If it's a minor tweak that everyone was using then there's prior art and you don't have a valid patent. If it's a tweak that no one else thought of that suddenly makes an old impractical idea become a realistic and useful thing, well, that sounds like a pretty legit patent to me.
But it's supposed to be for something novel - not just a minor tweak.
Why place a lower bound on the degree of novelty? If you patent a minor tweak that no one needs then everyone will just ignore your method and use the original one - which your patent doesn't cover.
Most programs have parts that can be run in parallel, but Amdahl's point is that as you increase the number of processors you'll find that the parts that are inherently serial - even if they're quite small - will increasingly become the bottleneck.
Sure, but patents are for methods, not ideas. I don't know if this patent is a legitimately a new method for wireless charging, but it doesn't matter if other techniques already exist.
People always strip the hell out of them by using the wrong one and you end up with a box of five really marginal screwdrivers that are only good for damaging screw heads.
Instead, buy a couple of magnetic handles with interchangeable bits, and then a big box of #2 bits: http://amzn.com/B0000DD6LW . Keep some #1s around for working on laptops and some #3s if you have big rack screws, but in a server room most things are #2.
THEN THROW THEM AWAY when you round them off. They're cheap and you have a whole box.
Honestly? The latter. I don't mind doing something ambitious and failing, but it should be "here, try this and we'll give you a big bonus if you succeed, no hurt feelings if it doesn't work out", not "do the impossible or we'll fire you". That'd be a miserable way to work.
IMO "CS" is misnamed. There's not a lot of science, as in applying the scientific method, involved. Would it be better to start calling them "computer mathematicians"?
There's nothing ad hominem about it - I'm not saying his argument is invalid or his current actions are good or bad. All I said is that he's still a douche, and GGP should be careful about liking the guy.
he is one of the few that arrived to his riches with honest work
Well, no, he arrived to his riches through fraud. The current copyright stuff is penny ante bullshit (and arguably legal and moral, though I personally find it gray), but his initial money came from good old fraud (the kind that actually harms people), insider trading, espionage, and embezzlement.
Actually I formed my opinion well before any of this went down. The guy's personality has been publicly known for most of two decades now.
His latest antics are much less harmful to society, and I do give him credit for that. I enjoy anyone who's a pain in the system's ass instead of causing real trouble. Larry Flynt is another fun one... but both of them, like cows, are best observed from a distance; the closer you get the more disgusting you realize they really are.
I'm sure there's plenty of disinformation being handed out as you say, but I'm confident in my independent opinion that he is still a total douche.
The same way they regulate marijuana: make it illegal; everyone uses it anyway; bust anyone who does enough business with it to upset someone powerful.
For rough comparison: A banana is about 15Bq. A human body is about 5000Bq.
200Bq/kg is enough that it should be logged and some statisticians will analyze it later, but in terms of immediate health hazard it ranks somewhere around worrying about being killed by meteorites.
2560x1440 is already widely available in 27" IPS monitors for $400 (ebay imports) to $800 (brand name). So what are you complaining about? There's no 1080p barrier. Just be willing to spend more if you want nicer stuff.
You don't want to mandate people give you data. That will just get you bad data. Instead, make it as easy as possible for them to do - APIs, easy web forms, any method you can think of that will make the barrier to entry as low as possible. Encourage them to use it, but relax and set your data Free and don't try to force it. It's like Wikis... Somehow it works out OK.
What's the advantage of landing a bunch of computers on the moon? Also, it's much easier to get a high bandwidth signal to an Earth satellite (including on the moon), so why would we want to process the data there with computers that will quickly become obsolete instead of just creating a simple and reliable relay station?
The idea that the patent system was founded on was protecting an idea so it can get to market without being stolen.
This is not true at all. The patent system was intended to give inventors an incentive to disclose and document how their inventions worked. It's to encourage growing the public domain, instead of everyone obfuscating everything to try to maintain trade secrets.
Yep, I saw a few frames of that during the launch. Wondered what it was but clearly it didn't ruin the mission. I'm interested what the official word will be.
Oh, WTF. I was just watching the replay and they seem to have pulled it. It was better than the NASA TV coverage I watched live, and I was just about to watch the second stage light off, but the feed dropped and now it's GONE.
Sometimes I hate the modern unarchivable internet.
I've used it for a couple years now. My experience:
The good:
Snapshots are a killer feature. Integrated redundancy is much nicer than RAID. Integrating LVM into the FS is very nice.
The bad:
sync is SLOW, and dpkg will suffer. You can work around it by creating a snapshot and then running 'eatmydata apt-get whatever' - and accept that you'll have to roll back if you have a power failure mid-install.
It finally has a functional fsck, but I don't trust it yet with mission-critical data.
Generally it works well, but it's still a new FS so I'm not ready to deploy it everywhere yet.
Definitely some interesting times ahead as the US's knee jerk SPREAD PEACE LOVE AND DEMOCRACY WITH BOMBS response meets the reality of that whole starting a war in Asia thing.
Slashdot Mirror
If it's a minor tweak that everyone was using then there's prior art and you don't have a valid patent. If it's a tweak that no one else thought of that suddenly makes an old impractical idea become a realistic and useful thing, well, that sounds like a pretty legit patent to me.
But it's supposed to be for something novel - not just a minor tweak.
Why place a lower bound on the degree of novelty? If you patent a minor tweak that no one needs then everyone will just ignore your method and use the original one - which your patent doesn't cover.
There is no metaphysical part of the program that is not parallellizable
require 'digest/sha2'
string = 'Parallelize this!'
123456789.times { string = Digest::SHA2.hexdigest(string) }
puts string
Any suggestions?
Most programs have parts that can be run in parallel, but Amdahl's point is that as you increase the number of processors you'll find that the parts that are inherently serial - even if they're quite small - will increasingly become the bottleneck.
Sure, but patents are for methods, not ideas. I don't know if this patent is a legitimately a new method for wireless charging, but it doesn't matter if other techniques already exist.
And you'll find some neat things like this: http://www.gns3.net/screenshots/ .
People always strip the hell out of them by using the wrong one and you end up with a box of five really marginal screwdrivers that are only good for damaging screw heads.
Instead, buy a couple of magnetic handles with interchangeable bits, and then a big box of #2 bits: http://amzn.com/B0000DD6LW . Keep some #1s around for working on laptops and some #3s if you have big rack screws, but in a server room most things are #2.
THEN THROW THEM AWAY when you round them off. They're cheap and you have a whole box.
Honestly? The latter. I don't mind doing something ambitious and failing, but it should be "here, try this and we'll give you a big bonus if you succeed, no hurt feelings if it doesn't work out", not "do the impossible or we'll fire you". That'd be a miserable way to work.
IMO "CS" is misnamed. There's not a lot of science, as in applying the scientific method, involved. Would it be better to start calling them "computer mathematicians"?
What, were they drawing it by hand before?
ad hominem insults
There's nothing ad hominem about it - I'm not saying his argument is invalid or his current actions are good or bad. All I said is that he's still a douche, and GGP should be careful about liking the guy.
he is one of the few that arrived to his riches with honest work
Well, no, he arrived to his riches through fraud. The current copyright stuff is penny ante bullshit (and arguably legal and moral, though I personally find it gray), but his initial money came from good old fraud (the kind that actually harms people), insider trading, espionage, and embezzlement.
Actually I formed my opinion well before any of this went down. The guy's personality has been publicly known for most of two decades now.
His latest antics are much less harmful to society, and I do give him credit for that. I enjoy anyone who's a pain in the system's ass instead of causing real trouble. Larry Flynt is another fun one... but both of them, like cows, are best observed from a distance; the closer you get the more disgusting you realize they really are.
I'm sure there's plenty of disinformation being handed out as you say, but I'm confident in my independent opinion that he is still a total douche.
He's still a complete douche, right down to the bottom of his trolling little heart. I'm not exactly a supporter, but I am enjoying the show.
The same way they regulate marijuana: make it illegal; everyone uses it anyway; bust anyone who does enough business with it to upset someone powerful.
For rough comparison: A banana is about 15Bq. A human body is about 5000Bq.
200Bq/kg is enough that it should be logged and some statisticians will analyze it later, but in terms of immediate health hazard it ranks somewhere around worrying about being killed by meteorites.
2560x1440 is already widely available in 27" IPS monitors for $400 (ebay imports) to $800 (brand name). So what are you complaining about? There's no 1080p barrier. Just be willing to spend more if you want nicer stuff.
You don't want to mandate people give you data. That will just get you bad data. Instead, make it as easy as possible for them to do - APIs, easy web forms, any method you can think of that will make the barrier to entry as low as possible. Encourage them to use it, but relax and set your data Free and don't try to force it. It's like Wikis... Somehow it works out OK.
What's the advantage of landing a bunch of computers on the moon? Also, it's much easier to get a high bandwidth signal to an Earth satellite (including on the moon), so why would we want to process the data there with computers that will quickly become obsolete instead of just creating a simple and reliable relay station?
$60k is doing good, but he's done it twice this year. $120k per year is not bad at all if he can keep it up.
The idea that the patent system was founded on was protecting an idea so it can get to market without being stolen.
This is not true at all. The patent system was intended to give inventors an incentive to disclose and document how their inventions worked. It's to encourage growing the public domain, instead of everyone obfuscating everything to try to maintain trade secrets.
Where the hell did this idea of a government being run like a business come from?
Republicans. Their candidates frequently propose doing so.
The Dragon can handle the extra capacity, but the Falcon 9 v1.0, the rocket propelling it, can't.
Disclaimer: I don't have firsthand knowledge; I'm just clarifying the posts above.
Yep, I saw a few frames of that during the launch. Wondered what it was but clearly it didn't ruin the mission. I'm interested what the official word will be.
Oh, WTF. I was just watching the replay and they seem to have pulled it. It was better than the NASA TV coverage I watched live, and I was just about to watch the second stage light off, but the feed dropped and now it's GONE.
Sometimes I hate the modern unarchivable internet.
I've used it for a couple years now. My experience:
The good:
Snapshots are a killer feature.
Integrated redundancy is much nicer than RAID.
Integrating LVM into the FS is very nice.
The bad:
sync is SLOW, and dpkg will suffer. You can work around it by creating a snapshot and then running 'eatmydata apt-get whatever' - and accept that you'll have to roll back if you have a power failure mid-install.
It finally has a functional fsck, but I don't trust it yet with mission-critical data.
Generally it works well, but it's still a new FS so I'm not ready to deploy it everywhere yet.
Definitely some interesting times ahead as the US's knee jerk SPREAD PEACE LOVE AND DEMOCRACY WITH BOMBS response meets the reality of that whole starting a war in Asia thing.