No it isn't, its a self-proclaimed freestate in the middle of Copenhagen. When you leave the place you are welcomed by a friendly sign stating that you're about to enter the European union.
Interesting point, but I do wonder if associativity, commutativity and distributivity (being mathematical concepts and not sequences) could then be used as patent circumvention devices. The sequence of operations of 'a = r * 22./7. * r' is clearly different from yours and to make it even more difficult, it could have different input-output behaviour caused by finite precision math (see the nifty trick of first multiplying r with 22 _before_ dividing it by 7:-)
Now you've got two possibilities: either get a distinct patent for each and every incarnation of your 'sequence', or get a patent for this equation and all 'mathematically equivalent' ones.
If you opt for the first, there's a much easier way than patents: copyright. If you opt for the second, all hell breaks loose (as it has in the US), because what constitutes 'mathematical' or even worse 'algorithmical' equivalence?
There are numerous algorithms that use different concepts to tackle the same problem using the same time/space complexity. There are even mathematical proofs that all algorithms are equally good (equivalent?) to random search for arbitrary search problems. Can you then patent one and thus patent them all? Mathematics abounds with isomorphism proofs showing that formalism a can be recast into formalism b without any change of meaning. You could get rich by patenting some sufficiently complex algorithm, then hire X mathematicians to prove equivalence between your algorithm and any other and Y lawyers to sue those bastards.
I don't think it is possible at all in software to draw a clear line between two algorithms that do the same thing, and surely you don't want to grant patents on application domains like sorting and searching, right? Yet this is what the practice of granting software patents currently entails: people get monopolies for domains (One Click shopping) or data formats (RSA, GIF), not for algorithms per se.
Note that Singer for instance did not patent 'using a sewing arm to create a specific pattern of stitches' as this is an algorithm and thus not patentable (in its time). Rather they patented putting the hole at the sharp end of the needle.
You're absolutely right, though I don't think the ability to output the.doc 'standard' is the way to go. I usually have to read/view office documents, hardly ever am I expected to edit them and send them back. So the only thing I need is a utility that makes a postscript file from an office document (does anybody know about a program 'msdoc2ps' that does this?) so I can view and print it. Currently I'm forced to go to my other box that runs windows to be able to transform the stuff to postscript as I don't run an office suite and am not planning to do so.
My own correspondence is in PDF. If someone complains that they can't read that I point them to the acrobat reader. This way I'm slowly (very very slowly) changing the mindset that you have to send editable MS-Office documents around in your correspondence.
So if I were to have a simple CL utility that would transform doc format files to ps files, I can quite happilly communicate with my co-workers without reinforcing the position that you have to send msdoc's around.
For my research articles the publisher often likes to have the LaTeX source to be able to format things properly. Guess what, Office 2000 does not output that.
Try this: Network doesn't work, fiddle with the IP-adress. Reboot. Still doesn't work. Fiddle with the workgroup. Reboot. Still doesn't work. Fiddle with the driver. Reboot. Fiddle with the protocols. Reboot. fiddle. reboot. fiddle. reboot...
Those couple of minutes each reboot has eaten up your day. Welcome to the productive world of Microsoft.
Bullshit. There is something close to 5,000 drivers that come with a default installation. When I installed Windows 2000 on my main box, absolutely everything was recognized. Correctly. And the sound works. And the printer works. Etc.
Bullshit. A collegue of mine tried to upgrade (?) to Win2k just this week on his not-so-new toshiba laptop. All went well until it hit the network. Big bang, crashes all over the place. It took him and computer support at the company two days to get the damn thing working. Needed a special Win2K CD-rom for Toshiba's, needed tweaks in the registry, toshiba only drivers, needed to override something called a BiosServer and about thirty reboots.
Guess what, I have the same brand/version laptop, installed RedHat in 30 minutes with everything working: network, sound, printers, samba, apm, etc.
So your mileage may vary, but windows installations are not always painless. Go to any support/installation department and ask around.
Breaking up Microsoft would be the worst thing to do. It would mean that you would get two competitive companies rather than a single dinosaur. Leave Microsoft as it is and their application branch is forced by the OS branch to ever more tightly integrate with Windows. Once their OS-monopoly is broken, their application software will die with it. Good riddens.
(And the OS-market will die; free will become less expensive than non-free, even in the eyes of the businessmen.)
Case in point:
IBM is still struggling to cope with 'the breakup that didn't happen'. AT&T spin-offs are thriving.
Since when can the media excuse itself with dumbly publishing PR without themselves checking the facts? They published it, so they are effectively giving it a stamp of approval.
The patent lawyer obviously forgot to mention that when you're sued for infringing upon even the dumbest of patents, you are the defendant who has to prove that either the patent is invalid or that you did not infringe upon it. Even if this is simple, it will cost you money for IP-lawyers, and you still have to hope you don't encounter a judge that has never seen a computer screen in its life.
Holding a dumb patent gives you a great FUD-sword to hold over your competitors head, especially when they're smaller. So no chilling here.
Weren't the words 'steal' and 'theft' outlawed by the GNU philosophy as being bad metaphors for criminal acts in the material world. 'Stealing' by making a copy does not deprive the owners from continuing to use the 'stolen' goods. Interesting to see that this choice of words is now part of GNU-advocacy (at least of this AC's).
The netherlands have an
institution called BKR (bureau krediet registratie). All your loans and payment behaviour are registered there. For mortgages and loans all banks will check your record there, and there can be a red flag.
If you have an alledged bad credit history, you'll find it difficult to get loans and mortgages and difficult to change the error. But luckily it is just a single place.
Python being owned by a 'Stichting' is not bad news at all. 'Stichting' translates from Dutch as something close to 'Foundation' and is legally a not for profit organization. This particular 'stichting' controls CWI in Amsterdam, a research and education centre. They are funded by the Dutch government. As far as I can see, having them own the copyright makes it sure that it will be freely available for quite a long time.
Not really, as contrary to the common belief on/. advertising the sale of marihuana is against Dutch law and the hypothetical Dutch E-bay would be forced to stop very quickly!
(For people getting cold feet and seeing their trip to Amsterdam blow up in smoke (:-), it is perfectly legal in the Netherlands to possess up to 5 grams of drugs for personal use. It is also legal to buy those 5 grams.)
This brings me to an interesting point in this discussion which is an experience a US friend of mine had in Amsterdam, which was that the Amsterdam shopkeepers refused to sell him seeds for plants. They only refused this to Americans. When I asked to owner how that came about, he explained that he would get shut down if Americans would get caught carrying his seeds, and would tell the police where they bought it.
The Dutch police can shut down a point of sale of Marihuana at will (remember, it is illigal to have more than 5 grams in stock). It is however legal to possess those seeds inside the Netherlands. Apparantly the US police can force the Dutch police to implement US law inside the Netherlands, not for buying marihuana, but for buying those seeds that are obviously intended for growing and prospering in the US, but by no means neccessarily so.
Although this is a situation that is carefully kept out of court and is by no means legalized, it does have some bearing on this case in that here we have an example where national (US) law is implemented in a different country (The Netherlands). The point of sale is in the other country, the buyer is a citizen of the first country, the offense to national law (bringing it into the US) has even not taken place!
As far as I know such a situation is unthinkable between two US states. Don't know exactly what to make of it in the context of the French vs. Yahoo case as it is not court stuff, but it is worth a ponder.
Though Penrose would probably agree that a 'quantumgravitational' computer would be able to do it though.
Simply said, Penrose is sceptic about computers ability to mimick a brain as they lack some form of mystical element (as has been proposed by countless philosophers in the past). His particular mystical element needs some improvements in physics: the link between gravitational theory and quantum theory. As to why? Noone (including Penrose) seems to be able to explain.
Slashdot Mirror
>>Christiana is NOT in Denmark!
>YES it is!!!!!!!!!!!!
No it isn't, its a self-proclaimed freestate in the middle of Copenhagen. When you leave the place you are welcomed by a friendly sign stating that you're about to enter the European union.
Interesting point, but I do wonder if associativity, commutativity and distributivity (being mathematical concepts and not sequences) could then be used as patent circumvention devices. The sequence of operations of 'a = r * 22./7. * r' is clearly different from yours and to make it even more difficult, it could have different input-output behaviour caused by finite precision math (see the nifty trick of first multiplying r with 22 _before_ dividing it by 7:-)
Now you've got two possibilities: either get a distinct patent for each and every incarnation of your 'sequence', or get a patent for this equation and all 'mathematically equivalent' ones.
If you opt for the first, there's a much easier way than patents: copyright. If you opt for the second, all hell breaks loose (as it has in the US), because what constitutes 'mathematical' or even worse 'algorithmical' equivalence?
There are numerous algorithms that use different concepts to tackle the same problem using the same time/space complexity. There are even mathematical proofs that all algorithms are equally good (equivalent?) to random search for arbitrary search problems. Can you then patent one and thus patent them all? Mathematics abounds with isomorphism proofs showing that formalism a can be recast into formalism b without any change of meaning. You could get rich by patenting some sufficiently complex algorithm, then hire X mathematicians to prove equivalence between your algorithm and any other and Y lawyers to sue those bastards.
I don't think it is possible at all in software to draw a clear line between two algorithms that do the same thing, and surely you don't want to grant patents on application domains like sorting and searching, right? Yet this is what the practice of granting software patents currently entails: people get monopolies for domains (One Click shopping) or data formats (RSA, GIF), not for algorithms per se.
Uhm, before 1?
Note that Singer for instance did not patent 'using a sewing arm to create a specific pattern of stitches' as this is an algorithm and thus not patentable (in its time). Rather they patented putting the hole at the sharp end of the needle.
Now that's an invention!
My own correspondence is in PDF. If someone complains that they can't read that I point them to the acrobat reader. This way I'm slowly (very very slowly) changing the mindset that you have to send editable MS-Office documents around in your correspondence.
So if I were to have a simple CL utility that would transform doc format files to ps files, I can quite happilly communicate with my co-workers without reinforcing the position that you have to send msdoc's around.
For my research articles the publisher often likes to have the LaTeX source to be able to format things properly. Guess what, Office 2000 does not output that.
Try this: Network doesn't work, fiddle with the IP-adress. Reboot. Still doesn't work. Fiddle with the workgroup. Reboot. Still doesn't work. Fiddle with the driver. Reboot. Fiddle with the protocols. Reboot. fiddle. reboot. fiddle. reboot ...
Those couple of minutes each reboot has eaten up your day. Welcome to the productive world of Microsoft.
Bullshit. A collegue of mine tried to upgrade (?) to Win2k just this week on his not-so-new toshiba laptop. All went well until it hit the network. Big bang, crashes all over the place. It took him and computer support at the company two days to get the damn thing working. Needed a special Win2K CD-rom for Toshiba's, needed tweaks in the registry, toshiba only drivers, needed to override something called a BiosServer and about thirty reboots.
Guess what, I have the same brand/version laptop, installed RedHat in 30 minutes with everything working: network, sound, printers, samba, apm, etc.
So your mileage may vary, but windows installations are not always painless. Go to any support/installation department and ask around.
It's going well in the appeal case...
Breaking up Microsoft would be the worst thing to do. It would mean that you would get two competitive companies rather than a single dinosaur. Leave Microsoft as it is and their application branch is forced by the OS branch to ever more tightly integrate with Windows. Once their OS-monopoly is broken, their application software will die with it. Good riddens.
(And the OS-market will die; free will become less expensive than non-free, even in the eyes of the businessmen.)
Case in point:
IBM is still struggling to cope with 'the breakup that didn't happen'. AT&T spin-offs are thriving.
Since when can the media excuse itself with dumbly publishing PR without themselves checking the facts? They published it, so they are effectively giving it a stamp of approval.
But then again, journalists and figures...
Nope, the default share in NT is 'everyone: full control'. Which service pack are you running? (I lost track at 6)
What about:
Starling catches Lecter, eats him?
The patent lawyer obviously forgot to mention that when you're sued for infringing upon even the dumbest of patents, you are the defendant who has to prove that either the patent is invalid or that you did not infringe upon it. Even if this is simple, it will cost you money for IP-lawyers, and you still have to hope you don't encounter a judge that has never seen a computer screen in its life.
Holding a dumb patent gives you a great FUD-sword to hold over your competitors head, especially when they're smaller. So no chilling here.
Mods: mark me down (this should be redundant)
Weren't the words 'steal' and 'theft' outlawed by the GNU philosophy as being bad metaphors for criminal acts in the material world. 'Stealing' by making a copy does not deprive the owners from continuing to use the 'stolen' goods. Interesting to see that this choice of words is now part of GNU-advocacy (at least of this AC's).
I really love autocorrection especcialy in text like:
...
... where index i ranges over
(Now in which forest of menu options was the possibility of turning this off? thank god I switched to $i$)
Other than this having to do with Linux, how
is this front-page worthy news?
Simple, there are no back pages
The netherlands have an
institution called BKR (bureau krediet registratie). All your loans and payment behaviour are registered there. For mortgages and loans all banks will check your record there, and there can be a red flag.
If you have an alledged bad credit history, you'll find it difficult to get loans and mortgages and difficult to change the error. But luckily it is just a single place.
Python being owned by a 'Stichting' is not bad news at all. 'Stichting' translates from Dutch as something close to 'Foundation' and is legally a not for profit organization. This particular 'stichting' controls CWI in Amsterdam, a research and education centre. They are funded by the Dutch government. As far as I can see, having them own the copyright makes it sure that it will be freely available for quite a long time.
Not really, as contrary to the common belief on /. advertising the sale of marihuana is against Dutch law and the hypothetical Dutch E-bay would be forced to stop very quickly!
(For people getting cold feet and seeing their trip to Amsterdam blow up in smoke (:-), it is perfectly legal in the Netherlands to possess up to 5 grams of drugs for personal use. It is also legal to buy those 5 grams.)
This brings me to an interesting point in this discussion which is an experience a US friend of mine had in Amsterdam, which was that the Amsterdam shopkeepers refused to sell him seeds for plants. They only refused this to Americans. When I asked to owner how that came about, he explained that he would get shut down if Americans would get caught carrying his seeds, and would tell the police where they bought it.
The Dutch police can shut down a point of sale of Marihuana at will (remember, it is illigal to have more than 5 grams in stock). It is however legal to possess those seeds inside the Netherlands. Apparantly the US police can force the Dutch police to implement US law inside the Netherlands, not for buying marihuana, but for buying those seeds that are obviously intended for growing and prospering in the US, but by no means neccessarily so. Although this is a situation that is carefully kept out of court and is by no means legalized, it does have some bearing on this case in that here we have an example where national (US) law is implemented in a different country (The Netherlands). The point of sale is in the other country, the buyer is a citizen of the first country, the offense to national law (bringing it into the US) has even not taken place!
As far as I know such a situation is unthinkable between two US states. Don't know exactly what to make of it in the context of the French vs. Yahoo case as it is not court stuff, but it is worth a ponder.
Though Penrose would probably agree that a 'quantumgravitational' computer would be able to do it though.
Simply said, Penrose is sceptic about computers ability to mimick a brain as they lack some form of mystical element (as has been proposed by countless philosophers in the past). His particular mystical element needs some improvements in physics: the link between gravitational theory and quantum theory. As to why? Noone (including Penrose) seems to be able to explain.