Who cares about the article's content, when the title was written with 6 words that start with "D". It could have been better, though: "Digital Dashboard Device Diligently Detects Driver Drowsiness".
If I find one of those devices, I'll drive my car to a bus or train station and attach the friggin' thing to anything that can travel far... An airplane would raise a lot of suspicions, but the effect would be hilarious: "What do you mean 'He's driving on Lake Ontario'?".
This is the problem, the patent system does not lock down ideas, it locks down implementations of ideas, or at least is meant to. The problem is that with software they are patenting the ideas themselves.
Software patents are threefold: they patent a process, a system, and a computer program product. If you design a new method for surface treating you obviously would want to protect the advantage that such method provides, and the fact that a method would be carried away by a computer is irrelevant. If you design a system, there is a reason it is how it is, and it has costed something to you to find out why that system is the correct one, so I understand if you want to protect it. The fact that this system is implemented in some way inside a computer is, again, irrelevant. You could argue about patenting a product, because there are other juridic instruments to protect a product.
If I design a program to sort a list in the most effective way to date, then I don't believe anyone should use it without my permission
Your individual program of course not, that would be limited by copyright. But the method you used to sort?? By patenting it you would essentially be patenting the mathematics behind your algorithm, which is obviously a stupid idea from the get-go and there are reasons math is not allowed to be patented.
You don't patent mathematics, in the same way that a mechanical drawing doesn't patent drawing. Let's say you figure out the mathematic substrate of an algorithm: you patent that algorithm (aka process or method), not the mathematics involved. Remember, it's the method, system, or product what you are patenting.
Finally, an opinion: let software patents exist, but they should end after 5 years. That way, everybody wins: patents become too short-lived to be used as a weapon or deterrent, so a lot won't be applied. It allows the company behind the patent to safely profit from those methods, systems and products. Finally, other rivals are, at most, 5 years behind you, promoting competition.
I'll translate you these lines from the original, because the one from that link sucks:
"95% of computers run Windows in Latin America. Apple has 1.3%, and Linux from 2% to 3%"
And THAT is from a Microsoft's executive. Linux-on-the-desktop is more than wishful thinking in LA. Cool!
I think you got almost all the truth. The key here is evidence: to prosecute a user for sharing copyrighted work is just a matter of finding evidence that a file was downloaded to X and that X was linked to you. Log files make this trivial.
To convict someone accused of rape or pedophilia is much more difficult: evidence can be unreliable or murky, a lot is based on people's testimony and you don't always have DNA aka smoking gun. It's not that they don't go after them (they do), is that it's just too damn hard and it doesn't get a lot of publicity (understandably).
Call me whatever you want, but the only reason AMD is still alive and well is because they've been innovating and building good products for a while now. Itanium, anyone?
Yes, you should be outraged if you get evaluated and those results are made public. You shouldn't be comparing people against each other in the first place, mostly because variations will always exist and usually the difference is meaningless. And, if you aren't familiar with the environment in which they work, what does that metric really mean, and why it is was it is, chances are you will make a mistake when you make decisions based on that data. Welcome to Quality Management 101: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Deming_philosophy_synopsis
In Argentina, almost all universities are tuition-free, and they manage to land achievements like these few:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_monopole#.22Monopoles.22_in_condensed-matter_systemshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdS/CFT
[Nobel prizes from Argentina in wikipedia, too lazy to copypaste them:P]
I now work at IBM with Almaden Research Center employees, and my whole degree costed less than 2000 U.S. dollars, all along 6 years. More than 100.000 dollars of debt? THAT'S what I call a problem!
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Who cares about the article's content, when the title was written with 6 words that start with "D". It could have been better, though: "Digital Dashboard Device Diligently Detects Driver Drowsiness".
Tell them Open Office comes from Oracle.
I think your suggestion is not as clear as you seem to think. ;)
If I find one of those devices, I'll drive my car to a bus or train station and attach the friggin' thing to anything that can travel far... An airplane would raise a lot of suspicions, but the effect would be hilarious: "What do you mean 'He's driving on Lake Ontario'?".
Patents lock down ideas.
This is the problem, the patent system does not lock down ideas, it locks down implementations of ideas, or at least is meant to. The problem is that with software they are patenting the ideas themselves.
Software patents are threefold: they patent a process, a system, and a computer program product. If you design a new method for surface treating you obviously would want to protect the advantage that such method provides, and the fact that a method would be carried away by a computer is irrelevant. If you design a system, there is a reason it is how it is, and it has costed something to you to find out why that system is the correct one, so I understand if you want to protect it. The fact that this system is implemented in some way inside a computer is, again, irrelevant. You could argue about patenting a product, because there are other juridic instruments to protect a product.
If I design a program to sort a list in the most effective way to date, then I don't believe anyone should use it without my permission
Your individual program of course not, that would be limited by copyright. But the method you used to sort?? By patenting it you would essentially be patenting the mathematics behind your algorithm, which is obviously a stupid idea from the get-go and there are reasons math is not allowed to be patented.
You don't patent mathematics, in the same way that a mechanical drawing doesn't patent drawing. Let's say you figure out the mathematic substrate of an algorithm: you patent that algorithm (aka process or method), not the mathematics involved. Remember, it's the method, system, or product what you are patenting.
Finally, an opinion: let software patents exist, but they should end after 5 years. That way, everybody wins: patents become too short-lived to be used as a weapon or deterrent, so a lot won't be applied. It allows the company behind the patent to safely profit from those methods, systems and products. Finally, other rivals are, at most, 5 years behind you, promoting competition.
I'll translate you these lines from the original, because the one from that link sucks: "95% of computers run Windows in Latin America. Apple has 1.3%, and Linux from 2% to 3%" And THAT is from a Microsoft's executive. Linux-on-the-desktop is more than wishful thinking in LA. Cool!
I think you got almost all the truth. The key here is evidence: to prosecute a user for sharing copyrighted work is just a matter of finding evidence that a file was downloaded to X and that X was linked to you. Log files make this trivial. To convict someone accused of rape or pedophilia is much more difficult: evidence can be unreliable or murky, a lot is based on people's testimony and you don't always have DNA aka smoking gun. It's not that they don't go after them (they do), is that it's just too damn hard and it doesn't get a lot of publicity (understandably).
Intel shipping boards with AMD chips? Now I've seen it all. :P
Call me whatever you want, but the only reason AMD is still alive and well is because they've been innovating and building good products for a while now. Itanium, anyone?
Yes, you should be outraged if you get evaluated and those results are made public. You shouldn't be comparing people against each other in the first place, mostly because variations will always exist and usually the difference is meaningless. And, if you aren't familiar with the environment in which they work, what does that metric really mean, and why it is was it is, chances are you will make a mistake when you make decisions based on that data. Welcome to Quality Management 101: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Deming_philosophy_synopsis
In Argentina, almost all universities are tuition-free, and they manage to land achievements like these few: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_monopole#.22Monopoles.22_in_condensed-matter_systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdS/CFT [Nobel prizes from Argentina in wikipedia, too lazy to copypaste them :P]
I now work at IBM with Almaden Research Center employees, and my whole degree costed less than 2000 U.S. dollars, all along 6 years. More than 100.000 dollars of debt? THAT'S what I call a problem!
You should have started with some definition of intelligence. I define it as the ability to solve problems, so yeah, those machines are intelligent.