Um.... We can't have perfected it. We rely on nuclear-powered submarines which are fundamentally un-stealthy because of the noise of the hot water running through the pipes. Diesel-electric submarines have a real shot at the stealth designation (and in fact, the Chinese have demonstrated that we can't detect their subs when they are running on electric).
However, the New Orleans looks to me to be designed to be stealthy from a radar perspective, so I wonder if it has some other stealth measures as well. I wonder if this is a case of building all our ships as stealthy as possible and then wondering why they don't see eachother.
The Bible and true scientific facts are never at odds and never can be. The differences come in from the interpretation of scientific facts and interpretations of Scripture. Science is primarily tells HOW things in nature work whereas the Bible primarily tells us WHO and WHY. It tells us who is behind nature and our existence and gives us the purpose he has in mind for it all.
That is a reasonably defensible position. Aryeh Kaplan has argued that one can derive the scientific age of the universe from a close reading of the Torah, psalms, and Midrash (and proceeds to show a close correspondences). Certain groups of Hindus do the same with the Rig Veda.
However, this does not diminish the fact that to Creationists, the Bible and Science are at odds with eachother, so THEY feel compelled to choose.
Just as a note on the above, even the scientific method can't disprove an entire category of theories. All it can do is insist that the theory must be in line with observable fact.
For example, there are some physicists who think that Newton's theories themselves could be fine-tuned to address the same data that supposedly disproves the theories in favor of relativity. Similarly although the theory of the luminiferous aether was disproved, it is rising up again in certain areas of particle physics.
Why? Because falsifying a scientific theory does NOT demonstrate that the underlying ideas are false, just that the current structure cannot be sufficient to jusify a certain observation.
You can't prove that there is no such thing as divine interaction with this world. You CAN disprove a specific model for this however. You can show that Judaism, Islam, and Christainity are inconsistant with eachother, that they can't all be true, and that they all appeal to logical fallacies for support. You can also show that the idea of divine intervention as a systemic explanation for everything is unhelpful from a science perspective.
But that is not sufficient to say that there can be no valid claims of divine interaction with this world.
A man wonders whether sex is permitted on the sabbath. So he goes and asks the priest whether sex is work and thus prohibited on the Sabbath. The priest consults the Bible and concludes that it is. The man is not entirely satisfied by this because he is unsure whether a celebate man is the right person to give him this advice, so he asks a protestent minister. The minister consults the Bible and concludes that it is work and is thus prohibited on the Sabbath. Just to get one final opinion, the man goes and asks a rabbi.
The rabbi sits and thinks about the matter for a moment and says "Of course it is is not work!"
The man asks the rabbi how he can be so sure given the views from two other learned religious men, and he answers "If sex were work, my wife would have the maid do it."
Moral of the story is that arguments from authority aren't really all that great. If your belief in creationism is because of what is written in the Bible, that is fundamentally different from an argument based on experiments and tests concerning available data. While it is quite possible to believe that God created the world and used evolution as a means to create humanity, this is different from trying to choose bible vs science.
Your statement is true for some definitions of "reality."
However, here is an interesting thought experiment: Can you prove beyond a doubt that the universe wasn't created 10 seconds ago in its current state complete with the memories of all in it?
As a reconstructionist Norse pagan, I find your statement insightful:
It would be equivalent to changing passages in Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica -- irrelevant to how things are done now.
This would be my argument against making changes to the Eddas. If you want to change passages in Newton's writings, you will destroy the historical value of those writings. It might not have a big impact on how science is done, but it would have a big impact on the history of ideas, and thus every one of us should object strenuously to a revisionist attempt to do this outside of, say, footnoting a translation.
Basically, if you're not a theist then you're an atheist... because you're without theism.
See, but see, the problem here is that "theism" tends to be seen as functionally equivalent to "classical monotheism," so by that viewpoint Buddhists, Hindus, and Neopagans are all soft atheists by that definition. This is more or less due to the fact that the secular humanism on which most modern atheism is based is largely simply secularized interpretations of Christian humanism. Western Atheists and Christians have a heck of a lot more in common with eachother than they do with Thai Buddhists with either group.....
I reject the whole framework, myself, in favor of something which is somewhat pantheistic with man-made religions functioning as an interface between a pantheistic reality and the human condition. Oddly enough this has paralles in Aristotilian thought, but is somewhat different from Aristotle's viewpoint in that I don't accept an unmoved mover, etc. In some ways that might make me "functionally atheist" to some atheists, but then I see most atheists as "functionally Christian..."
Please demonstrate this with regard to Uppanishadic Hinduism, where the closes thing you see to "God" is an abstract idea and the religion approximates patheism.
Dawkins' argument only holds with classical monotheism and breaks down when applied to ANYTHING else.
What about a study relating to archeology of themes relating to the Garden of Eden story?
What about the sociology of creationism as a phenominon, anthropological parallels, etc?
Is this more or less "science" than is "computer science?" Certainly the above suggestions are more closely tied to the scientific method, while most of computer science is dressed up logic rather than subject to the scientific method per se.
Not quite. I am working on a paper on theories of magic (in traditional cultures) at the moment and would suggest that scientific and mytho-magical are the result of very different ways of organizing knowledge. Scientific thought is the product of an analytical, objectively distanced worldview which is fundamentally the product of writing, while magic is fundamentally the product of an aggregative, participatory worldview conditioned by the constraints of oral tradition.
Most of the patterns that James Frazer showed in The Golden Bough are better understood as products of this aggregative, participatory world view than they are some sort of parallel to science. I think that Mircea Eliade's approach is much closer to the mark of how magic is seen in traditional cultures though.
Unfortunately the synthesis between the processes of science and religion ends up being theology (which is really the worst of both worlds, IMO). The other synthesis can be the sciences relating to anthropology of religion.
It's the antithesis because the one thing most religions agree on is that being "religious" requires "faith".
And you define faith as a type of belief. And you are wrong.
AFAICS, the only religions which demand faith in this regard are Islam, Christianity, the Sikh religion, and Judaism. What you believe has very little bearing on whether you are a Hindu or a Buddhist, for example (or for that matter a neopagan). I would go further and say that traditional religions are almost invariably orthopraxies, where belief is not a factor but practice is definitive.
Religion is the anti-thesis of science because you are not allowed to question in religion. When was the last time anybody happened to say, "you know the bible/koran/tora needs updating, let's change a few paragraphs shall we."
Really? Is that universal to all traditions?
If you are a Buddhist and you question the 8 noble truths, what exactly is going to happen to you?
If you are a Hindu and say "I don't believe that Vishnu is anything more than a figmant of my imagination" what is going to happen? (Actually in Hinduism there is a perpetual dialog about what exactly the Gods are.)
Most traditional religions are orthopraxies rather than orthodoxies. Belief isn't the defining factor, but rather holding the religious observances is.
How on earth do you get a PhD in creationism? The whole point of creationism is that it is grounded in biblical literalism. To get a PhD you are supposed to make a substantial contribution to the field, which seems to be at odds with the idea of creationism.
Now, I think one should be able to get a PhD in other (existing, humanities and sciences) fields by providing an authoritative study of mythological patterns in Genesis 1-3 as well as textual constructions, philology, structural anthropology, etc. But that is hardly the same thing as a PhD in creationism. Even if you could get a PhD equivalent in creation theology, the proper venue is as a doctor of divinity.
Although I think Robert Zoller certainly does deserve an honorary PhD for his work on topics related to astrology (whether it is through the philosophy department or the history department is a question for others). However his contributions, discussing the Renaissance significance of the Arabic Parts, their roots in Neo-Platonism and the relationship between neo-Platonism in the Middle-East and that in the West, etc. is groundbreaking both from a historical and a practical perspective. Similarly his work looking at Scandinavian sky lore is extremely interesting.
In this specific case, I think Blizzard has a strong case because such add-ins combine with the program to affect the screen display, which could be argued to CREATE a derivative work when running, since game displays tend to be primarily expressive. Whether they "can" and whether they "should" are two very different questions.
IANAL, but I understand that intent is only used in cases where the intent of both parties is clear (i.e. the licensor and the licensee, not necessarily the license author), and where the license is not otherwise clear. So you would seem to have to show that both the licensor and licensee accepted RMS's statements, and if not, vagueness would be held against the licensor.
However, the bigger issue is that I am not sure you need copyright permission to dynamically link to a library anyway, provided that distribution is not an issue. I think you could easily see linking as outside the bounds of the license regardless of what RMS says because it is a copyright license and hence matters beyond copyright become outside its scope.
The development of the AFC test, in my lay opinion, dooms the linking argument at least as regards the GPL v2. The GPL v3 is a more sticky case, and I am not sure the GPL v3 is compatible with the BSD license (everyone says "yes" but for incompatible reasons).
So does a network client. But if I write a network client for MySQL's protocols without using their libraries, then nobody argues that this has any requirement to be GPL. Also no copyright license is ever required to run the software and the GPL makes it clear that is not governed. Therefore ONLY actions prohibited otherwise by copyright law (at least regarding the GPL v2) are governed.
Does Microsoft have a copyright basis to make arbitrary demands regarding all code running on the platform? Can Microsoft sue MinGW developers for creating a work which is derivative of Windows without permission?
At least as far as the GPL v2.... (I am not going into the v3 can of worms.)
The problem is that I don't think that linking has much to do with whether you have a derivative work of not. If someone wants to make a proprietary add-on to a GPL project, I am willing to bet that the question of whether it is linked dynamically to the software or communicates through sockets will have very little bearing on whether it is a derivative work. THis is assuming that "aggregative work" means the same thing as "compiled or collected work" and "work based on the program" means "derivative work" (in the same sense that a movie may be "based on" a book--- If I rewrite the GCC in, say, Python, that is a derivative work).
(Functional elements, like API's, are NOT covered by copyright. OTOH, expressive elements like user interfaces are. So there are plenty of cases where loosely coupled programs could be derivative, and tightly coupled ones would not.)
Why would someone patent something if you could just "keep it a trade secret forever"?
Because patents and trade secrets have entirely different protections and the latter is far weaker for functional components of goods sold to the general public?
THe basic issue is that with a patent, the government grants a monopoly for a number of years on all applications of the innovation in exchange for disclosing it. The idea is that if you DON'T treat it as a trade secret, we will protect your market for a while.
However for a trade secret, you only have protection against certain forms of disclosure and competition. If I reverse engineer your implementation, you have NO protections under trade secret law. I pretty much only am in trouble if you trusted me with the secret and I betrayed your trust. If I came by it myself through reverse engineering, you have absolutely no protections.
I am not saying that patents on short-life-cycle goods like software should be the same as on long-life-cycle goods like automobiles. In fact I don't think they should be. I think a 5-year patent on software ought to be sufficient and a 10 year patent on longer-life-cycle goods ought to be sufficient (automobile parts, pharmaceuticals, etc). The key though is we have to stop thinking of patents as matters of "intellectual property" but rather "payment for disclosure." We as the public need to decide what the disclosure is worth in various areas and create a patent law system which addresses those concerns. (Copyright and software is another issue, and I am of the opinion that one should be forced to register the copyright on the source code before you can register the copyright on binary derivative works.)
The patent regime expires too quickly not if the big biotech companies are complaining but rather if companies are bypassing the patent process frequently and trying to keep things as trade secrets. The goal of a patent system ought to be to have the shortest patent protection schedule which encourages disclosure.
People will innovate anyway. They always have. However, the case is that some things that would ordinarily be kept as trade secrets will go through the patent process and hence be publically documented. Some sorts of innovations are good candidates for patents. Others are not.
For example, although I tend to be against software patents, I am for allowing patents on encryption algorythms because given the choice between an algorythm being a trade secret and it being patented, the latter is less damaging to everyone involved. However, I think we also need to reduce the time period where patents are honored, maybe to 10 years for most things or half that for software or other short-life-cycle products.
BTW, I think that software patents should be limited to fields like encryption, simply because I would rather have a documented encryption algorythm than I would an undocumented one. This isn't really an argument against patent-free open source algorythms, btw, just an argument against secret ones.
The exchange is not about innovation. We aren't giving people incentive to INNOVATE through patents. We are giving people incentive to disclose innovations through patents. There is a huge difference.
The argument for patent law is not about innovation but rather that without a patent process, there would be every incentive to keep innovations secret (moving innovations from patents into trade secrets). Given that alternative, I think that patents make a great deal of sense. The bargain is that if you tell everyone what your innovation is, we will give you a time-limited monopoly on it. If you don't, you can protect it using trade secret law indefinitely.
In some things, however, this is not in society's interest, so we should review certain types of patent protections and exclude them from the process.
Slashdot Mirror
ISTR firmware viruses infecting C64 floppy disk drives......
After reading the article, I don't think this is novel or new, rather a friendly reminder that firmware viruses are still a potential threat.
Um.... We can't have perfected it. We rely on nuclear-powered submarines which are fundamentally un-stealthy because of the noise of the hot water running through the pipes. Diesel-electric submarines have a real shot at the stealth designation (and in fact, the Chinese have demonstrated that we can't detect their subs when they are running on electric).
However, the New Orleans looks to me to be designed to be stealthy from a radar perspective, so I wonder if it has some other stealth measures as well. I wonder if this is a case of building all our ships as stealthy as possible and then wondering why they don't see eachother.
The Bible and true scientific facts are never at odds and never can be. The differences come in from the interpretation of scientific facts and interpretations of Scripture. Science is primarily tells HOW things in nature work whereas the Bible primarily tells us WHO and WHY. It tells us who is behind nature and our existence and gives us the purpose he has in mind for it all.
That is a reasonably defensible position. Aryeh Kaplan has argued that one can derive the scientific age of the universe from a close reading of the Torah, psalms, and Midrash (and proceeds to show a close correspondences). Certain groups of Hindus do the same with the Rig Veda.
However, this does not diminish the fact that to Creationists, the Bible and Science are at odds with eachother, so THEY feel compelled to choose.
Do those religious observances change?
Sure, they evolve over time.
For example, the Asvamedha hasn't been performed in some time.
Just as a note on the above, even the scientific method can't disprove an entire category of theories. All it can do is insist that the theory must be in line with observable fact.
For example, there are some physicists who think that Newton's theories themselves could be fine-tuned to address the same data that supposedly disproves the theories in favor of relativity. Similarly although the theory of the luminiferous aether was disproved, it is rising up again in certain areas of particle physics.
Why? Because falsifying a scientific theory does NOT demonstrate that the underlying ideas are false, just that the current structure cannot be sufficient to jusify a certain observation.
You can't prove that there is no such thing as divine interaction with this world. You CAN disprove a specific model for this however. You can show that Judaism, Islam, and Christainity are inconsistant with eachother, that they can't all be true, and that they all appeal to logical fallacies for support. You can also show that the idea of divine intervention as a systemic explanation for everything is unhelpful from a science perspective.
But that is not sufficient to say that there can be no valid claims of divine interaction with this world.
Not something I'm familiar with. However if it makes any claims to divine interaction with the world then it can just as easily be dismissed.
How so? You are prepared to prove a negative?
A man wonders whether sex is permitted on the sabbath. So he goes and asks the priest whether sex is work and thus prohibited on the Sabbath. The priest consults the Bible and concludes that it is. The man is not entirely satisfied by this because he is unsure whether a celebate man is the right person to give him this advice, so he asks a protestent minister. The minister consults the Bible and concludes that it is work and is thus prohibited on the Sabbath. Just to get one final opinion, the man goes and asks a rabbi.
The rabbi sits and thinks about the matter for a moment and says "Of course it is is not work!"
The man asks the rabbi how he can be so sure given the views from two other learned religious men, and he answers "If sex were work, my wife would have the maid do it."
Moral of the story is that arguments from authority aren't really all that great. If your belief in creationism is because of what is written in the Bible, that is fundamentally different from an argument based on experiments and tests concerning available data. While it is quite possible to believe that God created the world and used evolution as a means to create humanity, this is different from trying to choose bible vs science.
Define "real."
Your statement is true for some definitions of "reality."
However, here is an interesting thought experiment: Can you prove beyond a doubt that the universe wasn't created 10 seconds ago in its current state complete with the memories of all in it?
As a reconstructionist Norse pagan, I find your statement insightful:
It would be equivalent to changing passages in Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica -- irrelevant to how things are done now.
This would be my argument against making changes to the Eddas. If you want to change passages in Newton's writings, you will destroy the historical value of those writings. It might not have a big impact on how science is done, but it would have a big impact on the history of ideas, and thus every one of us should object strenuously to a revisionist attempt to do this outside of, say, footnoting a translation.
See, most folks on this board assume that all religions are exactly like Christianity. ;-)
Basically, if you're not a theist then you're an atheist... because you're without theism.
See, but see, the problem here is that "theism" tends to be seen as functionally equivalent to "classical monotheism," so by that viewpoint Buddhists, Hindus, and Neopagans are all soft atheists by that definition. This is more or less due to the fact that the secular humanism on which most modern atheism is based is largely simply secularized interpretations of Christian humanism. Western Atheists and Christians have a heck of a lot more in common with eachother than they do with Thai Buddhists with either group.....
I reject the whole framework, myself, in favor of something which is somewhat pantheistic with man-made religions functioning as an interface between a pantheistic reality and the human condition. Oddly enough this has paralles in Aristotilian thought, but is somewhat different from Aristotle's viewpoint in that I don't accept an unmoved mover, etc. In some ways that might make me "functionally atheist" to some atheists, but then I see most atheists as "functionally Christian..."
Please demonstrate this with regard to Uppanishadic Hinduism, where the closes thing you see to "God" is an abstract idea and the religion approximates patheism.
Dawkins' argument only holds with classical monotheism and breaks down when applied to ANYTHING else.
Can you have a scientific study of creationism?
What about a study relating to archeology of themes relating to the Garden of Eden story?
What about the sociology of creationism as a phenominon, anthropological parallels, etc?
Is this more or less "science" than is "computer science?" Certainly the above suggestions are more closely tied to the scientific method, while most of computer science is dressed up logic rather than subject to the scientific method per se.
Not quite. I am working on a paper on theories of magic (in traditional cultures) at the moment and would suggest that scientific and mytho-magical are the result of very different ways of organizing knowledge. Scientific thought is the product of an analytical, objectively distanced worldview which is fundamentally the product of writing, while magic is fundamentally the product of an aggregative, participatory worldview conditioned by the constraints of oral tradition.
Most of the patterns that James Frazer showed in The Golden Bough are better understood as products of this aggregative, participatory world view than they are some sort of parallel to science. I think that Mircea Eliade's approach is much closer to the mark of how magic is seen in traditional cultures though.
Unfortunately the synthesis between the processes of science and religion ends up being theology (which is really the worst of both worlds, IMO). The other synthesis can be the sciences relating to anthropology of religion.
It's the antithesis because the one thing most religions agree on is that being "religious" requires "faith".
And you define faith as a type of belief. And you are wrong.
AFAICS, the only religions which demand faith in this regard are Islam, Christianity, the Sikh religion, and Judaism. What you believe has very little bearing on whether you are a Hindu or a Buddhist, for example (or for that matter a neopagan). I would go further and say that traditional religions are almost invariably orthopraxies, where belief is not a factor but practice is definitive.
Religion is the anti-thesis of science because you are not allowed to question in religion. When was the last time anybody happened to say, "you know the bible/koran/tora needs updating, let's change a few paragraphs shall we."
Really? Is that universal to all traditions?
If you are a Buddhist and you question the 8 noble truths, what exactly is going to happen to you?
If you are a Hindu and say "I don't believe that Vishnu is anything more than a figmant of my imagination" what is going to happen? (Actually in Hinduism there is a perpetual dialog about what exactly the Gods are.)
Most traditional religions are orthopraxies rather than orthodoxies. Belief isn't the defining factor, but rather holding the religious observances is.
How on earth do you get a PhD in creationism? The whole point of creationism is that it is grounded in biblical literalism. To get a PhD you are supposed to make a substantial contribution to the field, which seems to be at odds with the idea of creationism.
Now, I think one should be able to get a PhD in other (existing, humanities and sciences) fields by providing an authoritative study of mythological patterns in Genesis 1-3 as well as textual constructions, philology, structural anthropology, etc. But that is hardly the same thing as a PhD in creationism. Even if you could get a PhD equivalent in creation theology, the proper venue is as a doctor of divinity.
I say this having made substantial contributions to the field of practical rune-magic.
Although I think Robert Zoller certainly does deserve an honorary PhD for his work on topics related to astrology (whether it is through the philosophy department or the history department is a question for others). However his contributions, discussing the Renaissance significance of the Arabic Parts, their roots in Neo-Platonism and the relationship between neo-Platonism in the Middle-East and that in the West, etc. is groundbreaking both from a historical and a practical perspective. Similarly his work looking at Scandinavian sky lore is extremely interesting.
In this specific case, I think Blizzard has a strong case because such add-ins combine with the program to affect the screen display, which could be argued to CREATE a derivative work when running, since game displays tend to be primarily expressive. Whether they "can" and whether they "should" are two very different questions.
IANAL, but I understand that intent is only used in cases where the intent of both parties is clear (i.e. the licensor and the licensee, not necessarily the license author), and where the license is not otherwise clear. So you would seem to have to show that both the licensor and licensee accepted RMS's statements, and if not, vagueness would be held against the licensor.
However, the bigger issue is that I am not sure you need copyright permission to dynamically link to a library anyway, provided that distribution is not an issue. I think you could easily see linking as outside the bounds of the license regardless of what RMS says because it is a copyright license and hence matters beyond copyright become outside its scope.
The development of the AFC test, in my lay opinion, dooms the linking argument at least as regards the GPL v2. The GPL v3 is a more sticky case, and I am not sure the GPL v3 is compatible with the BSD license (everyone says "yes" but for incompatible reasons).
So does a network client. But if I write a network client for MySQL's protocols without using their libraries, then nobody argues that this has any requirement to be GPL. Also no copyright license is ever required to run the software and the GPL makes it clear that is not governed. Therefore ONLY actions prohibited otherwise by copyright law (at least regarding the GPL v2) are governed.
Does Microsoft have a copyright basis to make arbitrary demands regarding all code running on the platform? Can Microsoft sue MinGW developers for creating a work which is derivative of Windows without permission?
At least as far as the GPL v2.... (I am not going into the v3 can of worms.)
The problem is that I don't think that linking has much to do with whether you have a derivative work of not. If someone wants to make a proprietary add-on to a GPL project, I am willing to bet that the question of whether it is linked dynamically to the software or communicates through sockets will have very little bearing on whether it is a derivative work. THis is assuming that "aggregative work" means the same thing as "compiled or collected work" and "work based on the program" means "derivative work" (in the same sense that a movie may be "based on" a book--- If I rewrite the GCC in, say, Python, that is a derivative work).
(Functional elements, like API's, are NOT covered by copyright. OTOH, expressive elements like user interfaces are. So there are plenty of cases where loosely coupled programs could be derivative, and tightly coupled ones would not.)
Why would someone patent something if you could just "keep it a trade secret forever"?
Because patents and trade secrets have entirely different protections and the latter is far weaker for functional components of goods sold to the general public?
THe basic issue is that with a patent, the government grants a monopoly for a number of years on all applications of the innovation in exchange for disclosing it. The idea is that if you DON'T treat it as a trade secret, we will protect your market for a while.
However for a trade secret, you only have protection against certain forms of disclosure and competition. If I reverse engineer your implementation, you have NO protections under trade secret law. I pretty much only am in trouble if you trusted me with the secret and I betrayed your trust. If I came by it myself through reverse engineering, you have absolutely no protections.
I am not saying that patents on short-life-cycle goods like software should be the same as on long-life-cycle goods like automobiles. In fact I don't think they should be. I think a 5-year patent on software ought to be sufficient and a 10 year patent on longer-life-cycle goods ought to be sufficient (automobile parts, pharmaceuticals, etc). The key though is we have to stop thinking of patents as matters of "intellectual property" but rather "payment for disclosure." We as the public need to decide what the disclosure is worth in various areas and create a patent law system which addresses those concerns. (Copyright and software is another issue, and I am of the opinion that one should be forced to register the copyright on the source code before you can register the copyright on binary derivative works.)
The patent regime expires too quickly not if the big biotech companies are complaining but rather if companies are bypassing the patent process frequently and trying to keep things as trade secrets. The goal of a patent system ought to be to have the shortest patent protection schedule which encourages disclosure.
People will innovate anyway. They always have. However, the case is that some things that would ordinarily be kept as trade secrets will go through the patent process and hence be publically documented. Some sorts of innovations are good candidates for patents. Others are not.
For example, although I tend to be against software patents, I am for allowing patents on encryption algorythms because given the choice between an algorythm being a trade secret and it being patented, the latter is less damaging to everyone involved. However, I think we also need to reduce the time period where patents are honored, maybe to 10 years for most things or half that for software or other short-life-cycle products.
BTW, I think that software patents should be limited to fields like encryption, simply because I would rather have a documented encryption algorythm than I would an undocumented one. This isn't really an argument against patent-free open source algorythms, btw, just an argument against secret ones.
What is a patent an exchange for, really?
The exchange is not about innovation. We aren't giving people incentive to INNOVATE through patents. We are giving people incentive to disclose innovations through patents. There is a huge difference.
The argument for patent law is not about innovation but rather that without a patent process, there would be every incentive to keep innovations secret (moving innovations from patents into trade secrets). Given that alternative, I think that patents make a great deal of sense. The bargain is that if you tell everyone what your innovation is, we will give you a time-limited monopoly on it. If you don't, you can protect it using trade secret law indefinitely.
In some things, however, this is not in society's interest, so we should review certain types of patent protections and exclude them from the process.