If (2.4 is under GPL) then (don't have to pay money to SCO to use 2.4)
The contrapositive form:
if (you have to pay money to SCO to use 2.4) then (2.4 is not under GPL)
also
if (2.4 is not under GPL) then (2.4 is illegal)
and
if (2.4 is illegal) then (you can't use 2.4)
(hypothetical syllogism)
if (you have to pay SCO money to use 2.4) then (you can't use 2.4)
So, if you feel that you need to pay money to SCO, you can't use 2.4 since you're saying that it's not under the GPL. I hope that if anyone pays off SCO, the kernel coders sue the fuck out of them for copyright infringement since the payer is saying that they don't think 2.4 is under the GPL.
I have to stop development on one of my projects because I don't want to pay SCO any money to use Linux.
You can't pay SCO money to keep using linux.
Look at it this way: Let's suppose that SCO loses. Then you don't owe SCO money.
Let's suppose that SCO wins:
SCO says that the 2.2 kernel is ok.
In that case, if they win, all that they have done is show that 2.4 = 2.2 + SCO + other stuff.
Combining terms,
2.4 = GPL + SCO
If SCO wins and puts the 2.4 kernel under GPL, you don't owe them any money. Everything goes on as normal.
If SCO wins and they say 2.4 can't be under the GPL, then 2.4 is illegal. That's because 2.4 would be a derivative work of BOTH 2.2 and SCO, and any license on 2.4 must work with the 2.2 license and the SCO license. Since the only license that will work with the 2.2 code is the GPL, 2.4 is illegal if they choose not to put it under that license and can't exist. I also don't think they can temporarily remove 2.4 from the GPL and add it back in, because the moment they remove it, all derivatives up to the first "tainted point" become illegal...so SCO can't later on "donate" the code back to Linux because they don't own all of it.
And they can't "gain control" of all of Linux by doing this either. It would be like MS putting some little utility in Windows illegally, then having the company that made the utility win a court case where they get control of all of Windows. Not gonna happen.
I never realized how cool those clauses saying that you can't extend or alter the GPL were until this came up.
So, to make it simpler, either everyone can use 2.4 for free, or nobody can use 2.4 at all.
OTOH, if you intend to stop using Linux anyway, and you still don't want them to sue you, then you might pay them off. But realize that if you feel you have to pay them off, then you're admitting that you can't use 2.4 Linux.
IANAL, But: No way. Even if they win, all that will have shown is that the 2.4 kernel = 2.2 kernel (which does not infringce SCO copyrights t?) + SCO code.+ other stuff.
Therefore, 2.4 kernel must be relicensed in such a way that ALL licenses agree. Since the 2.2 copyrights are under the GPL, the ONLY license that can work here is the GPL. If they say they don't want their code distributed under the GPL, then the 2.4 kernel can't be used at all.
So, their indemnification is really stupid. I don't know if they realize it, but if they lose, their customers wasted money paying off SCO, and if they win and put the 2.4+ under GPL, then why bother paying. And if they win and demand a change to the license, then the 2.4+ kernel users can't use the code anyways since the GPL will kill it.:P Stupid stupid stupid.
The problem is that if a large chunk of the public did this, the record labels would scream PIRACY!!!
I know. I am very aware of this. But I don't care. They're merely businesses. If I choose not to do business with them, then fuckem. If they attempt to coerce money out of me, or out of a large segment of the population that has nothing to do with them, its extortion. Real extortion. Not the "pseudo shakedown" they're engaging in right now with the P2P networks.
As for independents, I don't know if I can support them. I'm afraid that they will get more successful and change their tunes or join an RIAA company, at which point I've helped another person to get into the system. It's a tough call for me.
The problem is that I don't see how computers and copyright can coexist. If I can send, receive, copy and modify huge amounts of arbitrary data (requirements for a computer), then I can steal...err.. infringe copyrights.
I wish there were a way to actually enforce copyrigtht without getting to the endgame where computers are only a pale shadow of their current selves, with a few "real" computers allowed for "special approved people". Kind of like how the Stationers got printing presses made illegal for everyone except themselves hundreds of years ago.
I believe computers promote the progress of science, and so restricting them or taking them away will hinder the progress of science. Since the _ONLY_ reason that copyright exists is to promote the progress of the useful arts and sciences, I can't support this. I can't let them continue down this path, so I can't support them.
But, they are right. They should be able to get money for the things they create. I just don't see how to do it without taking away computers.
You can help me. Tell me how full-powered computers can exist, along with the elimination of piracy, while still allowing people to use copyrighted material totally anonymously on any machine they own at any time, while preventing copyrighted material from being used on other peoples' machines. And also in such a way that people who don't use copyrighted material don't have any restrictions or taxes or costs or burdens placed on them.
I knew this would happen months ago.:P The great shakedown starts. If they want to stop P2P, they should destroy particular users. But no, since it's not about the P2P, but about the shakedown, they'll stick to a few thousand bucks per year. Increasing as people refuse to stop P2P.
If it pisses you off. Never give them money again.This is not a "boycott" which has the overtones of people who are willing to go back to buying once the companies clean up their acts. This is a "lifestyle change" where you realize that they will lie and fuck you over so you never give them money ever again. No matter how much they protest that they've "cleaned up" down the road.
I thought it was 50 million in the US and 100million more outside? Also, most are or will be >= 18 within a few years, so you're talking tens of millions in the US who could vote if they got off their asses.
Convicted felons also give up certain rights (some even after their prison sentence is over), rights like voting,
Of course, they have to do this. Think about it, if 100 million people vote in elections, it only takes 50 million people voting together to elect the people they want. There are 50million+ file sharing people, so if they got their shit together, they could take over the system and make file sharing legal. Therefore, you have to take them out of the equation.
As people have pointed out before, systems and people route around damage. If you have a system (Copyright) that gets damaged by massive numbers of people (File sharars) and they could destroy you if they woke up (by voting) you route around them by neutering them by keeping them from voting by making them felons.
Of course they might just continue with their extortion racket of getting 10-20k from everyone in the world, but who's counting?
I don't see how to make filesharing legal and get artists paid. Many people won't pay for things unless they have to.:P I hope they come up with a foolproof plan for this, but I don't see how to force people to pay and still let them download as much as they want (for free). Does anyone know how to do this? Or can anyone point me to a website that has a foolproof plan for allowing people to share as much as they want privately, permanently, and without cost, while still making sure that artists get paid? Since, if someone comes up with some payment system, people will still try to get outside the controlled system so they can get things for free.
I disagree. Your answer, although legally accurate, is narrow and misleading. It helps to frame ideas into contexts that people can already understand. By repeating things like this, I believe that you're going to make less honest people believe that filesharing is ok. I don't see how to explain copyright infringement to people unless I equate it with stealing. Otherwise,in order to tell people why copyright infringement is wrong, I have to go to this big long list of things I can't do and a big long list of punishments, all the while making people ask "Why is this wrong again?" It's wrong because it's stealing. You're getting to use something that you didn't pay for. Perhaps you should broaden your definition of "stealing" to include copyright infringement.
I don't live in a world of "legalisms" where I go looking to the US code every time I want to understand something. I think about new situations in terms of things that I've previously encountered and use my experience to figure out what to do next or how to look at things. In my mind, "copyright infringement" is a type of "stealing" because it has the same net effect as stealing: I get to use something that I didn't pay for. Now, you can come back with the US code and look for technicalities and specific words to try show that "copyright infringement" is different from "stealing", but that's only at the legal level. I choose to step back and look at what's really happening instead of just looking for technicalities. On the basis of that, I have concluded that "copyright infringement" is a type of "stealing". If you want to live your life by quoting chapter and verse from the law, then fine. But IMO that's a sad way to live, and certainly not a way to understand things better.
And btw, I understood that this was stealing back when I used to steal^H^H^H^H^H"infringe on other people's copyright" by copying computer games. I didn't think it was wrong because I was a stupid teenager, but I knew that I was getting something for free that I should have paid for. So it's not the RIAA FUD.
Oh, also, I think that this law is a form of legalized extortion which was paid for with bribes. (I consider campaign contributions to be bribes unless they're in small amounts from individuals who can vote in the election the recipient is in.)
I don't think they're out to stop the piracy. I think they're out to get millions of people to do something bad that they can use to collect 10-20k from each of those people. Otherwise, why wouldn't they send those four students to jail forever and bankrupt them? That would teach them a lesson wouldn't it? That would scare people wouldn't it? If you knew your life would be OVER by engaging in filesharing, then you might think about it eh? I think they're doing it to get billions in revenue that they wouldn't otherwise get.
Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers.
Cool. So if I write a virus/trojan/worm, I have recorded an expression of mathematical thought in fixed form. Under the Berne Convention, I am now a copyright holder. Which means I can now destroy anyone's computer that has my copyrighted material on it...(after a couple of warnings). I think 2 popup windows telling them to get rid of my malicious code should be enough. As soon as they close the window a second time, I guess my code can destroy the computer now.
What's even better is that if they make this a hardware requirement to have this kind of a backdoor, they've just left the entire country open to a terrorist attack.
"If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that," Hatch said. "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize" the seriousness of their actions, he said.
Yay. Let's intentionally make it easier for assholes to destroy our country. Nice idea dipshit. Perhaps he didn't think that far ahead.
Remember when Ebay got those retarded patents on showing thumbnails of items for auction? I think their whole schtick was that they had items from more than one database being presented in a single webpage or something.:P Well, this is karma.
I don't want to see anyone win here. I want to see the award reduced massively, and I want to see the person who filed the lawsuit vilified by everyone. I want the injunction to be granted and I want them to fight it out as long as possible while their online auctions taken down. I don't wany Ebay to sell out to another company. I want Ebay to enforce its online auction patents against everyone else doing online auctions and I want all online auction sites taken down.
I want this to be a big fucking huge giant mess that pisses every Internet user in the entire country off and has them asking: Why can't I sell my <worthless crap> anymore? How dare the government tell me I can't do this? You mean a bunch of *lawyers* can just take away the Internet?
It's wishful thinking, but I hope that Ebay goes all the way with this and tries to drag everyone down with them.
Or, more seriously, how can you have servers distributing your DRM-protected content if all hardware will refuse to transmit that content due to a broadcast flag?
There will be machines that ignore the broadcast flag. There have to be, or the content companies can't distribute over the Internet. (Or if there's another option besides this, tell me.) But somehow, it still must be possible to transmit massive numbers of copies of DRM-protected content.
Since I wrote this little piece of text, I am a copyright holder. And, as a copyright holder, it's my right to have access to machines that ignore the broadcast flag. I want machines as powerful as those.
If there's a gaping hole in this logic, please tell me, because this whole broadcast-flag-enforced-by-hardware thing doesn't make sense to me since the copyright industry will need to have machines that transmit crippled content like that.
As a recovering math person, I think programming is math. For me, figuring out how to write a proof feels the same as figuring out how to write code to do something. It's just a different kind of math.
I think the issue is that computers let people do mathematics that has computational beauty, not proof beauty, and you have to appreciate the computational side to really understand it.
It's as Hofstadter wrote in Godel Escher Bach. It is possible to create systems with computers in which the entire system can be understood, but once the system is used to compute, the results can be so complex that they can't be preditcted.
This is the mathematics of computation where interesting things happen only after you compute. It's not the same as traditional mathematics where the beauty is found in the static proofs of theorems themselves. It's easy to miss what makes computers and programming special if you only try to apply the yardstick "proof beauty" of traditional mathematics to programs without understanding and applying the "computational beauty" that the programs create.
I know someone who still does word processing on an Atari 800...:) She's using it to write the manuscript for a book that will be published. That's probably older than most other things, but I don't know when those Atari 800's first came out.
Notice how I called the 10k-100k and the installment plan. (Ok, except for admitting guilt...but they did pay the money and I doubt that they'll do it again.:P)
Now, all we have to do is wait for them to defeat Verizon, and then they can send out tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands or millions of letters to beat down everyone.:)
Heck, 159.95 per month for 4 years is about 8k...I wasn't even too far off on the monthly payments. Damn. Sometimes I scare myself.
Well. What if you write some vague description of a computer program or some device, but can't figure out how to make it work with all the details in it? That's where the problem comes in. They should require working models of the patented products (in the case of software: working source code if there really must be software patents)) so that you're sure that the person patenting the invention has done the real work of inventing something. Heck, by the logic of not having to have working models, you should be able to patent a holodeck and then beat the crap out of anyone attempting to do any kind of VR research. Or, alternately, you should be able to patent a holodeck and make VR research patent-free after 20 years.
I've often thought of patenting a machine that produces power to run a computer running a compression algorithm that can compress completely random data that will cause a local change in entropy (since you're decreasing "order" by reducing the total amount of data which then sucks entropy from the nearby universe) when the data of length N is reduced to one of length n that can then be fed back into the power source for the original machine. See, it produces its own energy.:P
Slashdot Mirror
This is how I see it:
If (2.4 is under GPL) then (don't have to pay money to SCO to use 2.4)
The contrapositive form:
if (you have to pay money to SCO to use 2.4) then (2.4 is not under GPL)
also
if (2.4 is not under GPL) then (2.4 is illegal)
and
if (2.4 is illegal) then (you can't use 2.4)
(hypothetical syllogism)
if (you have to pay SCO money to use 2.4) then (you can't use 2.4)
So, if you feel that you need to pay money to SCO, you can't use 2.4 since you're saying that it's not under the GPL. I hope that if anyone pays off SCO, the kernel coders sue the fuck out of them for copyright infringement since the payer is saying that they don't think 2.4 is under the GPL.
I have to stop development on one of my projects because I don't want to pay SCO any money to use Linux.
You can't pay SCO money to keep using linux.
Look at it this way: Let's suppose that SCO loses. Then you don't owe SCO money.
Let's suppose that SCO wins:
SCO says that the 2.2 kernel is ok.
In that case, if they win, all that they have done is show that 2.4 = 2.2 + SCO + other stuff.
Combining terms,
2.4 = GPL + SCO
If SCO wins and puts the 2.4 kernel under GPL, you don't owe them any money. Everything goes on as normal.
If SCO wins and they say 2.4 can't be under the GPL, then 2.4 is illegal. That's because 2.4 would be a derivative work of BOTH 2.2 and SCO, and any license on 2.4 must work with the 2.2 license and the SCO license. Since the only license that will work with the 2.2 code is the GPL, 2.4 is illegal if they choose not to put it under that license and can't exist. I also don't think they can temporarily remove 2.4 from the GPL and add it back in, because the moment they remove it, all derivatives up to the first "tainted point" become illegal...so SCO can't later on "donate" the code back to Linux because they don't own all of it.
And they can't "gain control" of all of Linux by doing this either. It would be like MS putting some little utility in Windows illegally, then having the company that made the utility win a court case where they get control of all of Windows. Not gonna happen.
I never realized how cool those clauses saying that you can't extend or alter the GPL were until this came up.
So, to make it simpler, either everyone can use 2.4 for free, or nobody can use 2.4 at all.
OTOH, if you intend to stop using Linux anyway, and you still don't want them to sue you, then you might pay them off. But realize that if you feel you have to pay them off, then you're admitting that you can't use 2.4 Linux.
change the license to the 2.4 kernel.
:P Stupid stupid stupid.
IANAL, But: No way. Even if they win, all that will have shown is that the 2.4 kernel = 2.2 kernel (which does not infringce SCO copyrights t?) + SCO code.+ other stuff.
Therefore, 2.4 kernel must be relicensed in such a way that ALL licenses agree. Since the 2.2 copyrights are under the GPL, the ONLY license that can work here is the GPL. If they say they don't want their code distributed under the GPL, then the 2.4 kernel can't be used at all.
So, their indemnification is really stupid. I don't know if they realize it, but if they lose, their customers wasted money paying off SCO, and if they win and put the 2.4+ under GPL, then why bother paying. And if they win and demand a change to the license, then the 2.4+ kernel users can't use the code anyways since the GPL will kill it.
The problem is that if a large chunk of the public did this, the record labels would scream PIRACY!!!
I know. I am very aware of this. But I don't care. They're merely businesses. If I choose not to do business with them, then fuckem. If they attempt to coerce money out of me, or out of a large segment of the population that has nothing to do with them, its extortion. Real extortion. Not the "pseudo shakedown" they're engaging in right now with the P2P networks.
As for independents, I don't know if I can support them. I'm afraid that they will get more successful and change their tunes or join an RIAA company, at which point I've helped another person to get into the system. It's a tough call for me.
The problem is that I don't see how computers and copyright can coexist. If I can send, receive, copy and modify huge amounts of arbitrary data (requirements for a computer), then I can steal...err.. infringe copyrights.
I wish there were a way to actually enforce copyrigtht without getting to the endgame where computers are only a pale shadow of their current selves, with a few "real" computers allowed for "special approved people". Kind of like how the Stationers got printing presses made illegal for everyone except themselves hundreds of years ago.
I believe computers promote the progress of science, and so restricting them or taking them away will hinder the progress of science. Since the _ONLY_ reason that copyright exists is to promote the progress of the useful arts and sciences, I can't support this. I can't let them continue down this path, so I can't support them.
But, they are right. They should be able to get money for the things they create. I just don't see how to do it without taking away computers.
You can help me. Tell me how full-powered computers can exist, along with the elimination of piracy, while still allowing people to use copyrighted material totally anonymously on any machine they own at any time, while preventing copyrighted material from being used on other peoples' machines. And also in such a way that people who don't use copyrighted material don't have any restrictions or taxes or costs or burdens placed on them.
I knew this would happen months ago. :P The great shakedown starts. If they want to stop P2P, they should destroy particular users. But no, since it's not about the P2P, but about the shakedown, they'll stick to a few thousand bucks per year. Increasing as people refuse to stop P2P.
If it pisses you off. Never give them money again.This is not a "boycott" which has the overtones of people who are willing to go back to buying once the companies clean up their acts. This is a "lifestyle change" where you realize that they will lie and fuck you over so you never give them money ever again. No matter how much they protest that they've "cleaned up" down the road.
I thought it was 50 million in the US and 100million more outside? Also, most are or will be >= 18 within a few years, so you're talking tens of millions in the US who could vote if they got off their asses.
Convicted felons also give up certain rights (some even after their prison sentence is over), rights like voting,
Of course, they have to do this. Think about it, if 100 million people vote in elections, it only takes 50 million people voting together to elect the people they want. There are 50million+ file sharing people, so if they got their shit together, they could take over the system and make file sharing legal. Therefore, you have to take them out of the equation.
As people have pointed out before, systems and people route around damage. If you have a system (Copyright) that gets damaged by massive numbers of people (File sharars) and they could destroy you if they woke up (by voting) you route around them by neutering them by keeping them from voting by making them felons.
Of course they might just continue with their extortion racket of getting 10-20k from everyone in the world, but who's counting?
I don't see how to make filesharing legal and get artists paid. Many people won't pay for things unless they have to. :P I hope they come up with a foolproof plan for this, but I don't see how to force people to pay and still let them download as much as they want (for free). Does anyone know how to do this? Or can anyone point me to a website that has a foolproof plan for allowing people to share as much as they want privately, permanently, and without cost, while still making sure that artists get paid? Since, if someone comes up with some payment system, people will still try to get outside the controlled system so they can get things for free.
"Copyright infringement is NOT stealing"
I disagree. Your answer, although legally accurate, is narrow and misleading. It helps to frame ideas into contexts that people can already understand. By repeating things like this, I believe that you're going to make less honest people believe that filesharing is ok. I don't see how to explain copyright infringement to people unless I equate it with stealing. Otherwise,in order to tell people why copyright infringement is wrong, I have to go to this big long list of things I can't do and a big long list of punishments, all the while making people ask "Why is this wrong again?" It's wrong because it's stealing. You're getting to use something that you didn't pay for. Perhaps you should broaden your definition of "stealing" to include copyright infringement.
I don't live in a world of "legalisms" where I go looking to the US code every time I want to understand something. I think about new situations in terms of things that I've previously encountered and use my experience to figure out what to do next or how to look at things. In my mind, "copyright infringement" is a type of "stealing" because it has the same net effect as stealing: I get to use something that I didn't pay for. Now, you can come back with the US code and look for technicalities and specific words to try show that "copyright infringement" is different from "stealing", but that's only at the legal level. I choose to step back and look at what's really happening instead of just looking for technicalities. On the basis of that, I have concluded that "copyright infringement" is a type of "stealing". If you want to live your life by quoting chapter and verse from the law, then fine. But IMO that's a sad way to live, and certainly not a way to understand things better.
And btw, I understood that this was stealing back when I used to steal^H^H^H^H^H"infringe on other people's copyright" by copying computer games. I didn't think it was wrong because I was a stupid teenager, but I knew that I was getting something for free that I should have paid for. So it's not the RIAA FUD.
Oh, also, I think that this law is a form of legalized extortion which was paid for with bribes. (I consider campaign contributions to be bribes unless they're in small amounts from individuals who can vote in the election the recipient is in.)
I don't think they're out to stop the piracy. I think they're out to get millions of people to do something bad that they can use to collect 10-20k from each of those people. Otherwise, why wouldn't they send those four students to jail forever and bankrupt them? That would teach them a lesson wouldn't it? That would scare people wouldn't it? If you knew your life would be OVER by engaging in filesharing, then you might think about it eh? I think they're doing it to get billions in revenue that they wouldn't otherwise get.
Check out this post!
Start reporting them as stollen. ..........How is german bread going to help?
Oh, you silly grammer Nazi, you.
Ok, so I have to put some text in here, but lookit my .sig.
Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers.
Cool. So if I write a virus/trojan/worm, I have recorded an expression of mathematical thought in fixed form. Under the Berne Convention, I am now a copyright holder. Which means I can now destroy anyone's computer that has my copyrighted material on it...(after a couple of warnings). I think 2 popup windows telling them to get rid of my malicious code should be enough. As soon as they close the window a second time, I guess my code can destroy the computer now.
What's even better is that if they make this a hardware requirement to have this kind of a backdoor, they've just left the entire country open to a terrorist attack.
"If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that," Hatch said. "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize" the seriousness of their actions, he said.
Yay. Let's intentionally make it easier for assholes to destroy our country. Nice idea dipshit. Perhaps he didn't think that far ahead.
Except:
(GNU/Unix) = ((Gnu's)(Not)(Unix))/(Unix) = (Gnu's Not) = GN. WTF is a GN?
Remember when Ebay got those retarded patents on showing thumbnails of items for auction? I think their whole schtick was that they had items from more than one database being presented in a single webpage or something. :P Well, this is karma.
I don't want to see anyone win here. I want to see the award reduced massively, and I want to see the person who filed the lawsuit vilified by everyone. I want the injunction to be granted and I want them to fight it out as long as possible while their online auctions taken down. I don't wany Ebay to sell out to another company. I want Ebay to enforce its online auction patents against everyone else doing online auctions and I want all online auction sites taken down.
I want this to be a big fucking huge giant mess that pisses every Internet user in the entire country off and has them asking: Why can't I sell my <worthless crap> anymore? How dare the government tell me I can't do this? You mean a bunch of *lawyers* can just take away the Internet?
It's wishful thinking, but I hope that Ebay goes all the way with this and tries to drag everyone down with them.
Or, more seriously, how can you have servers distributing your DRM-protected content if all hardware will refuse to transmit that content due to a broadcast flag?
There will be machines that ignore the broadcast flag. There have to be, or the content companies can't distribute over the Internet. (Or if there's another option besides this, tell me.) But somehow, it still must be possible to transmit massive numbers of copies of DRM-protected content.
Since I wrote this little piece of text, I am a copyright holder. And, as a copyright holder, it's my right to have access to machines that ignore the broadcast flag. I want machines as powerful as those.
If there's a gaping hole in this logic, please tell me, because this whole broadcast-flag-enforced-by-hardware thing doesn't make sense to me since the copyright industry will need to have machines that transmit crippled content like that.
I think it's a bit different than that.
The enemy (SCO) of my enemy (Linux/IBM) is my friend (and friends help each other out, so here's some money).
God, I love the smell of tinfoil hat cynicism in the morning.
Is that possible? I thought the GPL was designed to keep things like this from happening.
As a recovering math person, I think programming is math. For me, figuring out how to write a proof feels the same as figuring out how to write code to do something. It's just a different kind of math.
I think the issue is that computers let people do mathematics that has computational beauty, not proof beauty, and you have to appreciate the computational side to really understand it.
It's as Hofstadter wrote in Godel Escher Bach. It is possible to create systems with computers in which the entire system can be understood, but once the system is used to compute, the results can be so complex that they can't be preditcted.
This is the mathematics of computation where interesting things happen only after you compute. It's not the same as traditional mathematics where the beauty is found in the static proofs of theorems themselves. It's easy to miss what makes computers and programming special if you only try to apply the yardstick "proof beauty" of traditional mathematics to programs without understanding and applying the "computational beauty" that the programs create.
I know someone who still does word processing on an Atari 800... :) She's using it to write the manuscript for a book that will be published. That's probably older than most other things, but I don't know when those Atari 800's first came out.
Hey, check out this post from a few weeks ago.
:P)
:)
Notice how I called the 10k-100k and the installment plan. (Ok, except for admitting guilt...but they did pay the money and I doubt that they'll do it again.
Now, all we have to do is wait for them to defeat Verizon, and then they can send out tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands or millions of letters to beat down everyone.
Heck, 159.95 per month for 4 years is about 8k...I wasn't even too far off on the monthly payments. Damn. Sometimes I scare myself.
Well. What if you write some vague description of a computer program or some device, but can't figure out how to make it work with all the details in it? That's where the problem comes in. They should require working models of the patented products (in the case of software: working source code if there really must be software patents)) so that you're sure that the person patenting the invention has done the real work of inventing something. Heck, by the logic of not having to have working models, you should be able to patent a holodeck and then beat the crap out of anyone attempting to do any kind of VR research. Or, alternately, you should be able to patent a holodeck and make VR research patent-free after 20 years.
:P
I've often thought of patenting a machine that produces power to run a computer running a compression algorithm that can compress completely random data that will cause a local change in entropy (since you're decreasing "order" by reducing the total amount of data which then sucks entropy from the nearby universe) when the data of length N is reduced to one of length n that can then be fed back into the power source for the original machine. See, it produces its own energy.