, etc.
Ideally, laws should be exactly as complex as they need to be, no more, no less. The only way to achieve this is through a slow evolution, which is what we try to do.