Netscape has a lot of problems, especially the fact that it crashes so much. No browser should crash just from getting a bad tag.
HOWEVER I think IE has some big-time problems, too. These affect web developers more than end users because developers usually test their pages with IE so the users don't see these gotchas. The big one is that IE makes decisions on it's own about what it thinks you mean rather than just doing what you tell it to.
For example, if you use text/plain encoding, and then follow it with some HTML, IE will ignore your encoding directive and process the HTML anyway. A page with text/plain encoding can come out as plain text under Netscape (as it should) and incorrectly as HTML on IE.
There are any number of examples of this sort of behavior - and it really sucks because as a developer you just cannot count on IE following the spec - like so many Microsoft products it tries to do too much rather than the right thing.
Until there are significant new HTML standards that browsers need to be upgraded for
I agree that browsers are turning into (or are already shovelware...
BUT
Some of the important underlying technologies like XML are in fact developing quite rapidly, so these frequent upgrades are important. The issue is getting browser developers to exercise some sort of restraint as to the feature list.
About a year ago I bought a Chembook 7000C - I think it's a rebadged Acer 8400. It cost me $2K. It has 128 MB RAM, a 8 gig hard disk, 15" screen, and a 400 MHz Deceleron, and the ATI LT Pro video. It's totally modular - you can swap out everything. What I really liked about it is that I was able to get it without ANY OS - not easy to do for a laptop, and saved me $100. It's got a touchpad which is ok I guess - there aren't any laptop pointing devices that I like. More of a problem is the lack of a third mouse button. Somebody should write a utility to convert the windows button to a third mouse button.
Since I do a lot of numerical work I love the separate numerical keypad. Few laptops have these.
The only problem I had with it is that the BIOS is a little weird - it seems to INSIST on having a DOS partition before it will boot. Once I created a small one I was able to use LILO, and everything else has worked out great. Both the video and sound are supported, and I love the huge screen - it is a REAL desktop replacement.
Given the size of this beast, it isn't light - maybe 9 lbs. and battery life is about 2.5 hrs. But that isn't the point for me - I am not a road warrior.
Next on my agenda is wireless networking so I can hack away in my leather lazy boy without running cat 5 through the living room - someething that would get my wife very PO'ed.
People may have good (technical) reasons to prefer using FreeBSD for a testbed like this. I know some Linux zealots may find this amazing, but it's true.
Perhaps, but given the license that this system comes with, it is incompatable with a GPL'ed system like Linux.
How many firearms related crimes do you think occure in the UK?
Shot, knifed or beaten, you are still dead.
Suicides by gun are rare in England, however the actual suicide rate in England is essentially the same as in the US where most suicides are by gun. Switzerland has the highest gun ownership per capita in the world, but one of the lowest murder rates.
Crime rates have nothing to do with gun ownership.
I think that this article exposes some of the real differences between what is happening in various nations as a response to the internet.
In the US we have legislation like the Electronic Communications and Privacy Act which places clear restrictions on tapping private data transnissions in the US. There have already been some punative lawsuits that have reuluted in large court settlements under this act. We also have arguments about just installing the ABILITY to tap communications in various transmittal devices, and a wide use of relatively secure cryptography.
In countries where basic human rights seem to never have been established we have the banning all encryption, and requirements that all transmissions be recorded, PERIOD.
DVD, Echelon, DCMA, etc, etc, etc... So many problem you need to solve.
Haven't you noticed the many and lengthy discussions of ALL aspects of this issue on Slashdot, be they in the US or elsewhere?
How many stories have we had here regarding the US aspects of DVD encryption? How can you pretend that this is not being addressed on slashdot? Ditto Echelon and DCMA.
The selective view you expose is amazing. The worst abuse regarding DVD decryption occurred in Norway with the arrest and interrogation of Mr.s Johnassen. The DCMA is the result of efforts to bring the US copyright system into parity with the rest of the world, particulary at the behest of Europeans and the WTO. Echelon not a solely US endeavor; several European nations INCLUDING your Britain are participating.
Issues of government intrusion aided by technology are universal, and have been discussed here no matter where they have been occurring.
Claims that US participants are ignoring these problems in the US in this forum are so utterly without basis in fact serves only to betray a myopic prejudice against Americans.
The fact is that these issues are universal, and need to be discussed no matter where they occur.
Apple has been even more proprietary than anybody else.
More proprietary than Microsoft? I don't THINK so. What does Microsoft have to compare with Darwin?
but they have released no specs on their G4 processor.
Nonsense. Apple doesn't even MAKE a G4 processor. That's a Motorola product, from which the specs are quite easy to get.
Heaven forbid that somebody steal their designs or _GASP!_ run a different OS succesfully on their beloved chip.
Whine all you want, but the web page says otherwise. Apple has been supporting OS's other than the standard for several years now; the first was AU/X, then there was mklinux, and now various free linux distros.
Think of all the money Apple would use if people who want the fastest system were not burdned with the kludgy OS9.
I don't know what you are trying to say here, but the fact of the matter is that there are several OS's other than Mac OS 9 that run on a Mac. These include OS X server and various linux flavors. Maybe you don't want to believe it, but thems the facts.
I think it's great that the US can offer so many good jobs to highly trained people - but I wonder if the importation of these folks has a harmful effect on the US educational system.
Clearly there is a shortfall of technically trained people in IT in the US. But rather than addressing the problem by increasing funding and wages in the US to attract its own citizens to these jobs, we have the importation of citizens of other countries to the US. The result is increasing demand for sound technical education abroad, and a decreased demand relative to the needs of the relevant indigenous economies..
Long term this must have deleterious affects on the US educational system, and ultimately the US economy. It may also do little good for the countries losing their best to emigration to the US..
Give up on pointers -- they're an archaic holdover from assembler.
Nonsense. Pointers are crucial to any serious language, including Perl. Without use of pointers (aka references) in Perl you cannot even write efficient subroutines.
A state college is a public trust, paid for by the public and managed for them by the state.
Sure, and if I were a taxpayer supporting Clemson I would be very annoyed to find that my money was going to support internet use for non-academic purposes such as making free long-distance phone calls.
If corporations actually controlled government. you would NOT see capital gains taxes, OSHA, Unions, Social Security Payroll Taxes, the EPA, the Taft-Hartley and Sherman anti-trust acts, the DOJ action against Microsoft, EOE acts, Worker's Comp, Unemployment Insurance, child labor laws, age discrimination laws, and any of a million other encumberances on the behaviour of corporations that protect citizens against corporations.
And who pays for the networks? The students, through tuition and taxes.
According to the Clemson web site, Clemson is a state supported land grant university. This means a LARGE part of the university's funds come from taxes on the residents of the state of South Carolina. This subsidy is made in order to keep tuition costs down, presumably because educated students are an asset to the state as a whole. It also means that the university regents have some responsibility to the state government to insure that these tax dollars are being spent for the intended purpose, that is the education of the students.
It also means that the taxpayers of the state of South Carolina own this network. NOT the students.
Now if I were a resident of the state of South Carolina I would have to question the use of my tax dollars for any non-academic pursuits, including providing subsidized internet access where any significant fraction of such access is being used for non-academic purposes.
Where Clemson is losing out here as far as I am concerned is that they are not cracking down on ALL non-academic use of thier internet bandwidth.
In this context, I think the students certainly have a right to have a say on the use of this network as far as it relates to their education. Any educator will tell you that the student is as responsible for the quality of his education as the teacher.
The nanosecond the student starts complaining that they are not being allowed to use this network for non-academic pursuits (such as making free long distance phone calls) they lose. The rights of the student at Clemson do not include tax subsidized internet access for non-academic pursuits.
Yes but if the university receives taxpayer dollars, it is a public institution and, hence, their network belongs to the people.
Said people being the taxpayers. Clemson AFAIK is a state supported land grant university. Its administrators are probably state appointed, and have as part of their responsibility the duty to insure state (taypayer) dollars are being spent for educational purposes in an efficient manner.
If I was a taxpayer in South Carolina I would take a pretty dim view of the idea that the network my tax dollars are subsidizing is being used largely for non-educational activities like moving around cd rips and providing free long distance service.
so forcing people to pay for a service that they can get for free by censoring websites is constitutional? Somehow I seriously doubt that.
Somehow I seriously doubt that you have ever read any part of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
The First Amendment starts "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of...."
This means Congress cannot make a law limiting the freedom of speech. Every private enterprise is free to do as they deem fit.
It doesn't mean I have to run your letter in my newspaper - I am free to censor or exert any control over it's contents as I deem fit.
Nowhere does it say that the Chancellors of Clemson University or anyone else has to let someone use it's facilities to enable a business that is in competition with it's own economic interests.
If all you are going to do is patent something to establish prior art, you are wasting your time and money. Other fields have long established journals for just this purpose. Some of these journals even allow anonymous publication so that if a company decides to publish to get something in the prior art they don't reveal to their competitors who is developing the technology.
There is no need to re-invent the wheel. Other technology areas have been dealing with patent law for up to 300 years, and have well established methods for handling certain problems.
If there is a concept which is unexpressible in another language, I would like to see it.
Expressibility is not strong enough. You can express quantum chromodynamics in English, but you sure as shit can't use English to solve problems in quantum chromodynamics.
I have heard similar similar comments that the Shapir-Whorf hypothesis has fallen into disfavor.
HOWEVER, my own experience is that the English language is a crappy way to think about a lot of problems. Many of the problems I have to solve require the use of complex logical structures (i.e. mathematics) for which there is no direct way to express in English. Without these tools of abstraction THAT DO NOT EXIST IN ENGLISH I would not be able to solve these problems.
Sorry, but that's simply incorrect. If I make an improvement to LZW or RSA (and this has been done), I still can't use it in a software program. Counter-examples are welcome.
Which is why, of course, I think that current patent law is in error. I thought I made that point clear.
There is a very severe conceptual problem with the assertion that the implementation of an algorithm on a specific piece of hardware should not be patentable. Algorithms are considered conceptually equivalent to other non-patentable material such as laws of nature in the frame of patent law. I think most people would agree with this classification. The problem comes because the fact of the matter is that all patentable technology is derived from implementation of natural laws in some physical context, be it a digital computer using a particular algorithm, a manufacturing process providing a cheap conversion of crude oil to gasoline, or a new discovery in tribology that leads to reduced engine wear in your car.
The new law of tribology is not patentable, but a new lubricant designed to make use of it certainly is. Even if the lubricant is the only possible practical use of this law.
The fact that a particular law of nature has only one practical application does not preclude the granting of a patent for that application. While it may prevent others from using that law to their own benefit, there is no provision in patent law, nor should there be that requires a law of nature have multiple applications before one particular application can be patentable. Such a distinction would seem absurd to me. Either you allow patents on implementations, or you do not.
And nobody would ever have dreamed of granting a patent to an algorithm's "implementation on an abacus", or "implementation using a pencil".
This can be read a number of ways. One should consider the fact that many algorithms as implemented on a digital computer have far more utiliity than the same algorithm as implemented on an abacus. Certainly not too many people are going to find RSA or LZW beneficial when used with a piece of paper. The combination of LZW and a digital computer is certainly a technological advance, and under the concepts of granting patents for such advances there is a strong argument that such an implementation should be patentable.
We routinely grant patents for devices that use natural laws to benefit us. Even if such a device is the sole practical implementation of this law. How is this really any different to granting a patent on a piece of computing hardware that uses an algorithm in a new manner? The fact that the computing device + algorithm is by far the most important such use of the algorithm should actually strengthen the argument that it is worthy of a patent, for some of the main criteria for granting a patent are that the invention should have novelty and utility.
A practical application of a new law of nature (including algorithms) has to be one of the strongest cases for being granted a patent. For not only have you advanced technology in a fundamental way through this basic development, but you have immediately put it to beneficial use. And on top of this you are sharing your invention by public disclosure of the technology in the form of a patent filed with the USPTO. If we are going to deny this sort of patent, then what if anything would qualify?
Not necessarily! To "escape" a patent, as you put it, it is mandatory that you do not infringe upon ANY of the the claims of the patent. Each claim is separate and infringing any one of them infringes the patent.
Ah grasshopper, I see you have no understanding of patents. Patent claims are NOT separate. Claims are stuctured with the most general claim first, and the following claims are in fact more specific cases. The later claims are in fact called dependent claims. Patent claims are structured in this manner for a variety of reasons, the most important being that if the most general claim is found to be invalid either during application of subsequent legal action, more specific claims may be upheld. Normally when you file a patent you claim the entire sidereal universe as claim one, and work your way down to very specific yet important commercial applications as your later, fall-back claims. Often the structure will fork; that is there will be multiple branches in the tree of claims. In some kinds of patents you may have two or three trees, however those are rare - and generally the patent office makes you didvide those into separate applications.
If you do not infringe on the primary claim, you will in fact be free of infringement of the patent since the dependent claims are special cases.
Slashdot Mirror
I absolutely HATE netscape!
Netscape has a lot of problems, especially the fact that it crashes so much. No browser should crash just from getting a bad tag.
HOWEVER I think IE has some big-time problems, too. These affect web developers more than end users because developers usually test their pages with IE so the users don't see these gotchas. The big one is that IE makes decisions on it's own about what it thinks you mean rather than just doing what you tell it to.
For example, if you use text/plain encoding, and then follow it with some HTML, IE will ignore your encoding directive and process the HTML anyway. A page with text/plain encoding can come out as plain text under Netscape (as it should) and incorrectly as HTML on IE.
There are any number of examples of this sort of behavior - and it really sucks because as a developer you just cannot count on IE following the spec - like so many Microsoft products it tries to do too much rather than the right thing.
Until there are significant new HTML standards that browsers need to be upgraded for
I agree that browsers are turning into (or are already shovelware...
BUT
Some of the important underlying technologies like XML are in fact developing quite rapidly, so these frequent upgrades are important. The issue is getting browser developers to exercise some sort of restraint as to the feature list.
About a year ago I bought a Chembook 7000C - I think it's a rebadged Acer 8400. It cost me $2K. It has 128 MB RAM, a 8 gig hard disk, 15" screen, and a 400 MHz Deceleron, and the ATI LT Pro video. It's totally modular - you can swap out everything. What I really liked about it is that I was able to get it without ANY OS - not easy to do for a laptop, and saved me $100. It's got a touchpad which is ok I guess - there aren't any laptop pointing devices that I like. More of a problem is the lack of a third mouse button. Somebody should write a utility to convert the windows button to a third mouse button.
Since I do a lot of numerical work I love the separate numerical keypad. Few laptops have these.
The only problem I had with it is that the BIOS is a little weird - it seems to INSIST on having a DOS partition before it will boot. Once I created a small one I was able to use LILO, and everything else has worked out great. Both the video and sound are supported, and I love the huge screen - it is a REAL desktop replacement.
Given the size of this beast, it isn't light - maybe 9 lbs. and battery life is about 2.5 hrs. But that isn't the point for me - I am not a road warrior.
Next on my agenda is wireless networking so I can hack away in my leather lazy boy without running cat 5 through the living room - someething that would get my wife very PO'ed.
People may have good (technical) reasons to prefer using FreeBSD for a testbed like this. I know some Linux zealots may find this amazing, but it's true.
Perhaps, but given the license that this system comes with, it is incompatable with a GPL'ed system like Linux.
Anyway, just to add my 10p: SuSE is great, because it *works*.
SuSE is a great distro, BUT RedHat installs on my IBM 365 laptop while the three times I've tried SuSE it failed.
How many firearms related crimes do you think occure in the UK?
Shot, knifed or beaten, you are still dead.
Suicides by gun are rare in England, however the actual suicide rate in England is essentially the same as in the US where most suicides are by gun. Switzerland has the highest gun ownership per capita in the world, but one of the lowest murder rates.
Crime rates have nothing to do with gun ownership.
I think that this article exposes some of the real differences between what is happening in various nations as a response to the internet.
In the US we have legislation like the Electronic Communications and Privacy Act which places clear restrictions on tapping private data transnissions in the US. There have already been some punative lawsuits that have reuluted in large court settlements under this act. We also have arguments about just installing the ABILITY to tap communications in various transmittal devices, and a wide use of relatively secure cryptography.
In countries where basic human rights seem to never have been established we have the banning all encryption, and requirements that all transmissions be recorded, PERIOD.
DVD, Echelon, DCMA, etc, etc, etc... So many problem you need to solve.
Haven't you noticed the many and lengthy discussions of ALL aspects of this issue on Slashdot, be they in the US or elsewhere?
How many stories have we had here regarding the US aspects of DVD encryption? How can you pretend that this is not being addressed on slashdot? Ditto Echelon and DCMA.
The selective view you expose is amazing. The worst abuse regarding DVD decryption occurred in Norway with the arrest and interrogation of Mr.s Johnassen. The DCMA is the result of efforts to bring the US copyright system into parity with the rest of the world, particulary at the behest of Europeans and the WTO. Echelon not a solely US endeavor; several European nations INCLUDING your Britain are participating.
Issues of government intrusion aided by technology are universal, and have been discussed here no matter where they have been occurring.
Claims that US participants are ignoring these problems in the US in this forum are so utterly without basis in fact serves only to betray a myopic prejudice against Americans.
The fact is that these issues are universal, and need to be discussed no matter where they occur.
This link doesn't verify anything. Hell. you can't even get to the home page hosting this link.
Anyone can post crap like this.
through the incredible hacking efforts of Ben Herrenschmidt, who received a donated iBook and G4 from LinuxPPC Inc. Where was Apple there?
Maybe you should ask Ben. His site is now hosted by Apple, so they seem to be endorsing his efforts.
http://ppclinux.apple.com/~benh/
Apple has been even more proprietary than anybody else.
More proprietary than Microsoft? I don't THINK so. What does Microsoft have to compare with Darwin?
but they have released no specs on their G4 processor.
Nonsense. Apple doesn't even MAKE a G4 processor. That's a Motorola product, from which the specs are quite easy to get.
Heaven forbid that somebody steal their designs or _GASP!_ run a different OS succesfully on their beloved chip.
Whine all you want, but the web page says otherwise. Apple has been supporting OS's other than the standard for several years now; the first was AU/X, then there was mklinux, and now various free linux distros.
Think of all the money Apple would use if people who want the fastest system were not burdned with the kludgy OS9.
I don't know what you are trying to say here, but the fact of the matter is that there are several OS's other than Mac OS 9 that run on a Mac. These include OS X server and various linux flavors. Maybe you don't want to believe it, but thems the facts.
Until Apple releases version 1.1 of the AirPort software, however, the encryption will not work.
Apple has already released version 1.1 of their AirPost software.
I think it's great that the US can offer so many good jobs to highly trained people - but I wonder if the importation of these folks has a harmful effect on the US educational system.
Clearly there is a shortfall of technically trained people in IT in the US. But rather than addressing the problem by increasing funding and wages in the US to attract its own citizens to these jobs, we have the importation of citizens of other countries to the US. The result is increasing demand for sound technical education abroad, and a decreased demand relative to the needs of the relevant indigenous economies..
Long term this must have deleterious affects on the US educational system, and ultimately the US economy. It may also do little good for the countries losing their best to emigration to the US..
Give up on pointers -- they're an archaic holdover from assembler.
Nonsense. Pointers are crucial to any serious language, including Perl. Without use of pointers (aka references) in Perl you cannot even write efficient subroutines.
A state college is a public trust, paid for by the public and managed for them by the state.
Sure, and if I were a taxpayer supporting Clemson I would be very annoyed to find that my money was going to support internet use for non-academic purposes such as making free long-distance phone calls.
The Corporations.
What kind of drugs are you on? Can I get some?
If corporations actually controlled government. you would NOT see capital gains taxes, OSHA, Unions, Social Security Payroll Taxes, the EPA, the Taft-Hartley and Sherman anti-trust acts, the DOJ action against Microsoft, EOE acts, Worker's Comp, Unemployment Insurance, child labor laws, age discrimination laws, and any of a million other encumberances on the behaviour of corporations that protect citizens against corporations.
And who pays for the networks? The students, through tuition and taxes.
According to the Clemson web site, Clemson is a state supported land grant university. This means a LARGE part of the university's funds come from taxes on the residents of the state of South Carolina. This subsidy is made in order to keep tuition costs down, presumably because educated students are an asset to the state as a whole. It also means that the university regents have some responsibility to the state government to insure that these tax dollars are being spent for the intended purpose, that is the education of the students.
It also means that the taxpayers of the state of South Carolina own this network. NOT the students.
Now if I were a resident of the state of South Carolina I would have to question the use of my tax dollars for any non-academic pursuits, including providing subsidized internet access where any significant fraction of such access is being used for non-academic purposes.
Where Clemson is losing out here as far as I am concerned is that they are not cracking down on ALL non-academic use of thier internet bandwidth.
In this context, I think the students certainly have a right to have a say on the use of this network as far as it relates to their education. Any educator will tell you that the student is as responsible for the quality of his education as the teacher.
The nanosecond the student starts complaining that they are not being allowed to use this network for non-academic pursuits (such as making free long distance phone calls) they lose. The rights of the student at Clemson do not include tax subsidized internet access for non-academic pursuits.
Yes but if the university receives taxpayer dollars, it is a public institution and, hence, their network belongs to the people.
Said people being the taxpayers. Clemson AFAIK is a state supported land grant university. Its administrators are probably state appointed, and have as part of their responsibility the duty to insure state (taypayer) dollars are being spent for educational purposes in an efficient manner.
If I was a taxpayer in South Carolina I would take a pretty dim view of the idea that the network my tax dollars are subsidizing is being used largely for non-educational activities like moving around cd rips and providing free long distance service.
so forcing people to pay for a service that they can get for free by censoring websites is constitutional? Somehow I seriously doubt that.
Somehow I seriously doubt that you have ever read any part of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
The First Amendment starts "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of...."
This means Congress cannot make a law limiting the freedom of speech. Every private enterprise is free to do as they deem fit.
It doesn't mean I have to run your letter in my newspaper - I am free to censor or exert any control over it's contents as I deem fit.
Nowhere does it say that the Chancellors of Clemson University or anyone else has to let someone use it's facilities to enable a business that is in competition with it's own economic interests.
If all you are going to do is patent something to establish prior art, you are wasting your time and money. Other fields have long established journals for just this purpose. Some of these journals even allow anonymous publication so that if a company decides to publish to get something in the prior art they don't reveal to their competitors who is developing the technology.
There is no need to re-invent the wheel. Other technology areas have been dealing with patent law for up to 300 years, and have well established methods for handling certain problems.
If there is a concept which is unexpressible in another language, I would like to see it.
Expressibility is not strong enough. You can express quantum chromodynamics in English, but you sure as shit can't use English to solve problems in quantum chromodynamics.
I have heard similar similar comments that the Shapir-Whorf hypothesis has fallen into disfavor.
HOWEVER, my own experience is that the English language is a crappy way to think about a lot of problems. Many of the problems I have to solve require the use of complex logical structures (i.e. mathematics) for which there is no direct way to express in English. Without these tools of abstraction THAT DO NOT EXIST IN ENGLISH I would not be able to solve these problems.
Sorry, but that's simply incorrect. If I make an improvement to LZW or RSA (and this has been done), I still can't use it in a software program. Counter-examples are welcome.
Take a look at the LUC algorithm.
Which is why, of course, I think that current patent law is in error. I thought I made that point clear.
There is a very severe conceptual problem with the assertion that the implementation of an algorithm on a specific piece of hardware should not be patentable. Algorithms are considered conceptually equivalent to other non-patentable material such as laws of nature in the frame of patent law. I think most people would agree with this classification. The problem comes because the fact of the matter is that all patentable technology is derived from implementation of natural laws in some physical context, be it a digital computer using a particular algorithm, a manufacturing process providing a cheap conversion of crude oil to gasoline, or a new discovery in tribology that leads to reduced engine wear in your car.
The new law of tribology is not patentable, but a new lubricant designed to make use of it certainly is. Even if the lubricant is the only possible practical use of this law.
The fact that a particular law of nature has only one practical application does not preclude the granting of a patent for that application. While it may prevent others from using that law to their own benefit, there is no provision in patent law, nor should there be that requires a law of nature have multiple applications before one particular application can be patentable. Such a distinction would seem absurd to me. Either you allow patents on implementations, or you do not.
And nobody would ever have dreamed of granting a patent to an algorithm's "implementation on an abacus", or "implementation using a pencil".
This can be read a number of ways. One should consider the fact that many algorithms as implemented on a digital computer have far more utiliity than the same algorithm as implemented on an abacus. Certainly not too many people are going to find RSA or LZW beneficial when used with a piece of paper. The combination of LZW and a digital computer is certainly a technological advance, and under the concepts of granting patents for such advances there is a strong argument that such an implementation should be patentable.
We routinely grant patents for devices that use natural laws to benefit us. Even if such a device is the sole practical implementation of this law. How is this really any different to granting a patent on a piece of computing hardware that uses an algorithm in a new manner? The fact that the computing device + algorithm is by far the most important such use of the algorithm should actually strengthen the argument that it is worthy of a patent, for some of the main criteria for granting a patent are that the invention should have novelty and utility.
A practical application of a new law of nature (including algorithms) has to be one of the strongest cases for being granted a patent. For not only have you advanced technology in a fundamental way through this basic development, but you have immediately put it to beneficial use. And on top of this you are sharing your invention by public disclosure of the technology in the form of a patent filed with the USPTO. If we are going to deny this sort of patent, then what if anything would qualify?
Not necessarily! To "escape" a patent, as you put it, it is mandatory that you do not infringe upon ANY of the the claims of the patent. Each claim is separate and infringing any one of them infringes the patent.
Ah grasshopper, I see you have no understanding of patents. Patent claims are NOT separate. Claims are stuctured with the most general claim first, and the following claims are in fact more specific cases. The later claims are in fact called dependent claims. Patent claims are structured in this manner for a variety of reasons, the most important being that if the most general claim is found to be invalid either during application of subsequent legal action, more specific claims may be upheld. Normally when you file a patent you claim the entire sidereal universe as claim one, and work your way down to very specific yet important commercial applications as your later, fall-back claims. Often the structure will fork; that is there will be multiple branches in the tree of claims. In some kinds of patents you may have two or three trees, however those are rare - and generally the patent office makes you didvide those into separate applications.
If you do not infringe on the primary claim, you will in fact be free of infringement of the patent since the dependent claims are special cases.