Really? What else? Oh yeah, they both can play media for which there is little to no content out yet. Better yet, the two formats are incompatible, which fractures the market and discourages uptake! Great strategy!
That's funny. I opened up the link Zonk posted, and the article said this:
"To be clear, we have said that in fiscal 08, entertainment and devices makes money. That's not exactly Xbox. We don't break profit down by business. And there are parts of entertainment and devices that make money. Xbox doesn't. Xbox has to make significant progress to enable E&D to get there. We feel we are on track"
That doesn't necessarily mean the XBox division will start making money. It could (and probably does) mean that they plan to try and hemorrhage less, so that the overall E&D division can finally get in the black.
Something like that. However, the advantage of a template and a table-keyboard is that the template need not have any sensitive electronics in it. This means you can build it out of a tough synthetic of some type which could, as you say, be run through an autoclave, exposed to harsh chemicals, etc.
Does a doctor frequently touch their watch or eyewear throughout the day? Didn't think so. As for clothing, this is *also* a big issue. This would be why scrubs exist. 'course, medical staff are *supposed* to ensure their scrubs are clean, and they certainly shouldn't be wearing them outside the hospital. Funny how those procedures get ignored all the time, too.
As for hygiene police, if resistant staph continues to proliferate, you never know, it might be necessary. But setting up the system so *more* procedures can simply get ignored? Frankly, that sounds like an even dumber idea.
Yet the pilots brought the plane down to a controlled crash and I think half of the passengers survived due to the flight engineer steering the plane with the throttles alone (actually, the pilots dictated to the engineer what they needed done by moving their [inoperative] control yokes). An amazing case of human cooperation saving quite a few lives.
Especially since I don't believe any pilot has repeated the feat in simulation.
They already have rules about things like personal sterilization, and they get violated all the time. How do you think staph transfers from patient to patient?
Fact is, the minute you rely solely on personal habits to solve these kinds of issues, you're in for a world of hurt.
Well, I'd imagine it would be a trivial task to build a small, textured rubber keyboard template that could be placed on a desk, thus providing the necessary tactile feedback. Make it dishwasher safe, and voila, you have a cheap, easy-to-sterilize keyboard.
Even to put this in terms of simple numbers, if the entire military had chips installed so they always followed orders and half the able men 18-30 not in the military rose up and lost at a rate of 100 people to kill one brainwashed soldier, there would still be some left over in addition to the rest of the populace.
Yeah, because the entire population of the US is going to rise up against it's oppressors simultaneously...
Get real. The middle class don't care, the lower class is too poor to do anything, and the upper class likes things the way they are. Combine that with a mass propaganda campaign against any likely insurgent groups, and the chance of an uprising catching any level of support are essentially zero.
The biggest problem with biofuels at the moment is that we aren't choosing our crops right: we're using crops with low energy yields (soy, maize, rape seed), and heavily subsidizing them and/or taxing (foreign) alternatives (e.g. sugar cane) to make our crops "competitive". The effect is, of course, that it costs society money (even those who don't use the crops we grow) and keeps other countries poor. That's no way to go.
Aha! I see your confusion. You see, you're looking at biofuels as a solution to global warming, pollution, etc. Politicians and lobbyists, however, see it as yet another way to pump more money into the declining farming industry in places like the United States.
I own a decently efficient car, I ride a train to work (well, I drive 10 miles to the train station each day), and I don't drive much on weekends.
Well if that's the case, you don't have much to worry about do you?
Or, maybe, your carbon footprint is greater than you realize, in which case your actions are incurring a cost that you're currently not paying for. A tax such as this only forces you, the consumer, to pay for your choices. If you don't like it, cut back your consumption or seek out alternatives.
Welcome to the process of "growing" from a startup to a venture-funded firm. This is, unfortunately, the way of things. After all, those who control the purse strings ultimately control the way things are operated.
'course, different funds have different policies regarding the companies they finance. So, in part, you can blame management for not doing their homework and working with a fund that was more hands off. *shrug*
All of which is why you have a reasonable sized TV (27" or 32" come to mind) for regular daytime watching, and have the big-screen in a nice home theatre setup, where you can watch your favorite HD content, movies, and so forth.
Frankly, the idea of have a 50"+ screen in my living room is simply laughable. A living room is for more than just watching TV. A gargantuan TV dominating the space is just ugly, IMHO.
Which is why I plan to build a separate A/V room in my basement. Then I can have the big screen down there with a projector and a nice surround-sound system without having to sacrifice my living space.
This is Canada. The power of the lobbyists is *greatly* reduced, thanks to laws which limit things like campaign financing (in fact, all financing for parties comes from a central pool, calculated using some formula based on the size of the membership (IIRC)). Thus, the danger of copyright cartels manipulating the system is significantly less than what you'd see in the United States.
Further, the ISPs have already fought back against the copyright cartels (ie, they refuse to release customer information to such organizations), and so I'm not yet concerned.
Underpants gnomes and FSM are just artificial creations that mock thousands of years of human insight, intuition, art, and culture.
No, it mocks people who believe in invisible things for which there is absolutely no evidence, who then attempt to elevate their beliefs to the level of scientific fact, or alternatively, attempt to drag science down to the level of religion.
Similarly, if I met someone who still believed that disease was caused by demonic possession, I'd mock them, too.
Copyright only protects the algorithm if the silly anti reverse engineering EULAs are taken into account.
Which have never been taken to court, and are likely unenforceable.
Now in this case, how would a patent on some process in Broadcom's proprietary driver help them financially, or contribute to the public good after expiration?
Let's say they developed some new software antenna technology that enhanced reception. This would be useful to them, as it would enhance their product, and it would be good for the public, as others may be able to build on the work, or use it as inspiration for other inventions.
Granted, this is a contrived example, but it *is* possible.
These concepts are directly derivable via mathematics,
Well that's just a stupid argument, no offense. This same argument could be applied to the creation of any physical invention. After all, these concepts are directly derivable from physics, chemistry, etc.
because generally patents do not express the precise nature of the algorithm, just what the lawyers manage to get written.
Then it's a poor patent and should be rejected. Given a patent, an expert in the area should be able to implement said invention. Blame the PTO if this isn't possible.
And again, the remainder of your post is about patents in general, and so I won't bother addressing it. You think they're a bad idea. Others disagree. You think history proves your points. Others may not. At this point, it's merely religion.:)
Neither the belief that God exists nor the belief that God doesn't exist have any scientifically admissible evidence behind them. A real skeptic would therefore believe neither.
I agree completely. Further, there's no scientific evidence that giant flying spaghetti monsters don't exist. Nor is there evidence that underpants gnomes don't exist (in fact, given the rate of underpants disappearances, I would argue *for* their existance!).
Therefore, as a true scientist, I choose not to take a stance on these issues until evidence is provided that *proves* that flying spaghetti monsters and underpants gnomes don't exist.
Ahh, I believe we're running under different assumptions. I came at the discussion considering the problem of preventing ROMs from the Wii being copied and played on, say, a computer. As such, I didn't address the issue of copying material from one Wii to another. In this case, you're absolutely right, the problem is solvable (well, barring hacking of the Wii firmware or some other more advanced trickery).
And all your examples are examples of *bad* patents. Again, this is the PTO not doing it's damn job! You're arguing against the current US implementation of patents, and yeah, it's broken as hell. But software patents as a *concept* are not a demonstrably bad idea, IMHO.
I'll leave your comments about patents in general on the floor. Whether they actually succeed in their intended purpose is, I think, a matter of opinion. Moreover, many of your objections are related to patents as conceived in the US (ie, rich corps screwing the little guy, etc), and don't necessarily apply to the underlying concept.
The reason software patents are bad is that copyright already covers the same concepts for software that patents do for hardware and machines, namely preventing the exact duplication of an invention.
And I see you completely missed my point. The patent ensures the inventor discloses the algorithm being protected. If you rely only on copyright, you won't get access to the algorithm for nearly 100 years! Patents, OTOH, force the inventor to disclose the algorithm in exchange for protection. Further, copyright only protects the inventor from outright copying. Thus, some company can still reverse engineer the code (which is perfectly legal) and reimplement it themselves. Patents protect the inventor in this case.
Of course, it's clear you're opposed to patents in general, so any argument here is largely moot.
How exactly are these companies not keeping their inventions secret? Where is the source code?
You *do* understand the difference between an algorithm and source, right? The patent discloses the algorithm. The source code is merely the expression.
and reverse engineering is now outlawed thanks to the DMCA
And it's at this point your argument falls apart. Reverse engineering is *not* outlawed by the DMCA. In fact, there are specific provisions in the legislation to allow exactly these sorts of activies. And since you can reverse engineer software, you can determine it's inner workings without violating copyright law. And that, in theory, is what patent law is intended to protect.
So far, software patent proponents have provided not a shred of evidence that software patents are beneficial.
Will, given that a) currently the PTO is broken, b) the lifetime for software patents is (IMHO) too long, and c) software patents, as a concept, have existed for a rather short period of time, I'd say the jury is still out on the effectiveness of software patents, as a concept.
Slashdot Mirror
Really? What else? Oh yeah, they both can play media for which there is little to no content out yet. Better yet, the two formats are incompatible, which fractures the market and discourages uptake! Great strategy!
That's funny. I opened up the link Zonk posted, and the article said this:
"To be clear, we have said that in fiscal 08, entertainment and devices makes money. That's not exactly Xbox. We don't break profit down by business. And there are parts of entertainment and devices that make money. Xbox doesn't. Xbox has to make significant progress to enable E&D to get there. We feel we are on track"
That doesn't necessarily mean the XBox division will start making money. It could (and probably does) mean that they plan to try and hemorrhage less, so that the overall E&D division can finally get in the black.
Something like that. However, the advantage of a template and a table-keyboard is that the template need not have any sensitive electronics in it. This means you can build it out of a tough synthetic of some type which could, as you say, be run through an autoclave, exposed to harsh chemicals, etc.
It looks interesting, but I wonder if it can be pressure sensetive
Well, given it works by accoustic localization, the answer is probably 'no'.
Does a doctor frequently touch their watch or eyewear throughout the day? Didn't think so. As for clothing, this is *also* a big issue. This would be why scrubs exist. 'course, medical staff are *supposed* to ensure their scrubs are clean, and they certainly shouldn't be wearing them outside the hospital. Funny how those procedures get ignored all the time, too.
As for hygiene police, if resistant staph continues to proliferate, you never know, it might be necessary. But setting up the system so *more* procedures can simply get ignored? Frankly, that sounds like an even dumber idea.
Yet the pilots brought the plane down to a controlled crash and I think half of the passengers survived due to the flight engineer steering the plane with the throttles alone (actually, the pilots dictated to the engineer what they needed done by moving their [inoperative] control yokes). An amazing case of human cooperation saving quite a few lives.
Especially since I don't believe any pilot has repeated the feat in simulation.
They already have rules about things like personal sterilization, and they get violated all the time. How do you think staph transfers from patient to patient?
Fact is, the minute you rely solely on personal habits to solve these kinds of issues, you're in for a world of hurt.
So some high-dollar high-tech overkill solution can be found instead?
"High-dollar"? What part of "cheap acoustic sensors" did you not understand?
Meanwhile, here's a link for a membrane keyboard designed to be chemically resistant and easy sterilized. $545 doesn't seem terribly cheap to me.
Well, I'd imagine it would be a trivial task to build a small, textured rubber keyboard template that could be placed on a desk, thus providing the necessary tactile feedback. Make it dishwasher safe, and voila, you have a cheap, easy-to-sterilize keyboard.
Even to put this in terms of simple numbers, if the entire military had chips installed so they always followed orders and half the able men 18-30 not in the military rose up and lost at a rate of 100 people to kill one brainwashed soldier, there would still be some left over in addition to the rest of the populace.
Yeah, because the entire population of the US is going to rise up against it's oppressors simultaneously...
Get real. The middle class don't care, the lower class is too poor to do anything, and the upper class likes things the way they are. Combine that with a mass propaganda campaign against any likely insurgent groups, and the chance of an uprising catching any level of support are essentially zero.
The biggest problem with biofuels at the moment is that we aren't choosing our crops right: we're using crops with low energy yields (soy, maize, rape seed), and heavily subsidizing them and/or taxing (foreign) alternatives (e.g. sugar cane) to make our crops "competitive". The effect is, of course, that it costs society money (even those who don't use the crops we grow) and keeps other countries poor. That's no way to go.
Aha! I see your confusion. You see, you're looking at biofuels as a solution to global warming, pollution, etc. Politicians and lobbyists, however, see it as yet another way to pump more money into the declining farming industry in places like the United States.
I own a decently efficient car, I ride a train to work (well, I drive 10 miles to the train station each day), and I don't drive much on weekends.
Well if that's the case, you don't have much to worry about do you?
Or, maybe, your carbon footprint is greater than you realize, in which case your actions are incurring a cost that you're currently not paying for. A tax such as this only forces you, the consumer, to pay for your choices. If you don't like it, cut back your consumption or seek out alternatives.
There is also a business case if the probability of being caught is extremely low, irrespective of how severe the punishment is.
Also known as the expected value of the activity.
Welcome to the process of "growing" from a startup to a venture-funded firm. This is, unfortunately, the way of things. After all, those who control the purse strings ultimately control the way things are operated.
'course, different funds have different policies regarding the companies they finance. So, in part, you can blame management for not doing their homework and working with a fund that was more hands off. *shrug*
All of which is why you have a reasonable sized TV (27" or 32" come to mind) for regular daytime watching, and have the big-screen in a nice home theatre setup, where you can watch your favorite HD content, movies, and so forth.
Frankly, the idea of have a 50"+ screen in my living room is simply laughable. A living room is for more than just watching TV. A gargantuan TV dominating the space is just ugly, IMHO.
Which is why I plan to build a separate A/V room in my basement. Then I can have the big screen down there with a projector and a nice surround-sound system without having to sacrifice my living space.
This is Canada. The power of the lobbyists is *greatly* reduced, thanks to laws which limit things like campaign financing (in fact, all financing for parties comes from a central pool, calculated using some formula based on the size of the membership (IIRC)). Thus, the danger of copyright cartels manipulating the system is significantly less than what you'd see in the United States.
Further, the ISPs have already fought back against the copyright cartels (ie, they refuse to release customer information to such organizations), and so I'm not yet concerned.
Underpants gnomes and FSM are just artificial creations that mock thousands of years of human insight, intuition, art, and culture.
No, it mocks people who believe in invisible things for which there is absolutely no evidence, who then attempt to elevate their beliefs to the level of scientific fact, or alternatively, attempt to drag science down to the level of religion.
Similarly, if I met someone who still believed that disease was caused by demonic possession, I'd mock them, too.
The Earth is filled with custard - lots of it, hot and molten.
What do you mean, you don't think so? Surely a good skeptic should neither believe or not believe in that?
Well, that's a silly example. There's evidence the Earth isn't filled with custard. It has a magnetic field.
*However*, if the earth were filled with *magnetic* custard...
Copyright only protects the algorithm if the silly anti reverse engineering EULAs are taken into account.
Which have never been taken to court, and are likely unenforceable.
Now in this case, how would a patent on some process in Broadcom's proprietary driver help them financially, or contribute to the public good after expiration?
Let's say they developed some new software antenna technology that enhanced reception. This would be useful to them, as it would enhance their product, and it would be good for the public, as others may be able to build on the work, or use it as inspiration for other inventions.
Granted, this is a contrived example, but it *is* possible.
These concepts are directly derivable via mathematics,
Well that's just a stupid argument, no offense. This same argument could be applied to the creation of any physical invention. After all, these concepts are directly derivable from physics, chemistry, etc.
because generally patents do not express the precise nature of the algorithm, just what the lawyers manage to get written.
Then it's a poor patent and should be rejected. Given a patent, an expert in the area should be able to implement said invention. Blame the PTO if this isn't possible.
And again, the remainder of your post is about patents in general, and so I won't bother addressing it. You think they're a bad idea. Others disagree. You think history proves your points. Others may not. At this point, it's merely religion.
Neither the belief that God exists nor the belief that God doesn't exist have any scientifically admissible evidence behind them. A real skeptic would therefore believe neither.
I agree completely. Further, there's no scientific evidence that giant flying spaghetti monsters don't exist. Nor is there evidence that underpants gnomes don't exist (in fact, given the rate of underpants disappearances, I would argue *for* their existance!).
Therefore, as a true scientist, I choose not to take a stance on these issues until evidence is provided that *proves* that flying spaghetti monsters and underpants gnomes don't exist.
Ahh, I believe we're running under different assumptions. I came at the discussion considering the problem of preventing ROMs from the Wii being copied and played on, say, a computer. As such, I didn't address the issue of copying material from one Wii to another. In this case, you're absolutely right, the problem is solvable (well, barring hacking of the Wii firmware or some other more advanced trickery).
And all your examples are examples of *bad* patents. Again, this is the PTO not doing it's damn job! You're arguing against the current US implementation of patents, and yeah, it's broken as hell. But software patents as a *concept* are not a demonstrably bad idea, IMHO.
I'll leave your comments about patents in general on the floor. Whether they actually succeed in their intended purpose is, I think, a matter of opinion. Moreover, many of your objections are related to patents as conceived in the US (ie, rich corps screwing the little guy, etc), and don't necessarily apply to the underlying concept.
The reason software patents are bad is that copyright already covers the same concepts for software that patents do for hardware and machines, namely preventing the exact duplication of an invention.
And I see you completely missed my point. The patent ensures the inventor discloses the algorithm being protected. If you rely only on copyright, you won't get access to the algorithm for nearly 100 years! Patents, OTOH, force the inventor to disclose the algorithm in exchange for protection. Further, copyright only protects the inventor from outright copying. Thus, some company can still reverse engineer the code (which is perfectly legal) and reimplement it themselves. Patents protect the inventor in this case.
Of course, it's clear you're opposed to patents in general, so any argument here is largely moot.
How exactly are these companies not keeping their inventions secret? Where is the source code?
You *do* understand the difference between an algorithm and source, right? The patent discloses the algorithm. The source code is merely the expression.
and reverse engineering is now outlawed thanks to the DMCA
And it's at this point your argument falls apart. Reverse engineering is *not* outlawed by the DMCA. In fact, there are specific provisions in the legislation to allow exactly these sorts of activies. And since you can reverse engineer software, you can determine it's inner workings without violating copyright law. And that, in theory, is what patent law is intended to protect.
So far, software patent proponents have provided not a shred of evidence that software patents are beneficial.
Will, given that a) currently the PTO is broken, b) the lifetime for software patents is (IMHO) too long, and c) software patents, as a concept, have existed for a rather short period of time, I'd say the jury is still out on the effectiveness of software patents, as a concept.