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Re:Make them bleed
Re:Make them bleed (Score:2)
Lets be clear. The government basically lost this case.
No, that's not true, and the truth is scarier than your statement. The correct statement is:
Let's be clear. The government intentionally lost this case.
I dont want software engineering to become some esoteric type of thing like quantum physics, or math, I want it to be something everyone can take part in.
Too late, software IS math. When you write software, you're solving math problems. If you do software research, you're doing math research. It's a newer branch of math, but it will become just as esoteric with time.
There is nothing colossally more wrong with being able to patent software than there is with patenting hardware.
It's the difference between building a machine out of circuits and getting a patent for that, and taking a machine that's already built and flipping some switches on it, and getting a patent for using the machine that's already made.
I agree you should get patents for building new machines, but you shouldn't get patents on uses of machines that are already built.
And one more thing...I have no problem with an algorithm being embedded in hardware like a graphics card being awarded a patent. It's just that the owner of the patent should not be able to stop someone from coding that algorithm into a general-purpose computer, since there is a tradeoff between speed and generality.
Hmm...even better...have a large network of people who each run web servers, and who each agree to go to each others' servers much more than the limit...and then everyone ends up making money. It could be a distributed network where you log on and go out randomly N nodes from your location and view a page there. If everyone did that 24/7 everyone would get rich. Wow...it's almost like printing money. I should patent this brilliant business method.
I'm surprized the university didn't fire him when they found out about this. It is certinaly a case where they should do that. Of cousre I don't have the whole story so maybe they did.
Rofl, firing every professor that ever screwed over one of his grad students would be like firing every member of Congress that cheated on his wife. Most of them do it. I have seen it. My advisor is one of the few people I have ever seen who didn't require his name on the research that came out of my PhD, even though he did a ton of work for me.
I heard that they threatened to fill our restaurants and stores with fatty foods and to start selling little sticks of flammable plant products that they will use to poison us with choking gas.
Now I hear about all of these people dying of heart attacks and cancer, and it must be those damn terrorists again!
I just woke up after a hard weekend of partying at the ALS and found a big fat penguin tattoed onto my ass!!! Those nasty Linux people always trying to play catchup to all of those great MS ideas!
There's a difference here. The CAD machines are designed to give instructions about how to construct real machines. Just as specialized circuits like video cards are real machines. That is different from taking a machine that already exists (a computer) and then flipping some switches in it (programming it) and then letting it operate. You never get outside of the operation of the computer itself...you are merely using the computer. Now, if you want to create a robotic fabricator attached to a computer and this fabricator uses algorithms to make real product X, I have no problem with patenting the whole system...as long as you are actually building something to go along with the system. Taking two or more common machines and attaching them using standard cables and attachments, and then saying you made a "new machine" is bullshit. You should have to actually create something and not just use things that exist in ways they were designed to be used.
In any case, pure algorithms should never be patentable, so if you have some new algorithm for your fabricator, anyone in the whole world should be allowed to use a similar or exact algorithm (if they code it themselves) to do what they want, including building another fabricator, as long as their fabricator is different enough from the original one. It should never be the case that someone can get a patent for something that can be stored purely as software, nor should anyone ever get sued merely for typing things into a general-purpose computer and distributing them.
Another example, if you want to make a system for facial recognition, that's fine. However, whatever you do should never be able to stop anyone else from taking a bunch of computers networked as they see fit attached to standard cameras that take pictures that get sent to the database to be checked against the face database using any algorithms whatsoever. The only thing your patent should cover is your precise implementation of the hardware you create, and you should not be able to get a patent just for pushing bits around in standard hardware attached using standard hookups between devices with whatever software you desire running the underlying system.
The Business Software Alliance announced that it is beginning an investigation into possible software license violations within Massachussetts State government offices. The BSA was supposedly tipped off by a former employee who spoke about "rampant IP and copyright violations at all levels of government." The BSA has withheld judgement on this subject, but "will be performing a full audit of all licenses and computers in the government's possession."
But, ALL systems like this will have the same kinds of flaws. There is simply too much at risk to allow someone access to everything about you and all of your money based on a simple login that you use constantly. As much as I like the idea of universal logins, they should be restricted to things that don't involve any kind of money. Ever.
These exact same bastards are claiming that software isn't protected speech in the DeCSS case.
If software isn't protected speech, and DVDs are software, then DVDs are not protected speech.
That means the government can start censoring all kinds of movies, and music and assrape the entire entertainment industry.
Then, they can see how it feels to have the First Amendment rights that they value trampled a little bit.
In fact, I might start just such a crusade just to be a prick.
It makes me wonder if people who open their mouths and start spouting bullshit that that they think will help their position of the moment ever think back to what they said yesterday. I wonder whether or not they think about any sort of a larger picture, or whether they are even capable of understanding things in a larger context. Did you ever read that "mappers" and "packers" paper? They must be a bunch of packers to start doing something this stupid in the face of the DeCSS thing.
Like harm as in "when you give your children proprietary software you are harming them by taking away their freedom, because they will live thinking that they must give up their freedoms to use computers." Therefore proprietary software must be abolished.
Also, harm as in "when you give your children Free software, you are teaching them that it's ok to share digital content and they will always want to do that and it will turn them into pirates and they will go attacking ships on the high seas." Therefore, Free software must be abolished.
Imagine trying to connect to a crisis assistance site aftera devastating earthquake
Imagine trying to find information on a disease like anthrax, but finding the sites blocked because there is an evil satanic band with the same name that we blocked all information about to "protect the children".
Imagine you just got breast/testicular cancer and you want to find out about the diseases but those sites are blocked too, because they have pictures of those naughty naughty body parts and we can't have that kind of corruption defiling our precious little minds.
I apologize for how this looks. Apparently:
Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted. So the whitespace is ugly below.
Yay, so now we get to see the version of the bill get watered down to the point that it's "tolerable" and then when those partial controls don't stop piracy, we get to see the pressure racheted up.:P
FrogSoup* Person::make_frog_soup(Stove &stove, Frog *frog)
{
int cooking_time = 0;
FrogSoup *frogsoup;
do
{
frog->placed_into(stove.get_pot());
if (frog->jumps_out())
{
stove.add_temp(-1);
cooking_time = 0;
frog->placed_into(stove.get_pot());
}
else
{
cooking_time++;
stove.add_temp(1);
}
sleep(1);
}
while (cooking_time <2000);
frogsoup = new Frogsoup;
delete frog;
frogsoup->set_broth(stove.get_pot().get_content s());
return frogsoup;
}
I wonder if they put any "self-help" code in there to stop piracy. Wouldn't that suck if they did that and someone figures out how to disable copies of XP remotely because of a "feature" instead of a bug?
Everyone send emails to this person correcting him for blaming something on Linux that wasn't the fault of Linux. Then the Washington post will have more stories about how informed and reasonable all Linux people are. That will get us away from this image of being a bunch of crazies using some neato niche toy instead of a real OS. Explain how using Linux will increase the efficiency of team operations and lead to better results for the team! We can't let them mock Linux like this or else Microsoft will win! Think of all the free press this might get, and then maybe he will write another article next week complaining about the deluge of letters!! Then the dialogue will be started! Cmon, this is the _Washington_ Post. Everyone in Congress reads it, so let's make some noise!
Holy shit...I wonder if they do have a nefarious plan to make Linus waste his resources protecting his trademark. After all, you gotta protect it, or you lose it... That's really scary.
isnt it possible that you US guys will order more and more of your CD's over the net from these guys?
But, all the US has to do is block access to unpatriotic sites all over the world. Fortunately, China is working on just such a technology and is probably putting it into its Red Flag Linux distros. So, the US can download it and force all Americans to use this technology to help prop up the domestic music industry.
OIC you're right. I read about 1 paragraph, and I stopped reading about here:
" i.e. co-opting the help of the open source community in developing a product "
I just assumed that "help of the open source community" meant that people had the code and were contributing code, and were whining because Luthis stopped releasing updates. I didn't realize that people got pissed because they got suckered into being beta testers.
Having read the rest of it, I still don't see what the big deal is. If the people have executables under an open source license (they did check right?) then they can still use them regardless of the chest-puffing luthis wants to engage in. If not, then people should have checked. It sucks, but it looks like there was never anything open there to start with. There's one born every minute, and luthis found a whole herd of them. Shrug.
Slashdot Mirror
From the looks of those investments, they must have been smoking crack. So there you go.
Yeah, let's hear it for my 31337 copy/paste and previewing skills. :)
faq
code
awards
privacy
journals
older stuff
rob's page
preferences
submit story
advertising
supporters
past polls
topics
about
bugs
jobs
hof
Re:Make them bleed
Re:Make them bleed (Score:2)
Lets be clear. The government basically lost this case.
No, that's not true, and the truth is scarier than your statement. The correct statement is:
Let's be clear. The government intentionally lost this case.
They could have won, but they chose not to.
Last night, Bill Gates commented, "We thought that 640k licenses would be enough for everybody. Guess we were wrong again."
I dont want software engineering to become some esoteric type of thing like quantum physics, or math, I want it to be something everyone can take part in.
Too late, software IS math. When you write software, you're solving math problems. If you do software research, you're doing math research. It's a newer branch of math, but it will become just as esoteric with time.
There is nothing colossally more wrong with being able to patent software than there is with patenting hardware.
It's the difference between building a machine out of circuits and getting a patent for that, and taking a machine that's already built and flipping some switches on it, and getting a patent for using the machine that's already made.
I agree you should get patents for building new machines, but you shouldn't get patents on uses of machines that are already built.
And one more thing...I have no problem with an algorithm being embedded in hardware like a graphics card being awarded a patent. It's just that the owner of the patent should not be able to stop someone from coding that algorithm into a general-purpose computer, since there is a tradeoff between speed and generality.
Hmm...even better...have a large network of people who each run web servers, and who each agree to go to each others' servers much more than the limit...and then everyone ends up making money. It could be a distributed network where you log on and go out randomly N nodes from your location and view a page there. If everyone did that 24/7 everyone would get rich. Wow...it's almost like printing money. I should patent this brilliant business method.
I'm surprized the university didn't fire him when they found out about this. It is certinaly a case where they should do that. Of cousre I don't have the whole story so maybe they did.
Rofl, firing every professor that ever screwed over one of his grad students would be like firing every member of Congress that cheated on his wife. Most of them do it. I have seen it. My advisor is one of the few people I have ever seen who didn't require his name on the research that came out of my PhD, even though he did a ton of work for me.
I heard that they threatened to fill our restaurants and stores with fatty foods and to start selling little sticks of flammable plant products that they will use to poison us with choking gas.
Now I hear about all of these people dying of heart attacks and cancer, and it must be those damn terrorists again!
I just woke up after a hard weekend of partying at the ALS and found a big fat penguin tattoed onto my ass!!! Those nasty Linux people always trying to play catchup to all of those great MS ideas!
There's a difference here. The CAD machines are designed to give instructions about how to construct real machines. Just as specialized circuits like video cards are real machines. That is different from taking a machine that already exists (a computer) and then flipping some switches in it (programming it) and then letting it operate. You never get outside of the operation of the computer itself...you are merely using the computer. Now, if you want to create a robotic fabricator attached to a computer and this fabricator uses algorithms to make real product X, I have no problem with patenting the whole system...as long as you are actually building something to go along with the system. Taking two or more common machines and attaching them using standard cables and attachments, and then saying you made a "new machine" is bullshit. You should have to actually create something and not just use things that exist in ways they were designed to be used.
In any case, pure algorithms should never be patentable, so if you have some new algorithm for your fabricator, anyone in the whole world should be allowed to use a similar or exact algorithm (if they code it themselves) to do what they want, including building another fabricator, as long as their fabricator is different enough from the original one. It should never be the case that someone can get a patent for something that can be stored purely as software, nor should anyone ever get sued merely for typing things into a general-purpose computer and distributing them.
Another example, if you want to make a system for facial recognition, that's fine. However, whatever you do should never be able to stop anyone else from taking a bunch of computers networked as they see fit attached to standard cameras that take pictures that get sent to the database to be checked against the face database using any algorithms whatsoever. The only thing your patent should cover is your precise implementation of the hardware you create, and you should not be able to get a patent just for pushing bits around in standard hardware attached using standard hookups between devices with whatever software you desire running the underlying system.
The Business Software Alliance announced that it is beginning an investigation into possible software license violations within Massachussetts State government offices. The BSA was supposedly tipped off by a former employee who spoke about "rampant IP and copyright violations at all levels of government." The BSA has withheld judgement on this subject, but "will be performing a full audit of all licenses and computers in the government's possession."
But, ALL systems like this will have the same kinds of flaws. There is simply too much at risk to allow someone access to everything about you and all of your money based on a simple login that you use constantly. As much as I like the idea of universal logins, they should be restricted to things that don't involve any kind of money. Ever.
Here's why.
These exact same bastards are claiming that software isn't protected speech in the DeCSS case.
If software isn't protected speech, and DVDs are software, then DVDs are not protected speech.
That means the government can start censoring all kinds of movies, and music and assrape the entire entertainment industry.
Then, they can see how it feels to have the First Amendment rights that they value trampled a little bit.
In fact, I might start just such a crusade just to be a prick.
It makes me wonder if people who open their mouths and start spouting bullshit that that they think will help their position of the moment ever think back to what they said yesterday. I wonder whether or not they think about any sort of a larger picture, or whether they are even capable of understanding things in a larger context. Did you ever read that "mappers" and "packers" paper? They must be a bunch of packers to start doing something this stupid in the face of the DeCSS thing.
Like harm as in "when you give your children proprietary software you are harming them by taking away their freedom, because they will live thinking that they must give up their freedoms to use computers." Therefore proprietary software must be abolished.
Also, harm as in "when you give your children Free software, you are teaching them that it's ok to share digital content and they will always want to do that and it will turn them into pirates and they will go attacking ships on the high seas." Therefore, Free software must be abolished.
Imagine trying to connect to a crisis assistance site aftera devastating earthquake
Imagine trying to find information on a disease like anthrax, but finding the sites blocked because there is an evil satanic band with the same name that we blocked all information about to "protect the children".
Imagine you just got breast/testicular cancer and you want to find out about the diseases but those sites are blocked too, because they have pictures of those naughty naughty body parts and we can't have that kind of corruption defiling our precious little minds.
I apologize for how this looks. Apparently:
:P
Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted. So the whitespace is ugly below.
Yay, so now we get to see the version of the bill get watered down to the point that it's "tolerable" and then when those partial controls don't stop piracy, we get to see the pressure racheted up.
FrogSoup* Person::make_frog_soup(Stove &stove, Frog *frog)
{
int cooking_time = 0;
FrogSoup *frogsoup;
do
{
frog->placed_into(stove.get_pot());
if (frog->jumps_out())
{
stove.add_temp(-1);
cooking_time = 0;
frog->placed_into(stove.get_pot());
}
else
{
cooking_time++;
stove.add_temp(1);
}
sleep(1);
}
while (cooking_time <2000);
frogsoup = new Frogsoup;
delete frog;
frogsoup->set_broth(stove.get_pot().get_content s());
return frogsoup;
}
I wonder if they put any "self-help" code in there to stop piracy. Wouldn't that suck if they did that and someone figures out how to disable copies of XP remotely because of a "feature" instead of a bug?
Everyone send emails to this person correcting him for blaming something on Linux that wasn't the fault of Linux. Then the Washington post will have more stories about how informed and reasonable all Linux people are. That will get us away from this image of being a bunch of crazies using some neato niche toy instead of a real OS. Explain how using Linux will increase the efficiency of team operations and lead to better results for the team! We can't let them mock Linux like this or else Microsoft will win! Think of all the free press this might get, and then maybe he will write another article next week complaining about the deluge of letters!! Then the dialogue will be started! Cmon, this is the _Washington_ Post. Everyone in Congress reads it, so let's make some noise!
Holy shit...I wonder if they do have a nefarious plan to make Linus waste his resources protecting his trademark. After all, you gotta protect it, or you lose it... That's really scary.
Put a tax on all recordable media and pay artists a living, but not a huge living.
Next week they'll come to your house and leave a horse's head in your bed while you sleep.
isnt it possible that you US guys will order more and more of your CD's over the net from these guys?
But, all the US has to do is block access to unpatriotic sites all over the world. Fortunately, China is working on just such a technology and is probably putting it into its Red Flag Linux distros. So, the US can download it and force all Americans to use this technology to help prop up the domestic music industry.
Before we decide to post reactionary "EU sucks" posts en masse, we have to consider that they may actually have a point.
/. much, or at least hasn't been assimilated into the collective fully...:)
Methinks someone doesn't read
OIC you're right. I read about 1 paragraph, and I stopped reading about here:
" i.e. co-opting the help of the open source community in developing a product "
I just assumed that "help of the open source community" meant that people had the code and were contributing code, and were whining because Luthis stopped releasing updates. I didn't realize that people got pissed because they got suckered into being beta testers.
Having read the rest of it, I still don't see what the big deal is. If the people have executables under an open source license (they did check right?) then they can still use them regardless of the chest-puffing luthis wants to engage in. If not, then people should have checked. It sucks, but it looks like there was never anything open there to start with. There's one born every minute, and luthis found a whole herd of them. Shrug.