...20 years later when the patent expires, the world will be able to afford cancer cures - shame about all those people that died in the meantime.
OK, I'm going to shamelessly extrapolate Moore's law: 20 years is approximately 13 iterations of Moore's law. 13 doublings of computer power. A $2000 computer then will be the equivalent of 8,000 computers now.
If this sort of thing is necessary to cure cancer (and I doubt it), then the cure will be within reach well before that 20 years are up.
Many scientific projects that require high levels of computing power have had to decide "Will we buy hardware now and compute for four years, or wait three years, buy the hardware, and compute for one?"
$10,000 is nowhere near the actual price of patenting something like this.
I just went through the process of pricing patents. A patent on a mechanical device was estimated in the tens of thousands of dollars - the actual patent fees charged by the USPTO plus the patent attorney's fees. An international patent was in the realm of six figures.
Challenging that patent will cost millions of dollars. Have you written your check to the IETF to help defray their legal expenses, or are you more of a "Let's you and him fight" kind of guy? Me, I'm more of a "What a bunch of IDIOTS!" kind of guy. Welcome to the desert of the real...
I guess the "government by the people, for the people, and of the people" is redefining the word "people" as multi-national corporations.
Indeed. Corporations, originally a legal fiction to give companies the same rights before the law that human beings had, now effectively have more rights. Why? Because they have the resources to enforce their rights. If a cop threatens to arrest if you don't let him search your car, what are you going to do? Most people can't afford to call their your boss and say "I won't be in today...I've been arrested." Most people can't afford to sue the police department for harassment, particularly in the face of a blue wall of silence.
But try sometime to get your local law enforcement to violate the rights of a corporation. Try to get a cop through the locked door of a company headquarters without a court order. It won't happen. The corps are more powerful than most local law enforcement agencies and some federal ones (DOJ, anyone?). Those agencies know it and won't pick fights they don't think they can win.
YOU, however, are small potatoes and can't fight back. You have the right to be harassed.
In a stunning announcement today, the American Automobile Association stated "All science is actually automotive engineering." A recent study has shown that over 98% of scientific developments required the use of a car. "Without these amazing machines, I'd have to walk 45 miles to work, up hill both ways!" one scientist was quoted as saying.
In a related event, the Carpenters Union announced "All science is actually construction." Nearly 100% of lab experiments take place in buildings that were built by builders. Without us, there'd be no labs, no checking of theories - in short, no scientific advancement." Theoretical mathematicians scoffed at the announcement, but other scientists confirmed that most labs are not in caves or other natural structures.
Meanwhile, representatives of the National Restaurant Association are preparing press releases to explain that all science is actually eating. 100% of scientists contacted by this reporter confirmed that they would be unable to do science if it weren't for food.
Also - with regard to Linux vs VB - I don't necessarily believe that Linux is the end-all be-all (yet:), or that Linux should be used exclusively in schools. Rather, I don't think any decisions on what platform to use in schools should be based on what industry is using RIGHT NOW.
Trivial for you and me, perhaps; non-trivial for ordinary users.
Consider this - the Start menu encapsulates Program Manager. Anyone who can start programs from Program Manager should be able to start programs with the Start button. Is this therefore a trivial change from the Win3.x interface? I would suggest not. 'Trivial', to me, implies that a user would find it intuitively obvious. Trivial for me is not trivial for my mother. If any training is required for the user base, then the change is not trivial. I'll grant you this...if a UI change generates calls to the help desk from the 10% of the user base that is the most stupid - and only from them - then the change is probably trivial.
I stand by my statement that the default UI in 2K has non-trivial differences from the default UI in 95. Yes, you can admin these things six ways to sunday - I can set up the equivalent of Program Manager by using windows that contain shortcuts - but that's not the point.
No, the next step is to go out to zeroknowledge.com (or someplace similar) and start emailing out all the company confidential documents you can lay your hands to every other company in your industry. Presto! You have no more knowledge of your company's trade secrets (which are protected by law only as long as they are secret).
Immoral? Unethical? Possibly illegal? Absolutely. But how is this different from stealing a loaf of bread? You've got to be able to work.
I'd like to ask you to change your login name. Your name infringes on my trademark. I know this is an inconvenience for you, but I would greatly appreciate it. Please?
-----------------
And I'll bet you wouldn't do it, no matter how nice the request.
Why should the IETF inconvenience MILLIONS of users so that a single individual can profit?
Here's your comment:
But the differences between Win95 and Win2K are trivial, in terms of UI.
Here's my sarcastic response:
I agree. Hiding options that haven't been used recently, so that they are unavailable unless you know how the UI works, is completely trivial.
I can understand how you thought I was talking about productivity and word processors by the fact that we both spent so much time talking about them. However, I really only wanted to point out one example of a nontrivial difference between the 95 and the 2000 UIs.
There is no way in the world I would let my four-year-old drive a car, or go across the street by herself, or stay at a mall unattended, or walk around the block with a sixteen-year-old boy who thought she was cute and who couldn't keep his eyes off of her. These are all appropriate things to permit a sixteen year old girl to do (maybe - depending on the boy:) Surely you would agree that some actions are appropriate for a teen that aren't appropriate for a preschooler. Why not some knowledge? Would you try to teach differentiation of transcendental functions to a child who hadn't grasped counting? Or fractal transformations to a child that hadn't mastered the names of shapes? Do you think that gradually teaching children what they need to know can be a good thing?
Let's talk about death. My four-year-old does not need a gut-level understanding of the horror of the holocaust. She doesn't need to see bodies in a morgue. She doesn't need to know how horrific death can be. For that matter, she doesn't have to realize that she will die some day. She does have to realize that her 70-year-old grandparents may not always be here. Why? Real, deep knowledge of her own and others' mortality is too much for her to handle at her age; it would lead (unnecessarily) to nightmares, to a fear of risk-taking, to a fear of the world in general. Can't climb a tree, might fall down and die. Can't pet the dog, might rip me to shreds. Can't go to sleep; clown will eat me:) And what would the benefit be? Why does she have to know the horrors of the world NOW? However, the reality is that her grandparents COULD go at any time. She needs preparation for that. If she contracted some disease that would kill her, she'd have to realize that she was going to die. As she grows and matures and becomes more and more capable of dealing with reality, I will ABSOLUTELY see to it she has the knowledge necessary to deal with reality.
Let's talk about sex. I was a teacher for a while, and one of the legal requirements of my job was to report suspicions of child abuse. If a young child was able to give a detailed explanation of oral sex, the parents would find themselves in a police station pretty quickly. Too-extensive knowledge of sexuality at that age is a strong indicator of sexual abuse, and with good reason.
Do I think that anyone else should decide how I raise my child? No. Do I think anyone else should decide what I see? No. Do I think that I should decide how best to protect my child and provide her with the knowledge she needs? Absolutely.
On the other pseudopod, I knew a family which became EXTREMELY upset because someone used the word 'penis' in front of their 17-year-old daughter (the word was used clinically to describe a medical procedure). DO I think that those parents are a few miles around the bend? Absolutely.
To raise your kids, hide the part of reality you don't think is appropriate for them and it will magically go away. No, gradually reveal reality - not all at once. It's too much for them.
I have heard this argument before and it indicates a total lack of critical thinking. By your reasoning, it was critical that 2nd graders in 1990 (who are graduating this year) use DOS 5.0 because of its market share in the business world. Guess what? DOS 5.0 skills are USELESS except in the most esoteric IS/IT jobs.
Your argument does not hold water for most elementary and secondary students. ANY particular system they learn in grade school will be obsolete and off the market (at least in the business world) before they graduate high school. This is particularly true for grade-school students, who will see at least five iterations of Moore's law (60 GB * 2^5 = 1TB; 1.4 GHz * 2^5 = 50 GHz, Win2K * 2^5 = Win64K, etc.) before they graduate high school.
Your argument might hold water for high-school juniors or seniors, if your goal is to educate them for a job that they will start immediately out of high school and if that job will require computer usage. Outside of IT, I'm not aware of any jobs for 18-year-olds that require computer skills.
However, for any students planning on ANY kind of post-secondary education, whether technical, vocational, or academic, your argument again fails.
After all, think about the invention of calculus. This has made physics possible, thus making many things that we take for granted possible (computers, etc.). Now, one could say that calculus is just a logical progression from algebra. However, think about the thought processes and the jumps that had to be made just to make that logical progression possible. Get thee to at text on the history of mathematics. There was no singular point that was "the invention of calculus." Newton did not 'invent' calculus. Many of the important theorems of calculus were already in place, 'proved' by the standards of the day. What Newton did was an incremental step forward from previous work. Granted, in his lifetime, he was able to provide LOTS of incremental steps, and analysis (the branch of mathematics which includes calculus) was much improved by his work.
Keep in mind, though, that there was for decades (centuries?) dispute over Newton's contributions vs. Leibniz's contributions. Both 'invented'/'discovered' calculus simultaneously. Furthermore, nearly everything that Newton accomplished, Archimedes already had. 2000 years earlier. Without centuries of analysis to build on. Without decent notation (don't underestimate its value - Einstein couldn't have done his work without the tensor calculus - in essence, a way to represent MANY equations with a single variable).
Newton's brilliance was in pulling everything together, improving on it, developing better notation, and applying it to widely disparate fields of inquiry. In a single lifetime.
There is no such thing as "an increment that changes everything." Each such increment is built on thousands of others, and provides a foundation for thousands more.
285 million (current US population)- 50 million = 235 million who didn't want Al Gore to become President. Of course, the same holds true for George bush.
New law:
You must win, not a majority of the votes cast, but a majority of the votes of eligible voters in order to unseat the current president.
New law part 2:
A sitting president may not in any way attempt to influence the outcome of a presidential election - NO CAMPAIGNING TO STAY IN OFFICE!
Under current law, you are in illegal possession of a copyright protection circumvention device (see attachment). Under the Freedom of Information Act, I demand that you retain this information and make it available to me. However, under the DMCA, I demand that you initiate impeachment proceedings against yourself for your flagrant violation of the law in receiving the attached piece of paper.
The fundamental problem with democracy is its core assumption: that what is good for the majority of people is automatically good for all. Actually, the core assumption of democracy (see previous post in this thread regarding difference between technical and conversational usage of the term) is that people should govern themselves. The "tyranny of the majority" is an unfortunate but necessary side effect which must be controlled.
Congratulations on completing your high school's civics requirement. Now that you've made your pedantic point, let me one up you. 'Democracy' derives from Greek roots meaning 'rulership by the people'. There are a variety of political systems that meet this requirement, pure democracies and republics included. Don't confuse conversational English with a technical discussion of political science.
Popularity is irrelevant when it comes to right and wrong. You are absolutely correct.
However, I'm not talking about right and wrong. I'm talking about the law. Far from disagreeing, you are proving my point. Note that the law changed regarding ALL the things you mention when enough people wanted it to change.
In a democracy, it really is true that 50,000,000 people can't be wrong. The music industry has two choices: give people what they want, or get screwed. People will do what they want to do. The law is not an abstract entity; it is a formal codification of the will of the people. When the formal code disagrees with the will of the people, guess what has to change.
So you're saying that at the time Amazon developed this technology, no one else could have? Because THAT is the standard that patents are supposed to be held to. To be patented, somethings must be non-obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the area that the patent is granted - in this case, web development.
When you say it's non-obvious, you're saying that either NO ONE else could have thought "Hey! Let's make it so customers can click ONE BUTTON and get their order" or that NO programmers except Amazon's could have developed the technique. I would suggest that had anyone else had the thought (and many have, independently of Amazon) and that any team of web developers could have come up with Amazon's tehnique if their managers had said "Code it this way or you're fired!"
I'll grant that my opinion runs counter to that of the USPTO and most patent attorneys, but I believe that my opinion closer matches the intent of Congress and the Constitution. Patents become easier to obtain and easier to grant because the two interested parties (patent applicants and the patent office) want it to be as easy as possible - the USPTO so they can trim their budget and tell Congress "Look! We granted 40 million patents last year! Ain't it cool?" and patent applicants so they can spend half an hour filling out a form and then two decades suing everyone else in their industry.
Slashdot Mirror
...20 years later when the patent expires, the world will be able to afford cancer cures - shame about all those people that died in the meantime.
OK, I'm going to shamelessly extrapolate Moore's law: 20 years is approximately 13 iterations of Moore's law. 13 doublings of computer power. A $2000 computer then will be the equivalent of 8,000 computers now.
If this sort of thing is necessary to cure cancer (and I doubt it), then the cure will be within reach well before that 20 years are up.
Many scientific projects that require high levels of computing power have had to decide "Will we buy hardware now and compute for four years, or wait three years, buy the hardware, and compute for one?"
As does the alien's response:
Peace?
No peace...
DIE!
If, in the EULA, you agree to these audits for free, then you haven't a leg to stand on. Otherwise...YOU GO, DUDE!
$10,000 is nowhere near the actual price of patenting something like this.
I just went through the process of pricing patents. A patent on a mechanical device was estimated in the tens of thousands of dollars - the actual patent fees charged by the USPTO plus the patent attorney's fees. An international patent was in the realm of six figures.
Challenging that patent will cost millions of dollars. Have you written your check to the IETF to help defray their legal expenses, or are you more of a "Let's you and him fight" kind of guy? Me, I'm more of a "What a bunch of IDIOTS!" kind of guy. Welcome to the desert of the real...
I guess the "government by the people, for the people, and of the people" is redefining the word "people" as multi-national corporations.
Indeed. Corporations, originally a legal fiction to give companies the same rights before the law that human beings had, now effectively have more rights. Why? Because they have the resources to enforce their rights. If a cop threatens to arrest if you don't let him search your car, what are you going to do? Most people can't afford to call their your boss and say "I won't be in today...I've been arrested." Most people can't afford to sue the police department for harassment, particularly in the face of a blue wall of silence.
But try sometime to get your local law enforcement to violate the rights of a corporation. Try to get a cop through the locked door of a company headquarters without a court order. It won't happen. The corps are more powerful than most local law enforcement agencies and some federal ones (DOJ, anyone?). Those agencies know it and won't pick fights they don't think they can win.
YOU, however, are small potatoes and can't fight back. You have the right to be harassed.
AP, UPI (NY)
In a stunning announcement today, the American Automobile Association stated "All science is actually automotive engineering." A recent study has shown that over 98% of scientific developments required the use of a car. "Without these amazing machines, I'd have to walk 45 miles to work, up hill both ways!" one scientist was quoted as saying.
In a related event, the Carpenters Union announced "All science is actually construction." Nearly 100% of lab experiments take place in buildings that were built by builders. Without us, there'd be no labs, no checking of theories - in short, no scientific advancement." Theoretical mathematicians scoffed at the announcement, but other scientists confirmed that most labs are not in caves or other natural structures.
Meanwhile, representatives of the National Restaurant Association are preparing press releases to explain that all science is actually eating. 100% of scientists contacted by this reporter confirmed that they would be unable to do science if it weren't for food.
Also - with regard to Linux vs VB - I don't necessarily believe that Linux is the end-all be-all (yet :), or that Linux should be used exclusively in schools. Rather, I don't think any decisions on what platform to use in schools should be based on what industry is using RIGHT NOW.
I'll bet, BTW, that the Linux jobs paid better...
Trivial for you and me, perhaps; non-trivial for ordinary users.
Consider this - the Start menu encapsulates Program Manager. Anyone who can start programs from Program Manager should be able to start programs with the Start button. Is this therefore a trivial change from the Win3.x interface? I would suggest not. 'Trivial', to me, implies that a user would find it intuitively obvious. Trivial for me is not trivial for my mother. If any training is required for the user base, then the change is not trivial. I'll grant you this...if a UI change generates calls to the help desk from the 10% of the user base that is the most stupid - and only from them - then the change is probably trivial.
I stand by my statement that the default UI in 2K has non-trivial differences from the default UI in 95. Yes, you can admin these things six ways to sunday - I can set up the equivalent of Program Manager by using windows that contain shortcuts - but that's not the point.
Right - but terms of service are a contract between you and your provider. If someone violates TOS, it is a civil matter, not a criminal one.
No, the next step is to go out to zeroknowledge.com (or someplace similar) and start emailing out all the company confidential documents you can lay your hands to every other company in your industry. Presto! You have no more knowledge of your company's trade secrets (which are protected by law only as long as they are secret).
Immoral? Unethical? Possibly illegal? Absolutely. But how is this different from stealing a loaf of bread? You've got to be able to work.
KlausBreuer,
I'd like to ask you to change your login name. Your name infringes on my trademark. I know this is an inconvenience for you, but I would greatly appreciate it. Please?
-----------------
And I'll bet you wouldn't do it, no matter how nice the request.
Why should the IETF inconvenience MILLIONS of users so that a single individual can profit?
Here's your comment:
But the differences between Win95 and Win2K are trivial, in terms of UI.
Here's my sarcastic response:
I agree. Hiding options that haven't been used recently, so that they are unavailable unless you know how the UI works, is completely trivial.
I can understand how you thought I was talking about productivity and word processors by the fact that we both spent so much time talking about them. However, I really only wanted to point out one example of a nontrivial difference between the 95 and the 2000 UIs.
There is no way in the world I would let my four-year-old drive a car, or go across the street by herself, or stay at a mall unattended, or walk around the block with a sixteen-year-old boy who thought she was cute and who couldn't keep his eyes off of her. These are all appropriate things to permit a sixteen year old girl to do (maybe - depending on the boy :) Surely you would agree that some actions are appropriate for a teen that aren't appropriate for a preschooler. Why not some knowledge? Would you try to teach differentiation of transcendental functions to a child who hadn't grasped counting? Or fractal transformations to a child that hadn't mastered the names of shapes? Do you think that gradually teaching children what they need to know can be a good thing?
:) And what would the benefit be? Why does she have to know the horrors of the world NOW? However, the reality is that her grandparents COULD go at any time. She needs preparation for that. If she contracted some disease that would kill her, she'd have to realize that she was going to die. As she grows and matures and becomes more and more capable of dealing with reality, I will ABSOLUTELY see to it she has the knowledge necessary to deal with reality.
Let's talk about death. My four-year-old does not need a gut-level understanding of the horror of the holocaust. She doesn't need to see bodies in a morgue. She doesn't need to know how horrific death can be. For that matter, she doesn't have to realize that she will die some day. She does have to realize that her 70-year-old grandparents may not always be here. Why? Real, deep knowledge of her own and others' mortality is too much for her to handle at her age; it would lead (unnecessarily) to nightmares, to a fear of risk-taking, to a fear of the world in general. Can't climb a tree, might fall down and die. Can't pet the dog, might rip me to shreds. Can't go to sleep; clown will eat me
Let's talk about sex. I was a teacher for a while, and one of the legal requirements of my job was to report suspicions of child abuse. If a young child was able to give a detailed explanation of oral sex, the parents would find themselves in a police station pretty quickly. Too-extensive knowledge of sexuality at that age is a strong indicator of sexual abuse, and with good reason.
Do I think that anyone else should decide how I raise my child? No. Do I think anyone else should decide what I see? No. Do I think that I should decide how best to protect my child and provide her with the knowledge she needs? Absolutely.
On the other pseudopod, I knew a family which became EXTREMELY upset because someone used the word 'penis' in front of their 17-year-old daughter (the word was used clinically to describe a medical procedure). DO I think that those parents are a few miles around the bend? Absolutely.
To raise your kids, hide the part of reality you don't think is appropriate for them and it will magically go away.
No, gradually reveal reality - not all at once. It's too much for them.
I agree. Hiding options that haven't been used recently, so that they are unavailable unless you know how the UI works, is completely trivial.
I have heard this argument before and it indicates a total lack of critical thinking. By your reasoning, it was critical that 2nd graders in 1990 (who are graduating this year) use DOS 5.0 because of its market share in the business world. Guess what? DOS 5.0 skills are USELESS except in the most esoteric IS/IT jobs.
Your argument does not hold water for most elementary and secondary students. ANY particular system they learn in grade school will be obsolete and off the market (at least in the business world) before they graduate high school. This is particularly true for grade-school students, who will see at least five iterations of Moore's law (60 GB * 2^5 = 1TB; 1.4 GHz * 2^5 = 50 GHz, Win2K * 2^5 = Win64K, etc.) before they graduate high school.
Your argument might hold water for high-school juniors or seniors, if your goal is to educate them for a job that they will start immediately out of high school and if that job will require computer usage. Outside of IT, I'm not aware of any jobs for 18-year-olds that require computer skills.
However, for any students planning on ANY kind of post-secondary education, whether technical, vocational, or academic, your argument again fails.
After all, think about the invention of calculus. This has made physics possible, thus making many things that we take for granted possible (computers, etc.). Now, one could say that calculus is just a logical progression from algebra. However, think about the thought processes and the jumps that had to be made just to make that logical progression possible.
Get thee to at text on the history of mathematics. There was no singular point that was "the invention of calculus." Newton did not 'invent' calculus. Many of the important theorems of calculus were already in place, 'proved' by the standards of the day. What Newton did was an incremental step forward from previous work. Granted, in his lifetime, he was able to provide LOTS of incremental steps, and analysis (the branch of mathematics which includes calculus) was much improved by his work.
Keep in mind, though, that there was for decades (centuries?) dispute over Newton's contributions vs. Leibniz's contributions. Both 'invented'/'discovered' calculus simultaneously. Furthermore, nearly everything that Newton accomplished, Archimedes already had. 2000 years earlier. Without centuries of analysis to build on. Without decent notation (don't underestimate its value - Einstein couldn't have done his work without the tensor calculus - in essence, a way to represent MANY equations with a single variable).
Newton's brilliance was in pulling everything together, improving on it, developing better notation, and applying it to widely disparate fields of inquiry. In a single lifetime.
There is no such thing as "an increment that changes everything." Each such increment is built on thousands of others, and provides a foundation for thousands more.
285 million (current US population)- 50 million = 235 million who didn't want Al Gore to become President. Of course, the same holds true for George bush.
New law:
You must win, not a majority of the votes cast, but a majority of the votes of eligible voters in order to unseat the current president.
New law part 2:
A sitting president may not in any way attempt to influence the outcome of a presidential election - NO CAMPAIGNING TO STAY IN OFFICE!
Dear Congress Critter (insert name here):
Under current law, you are in illegal possession of a copyright protection circumvention device (see attachment). Under the Freedom of Information Act, I demand that you retain this information and make it available to me. However, under the DMCA, I demand that you initiate impeachment proceedings against yourself for your flagrant violation of the law in receiving the attached piece of paper.
Yours truly,
(insert name here)
And having given this post further thought, (puts on CYNIC hat), we're not any form of democracy. We're an oligarchy.
The fundamental problem with democracy is its core assumption: that what is good for the majority of people is automatically good for all.
Actually, the core assumption of democracy (see previous post in this thread regarding difference between technical and conversational usage of the term) is that people should govern themselves. The "tyranny of the majority" is an unfortunate but necessary side effect which must be controlled.
Congratulations on completing your high school's civics requirement. Now that you've made your pedantic point, let me one up you. 'Democracy' derives from Greek roots meaning 'rulership by the people'. There are a variety of political systems that meet this requirement, pure democracies and republics included. Don't confuse conversational English with a technical discussion of political science.
Popularity is irrelevant when it comes to right and wrong.
You are absolutely correct.
However, I'm not talking about right and wrong. I'm talking about the law. Far from disagreeing, you are proving my point. Note that the law changed regarding ALL the things you mention when enough people wanted it to change.
In a democracy, it really is true that 50,000,000 people can't be wrong. The music industry has two choices: give people what they want, or get screwed. People will do what they want to do. The law is not an abstract entity; it is a formal codification of the will of the people. When the formal code disagrees with the will of the people, guess what has to change.
This was probably on the same level as using 555 as a telephone exchange on TV.
So you're saying that at the time Amazon developed this technology, no one else could have? Because THAT is the standard that patents are supposed to be held to. To be patented, somethings must be non-obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the area that the patent is granted - in this case, web development.
When you say it's non-obvious, you're saying that either NO ONE else could have thought "Hey! Let's make it so customers can click ONE BUTTON and get their order" or that NO programmers except Amazon's could have developed the technique. I would suggest that had anyone else had the thought (and many have, independently of Amazon) and that any team of web developers could have come up with Amazon's tehnique if their managers had said "Code it this way or you're fired!"
I'll grant that my opinion runs counter to that of the USPTO and most patent attorneys, but I believe that my opinion closer matches the intent of Congress and the Constitution. Patents become easier to obtain and easier to grant because the two interested parties (patent applicants and the patent office) want it to be as easy as possible - the USPTO so they can trim their budget and tell Congress "Look! We granted 40 million patents last year! Ain't it cool?" and patent applicants so they can spend half an hour filling out a form and then two decades suing everyone else in their industry.
IANAL, but if I were, I'd commit suicide.