Just because open source and closed source projects can share the same problems (bad design, obscure data formats, lack of documentation) does not mean that open source is not a better strategy.
What would you prefer? That your organisation ran on a closed-source product with all these problems, or an open source one with the same problems? There is a huge difference, because:
1. The simple act of publishing software as open source (especially if it starts like that) involves a wider audience which raises quality because it's simpler for developers to fix problems than to argue with unhappy users. This does not happen with closed source in the same way because the audience is limited to "clients" who actually pay more when the software is worse (so the dynamics work the other way).
2. When other developers can download and run the software (we assume that open source implies "free to use"), they are at least able to highlight the weak areas and propose improvements, or make improvements. This is impossible with closed source, and again the dynamics work the other way, since the more complex and opaque the software, the safer and more lucrative the developers' jobs can be.
3. Perhaps most importantly, the simple act of publishing software as open source is a public declaration of a use case and an invitation to other teams to compete for the same space (the same budget). Competition is a key driver to improvement and open source stimulates this in a way that closed source does not.
Of course it's possible to write open source that is lousy. But overall, mandating "open sourcing of all newly developed software" (except in the rare cases where the software itself gives a firm a business advantage) is a recipe for better quality and lower costs.
The key problem is (apart from the fact that inviting a large consultancy firm into your organisation is like inviting Tom Cruise into your marriage) that closed applications depend on a small skill pool that can be easily turned against you.
For many larger organisations, a straight-forward way to create a competitive market for services is to either open-source major systems, use existing open source applications (which is still difficult), or mandate that any new custom software must be open sourced.
For government departments, especially, this policy would improve quality and cut costs significantly, simply because anyone wishing to offer their skills would have access to the information they need.
I don't think simply submitting stories is enough. A good journalist needs to find stories that interest the readers, that drive up hits, and generate advertising revenue.
Perhaps if people got a share of the ad revenue from the stories they posted, it'd work better.
The patent system, much like software, is the creation of our minds. It's an artificial system of monopolies with only one purpose, to maximise the amount of innovation society produces, through appropriate protection of investment. Copyright is, of course, exactly the same, only different.
Your arguments don't address the actual question, which is much simpler than technical debate about maths, the reality of the universe, and the difference between an idea and a piece of work.
The question is simply: does the patent system stimulate programmers and SMEs to invent, or does it not. It is a question with a black and white answer. Patents are either good for software, or they are bad for it. There are no special cases: any mechanism that produces more software, more cheaply, will do so systematically across all domains.
If the answer is yes, you will find programmers and the CEOs of SMEs in their thousands invading the streets, or at least writing emails, demanding more patent protection.
But, surprisingly perhaps for someone who has graduated to the position of engineer of patents, you find yourself confronted by masses of unhappy, angry, confused programmers and SME CEOs who detest software patents with such a fury that they are willing to sacrifice their time, their money, and years of their lives, in some cases, to oppose wider patentability of software.
Software patents must be stopped, and rolled back, or the software industry will suffer and in some parts of the world, die.
There is no pity in economics - inefficient systems are punished mercilessly, and if the US persists in its mindless pursuit of universal patentability, it will simply arrive at the stage where no-one - not the software industry, not the music industry, not the movie industry - will invest in copyrightable works, because every idea and concept will be owned by a patent engineer.
At which stage the patent engineers of the world can write the content.
I bought a Dana a week ago, as a writing machine. It has:
* B/W landscape screen
* Full-size keyboard, one of the best I've ever used, on any computer
* Standard-sized rechareagble batteries (3 x AA)
* Runs 30 hours on one charge
* Two SD slots
* Infrared
* USB connection for printer
* USB connection for synchronisation, also charges the device
* Wifi
The screen works in direct sunlight, and also in dim light. The only drawback is that it does not fold in half, but in compensation, the device is extraordinarily robust. Almost unbreakable. And you get that lovely instant-on Palm response.
I'll probably get a second smaller Palm to act as a lighter clone, since I can easily sync the data between the two.
Google is admittedly not an operating system in the classic sense, but it is systematically taking over the functionality that users expect their boxes to provide, and it is entirely supported by advertising.
Trying to plug an advertising-driven model into traditional "operating systems" is like trying to glue a Mini-ATX motherboard into a Palm PDA. Some things just don't translate. We have learned to accept Google's ads, because they sit inoccuously in parts of the screen that would be blank otherwise. How can Windows even attempt this?
I don't think Microsoft and Google are competing on the same terms any more, if they ever were. While Microsoft are still selling products that were defined twenty years ago and hit their peak a decade ago, Google is busy reinventing the online world, following its own designs and writing the rules.
Let me give you an example... Office applications. On the one hand, Microsoft is wondering how to provide online access (advertising supported, metered, whatever) to Office. Now, Google are thinking, "in five years' time, people won't want to write documents this way any longer" and they're thinking of how to use the web to create documents, presentations, totally bypassing the Office metaphor (which is ancient, dating to before the days of the IBM PC). The very first microcomputers, running CP/M, ran office applications (WordStar, CalcStar, etc.)
I used to write many documents using Word, then I switched to OpenOffice a few years ago. Today, I edit my documents as text, post them to Wikis, and use text-to-PDF and text-to-HTML conversion tools to produce deliverable output. I don't open OpenOffice any more unless someone sends me a document. The only exception is spreadsheets. I've not yet seen a new online abstraction that replaces spreadsheets, though calculations would be a natural feature to add to wiki systems.
The patent debate has so many tables to eat from, I don't need to toss you crumbs, but entire repasts. Here are some things to think about:
- Can one define new open standards in a world with software patents?
- How are software patents different from business method patents?
- What does it mean to "patent software"? Are such patents not in fact patents on ideas?
- When should government create monopolies as a tool of trade? Should this be done by burocrats and specialists who live off the resulting conflicts?
- Are patents (software and other) a measurement of innovation? If so, are they cause, or effect?
- If patents are a cause of innovation, can this be proven? Does, for instance, the requirement for universities to patent their research result in more innovation, or less innovation? Is there any empircal proof, anywhere, that patents drive innovation? Have we seen this in the IT business?
- If patents are an effect of innovation, how does that work? Can we derive models that show the relationships between innovation, wealth, and evolving forms of ownership?
- Are there other parallels for software patents? E.g. traditional land ownership vs. modern land ownership?
- What is the political orientation of patents? Are they a capitalist, socialist, fascist, or apolitical form of ownership?
- If I fight software patents (which I do) does that make me an anti-property leftwing radical? Or rather a free-market right-wing pro-competition radical?
- What are the links between software patents and globalization? How are software patents used to impose US economic policy abroad?
- How do copyright and patent, two forms of intellectual property, operate in a domain like software where they can both be applied but at different levels? Do authors and inventors really have a choice between the two tools?
- Who really benefits from the patent system? Cui bono?
- What is the end-game, assuming everything is patentable, and he with the most lawyers wins? Is this necessarily a bad scenario? How long will it last for?
- Have software patents any precursors in history? Is this an old story we're doomed to repeat?
Each of these is enough for a doctoral thesis. Please comment...:-)
The problem is not that there are 'good' and 'bad' software patents, even if such a distinction can be made (since clearly it's a relative judgement).
The problem is that there is no mechanism that can filter the very damaging software patents from the less-damaging ones. At least, as far as experience shows in the USA and Europe, any legal definition that allows some software patents can be systematically broadened to include them all.
The only barrier to the really damaging software patents - the ones that claim ownership of an entire software ecology - is a blanket ban on the patenting of software, period. In Europe this is called the "subject matter" criteria, which is the key barrier to software patents in Europe. Prior art, triviality, and industrial application (the other criteria) are hackable to mean anything one likes. Lawyers have also been hacking the subject matter, but it's harder, since the European Patent Convention clearly does not allow patents on computer programs. (The hack usually starts by saying, "ah, but we're not patenting the program, just the underlying methods...")
The Blackboard patent looks truly obvious, but that's not enough of an argument to invalidate it. One needs to prove it was unobvious when it was filed and that your prior art can be documented to before that date as well. I've seen in patent suits in Europe that this can be very difficult, even for well-funded firms. Once granted, a relevant patent has an even chance of surviving, no matter what you throw at it. Ask Microsoft... they've been at the sharp end often enough.
Eventually, we need to see a movement to ban the patenting of software in the USA, much like this movement already exists in Europe. The alternative is to see the software ecology get more and more subverted, to the point where small-to-medium firms cannot innovate any longer, which is a bad place to be in an information economy.
To those who say, "if it's a bad patent, fight it in court", please understand that being at the receiving end of such legal instruments is tantamount to being at the end of a large gun. Small firms cannot afford lawsuits, even frivoulous ones, and it's incredible that the USPTO should have turned into an accomplice and tool of such legalized extortions.
Electronic voting machines with no paper trail are an insult to democracy. That they come with switches to bypass even the dubious "safeguards" provided is hardly a surprise.
- 8"x5" screen area (1024x800) - high-contrast b/w indoor/outdoor screen - 30 hour battery life - runs on 4 AA hot swappable batteries plus internal battery - removable solid state storage - an open OS made for mobile work, or Linux - full size keyboard, or BlueTooth foldable keyboard - USB, WiFi, bluetooth, and SIM - weight under 1lb - thickness under 0.5" - price around $250
It worked so well in Italy, for Berlusconi. If you break the law, just change the law, preferrably retroactively. You can stay out of jail for a long time like this.
Giving JavaScript the power to do random network accesses may make AJAX possible, but code running in my browser has no business accessing my local intranet. For that matter, I'm uncomfortable with JavaScript applications 'phoning home' without my knowledge.
So, the fix is to treat all attempts by JavaScript in a browser as 'hostile until proven otherwise', and to ask for user confirmation when such attempts happen. Put a firewall around the browser and treat any code running in it as dangerous by default.
I predict 2 weeks before there's a FireFox update for this, and 2 years before MSIE fixes the problem.
No-one comes here for the news! Not only is it always a day or two late, we often recycle it just for fun, and then make 'slashbacks' on it one more time just to annoy the hell out of people like you.
People come here for the comments. Like this comment.
Actually there's a story about this comment. A guy sold me a whole pack of comments, telling me they were cool and the latest fashion. But when I took them home they started making all kinds of noise, and annoying the neighbours. So I tried to flush one down the toilet but it just got stuck and the toilet overflowed, so I had a living room full of noisy, wet, and smelly comments, which really annoyed the neighbours. I tried burning the comments in a barbeque but they didn't really catch, but started smoking, so I found myself with a whole house full of smoking, smelly, wet, noisy comments. Luckily, some of my friends had mod points, so we caught the comments and modded them down to -1 insane, which made them a lot madder, but at least no-one could see them any more. I was left with a single comment, slightly used, but after I dried it in the microwave and it passed the lameness filters, I posted it here.
Oh hang on, nowhere in those principles does it mention anything about giving competitors open access to Windows systems. Maybe this one:
"Microsoft is committed to designing and licensing Windows (and all the parts of the Windows platform) on terms that create and preserve opportunities for application developers and Web site creators to build innovative products on the Windows platform -- including products that directly compete with Microsoft's own products."
Translation: We love products that compete with us, so long as they run on Windows, because it just means you're doing the R&D work for us. Hey, that's how we got to be so large, by taking ideas from other people, so why stop now?
Microsoft make a lousy OS, but nice applications. Why are they not selling proprietary software on Linux? They could have killed OpenOffice and ODF years ago if there had been a nice, decently-priced MSOffice for Linux.
Of course people will run open source on Windows, but that will bring Microsoft no revenue and no lockin, since all open source products, almost by definition, cannot be locked down to a single platform. Even if the code can't be ported it'll be rewritten.
But I suspect the real reason for this statement is that corporate buyers are increasingly specifying an open source 'stack' as part of their purchasing reqirements. The operating system must be able to run (e.g.) the 'Apache stack' (whatever that means), so there is pressure coming from the market for such a statement.
Still, it's a half-assed approach that seems to be lacking in any kind of long-term strategy.
Burnout is a very commom symptom in all kinds of volunteer organisations, open source being one of the ones see more about on Slashdot.
The causes are quite straight-forward. When we do something for other people, we need some kind of reward. It can come in many forms - appreciation, money, reputation, status. The best rewards change over time and are a good mix of all these.
Open source projects consume people, with demands on their time, social life, professional capacity. The only rewards tend to be reputation. Depending on the invidual's personal life and other demands (family, job), they can sustain a heavy open source project for a few years, and as many as five or six. At some point, it either becomes a profession (with a wage) or a problem.
All volunteer organisations have this problem and it's exacerbated by peer pressure. If everyone else is spending 80 hours a week hacking, then it seems normal to spend 81. At some points, open source projects can seem like cults, and unintentionally adopt many cult techniques to keep people involved, whatever the personal cost.
(Those techniques include isolation from family, use of secret languages, separation from real time and real life, etc. I don't *think* any OS projects do this on purpose, though I have my secret doubts about the FSF. Just kidding, Richard!)
I've seen burnout cases so severe the persons involved were literally sick, unable to function normally any more, and needing psychiatric help. In other cases it's project-specific. I've had this on open source projects, where after five years I've just abandoned the software, telling the users, "sorry, it's not working any more".
Each person has different needs, but eventually if we don't get what we need, we get sick. Young people are especially vulnerable because they don't understand their own needs very well and neglect them easily.
The upside is that burnout is easily cured by a change of scene and some tangible rewards. Some people even come back to projects they've abandoned, but it can be very difficult. A good dose of selfishness ("what do I need in order to feel happy NOW") is always useful, and a good self-protection measure in many environments, open source groups included.
Art is, at the very least, the use of skill and imagination in the creation of objects.
When one writes a program that produces pictures, the software may itself be art, but the pictures it produces are not.
I'd go further and say that 'good art' also requires the input of emotion, and the stronger the emotion, and the more the viewer feels this emotion, the better the art in many cases. We engineers also produce objects with skill and imagination, but we are not artists.
Snakes, spiders, water, heights are genetically-enabled fears that all primates share if they are imprinted. The mechanism has been demonstrated on monkeys and chimpanzees. If you show a young chimpanzee a snake for the first time, and show him other chimpanzees expressing fear, the youngster develops a fear of snakes. If you show him chimpanzees ignoring the snake, he does not. We know it's a genetic function because the same does not happen with a flower, a chair, etc.
It makes sense because there's no point being afraid of harmless snakes, safe water, etc.
But some fears are so deep they don't need activation. One of these is the fear of fanged predators in the night. It so happens (I read about this many years ago and can't find the reference) that there was at least one population of sabre-toothed tigers that evolved specifically to hunt proto-human primates, and it's quite possible that this group (the survivors, at least) were an ancestral population. IIrc there was a mountain of ape skulls in the tiger's cave, each showing marks where the teeth wrapped around the whole head as the tiger dragged off its victim.
Vampires are probably a modern expression of this ancient terror.
As for snakes forcing us to develop 3D vision? That's just junk science. We're evolved from fruit-eating primates and such animals develop colour vision to detect fruit, and 3D vision because swinging through trees without a depth of field is very quickly selected against.
AMD have taken a large part of the market that Itanium was meant to take, the 64-bit multicore server market. It's a market that pays for commodity performance above all, and AMD seem to have become the dominant CPU supplier for high-end X86 systems like the HP ProLiant DL585. These are the kinds of server that run Wall Street.
Yes, the Democrats have realised, just as Rheinhold predicted all those years ago, that lots of people will have mobile phones in 2008!
It's stunning, and I expect the use of mobile phones will dramatically change the future of elections! For example, to raise money, people won't call fixed lines any more, but - get this! - call donors on their mobile phone!!
The opportunities are limitless... you could actually send people text messages to remind them to vote. You could... like... get them to download your ads, if you called them something cool like "podcasts"...
This kind of amazing insight is why the Democrats will definitely win the next elections, unless of course the Republicans simply start a new war, deport some gay abortion doctors to Guantanamo Bay for immigration violations, and install yet more unverifiable voting machines in all the swing states.
Democrats, please! If you want to win in 2008, listen to your young, radical wing. Impeach Bush. Reform Congress, starting by kicking out the corrupt Democrat congressmen who have sold out their constituents. Get people tuned into the real problems in the country... the failed war on drugs, the corruption of the ruling elite, the systematic theft of the nation's wealth by the military-industrial complex, the acts of aggression on foreign states, the institution of a spy state, the use of torture on people held without trial or representation.
Get a million people into the streets, and do this using text messages, of course, like people's revolutions have done all over the world for the last ten years. Get organised using wikis, email lists, and real grass roots movements. Forget the hype, and please, please, please don't read any more Rheinhold.
But, since you Democrat leaders seem to be part of the same machine that elected Bush, I guess I'm spitting into the wind by saying this.
Over 450 people have been to space, and 150 have walked in space, but did you know that no-one has ever eaten hot chilis in space?!!
Yes, for only a few dollars more you can be the first* to:
- Sing "I did it my way" while orbiting the equator ($15m)
- Take part in a Rheingold-approved smart mob from 150m up! ($16.5m)
- Experience the dark side of the moon ($50m)
- Dig for diamonds and gold on the surface of the moon ($350m)**
- Dare to try "extreme reentry", just you and a suit and a chute ($5m)
- Do the 'No HAL!' space dance ($30m)
- Learn to patch an inflatable space station using chewing gum and frozen urine ($22.5m)
- Take guitar lessons in space ($32m)
- Conceive your next baby in space ($40m for two)
* Alien visitations not included. ** Precious items recovered from the lunar surface are the property of the tour company.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because open source and closed source projects can share the same problems (bad design, obscure data formats, lack of documentation) does not mean that open source is not a better strategy.
What would you prefer? That your organisation ran on a closed-source product with all these problems, or an open source one with the same problems? There is a huge difference, because:
1. The simple act of publishing software as open source (especially if it starts like that) involves a wider audience which raises quality because it's simpler for developers to fix problems than to argue with unhappy users. This does not happen with closed source in the same way because the audience is limited to "clients" who actually pay more when the software is worse (so the dynamics work the other way).
2. When other developers can download and run the software (we assume that open source implies "free to use"), they are at least able to highlight the weak areas and propose improvements, or make improvements. This is impossible with closed source, and again the dynamics work the other way, since the more complex and opaque the software, the safer and more lucrative the developers' jobs can be.
3. Perhaps most importantly, the simple act of publishing software as open source is a public declaration of a use case and an invitation to other teams to compete for the same space (the same budget). Competition is a key driver to improvement and open source stimulates this in a way that closed source does not.
Of course it's possible to write open source that is lousy. But overall, mandating "open sourcing of all newly developed software" (except in the rare cases where the software itself gives a firm a business advantage) is a recipe for better quality and lower costs.
The key problem is (apart from the fact that inviting a large consultancy firm into your organisation is like inviting Tom Cruise into your marriage) that closed applications depend on a small skill pool that can be easily turned against you.
For many larger organisations, a straight-forward way to create a competitive market for services is to either open-source major systems, use existing open source applications (which is still difficult), or mandate that any new custom software must be open sourced.
For government departments, especially, this policy would improve quality and cut costs significantly, simply because anyone wishing to offer their skills would have access to the information they need.
Is this the start of a new type of journalism?
I don't think simply submitting stories is enough. A good journalist needs to find stories that interest the readers, that drive up hits, and generate advertising revenue.
Perhaps if people got a share of the ad revenue from the stories they posted, it'd work better.
Dear anonymous patent engineer,
The patent system, much like software, is the creation of our minds. It's an artificial system of monopolies with only one purpose, to maximise the amount of innovation society produces, through appropriate protection of investment. Copyright is, of course, exactly the same, only different.
Your arguments don't address the actual question, which is much simpler than technical debate about maths, the reality of the universe, and the difference between an idea and a piece of work.
The question is simply: does the patent system stimulate programmers and SMEs to invent, or does it not. It is a question with a black and white answer. Patents are either good for software, or they are bad for it. There are no special cases: any mechanism that produces more software, more cheaply, will do so systematically across all domains.
If the answer is yes, you will find programmers and the CEOs of SMEs in their thousands invading the streets, or at least writing emails, demanding more patent protection.
But, surprisingly perhaps for someone who has graduated to the position of engineer of patents, you find yourself confronted by masses of unhappy, angry, confused programmers and SME CEOs who detest software patents with such a fury that they are willing to sacrifice their time, their money, and years of their lives, in some cases, to oppose wider patentability of software.
Software patents must be stopped, and rolled back, or the software industry will suffer and in some parts of the world, die.
There is no pity in economics - inefficient systems are punished mercilessly, and if the US persists in its mindless pursuit of universal patentability, it will simply arrive at the stage where no-one - not the software industry, not the music industry, not the movie industry - will invest in copyrightable works, because every idea and concept will be owned by a patent engineer.
At which stage the patent engineers of the world can write the content.
I bought a Dana a week ago, as a writing machine. It has:
* B/W landscape screen
* Full-size keyboard, one of the best I've ever used, on any computer
* Standard-sized rechareagble batteries (3 x AA)
* Runs 30 hours on one charge
* Two SD slots
* Infrared
* USB connection for printer
* USB connection for synchronisation, also charges the device
* Wifi
The screen works in direct sunlight, and also in dim light. The only drawback is that it does not fold in half, but in compensation, the device is extraordinarily robust. Almost unbreakable. And you get that lovely instant-on Palm response.
I'll probably get a second smaller Palm to act as a lighter clone, since I can easily sync the data between the two.
:-(
... (counts)... over a whole day now!
I can't believe it. And I've been campaigning for
CAPSoff. Changing the world. One lousy key at a time.
Clearly we need to clean up a lot of keyboard junk. CAPS LOCK is just the start. Who knows where we'll finish?
The CAPSoff blog.
That is... very funny. Brilliant, even.
Google is admittedly not an operating system in the classic sense, but it is systematically taking over the functionality that users expect their boxes to provide, and it is entirely supported by advertising.
Trying to plug an advertising-driven model into traditional "operating systems" is like trying to glue a Mini-ATX motherboard into a Palm PDA. Some things just don't translate. We have learned to accept Google's ads, because they sit inoccuously in parts of the screen that would be blank otherwise. How can Windows even attempt this?
I don't think Microsoft and Google are competing on the same terms any more, if they ever were. While Microsoft are still selling products that were defined twenty years ago and hit their peak a decade ago, Google is busy reinventing the online world, following its own designs and writing the rules.
Let me give you an example... Office applications. On the one hand, Microsoft is wondering how to provide online access (advertising supported, metered, whatever) to Office. Now, Google are thinking, "in five years' time, people won't want to write documents this way any longer" and they're thinking of how to use the web to create documents, presentations, totally bypassing the Office metaphor (which is ancient, dating to before the days of the IBM PC). The very first microcomputers, running CP/M, ran office applications (WordStar, CalcStar, etc.)
I used to write many documents using Word, then I switched to OpenOffice a few years ago. Today, I edit my documents as text, post them to Wikis, and use text-to-PDF and text-to-HTML conversion tools to produce deliverable output. I don't open OpenOffice any more unless someone sends me a document. The only exception is spreadsheets. I've not yet seen a new online abstraction that replaces spreadsheets, though calculations would be a natural feature to add to wiki systems.
Google gets this, I think.
The patent debate has so many tables to eat from, I don't need to toss you crumbs, but entire repasts. Here are some things to think about:
:-)
- Can one define new open standards in a world with software patents?
- How are software patents different from business method patents?
- What does it mean to "patent software"? Are such patents not in fact patents on ideas?
- When should government create monopolies as a tool of trade? Should this be done by burocrats and specialists who live off the resulting conflicts?
- Are patents (software and other) a measurement of innovation? If so, are they cause, or effect?
- If patents are a cause of innovation, can this be proven? Does, for instance, the requirement for universities to patent their research result in more innovation, or less innovation? Is there any empircal proof, anywhere, that patents drive innovation? Have we seen this in the IT business?
- If patents are an effect of innovation, how does that work? Can we derive models that show the relationships between innovation, wealth, and evolving forms of ownership?
- Are there other parallels for software patents? E.g. traditional land ownership vs. modern land ownership?
- What is the political orientation of patents? Are they a capitalist, socialist, fascist, or apolitical form of ownership?
- If I fight software patents (which I do) does that make me an anti-property leftwing radical? Or rather a free-market right-wing pro-competition radical?
- What are the links between software patents and globalization? How are software patents used to impose US economic policy abroad?
- How do copyright and patent, two forms of intellectual property, operate in a domain like software where they can both be applied but at different levels? Do authors and inventors really have a choice between the two tools?
- Who really benefits from the patent system? Cui bono?
- What is the end-game, assuming everything is patentable, and he with the most lawyers wins? Is this necessarily a bad scenario? How long will it last for?
- Have software patents any precursors in history? Is this an old story we're doomed to repeat?
Each of these is enough for a doctoral thesis. Please comment...
The problem is not that there are 'good' and 'bad' software patents, even if such a distinction can be made (since clearly it's a relative judgement).
The problem is that there is no mechanism that can filter the very damaging software patents from the less-damaging ones. At least, as far as experience shows in the USA and Europe, any legal definition that allows some software patents can be systematically broadened to include them all.
The only barrier to the really damaging software patents - the ones that claim ownership of an entire software ecology - is a blanket ban on the patenting of software, period. In Europe this is called the "subject matter" criteria, which is the key barrier to software patents in Europe. Prior art, triviality, and industrial application (the other criteria) are hackable to mean anything one likes. Lawyers have also been hacking the subject matter, but it's harder, since the European Patent Convention clearly does not allow patents on computer programs. (The hack usually starts by saying, "ah, but we're not patenting the program, just the underlying methods...")
The Blackboard patent looks truly obvious, but that's not enough of an argument to invalidate it. One needs to prove it was unobvious when it was filed and that your prior art can be documented to before that date as well. I've seen in patent suits in Europe that this can be very difficult, even for well-funded firms. Once granted, a relevant patent has an even chance of surviving, no matter what you throw at it. Ask Microsoft... they've been at the sharp end often enough.
Eventually, we need to see a movement to ban the patenting of software in the USA, much like this movement already exists in Europe. The alternative is to see the software ecology get more and more subverted, to the point where small-to-medium firms cannot innovate any longer, which is a bad place to be in an information economy.
To those who say, "if it's a bad patent, fight it in court", please understand that being at the receiving end of such legal instruments is tantamount to being at the end of a large gun. Small firms cannot afford lawsuits, even frivoulous ones, and it's incredible that the USPTO should have turned into an accomplice and tool of such legalized extortions.
Who stands up for the small-to-medium IT firms?
Electronic voting machines with no paper trail are an insult to democracy. That they come with switches to bypass even the dubious "safeguards" provided is hardly a surprise.
My ideal notebook:
- 8"x5" screen area (1024x800)
- high-contrast b/w indoor/outdoor screen
- 30 hour battery life
- runs on 4 AA hot swappable batteries plus internal battery
- removable solid state storage
- an open OS made for mobile work, or Linux
- full size keyboard, or BlueTooth foldable keyboard
- USB, WiFi, bluetooth, and SIM
- weight under 1lb
- thickness under 0.5"
- price around $250
It worked so well in Italy, for Berlusconi. If you break the law, just change the law, preferrably retroactively. You can stay out of jail for a long time like this.
Giving JavaScript the power to do random network accesses may make AJAX possible, but code running in my browser has no business accessing my local intranet. For that matter, I'm uncomfortable with JavaScript applications 'phoning home' without my knowledge.
So, the fix is to treat all attempts by JavaScript in a browser as 'hostile until proven otherwise', and to ask for user confirmation when such attempts happen. Put a firewall around the browser and treat any code running in it as dangerous by default.
I predict 2 weeks before there's a FireFox update for this, and 2 years before MSIE fixes the problem.
No-one comes here for the news! Not only is it always a day or two late, we often recycle it just for fun, and then make 'slashbacks' on it one more time just to annoy the hell out of people like you.
People come here for the comments. Like this comment.
Actually there's a story about this comment. A guy sold me a whole pack of comments, telling me they were cool and the latest fashion. But when I took them home they started making all kinds of noise, and annoying the neighbours. So I tried to flush one down the toilet but it just got stuck and the toilet overflowed, so I had a living room full of noisy, wet, and smelly comments, which really annoyed the neighbours. I tried burning the comments in a barbeque but they didn't really catch, but started smoking, so I found myself with a whole house full of smoking, smelly, wet, noisy comments. Luckily, some of my friends had mod points, so we caught the comments and modded them down to -1 insane, which made them a lot madder, but at least no-one could see them any more. I was left with a single comment, slightly used, but after I dried it in the microwave and it passed the lameness filters, I posted it here.
There are no old stories, only old comments.
So how does this fit with Microsoft's 12 Windows Principles?
Oh hang on, nowhere in those principles does it mention anything about giving competitors open access to Windows systems. Maybe this one:
"Microsoft is committed to designing and licensing Windows (and all the parts of the Windows platform) on terms that create and preserve opportunities for application developers and Web site creators to build innovative products on the Windows platform -- including products that directly compete with Microsoft's own products."
Translation: We love products that compete with us, so long as they run on Windows, because it just means you're doing the R&D work for us. Hey, that's how we got to be so large, by taking ideas from other people, so why stop now?
Microsoft make a lousy OS, but nice applications. Why are they not selling proprietary software on Linux? They could have killed OpenOffice and ODF years ago if there had been a nice, decently-priced MSOffice for Linux.
Of course people will run open source on Windows, but that will bring Microsoft no revenue and no lockin, since all open source products, almost by definition, cannot be locked down to a single platform. Even if the code can't be ported it'll be rewritten.
But I suspect the real reason for this statement is that corporate buyers are increasingly specifying an open source 'stack' as part of their purchasing reqirements. The operating system must be able to run (e.g.) the 'Apache stack' (whatever that means), so there is pressure coming from the market for such a statement.
Still, it's a half-assed approach that seems to be lacking in any kind of long-term strategy.
Burnout is a very commom symptom in all kinds of volunteer organisations, open source being one of the ones see more about on Slashdot.
The causes are quite straight-forward. When we do something for other people, we need some kind of reward. It can come in many forms - appreciation, money, reputation, status. The best rewards change over time and are a good mix of all these.
Open source projects consume people, with demands on their time, social life, professional capacity. The only rewards tend to be reputation. Depending on the invidual's personal life and other demands (family, job), they can sustain a heavy open source project for a few years, and as many as five or six. At some point, it either becomes a profession (with a wage) or a problem.
All volunteer organisations have this problem and it's exacerbated by peer pressure. If everyone else is spending 80 hours a week hacking, then it seems normal to spend 81. At some points, open source projects can seem like cults, and unintentionally adopt many cult techniques to keep people involved, whatever the personal cost.
(Those techniques include isolation from family, use of secret languages, separation from real time and real life, etc. I don't *think* any OS projects do this on purpose, though I have my secret doubts about the FSF. Just kidding, Richard!)
I've seen burnout cases so severe the persons involved were literally sick, unable to function normally any more, and needing psychiatric help. In other cases it's project-specific. I've had this on open source projects, where after five years I've just abandoned the software, telling the users, "sorry, it's not working any more".
Each person has different needs, but eventually if we don't get what we need, we get sick. Young people are especially vulnerable because they don't understand their own needs very well and neglect them easily.
The upside is that burnout is easily cured by a change of scene and some tangible rewards. Some people even come back to projects they've abandoned, but it can be very difficult. A good dose of selfishness ("what do I need in order to feel happy NOW") is always useful, and a good self-protection measure in many environments, open source groups included.
Art is, at the very least, the use of skill and imagination in the creation of objects.
When one writes a program that produces pictures, the software may itself be art, but the pictures it produces are not.
I'd go further and say that 'good art' also requires the input of emotion, and the stronger the emotion, and the more the viewer feels this emotion, the better the art in many cases. We engineers also produce objects with skill and imagination, but we are not artists.
Snakes, spiders, water, heights are genetically-enabled fears that all primates share if they are imprinted. The mechanism has been demonstrated on monkeys and chimpanzees. If you show a young chimpanzee a snake for the first time, and show him other chimpanzees expressing fear, the youngster develops a fear of snakes. If you show him chimpanzees ignoring the snake, he does not. We know it's a genetic function because the same does not happen with a flower, a chair, etc.
It makes sense because there's no point being afraid of harmless snakes, safe water, etc.
But some fears are so deep they don't need activation. One of these is the fear of fanged predators in the night. It so happens (I read about this many years ago and can't find the reference) that there was at least one population of sabre-toothed tigers that evolved specifically to hunt proto-human primates, and it's quite possible that this group (the survivors, at least) were an ancestral population. IIrc there was a mountain of ape skulls in the tiger's cave, each showing marks where the teeth wrapped around the whole head as the tiger dragged off its victim.
Vampires are probably a modern expression of this ancient terror.
As for snakes forcing us to develop 3D vision? That's just junk science. We're evolved from fruit-eating primates and such animals develop colour vision to detect fruit, and 3D vision because swinging through trees without a depth of field is very quickly selected against.
Uhm, Dell started shipping Opterons in May, precisely because high-end users were demanding them, and buying their servers from HP.
AMD have taken a large part of the market that Itanium was meant to take, the 64-bit multicore server market. It's a market that pays for commodity performance above all, and AMD seem to have become the dominant CPU supplier for high-end X86 systems like the HP ProLiant DL585. These are the kinds of server that run Wall Street.
Yes, the Democrats have realised, just as Rheinhold predicted all those years ago, that lots of people will have mobile phones in 2008!
It's stunning, and I expect the use of mobile phones will dramatically change the future of elections! For example, to raise money, people won't call fixed lines any more, but - get this! - call donors on their mobile phone!!
The opportunities are limitless... you could actually send people text messages to remind them to vote. You could... like... get them to download your ads, if you called them something cool like "podcasts"...
This kind of amazing insight is why the Democrats will definitely win the next elections, unless of course the Republicans simply start a new war, deport some gay abortion doctors to Guantanamo Bay for immigration violations, and install yet more unverifiable voting machines in all the swing states.
Democrats, please! If you want to win in 2008, listen to your young, radical wing. Impeach Bush. Reform Congress, starting by kicking out the corrupt Democrat congressmen who have sold out their constituents. Get people tuned into the real problems in the country... the failed war on drugs, the corruption of the ruling elite, the systematic theft of the nation's wealth by the military-industrial complex, the acts of aggression on foreign states, the institution of a spy state, the use of torture on people held without trial or representation.
Get a million people into the streets, and do this using text messages, of course, like people's revolutions have done all over the world for the last ten years. Get organised using wikis, email lists, and real grass roots movements. Forget the hype, and please, please, please don't read any more Rheinhold.
But, since you Democrat leaders seem to be part of the same machine that elected Bush, I guess I'm spitting into the wind by saying this.
Over 450 people have been to space, and 150 have walked in space, but did you know that no-one has ever eaten hot chilis in space?!!
Yes, for only a few dollars more you can be the first* to:
- Sing "I did it my way" while orbiting the equator ($15m)
- Take part in a Rheingold-approved smart mob from 150m up! ($16.5m)
- Experience the dark side of the moon ($50m)
- Dig for diamonds and gold on the surface of the moon ($350m)**
- Dare to try "extreme reentry", just you and a suit and a chute ($5m)
- Do the 'No HAL!' space dance ($30m)
- Learn to patch an inflatable space station using chewing gum and frozen urine ($22.5m)
- Take guitar lessons in space ($32m)
- Conceive your next baby in space ($40m for two)
* Alien visitations not included.
** Precious items recovered from the lunar surface are the property of the tour company.