I'm not a USAian, but even I can't wait for the
Presidential election at the end of the year. Please,
vote these right-wing idiots out and do the world a favour.
Enough is enough.
If the process can be purely represented in
software, with no physical component, then
Copyright is the most appropriate protection.
If there is a physical component, then that
component may be patentable, but only that,
with Copyright protecting the software.
Since any automatable process can theoretically
be done manually, allowing the combination to be patentable is
equivalent to saying "well, the physical lever itself is
not patentable, but if a human operator pulls
it, then the process is patentable". Even
if it completely obvious how to operate the lever upon manual inspection.
because the word "algorithm" can constitute all sorts of processes that I believe should be protected by patents. If I come up with a process to cheaply digest organic matter into hydrocarbon chains (i.e., oil), and the temperature, pressure, composition etc. are all crucial to this process, how are those parameters and that sequence of reactions different from an algorithm?
This is similar to the argument that the EU tried
recently. The argument was: "well a mobile
phone is mostly just a bunch of software, and
mobile phones are useful inventions, so we must
allow patenting of software".
That argument is pure rubbish. If a device is
mostly software, then Copyright already provides
more than enough protection for your "invention".
Your competitors must either license from you
or do the hard work themselves from scratch.
Patents are not necessary to protect software.
Copyright is, and always has been, the most
effective means. There are only two reasons
why you might want a patent on software: to
extort money from others, or to protect yourself
from such extortion.
Oh, but they did break the three laws of robotics in the most obvious way in one of his stories, a number of robots were manufactured without the first law (never harm a human being...).
Perhaps you are thinking of the "New Law" robots in Roger Macbride Allens books (Inferno being the one I can remember off-hand).
The New Law robots still had a first law, but it was modified to only say "cannot harm a human being". The bit about "or allow a human being to come to harm" was removed. The other laws were tweaked a little along the same lines.
This was done on one of the Spacer planets to try to head off the disaster occuring on the others where humans had become so dependent upon robots that they'd lost all drive and initiative. New Law robots were intended to be partners with humanity, not its nannies.
The 3 law fundamentalists didn't like this one bit, of course, as they didn't want to get off their backsides and actually do the dirty work to help restore their planet's failing terraform.
I kind of like the New Laws better than the old, but the one thing that always bugged me was the manufacturing process. They used a completely different substance from platinum-irridium, supposedly because it was impossible to reprogram PI brains with something other than the 3 laws. Asimov and his immitators never really understood the difference between hardware and software.
"At idle, with no applications running, the commit charge is at a whopping 483 MB!! Obviously, the final release or even the beta releases will not consume this much of the system resources."
Seems a bit low to me. They haven't used up the full 512 Mb of RAM on standard systems yet. It's going to take them ages to meet their target of making everyone buy 4 Gb systems at this rate! Looks like Longhorn will have to slip some more so they can cram a few more unnecessary things in.
I've already sent off the following letter to DFAT, and I urge others to do the same. The e-mail address is us_fta@dfat.gov.au. (We actually do already have DMCA-style laws here, but they were neutered a little last time).
I read with some concern that the Free Trade Agreement with the US will
involve harmonising our intellectual property laws with the US, in particular
with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. This would be a disaster for
innovation in Australia.
I refer you to the following paper, entitled "Unintended Consequences: Five
Years under the DMCA" by the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
This paper describes the harm that has been done in the US to free speech,
scientific research, and fair use since the DMCA's introduction. Introducing
a similar law here would be devastating.
My own company, Southern Storm Software, Pty Ltd, would be directly affected
by such as change. At present, Australian law protects those who reverse
engineer a competitor's product for the purpose of interoperation.
DMCA-style laws would make me a felon solely for trying to compete fairly in
my chosen market.
I urge you to please reconsider, so that Australia remains competitive in the
Information Technology industry, and does not become a victim of the large
Copyright interests in the US who are not interested in true and open
competition.
No need to appeal to old P166 boxes for a "won't work example". A top of the line Palm or iPAQ handheld, or a next generation smart mobile phone won't have sufficient CPU capacity to do heavy math. At least your P166 had an FPU. The average PDA doesn't. Heavy math in the SMTP client isn't really a solution either.
Hardly. Another easy example: desktop GUIs. Back in 1984, Apple had copyrights on all their code to produce the Mac GUI. Microsoft comes along with Windows and copies many of the ideas.* Apple tried to stretch copyright law into patent law to stop Microsoft and failed. An idea like a desktop GUI isn't protected at all by copyright.
And if Apple (or Xerox) had patented the GUI, the amount of innovation in GUI development would have been miniscule because it would have been hard-wired to a single closed platform. What, you think Apple would have just licensed their patents free of charge to MIT to use in
the X window system? Of course not. No X
means no shiny Linux desktops.
Again, if it forces your hand to "invent around" a patent and, perhaps even by dumb luck, invent something better, good. The patent then did its other job: to advance society.
And what if you cannot "invent around" it because the algorithm is fundamental? I'm old enough to remember when it was illegal to write encryption software for the Internet. Not because of government heavy handedness, but because RSA Data Security, Inc. refused point blank to license the RSA patent to open source implementations. Internet security was set back by a decade by one company's greed.
Patents come with a very heavy cost. They put
all the power to use an idea in the hands of the patent owner, while ignoring society's interest in a vibrant and competitive marketplace. The copyright alternative is a case of "adapt or die". It's brutal, but it works a lot better.
Okay, where can I get some blue and red 3D glasses in this day and age?
As luck would have it, I saw Spy Kids 3D yesterday.
I knew there had to be a reason why I subjected myself
to that. And now I know: free 3D glasses for viewing
images from Mars!
i.e. ask your local cinema. They probably have a whole
box of the things just lying around in a store room.
Yeah, this will end well. Someone will configure
the wrong co-ordinates by accident (or by design
if a cracker). This will lead to some plane
running into a mountain as it tries to avoid a
phantom no fly zone just to the side of the
mountain. And the pilot can do nothing to avoid
the collision that he can see coming.
Never, ever, ever, take control away from the pilot. That's the first rule of air safety. Humans
can react to unknown situations in ways that
computers cannot.
They may have been under some pressure to book
the Baystar and RBC investments as revenue, or
some other similar "creative accounting" move, to
make the 4th quarter look like a gain rather than
a loss. And the finance guys said "No way do I
want to share a cell with the Enron guys! I quit!".
Never forget the Golden Rule of Optimization: a quicksort compiled with no optimization will invariably beat the pants off a bubblesort compiled with the best optimizer in the universe.
Optimizers change the constants in the algorithm running time. They cannot change the algorithm's order.
With the exception of high-performance computing, no one needs a super-optimizing compiler any more. Instead, they need to (re-)learn basic algorithm and data structure theory.
Qt/Embedded is the low-level widget library - essentially Qt ported to embedded Linux.
Qtopia is a suite of PDA/SmartPhone applications that build on top of Qt/Embedded. I belive that Motorola is using Qt/Embedded and its own suite of applications on top, not Qtopia.
Microsoft agreed to make their specifications available for people making interoperable software. But the government forgot to say "available at no cost to the licensees", and Microsoft is exploiting that loophole. Big surprise.
I visited the "licensing" site a few weeks back, and the whole thing is "fill in this form and we'll get back to you about your payment". Sorry, that's not what they were supposed to do.
Let's hope the judge realises that for competition to occur, the main player cannot levy a fee against its competitors.
The accuracy problem cannot be fixed by voter receipts, since most voters will not know how to verify them. It can only be fixed by ensuring that the votes can be re-counted using some mechanism other than the computer that first recorded them.
Use the computer to help the voter prepare the ballot, print it out, and then have the voter hand carry it to the ballot box.
The computer can keep a running tally, but at the end of the day if the tally does not match a hand count of the box contents, then the ballot box is the only correct representation of the will of the voters.
It is easy to teach the average monkey to keep an eye on the ballot box for tampering, and to hand count the contents. Teaching the average monkey correct computer security skills is impossible, so that source of problems must be factored out.
Fine. So ban the calls from charitable organisations as well. It's pretty much impossible to tell the difference between a real charitable organisation and a scam over the phone, so I hang up on all such calls as a matter of policy.
If they turn up at the door wearing a badge, during a widely publicised door knock appeal, they might get a few bucks. But not if they call me out of the blue claiming to represent an organisation I cannot verify the identity of.
In fact, most of the stuff I read was simply clarifying existing statements that "computer-implemented inventions may be patented" (not software itself, but inventions that incorporate a software component), adding additional clarification on when it would not be appropriate to consider pure software or business methods "computer-implemented inventions".
And herein lies the slippery slope. The current version makes it illegal to patent software on its own, but not software used as one component in some otherwise physical product. The standard example given, regurgitated by some of the MEP's in the referenced article, is that of mobile phones.
However, the mobile phone argument shows exactly why this is still a bad law. Mobile phones these days are essentially "software plus an antenna". So what happens when we allow people to patent "algorithm X plus an antenna"?
What we get is this: some open source programmer writes algorithm X, and deploys it in a usual fashion. Some patent miscreant then jumps up and says "hey, you're running algorithm X on a laptop with a wireless network card! You're infringing my patent and owe me royalties!".
No, the current "clarifications" are no good. Software patenting must be abolished completely, in all of its forms. If the physical device does not have some unique and novel feature of its own, sans software, then the device should not be patentable. Period.
The ISO is a standards organisation that has consistently "not got it" when it comes to making standards available to the public.
Try Googling for most major standards and you'll get nothing but price lists, despite the fact that their entire organisation's publishing needs could be run off a 486 in a cupboard running a Web server.
I hope we can use this incident to start a wider discussion with ISO and educate them that a public standard that isn't available to the public free of charge kind of defeats the purpose of the exercise.
The referenced article is old (11 Feb 2003), and refers to the patent *application*, not the patent itself. An application is not a patent - just the "inventors" hope that it will be one.
Unless someone can produce an actual granted patent number for this, then it's still "nothing to see, move along" for the time being.
-- Rhys Weatherley, author of DotGNU Portable.NET.
And there's no reason that SCO couldn't hire someone with "depth of historical knowledge to know where to look". Bruce Perens and Eric Raymond aren't the only people with this knowledge.
You're assuming of course that any of the Unix old hands with the necessary knowlege would want to have anything to do with such a task. As Eric Raymond put it in the OSI's position paper:
Thus, the community of Unix hackers that had grown up around the pre-commercial releases never lost the conviction that, ethically, the Unix code belonged to them -- the people who had the ideas and wrote the code -- regardless of what the legal paperwork said.
That's the core issue here - no one who believes in Unix, by the community, for the community, would have anything to do with SCO's shenanigans. Which leaves SCO relying upon non-existent MIT mathematicians, junior programmers, and law clerks to troll the source code looking for things that aren't actually there.
The article is good, but focuses mainly on technologies for automating the transfer of money (wire transfer, credit cards, ATM's, etc).
There have also been significant leaps in the technology that is plain old paper currency. e.g. watermarking, plastic bank notes (Australia), holograms, etc.
Would have been nice if they had explored this aspect also. Give me good old-fashioned currency any day.
I'm the primary author of DotGNU Portable.NET, so this does affect me to some extent.
First, this is a patent application, not an actual patent grant. I doubt that the application would last very long in its current form - it's too broad, even by the USPTO's narrow criteria for broadness.
Second, because Microsoft is standardizing this technology through the ECMA, as an eventual lead-in to ISO, they will be in a difficult position if they start demanding royalties or playing RAND games.
They backed off on the Kerberos thing, and they could be made to back off here too - blatantly targetting the only two competitors in the CLR space (Mono and Portable.NET) won't win them any PR points.
Third, most of what is discussed here has precedents in prior art. If Mono and Portable.NET infringe, then so does the JVM, and that's definite prior art.
We perhaps need to organise a bit to lobby on this one, but it isn't the end of the world - yet.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not a USAian, but even I can't wait for the Presidential election at the end of the year. Please, vote these right-wing idiots out and do the world a favour. Enough is enough.
Since any automatable process can theoretically be done manually, allowing the combination to be patentable is equivalent to saying "well, the physical lever itself is not patentable, but if a human operator pulls it, then the process is patentable". Even if it completely obvious how to operate the lever upon manual inspection.
This is similar to the argument that the EU tried recently. The argument was: "well a mobile phone is mostly just a bunch of software, and mobile phones are useful inventions, so we must allow patenting of software".
That argument is pure rubbish. If a device is mostly software, then Copyright already provides more than enough protection for your "invention". Your competitors must either license from you or do the hard work themselves from scratch.
Patents are not necessary to protect software. Copyright is, and always has been, the most effective means. There are only two reasons why you might want a patent on software: to extort money from others, or to protect yourself from such extortion.
Perhaps you are thinking of the "New Law" robots in Roger Macbride Allens books (Inferno being the one I can remember off-hand).
The New Law robots still had a first law, but it was modified to only say "cannot harm a human being". The bit about "or allow a human being to come to harm" was removed. The other laws were tweaked a little along the same lines.
This was done on one of the Spacer planets to try to head off the disaster occuring on the others where humans had become so dependent upon robots that they'd lost all drive and initiative. New Law robots were intended to be partners with humanity, not its nannies.
The 3 law fundamentalists didn't like this one bit, of course, as they didn't want to get off their backsides and actually do the dirty work to help restore their planet's failing terraform.
I kind of like the New Laws better than the old, but the one thing that always bugged me was the manufacturing process. They used a completely different substance from platinum-irridium, supposedly because it was impossible to reprogram PI brains with something other than the 3 laws. Asimov and his immitators never really understood the difference between hardware and software.
I was thinking: "Finally, someone has written down how to troubleshoot CUPS so that I can get my damn printer working!".
I read with some concern that the Free Trade Agreement with the US will involve harmonising our intellectual property laws with the US, in particular with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. This would be a disaster for innovation in Australia.
I refer you to the following paper, entitled "Unintended Consequences: Five Years under the DMCA" by the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/unintended_consequences .php
This paper describes the harm that has been done in the US to free speech, scientific research, and fair use since the DMCA's introduction. Introducing a similar law here would be devastating.
My own company, Southern Storm Software, Pty Ltd, would be directly affected by such as change. At present, Australian law protects those who reverse engineer a competitor's product for the purpose of interoperation. DMCA-style laws would make me a felon solely for trying to compete fairly in my chosen market.
I urge you to please reconsider, so that Australia remains competitive in the Information Technology industry, and does not become a victim of the large Copyright interests in the US who are not interested in true and open competition.
Name and address added.
http://www.southern-storm.com.au/
No need to appeal to old P166 boxes for a "won't work example". A top of the line Palm or iPAQ handheld, or a next generation smart mobile phone won't have sufficient CPU capacity to do heavy math. At least your P166 had an FPU. The average PDA doesn't. Heavy math in the SMTP client isn't really a solution either.
Patents come with a very heavy cost. They put all the power to use an idea in the hands of the patent owner, while ignoring society's interest in a vibrant and competitive marketplace. The copyright alternative is a case of "adapt or die". It's brutal, but it works a lot better.
As luck would have it, I saw Spy Kids 3D yesterday. I knew there had to be a reason why I subjected myself to that. And now I know: free 3D glasses for viewing images from Mars!
i.e. ask your local cinema. They probably have a whole box of the things just lying around in a store room.
Never, ever, ever, take control away from the pilot. That's the first rule of air safety. Humans can react to unknown situations in ways that computers cannot.
They may have been under some pressure to book the Baystar and RBC investments as revenue, or some other similar "creative accounting" move, to make the 4th quarter look like a gain rather than a loss. And the finance guys said "No way do I want to share a cell with the Enron guys! I quit!".
Optimizers change the constants in the algorithm running time. They cannot change the algorithm's order.
With the exception of high-performance computing, no one needs a super-optimizing compiler any more. Instead, they need to (re-)learn basic algorithm and data structure theory.
Qt/Embedded is the low-level widget library - essentially Qt ported to embedded Linux. Qtopia is a suite of PDA/SmartPhone applications that build on top of Qt/Embedded. I belive that Motorola is using Qt/Embedded and its own suite of applications on top, not Qtopia.
I visited the "licensing" site a few weeks back, and the whole thing is "fill in this form and we'll get back to you about your payment". Sorry, that's not what they were supposed to do.
Let's hope the judge realises that for competition to occur, the main player cannot levy a fee against its competitors.
The accuracy problem cannot be fixed by voter receipts, since most voters will not know how to verify them. It can only be fixed by ensuring that the votes can be re-counted using some mechanism other than the computer that first recorded them.
Use the computer to help the voter prepare the ballot, print it out, and then have the voter hand carry it to the ballot box.
The computer can keep a running tally, but at the end of the day if the tally does not match a hand count of the box contents, then the ballot box is the only correct representation of the will of the voters.
It is easy to teach the average monkey to keep an eye on the ballot box for tampering, and to hand count the contents. Teaching the average monkey correct computer security skills is impossible, so that source of problems must be factored out.
If they turn up at the door wearing a badge, during a widely publicised door knock appeal, they might get a few bucks. But not if they call me out of the blue claiming to represent an organisation I cannot verify the identity of.
However, the mobile phone argument shows exactly why this is still a bad law. Mobile phones these days are essentially "software plus an antenna". So what happens when we allow people to patent "algorithm X plus an antenna"?
What we get is this: some open source programmer writes algorithm X, and deploys it in a usual fashion. Some patent miscreant then jumps up and says "hey, you're running algorithm X on a laptop with a wireless network card! You're infringing my patent and owe me royalties!".
No, the current "clarifications" are no good. Software patenting must be abolished completely, in all of its forms. If the physical device does not have some unique and novel feature of its own, sans software, then the device should not be patentable. Period.
The ISO is a standards organisation that has consistently "not got it" when it comes to making standards available to the public.
Try Googling for most major standards and you'll get nothing but price lists, despite the fact that their entire organisation's publishing needs could be run off a 486 in a cupboard running a Web server.
I hope we can use this incident to start a wider discussion with ISO and educate them that a public standard that isn't available to the public free of charge kind of defeats the purpose of the exercise.
The referenced article is old (11 Feb 2003), and refers to the patent *application*, not the patent itself. An application is not a patent - just the "inventors" hope that it will be one.
Unless someone can produce an actual granted patent number for this, then it's still "nothing to see, move along" for the time being.
-- Rhys Weatherley, author of DotGNU Portable.NET.
It's a prize, not a wage.
There have also been significant leaps in the technology that is plain old paper currency. e.g. watermarking, plastic bank notes (Australia), holograms, etc.
Would have been nice if they had explored this aspect also. Give me good old-fashioned currency any day.
http://wearables.unisa.edu.au/arquake/
First, this is a patent application, not an actual patent grant. I doubt that the application would last very long in its current form - it's too broad, even by the USPTO's narrow criteria for broadness.
Second, because Microsoft is standardizing this technology through the ECMA, as an eventual lead-in to ISO, they will be in a difficult position if they start demanding royalties or playing RAND games.
They backed off on the Kerberos thing, and they could be made to back off here too - blatantly targetting the only two competitors in the CLR space (Mono and Portable.NET) won't win them any PR points.
Third, most of what is discussed here has precedents in prior art. If Mono and Portable.NET infringe, then so does the JVM, and that's definite prior art.
We perhaps need to organise a bit to lobby on this one, but it isn't the end of the world - yet.
More information on Portable.NET here.