Do you seriously think the "other root cause" phenomenon could be a significant source of error for those statistics? I don't think so. People who drive dangerously tend to be involved in accidents. Those statistics do say something about who's a better driver.
Another lovely example of uncited assertions. Another anonymous poster claimed to have worked for an insurance company, and said factoring in miles, males are still slightly more expensive, so you'll need to back up your "better drivers" claim. Do you have any stats to back it up, or are you just arguing emotionally because you can't face that women just have fewer accidents?
Additionally, not all miles are created equal. It wouldn't surprise me if people who drive more miles tend to have more highway miles. A highway mile has fewer intersections than a non-highway mile, so one would expect fewer accidents. Fewer accidents on a per-mile-driven basis, even if men could claim it, would not prove that men are better drivers.
I'm not right or left, I'm central. But, please tell me what platform Al Gore ran on in 2000. I do recall being hit on the head with the phrase "lock box" about a billion times. The Democrats are notorious for running on platforms of "But my opponent wants to plunder Social Security and hates old people!"
Al Gore is going to be running in 2008 with the campaign slogan, "I told you so!"
How do you know it wouldn't have helped if he had had facts to back up what he was saying? I think his ideas would have been much better received if they weren't ignorant speculation.
Could you explain how you arrive at those numbers? I've been looking for a way to misread the stats to come up with your conclusions and haven't found one. At first I thought you were misunderstanding the "Total Drivers" column, which really means total drivers involved in accidents. But even that reading wouldn't match your numbers.
(warning: the following is not backed up with links because I can't find the info right now, so mod me down if you want)
Notice that you got modded up, not down. You are thinking that slashdot moderators are a bunch of rational males who will evaluate your post based on its substance. As it turns out, you got modded "informative" despite the fact that your unsubstantiated assertions are contradicted by actual accident statistics.
Why? Because emotionally, it's hard for us males to accept that women don't get into as many accidents as males, whether you look at complete smash-ups or reversing into lampposts. So we concoct a fiction to help our mental model of the world to be more favorable to ourselves. This is not rationality.
My goal wasn't necessarily to be fully substantive, just to be more substantive than the post I was replying to. That post seems hypocritical. People who hold opinions harmonious with what Lawrence Summers is reputed to have said accuse the other side of not arguing rationally...pot calling the kettle black. Right, we don't know which Lawrence Summers comments were supposedly refuted. Nonetheless, we have "insightful" slashdot posters asserting that his critics are responding emotionally, not rationally. In fact, you don't know. I see plenty of airheaded emotionalism in support of Lawrence Summers. More than I see criticizing him, in fact.
"It's possible I made some reference to innate differences," he said. He said people "would prefer to believe" that the differences in performance between the sexes are due to social factors, "but these are things that need to be studied."
And one of his critics:
"Here was this economist lecturing pompously (to) this room full of the country's most accomplished scholars on women's issues in science and engineering, and he kept saying things we had refuted in the first half of the day," said Denton, the outgoing dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Washington.
Now, who's substantiating his comments and who isn't?
I do know that Diamond v. Diehr was not the last court decision known to mankind. You should know that it was the last Supreme Court decision pertinent to software patents. Later decisions, most notably Alappat, were made by lower courts. I am well aware that the USPTO has used those lower-court decisions in its interpretation of statute and case law, which you've informed me is embodied in something called the MPEP.
And I am not the only one who noticed that Alappat was "illogical, inconsistent with precedent and with sound principles of patent law". Read the dissenting judge's opinion. I cannot say why the Supreme Court has not taken other cases since Diehr to correct problems caused by lower courts. I do know that they only hear about half the cases they are asked to hear, and that their previous opinions called for legislative clarification. I presume most of the judges see the ball as being in the legislature's court at this point, and the Court has moved on to other matters.
Small words are easy to misunderstand. Diehr did not contradict earlier opinion that software for a general-purpose digital computer is not statutory material for a patent. The Court never decided about software that does not fall into this category, e.g. compiler techniques, and said it called for legislative clarification. However, all the software patents I've seen discussed on Slashdot (e.g. arithmetic coding for JPEG) are for general-purpose digital computers, and definitely not statutory according to all the rulings. People interpret Diehr as meaning you can re-word your software patent to sound like a process patent and then it's valid. That's not what they said; in fact section IV of the opinion explicitly says they're not saying that. People are determined to misinterpret it.
Mathematicians brought amazing benefits to humanity for centuries without patent protection. Now mathematical algorithms are being patented, because investors like monopolies. Society is not benefiting. We should go back to the state where mathematics is not patentable. Useful algorithms will still be discovered, except without patents on them everyone would actually use them.
The USPTO issues lots of patents that don't stand up under the standards set by Benson, Flook and Diehr rulings. No plush jobs are being lost. I don't care what any third grader tells me; the USPTO is not executing law according to the judicial branch's interpretation.
Yes, that's what I'm saying. We have clear rulings from the Supreme Court against patents on software for general-purpose digital computers. They didn't rule on patents covering software that doesn't preempt the use of algorithms on general-purpose digital computers, and called on the legislature to clarify things, but that never happened.
The dissent in Diehr criticized the majority for not issuing a clear ruling to reiterate Benson and Flook. For my part, having read Diehr, I thought the opinion was clear enough. But widespread misconceptions about Diehr prove me wrong and the dissent right; more clarity would have helped. I try to do my part with Diamond v. Diehr, abridged.
I was reading your reply to my comment. If I say software patents violate my rights and you reply with "how does this highly restricted scenario violate your rights?" Then you are the one who's reading things into somebody else's posts. If I write about software patents in general, reply about software patents in general. If you want to talk about a certain restricted case, start your own thread.
If you want to stick with this thread, please don't confuse thinking of an idea first and getting a patent on it first, especially w.r.t. software. As someone who holds 3 patents you ought to know better.
You explicitly said patents "allow" people to make money off of software development. Programmers in Europe show that patents are not needed to "allow" people to profit.
I think it was either Benson or Flook where you can read the Supreme Court explicitly rejecting the machine argument.
The Diehr opinion has a quote from commentators talking about patent protection for software, noting that "this industry is growing by leaps and bounds without it," so yes there was a time when software was not patentable.
I can only sue him if his code was stolen from me.
That's not true. You can sue him just because you feel like it. You can win if his lawyer thinks there's some possibility a court might decide that your patent claims cover his software, or if he thinks the legal costs wouldn't be worth it.
You can probably win more damages if you can prove he was aware of your patent, but by no means does he need to steal your code, or even be aware of its existence, for you to sue him.
How is my inventing something novel -- something you didn't think of -- and patenting it robbing you of your rights? Why should you have a right to use something you never thought of yourself?
You are seriously too ignorant to be making assertions in a discussion of patents. If you do not understand that you violate a patent when you do think of the idea yourself and have never even heard of the patented invention, you really don't know the first thing about patents. Software patents deny me the right to explore an idea I come up with myself.
The US Supreme Court repeatedly rejected your argument about running software being a machine. You just don't get it. Entities recouped money on software development before they were patentable. My company owns no software patents but makes plenty of money off of my programming. Patents do not "allow" this to happen. Profitable software development happens despite software patents, not because of it. Or do you think there are no computer programmers in Europe? Get a clue.
The cases are Benson, Flook and Diehr. Yes, there's little point in getting a patent if you don't enforce it, but that possibility is the only thing making the OP technically correct to say that software patents aren't inherently evil.
Slashdot Mirror
What do you do if your app connects to more than one database? How does Rails find the right "Clients" table?
Do you seriously think the "other root cause" phenomenon could be a significant source of error for those statistics? I don't think so. People who drive dangerously tend to be involved in accidents. Those statistics do say something about who's a better driver.
Another lovely example of uncited assertions. Another anonymous poster claimed to have worked for an insurance company, and said factoring in miles, males are still slightly more expensive, so you'll need to back up your "better drivers" claim. Do you have any stats to back it up, or are you just arguing emotionally because you can't face that women just have fewer accidents?
Additionally, not all miles are created equal. It wouldn't surprise me if people who drive more miles tend to have more highway miles. A highway mile has fewer intersections than a non-highway mile, so one would expect fewer accidents. Fewer accidents on a per-mile-driven basis, even if men could claim it, would not prove that men are better drivers.
Read the parent to my post. I was replying to it, not the article.
How do you know it wouldn't have helped if he had had facts to back up what he was saying? I think his ideas would have been much better received if they weren't ignorant speculation.
Actual statistics show that men are more likely to cause car accidents regardless of whether alcohol is involved.
No need to speculate about insurance claims. Women have fewer documented less-serious accidents than men.
Could you explain how you arrive at those numbers? I've been looking for a way to misread the stats to come up with your conclusions and haven't found one. At first I thought you were misunderstanding the "Total Drivers" column, which really means total drivers involved in accidents. But even that reading wouldn't match your numbers.
Notice that you got modded up, not down. You are thinking that slashdot moderators are a bunch of rational males who will evaluate your post based on its substance. As it turns out, you got modded "informative" despite the fact that your unsubstantiated assertions are contradicted by actual accident statistics.
Why? Because emotionally, it's hard for us males to accept that women don't get into as many accidents as males, whether you look at complete smash-ups or reversing into lampposts. So we concoct a fiction to help our mental model of the world to be more favorable to ourselves. This is not rationality.
My goal wasn't necessarily to be fully substantive, just to be more substantive than the post I was replying to. That post seems hypocritical. People who hold opinions harmonious with what Lawrence Summers is reputed to have said accuse the other side of not arguing rationally...pot calling the kettle black. Right, we don't know which Lawrence Summers comments were supposedly refuted. Nonetheless, we have "insightful" slashdot posters asserting that his critics are responding emotionally, not rationally. In fact, you don't know. I see plenty of airheaded emotionalism in support of Lawrence Summers. More than I see criticizing him, in fact.
Now, who's substantiating his comments and who isn't?
I do know that Diamond v. Diehr was not the last court decision known to mankind. You should know that it was the last Supreme Court decision pertinent to software patents. Later decisions, most notably Alappat, were made by lower courts. I am well aware that the USPTO has used those lower-court decisions in its interpretation of statute and case law, which you've informed me is embodied in something called the MPEP.
And I am not the only one who noticed that Alappat was "illogical, inconsistent with precedent and with sound principles of patent law". Read the dissenting judge's opinion. I cannot say why the Supreme Court has not taken other cases since Diehr to correct problems caused by lower courts. I do know that they only hear about half the cases they are asked to hear, and that their previous opinions called for legislative clarification. I presume most of the judges see the ball as being in the legislature's court at this point, and the Court has moved on to other matters.
Small words are easy to misunderstand. Diehr did not contradict earlier opinion that software for a general-purpose digital computer is not statutory material for a patent. The Court never decided about software that does not fall into this category, e.g. compiler techniques, and said it called for legislative clarification. However, all the software patents I've seen discussed on Slashdot (e.g. arithmetic coding for JPEG) are for general-purpose digital computers, and definitely not statutory according to all the rulings. People interpret Diehr as meaning you can re-word your software patent to sound like a process patent and then it's valid. That's not what they said; in fact section IV of the opinion explicitly says they're not saying that. People are determined to misinterpret it.
People do not misinterpret Diehr because they lack expertise. They misinterpret Diehr because it's in their interest to do so.
Mathematicians brought amazing benefits to humanity for centuries without patent protection. Now mathematical algorithms are being patented, because investors like monopolies. Society is not benefiting. We should go back to the state where mathematics is not patentable. Useful algorithms will still be discovered, except without patents on them everyone would actually use them.
The USPTO issues lots of patents that don't stand up under the standards set by Benson, Flook and Diehr rulings. No plush jobs are being lost. I don't care what any third grader tells me; the USPTO is not executing law according to the judicial branch's interpretation.
Yes, that's what I'm saying. We have clear rulings from the Supreme Court against patents on software for general-purpose digital computers. They didn't rule on patents covering software that doesn't preempt the use of algorithms on general-purpose digital computers, and called on the legislature to clarify things, but that never happened.
The dissent in Diehr criticized the majority for not issuing a clear ruling to reiterate Benson and Flook. For my part, having read Diehr, I thought the opinion was clear enough. But widespread misconceptions about Diehr prove me wrong and the dissent right; more clarity would have helped. I try to do my part with Diamond v. Diehr, abridged.
What you say may be true about USPTO employees; I can't say. However, the USPTO itself collects fees that don't apply to rejected patents.
I was reading your reply to my comment. If I say software patents violate my rights and you reply with "how does this highly restricted scenario violate your rights?" Then you are the one who's reading things into somebody else's posts. If I write about software patents in general, reply about software patents in general. If you want to talk about a certain restricted case, start your own thread.
If you want to stick with this thread, please don't confuse thinking of an idea first and getting a patent on it first, especially w.r.t. software. As someone who holds 3 patents you ought to know better.
You explicitly said patents "allow" people to make money off of software development. Programmers in Europe show that patents are not needed to "allow" people to profit.
I think it was either Benson or Flook where you can read the Supreme Court explicitly rejecting the machine argument.
The Diehr opinion has a quote from commentators talking about patent protection for software, noting that "this industry is growing by leaps and bounds without it," so yes there was a time when software was not patentable.
That's not true. You can sue him just because you feel like it. You can win if his lawyer thinks there's some possibility a court might decide that your patent claims cover his software, or if he thinks the legal costs wouldn't be worth it.
You can probably win more damages if you can prove he was aware of your patent, but by no means does he need to steal your code, or even be aware of its existence, for you to sue him.
The US Supreme Court repeatedly rejected your argument about running software being a machine. You just don't get it. Entities recouped money on software development before they were patentable. My company owns no software patents but makes plenty of money off of my programming. Patents do not "allow" this to happen. Profitable software development happens despite software patents, not because of it. Or do you think there are no computer programmers in Europe? Get a clue.
The cases are Benson, Flook and Diehr. Yes, there's little point in getting a patent if you don't enforce it, but that possibility is the only thing making the OP technically correct to say that software patents aren't inherently evil.