17. Article 52 shall be amended to read as follows:
Article 52 - Patentable inventions
(1) European patents shall be granted for any inventions, in all fields of
technology, provided that they are new, involve an inventive step and are
susceptible of industrial application.
(2) The following in particular shall not be regarded as inventions within the
meaning of paragraph 1:
(a) discoveries, scientific theories and mathematical methods;
(b) aesthetic creations; (c) schemes, rules and methods for performing mental acts, playing games or
doing business;
(d) presentations of information.
All of the source documents arising from the current conference are posted here . The purpose of the conference itself is described here. I'll try & find which document covers software patents specifically.
The whole schebang has to do with "European countries' collective political determination to establish a uniform patent system in Europe." Note, though, that from trawling through Europa earlier today, I get the impression that the final aim - a European Patent - has not yet been reached. So for now, member states signed up to EPO, it may be assumed, will amend their national legislation to match the EPO resolution.
Did anyone else find this ummmm...counter-intuitive?
Umm... aaah.... no. if European technology companies cannot compete in a marketplace that has been closed by the application of a software patent then, err, the result for long term competitiveness would seem dire. Seems very clear to me. What am I missing?
Did anyone else find this ummmm...counter-intuitive?
Umm... aaah.... no. if European technology companies cannot compete in a marketplace that has been closed by the application of a software patent then, err, the result for long term competitiveness would seem dire. Seems veryc lear to me. What am I missing?
The graph at the foot of the PDF ignores the presumed transfer from EE to CS & CE... and if the US is anything like the UK, then we can presume that there is more demand for courses that previously did not tend to be awarded degree status, catering for the increased population in higher education.
I don't think there's much that can be seen in this single-year snapshot... move along now.
This - and other concerns raised here about the environmental impact, &c - would make interesting additional reading. I recall that in the UK, for many years, government refused to fund anything more than token research into sustainable power generation (wind, waves); and justified their decision by using a cost model so skewed towards coal & gas, as to suggest wave & water would never be viable. But then, electrical power and the UK is weird: we must be the only country where the hourly price paid to the generating companies for their supply is set at the highest bid made to supply for that hour, rather than the lowest. You have to love accountants.
That is just a tiny wee bit niaive... if an OS cannot be released until it works with everything you might want to throw at it...
And the name winmodem does rather give the game away - as I understand them, much of what is done in hardware in a conventional modem is done in (OS) software in a winmodem. The trick, of course, is to turn the winmodem into a linmodem. Or, err, buy a concentional modem.
Similar sorts of things happen in the UK tax system. The taxable value of a car (e.g. supplied to an employee) is based on a list price, and not on the price that the company paid for the car. The list price and the price paid can differ very markedly, and never to the tax-payer's benefit. Why? Months of correspondance with Inland Revenue never got me to the point of understanding it.
But if these folks don't feel the need to buy an upgrade to Office 2000, why would they feel the need to rent an upgrade?
Microsoft's point exactly. If people do not want to upgrade (and, face it, how much more development will there be in Wordprocessors - there's not much that I do in Word2k that I was unable to do in Wordstar in 1987...) then better to rent than sell.
Another poster made the most pertinent point: until the monopoly position on the Word file format is challenged, MS will continue to amend it and so engineer the need for users to upgrade and/or rent.
Au contrere, mon ami. We like free speech and free beer; and dislike licensing models which we find laughable.
I guess - if you pushed them - the posters in this thread would state their belief that they think MS has a big problem: why should users continue to pay to upgrade MS applications, when there is as near as damnit no difference between one Word version and the next. We guess that MS thinks, "a ha! if we can get the user to hire the application rather than buy it, we have revenue for life".
Even the press release - bless it - gives the game away. They speak of "at a lower initial cost" which begs the thought that the lifetime cost will be greater.
And the conspiracy theory? I think it is reasonable to speculate that MS would like to be a service company rather than a product company - especially in a marketplace in which the commoditisation of products is driving price.
We don't think MS is stupid. We know they are very clever indeed - especially at the business of business models. And the subscription business model is clearly more attractive than the "I'm happy with my Office 2000 and don't feel inclined ever again up pay to upgrade".
Don't get me wrong (or do if you prefer, for I am a liberal...)
My point isn't exactly that we should not be discussing this incident; instead that we should have more threads that discuss such things, and extend the scope of stuff that matters. just two examples:
All things Chomsky: deterring democracy and manufacturing consent
Exploitation and sheer lies, a la Gap (providers of Chinos to all Nerds, methinks)
I submit these things are of interest to many nerds & that they matter; even that they have a relationship with technology. Slashdot has a good UI, capable of enabling those uninterested to filter such stuff out. It has Jamie & Michael & JonKatz, all of whom seem to grok these issues.
So, in summation, I'm proposing a move from the sporadic and random appearance of a thread like this, to a more regular Topic based approach. Any takers?
What is the deal with this? "Courts & Police don't like Demonstrators Shock Horror Probe". Can anyone explain why this is news for nerds and stuf that matters, whilst at the same time everything else that sucks about the US way of life is not?
There seem to be a couple of issues, here, the second being more interesting than the first.
1. You're site still has a fairly blatent (indirect) link to the code... "I encourage you to click here for a list of mirrors". You'd be hard pressed to defend this. If, however, you provided a link to" sites which provide further commentary on the DeCSS/MPAA matter", then the link to the code would not be so blatent and you could, imho, argue fair comment.
2. More interestingly, the form of words in the letter: "injunction against.. linking any Internet web site, either directly or through a series of links, to any other Internet web site containing DeCSS". is surely unenforcable. My site has a link to slashdot. Slashdot has a link to your site. Your site has a link to 2600. 2600 has links to mirrors of hte DeCSS code. So we're all implicated. Various UK Government sites link to my site. They're implicated. US Government sites link to UK government sites. MPAA probably links to US Government sites. They're implicated.
The logic appears to me that we should all stop linking to other sites, on the off chance that there is a route through which someone can get the the DeCSS code. To comply with the injunction, we should, in effect, dismantle the internet.
Further, we should not link to 2600 for any other reason than to highlight a DeCSS link; in other words, the injunction apparantly makes it impossible to link to 2600 for any reason.
So, to repeat, I suggest there must be plenty of scope under your free speech amendment to argue that the injunction is not enforcable.
Since most of your scrawny websites seem to be falling over, you might want to try the BBC site for election coverage... since we're all asleep now and don't really care much which right wing business stooge you elect, it isn't getting too many hits.
First, my prediction: they'll eventually chose to open up the SLD to follow the UK conventions of.co.uk, org.uk, ac.uk
Second; a comparison. For some time, the registrars of the.nhs.uk namespace tried to enforce a similar root structure of institution.area.nhs.uk. Sadly they caused suffering on a scale comparable with 1480, coming up with snappy domains like:
leicester-ha.trent.nhs.uk
northants-ha.anglox.nhs.uk
sw-devon-ha.swest.nhs.uk
all of which are rather like 1480's examples of
IVY.PRS.K12.NJ.US
DMHS.JCPS.K12.KY.US
OHS.EUNION.K12.CA.US
Are any of these domains memorable (or even vaguely comprehensible)? No. Thats why 1480 and the UK NHS namespace people both fail.
Finally, given the abject failure of nic.gov to prevent politicians from running a coach and four horses through RFC 2146 in the matter of GOP.GOV, FREEDOM.GOV and FLATTAX.GOV (see slashdot passem 1, 2) we can have little confidence that the same government will manage to do other than screw up.US
"a patent based on the software, covering the computerization of the entire trade process, including the creation of customs declarations and shipping documents, along with services such as insurance and letters of credit."
This is the sort of thing the EDI brigade were doing for twenty years or so before the web turned their world upside down. Mr. Pool will not become a rich man this way; that was his 15 minutes of fame.
Slashdot Mirror
cringe...
The important rubric, from this document, runs:
17. Article 52 shall be amended to read as follows:
Article 52 - Patentable inventions
(1) European patents shall be granted for any inventions, in all fields of technology, provided that they are new, involve an inventive step and are susceptible of industrial application.
(2) The following in particular shall not be regarded as inventions within the meaning of paragraph 1:
(a) discoveries, scientific theories and mathematical methods;
(b) aesthetic creations;
(c) schemes, rules and methods for performing mental acts, playing games or doing business;
(d) presentations of information.
The whole schebang has to do with "European countries' collective political determination to establish a uniform patent system in Europe." Note, though, that from trawling through Europa earlier today, I get the impression that the final aim - a European Patent - has not yet been reached. So for now, member states signed up to EPO, it may be assumed, will amend their national legislation to match the EPO resolution.
Umm ... aaah .... no. if European technology companies cannot compete in a marketplace that has been closed by the application of a software patent then, err, the result for long term competitiveness would seem dire. Seems very clear to me. What am I missing?
Umm ... aaah .... no. if European technology companies cannot compete in a marketplace that has been closed by the application of a software patent then, err, the result for long term competitiveness would seem dire. Seems veryc lear to me. What am I missing?
Can you illustrate your contention with any examples?
What am I missing here? The pipe we are discussing has sweet fanny adams to do with the USA. Check out the route.
I don't think there's much that can be seen in this single-year snapshot ... move along now.
This - and other concerns raised here about the environmental impact, &c - would make interesting additional reading. I recall that in the UK, for many years, government refused to fund anything more than token research into sustainable power generation (wind, waves); and justified their decision by using a cost model so skewed towards coal & gas, as to suggest wave & water would never be viable. But then, electrical power and the UK is weird: we must be the only country where the hourly price paid to the generating companies for their supply is set at the highest bid made to supply for that hour, rather than the lowest. You have to love accountants.
And the name winmodem does rather give the game away - as I understand them, much of what is done in hardware in a conventional modem is done in (OS) software in a winmodem. The trick, of course, is to turn the winmodem into a linmodem. Or, err, buy a concentional modem.
Similar sorts of things happen in the UK tax system. The taxable value of a car (e.g. supplied to an employee) is based on a list price, and not on the price that the company paid for the car. The list price and the price paid can differ very markedly, and never to the tax-payer's benefit. Why? Months of correspondance with Inland Revenue never got me to the point of understanding it.
Microsoft's point exactly. If people do not want to upgrade (and, face it, how much more development will there be in Wordprocessors - there's not much that I do in Word2k that I was unable to do in Wordstar in 1987...) then better to rent than sell.
Another poster made the most pertinent point: until the monopoly position on the Word file format is challenged, MS will continue to amend it and so engineer the need for users to upgrade and/or rent.
I guess - if you pushed them - the posters in this thread would state their belief that they think MS has a big problem: why should users continue to pay to upgrade MS applications, when there is as near as damnit no difference between one Word version and the next. We guess that MS thinks, "a ha! if we can get the user to hire the application rather than buy it, we have revenue for life".
Even the press release - bless it - gives the game away. They speak of "at a lower initial cost" which begs the thought that the lifetime cost will be greater.
And the conspiracy theory? I think it is reasonable to speculate that MS would like to be a service company rather than a product company - especially in a marketplace in which the commoditisation of products is driving price.
We don't think MS is stupid. We know they are very clever indeed - especially at the business of business models. And the subscription business model is clearly more attractive than the "I'm happy with my Office 2000 and don't feel inclined ever again up pay to upgrade".
Its the big thing out there.
The lack of .union is the biggest disappointment to me. So I guess that's Capital,1; Labour, 0.
My point isn't exactly that we should not be discussing this incident; instead that we should have more threads that discuss such things, and extend the scope of stuff that matters. just two examples:
- All things Chomsky: deterring democracy and manufacturing consent
- Exploitation and sheer lies, a la Gap (providers of Chinos to all Nerds, methinks)
I submit these things are of interest to many nerds & that they matter; even that they have a relationship with technology. Slashdot has a good UI, capable of enabling those uninterested to filter such stuff out. It has Jamie & Michael & JonKatz, all of whom seem to grok these issues.So, in summation, I'm proposing a move from the sporadic and random appearance of a thread like this, to a more regular Topic based approach. Any takers?
What is the deal with this? "Courts & Police don't like Demonstrators Shock Horror Probe". Can anyone explain why this is news for nerds and stuf that matters, whilst at the same time everything else that sucks about the US way of life is not?
1. You're site still has a fairly blatent (indirect) link to the code ... "I encourage you to click here for a list of mirrors". You'd be hard pressed to defend this. If, however, you provided a link to" sites which provide further commentary on the DeCSS/MPAA matter", then the link to the code would not be so blatent and you could, imho, argue fair comment.
2. More interestingly, the form of words in the letter: "injunction against .. linking any Internet web site, either directly or through a series of links, to any other Internet web site containing DeCSS". is surely unenforcable. My site has a link to slashdot. Slashdot has a link to your site. Your site has a link to 2600. 2600 has links to mirrors of hte DeCSS code. So we're all implicated. Various UK Government sites link to my site. They're implicated. US Government sites link to UK government sites. MPAA probably links to US Government sites. They're implicated.
The logic appears to me that we should all stop linking to other sites, on the off chance that there is a route through which someone can get the the DeCSS code. To comply with the injunction, we should, in effect, dismantle the internet.
Further, we should not link to 2600 for any other reason than to highlight a DeCSS link; in other words, the injunction apparantly makes it impossible to link to 2600 for any reason.
So, to repeat, I suggest there must be plenty of scope under your free speech amendment to argue that the injunction is not enforcable.
I do not mean by this that vote swapping is either of these things, merely that "its just speech" appears to be a pretty lame argument.
Since most of your scrawny websites seem to be falling over, you might want to try the BBC site for election coverage ... since we're all asleep now and don't really care much which right wing business stooge you elect, it isn't getting too many hits.
Many thoughts
The University of York has set up a UK Aurorawatch site, complete with an Aurora Alert by email or SMS.
- leicester-ha.trent.nhs.uk
- northants-ha.anglox.nhs.uk
- sw-devon-ha.swest.nhs.uk
all of which are rather like 1480's examples of- IVY.PRS.K12.NJ.US
- DMHS.JCPS.K12.KY.US
- OHS.EUNION.K12.CA.US
Are any of these domains memorable (or even vaguely comprehensible)? No. Thats why 1480 and the UK NHS namespace people both fail.This is the sort of thing the EDI brigade were doing for twenty years or so before the web turned their world upside down. Mr. Pool will not become a rich man this way; that was his 15 minutes of fame.