Good show, Sloppy. I don't know if this bloke has ever been to University, but when I was reading Maths and Analytical Philosophy at Uni, I noticed that most Uni-sponsored research lacked the polish, verily, even the efficacy necessary to become a commercial product. Universities are interested in discovery and dissemination; as a consequence, their work is largely theoretical. If a Uni sponsors an applied project, it will invariably be unmarketable in the long run.
The sad truth is that if companies were not afforded patent protection, then their massive research budgets would go to cutthroat marketing and developing snake-oil.
You're just a shitty programmer, who needs mama to keep you straight and enforce some rules.
It amazes me how many people posting here have obviously never worked in industry. The fact remains that it does not matter what my individual engineering discipline is, because real software systems are built by large teams, and not all of them are expert virtuoso programmers like you. The fact of the matter is that consultancies will pull any teenaged tosser off of the street, hand him a copy of Teach Yourself To Be An Unleashed Dummy In 21 Days and market him as an "experienced programer." In today's IT market, sometimes one has to hire these sad wankers to rush a project out the door.
The vast majority of programmers do not have the skills or the discipline to produce maintainable, readable code. This is why, for large-scale development projects, teams either insist on rigid coding standards (i.e. if you don't comment every ten lines, you can't check your code in), or languages which enforce their own standards. As an example, the US Ministry of Defence has long insisted that all defence-related software be written in Ada, solely because it is a safe language with enforced coding standards. My organisation, on the other hand, insists on Java and Eiffel.
I'd really like to see someone substantiate these claims that people write maintainable, readable perl. Anecdotal evidence would seem to sharply discredit this view, as would looking at most major large perl projects. Perhaps this code exists in on the hard-drives of these virtuoso perl bigots, who shield it from the masses as the Israelites shielded the Ark of the Covenant from the rabble. Who knows?
Well, in smalltalk, you can use delegation and use a refactoring browser to dupe methods from two base classes as needed, so MI is not strictly necessary. (This works because of smalltalk's type system.) However, in a language without such a strong development environment, MI can be extremely helpful in collapsing a class hierarchy (a very useful refactoring), or in quickly designing complicated behavior. MI is usually not the best solution, but multiple-interface inheritance with multiple-implementation delegation is a sane and useful compromise.
I really don't see how having strong opinions constitutes "Flamebait".
Unfortunately, these discoveries will all be illegal in the state of Kansas, because they imply that Hera did not create humans as a punishment for Zeus seducing nymphs by coming to them as bull or swan.
It's simply unAmerican to threaten the country's moral fiber by tearing down the Olympic pantheon's primacy.
The smallest eCos footprint is 4kb (3kb ROM, 1KB RAM). It also comes with ISO C and math library runtimes, so most applications should port fairly easily.
Try using eCos. It's made by the Cygnus division of RedHat, is completely open-source, and will compile a kernel in a minimum of 10kb or so. You can add the EL/IX compatibility layer to make it look like Linux, too. It runs on "eight architectures and dozens of reference platforms", so you won't be too limited in choice of arch. It's very modular; at compile time you can even choose between several schedulers based on size and speed. The "eCos developers' community page" is here.
Yes, but gov't bounties don't cover the 98% of that research budget that goes toward projects which never become drugs, and the brief monopoly on production of a successful drug can cover those costs.
As a citizen of the EU, I have no real problems with socialism, but I feel that research-driven industries will only be supported adequately by governments when they (gov'ts) have a selfish motive (i.e. war).
All of the above made their creators HEAPS of money. But they fell victim to the burn rate of the MODERN world. It's time to let the public play with them.
So much for patented IP.
Why? Why on earth would I be interested in "playing with" the innards of an Intel Pentium when I can read research papers that describe innovative architectures from universities for free, or from ACM for a pittance? Why, when I can read about a real architecture (i.e. MIPS, SPARC, Merlot, etc.) freely in any architecture text or from many web-sites? I don't see how releasing obsolete technology is good for anyone -- and the examples you cite don't even have any real historical significance. If you were talking about ENIAC or RISC-I, that'd be another matter.
You don't want to "stifle innovation by the little guy". That's great. If I came out with some GPLed EDO chipset schematic, do you really think that Intel (or whoever) would charge me down with guns blazing? I doubt it, because I wouldn't be competing with them, and I wouldn't be taking any dollars from them. Unlike copyright, patents can be selectively enforced and still retain validity. However, new markets appear all of the time. My GPLed EDO chipset might just interfere with Intel's (or whoever's) embedded systems plan, and they would be well within their rights to tell me to cease and desist in such a case, because they paid to develop the technology with the expectation that they could control it for a time.
Your copyright argument is similarly spurious. Perhaps it holds for the rubbish which is on the radio -- the sort of music which is barely worth the aluminum it's pressed on -- but what of real composers, like the USian John Adams, or Philip Glass, or John Corigliano? What is the incentive to write music if one can't reasonably expect to derive royalties from recordings and for-pay performances during her lifetime? Comissions are one thing, but very few composers get them these days, and they are really more of an "advance" than a "salary".
The Mickey Mouse example is also a little absurd. That character embodies Disney's corporate identity, which they have spent millions of dollars to develop and promote. Shouldn't they have the rights to that character?
It seems that you're advocating freeing society's junkyard for everyone to play in -- I'd rather give credit where it's due and not get tetanus. Thanks a lot, troll.
Sorry about that; I stand corrected. I'm not a serious investor and read the report rather hastily, hence the faulty data. It still works out to 1.2 billion quid per annum, though. I was mostly going on some internal information we had here. (I work for a competitor of Glaxo's, who I can't name for obvious reasons.)
First off, the original poster was complaining about IP patents in general, so I responded with a valid example. However, I'll feed your obvious troll.
Why the comparison of software to pharmaceuticals? Both are industries with extremely high research costs, and many companies never see payoffs for the majority of that research. Fraunhofer poured over fifteen years and millions of DM into the MP3 encoding and collecting the psychoacoustic data for spectral encoding. Damn right they have an interest in protecting it!
The only problem I see with software patents as opposed to other patents is that, since the law hasn't caught up with the tech, the patents are overly broad and, in many cases, serve to stifle innovation. However, not all patents are bad. In many cases, the only incentive for research is the potential that it might someday become a successful product, and patents provide the guarantee that the innovators may profit. I realize this may not be a popular view here, but I still feel it's valid.
Unfortunately, Free software advocates will have a problem in this war: in many cases Free software is not funded, and the developers are "hackers" -- skilled programmers, but not necessarily CS researchers. Since researchers cost money, and many problem domains are still the subject of active research, only a very special Free program in one of these domains will embody an innovation which is superior to an equivalent encumbered program. I believe Ogg may be such a program, but they'd have been wise to secure a patent lawyer to make sure they're treading on solid ground legally, and perhaps patent their techniques themselves!
First, I'm not falling for anything; just quoting.
What if you misappropriated Nietzsche the way Rand did, using the "transvaluation of all values" to justify a diluted, "I'm OK, you're OK", philosophically tepid world-view? Would that be bad? Really. I wonder how much of her philosophy stemmed from her husband's documented impotence and the "virtuous selfishness" of her stream of young lovers.
Hankopf's essay relates directly to the problems arising from Oracle being allowed to provide electricity for their HQ and surrounding areas. Basically, she demonstrates that, since Oracle only has a motive to provide QoS for themselves, that they will not be receptive to other consumers' complaints. This places Oracle in a bit of a bind, since PG&E is not interested in providing the level of QoS that Oracle desire.
So, if Rand really relies on the profit motive, then she's just as full of shit as her followers, since not even Ellison's billions can provide an excuse for PG&E to get their heads out of their bums.
Sorry, but this is flat-out absurd. The main advangtage of Eiffel (as I've used it in engineering projects) is Design-by-Contract, which is unenforcable in lesser languages. Real Eiffel programmers don't want the ability to link in methods from other languages, especially since Microsoft are allowing mongrel languages to target.NET, like Java and VB, which allow blasphemies like side-effects in functions with return values.
Besides, any serious OO programmer knows that an OO language without multiple-implementation inheritance is a crippled husk of a language. Even Java has it with the addition of JAMIE and delegation..NET is merely a platform for VenerealBasic programmers who can't do real design, and Eiffel# is an Eiffel impostor with broken arms and legs.
If it were a 1 in 250 chance that it would kill Fidel Castro or Saddam Hussein, the USG would put ten more Iridium networks in space for the express purpose of de-orbiting them.
Reading into a an action flick like "The 6th Day" is like trying to find the meaning of life in a thrash metal album.
Chas, that's hardly fair. Thrash metal has dealt with many of the same issues as 20th-century literature: nihilism, the futility of life in an industrialized society, addiction, the role of the hero, and the impossibility of individualism. I refer you to Slayer's "Seasons in the Abyss", Anthrax' "Persistence of Time", and Megadeth's "Rust in Peace" for more examples. These issues were "enlightening" when Kafka wrote about them; why not when Dave Mustaine did?
Dismissing thrash metal is akin to dismissing the Expresionist movement in 1920s German art, or to dismissing Romantic literature and music (as music critic Eduard Hanslick did in the 1860s) as the rumblings of disaffected youngsters. This sort of snobbery merely causes one to miss great art.
Anna Hankopf, formerly of the EE department at UC-Berkeley, had an interesting paper about the possible destabilizing effects of limitless mains power without centralized control. One need only look at the mess that Oracle is currently making in Mountain View WRT power to see that the utility companies are not as evil as some might have us believe.
Unfortunately, I can't find a link for Dr. Hankopf's paper, but it primarily focused on the necessity of some centralized control of mains electrical power, if a technological society is to flourish. Hankopf claims that free power is merely
'mythopoetical libertarianism,' which imposes upon a newly-classless society the semiotics of a sadly posttextual paradigm. But an abundance of narratives concerning the economy, and subsequent stasis, of cultural society may be found. A Marxist approach will destroy the semiotics of a technology culture and, ultimately, cause its collapse.
There is no need to dissect Hankopf's bias -- as a card-carrying Objectivist, she clearly feels that corporations with a profit motive will provide the best foundation for a modern society. However, she raises some interesting points, especially in light of the Oracle debacle.
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I'm just not sure. I don't know if it's newsworthy yet because EL/IX is still in beta. Who knows, though?
The sad truth is that if companies were not afforded patent protection, then their massive research budgets would go to cutthroat marketing and developing snake-oil.
The vast majority of programmers do not have the skills or the discipline to produce maintainable, readable code. This is why, for large-scale development projects, teams either insist on rigid coding standards (i.e. if you don't comment every ten lines, you can't check your code in), or languages which enforce their own standards. As an example, the US Ministry of Defence has long insisted that all defence-related software be written in Ada, solely because it is a safe language with enforced coding standards. My organisation, on the other hand, insists on Java and Eiffel.
I'd really like to see someone substantiate these claims that people write maintainable, readable perl. Anecdotal evidence would seem to sharply discredit this view, as would looking at most major large perl projects. Perhaps this code exists in on the hard-drives of these virtuoso perl bigots, who shield it from the masses as the Israelites shielded the Ark of the Covenant from the rabble. Who knows?
I really don't see how having strong opinions constitutes "Flamebait".
It's simply unAmerican to threaten the country's moral fiber by tearing down the Olympic pantheon's primacy.
The smallest eCos footprint is 4kb (3kb ROM, 1KB RAM). It also comes with ISO C and math library runtimes, so most applications should port fairly easily.
Good luck!
As a citizen of the EU, I have no real problems with socialism, but I feel that research-driven industries will only be supported adequately by governments when they (gov'ts) have a selfish motive (i.e. war).
You don't want to "stifle innovation by the little guy". That's great. If I came out with some GPLed EDO chipset schematic, do you really think that Intel (or whoever) would charge me down with guns blazing? I doubt it, because I wouldn't be competing with them, and I wouldn't be taking any dollars from them. Unlike copyright, patents can be selectively enforced and still retain validity. However, new markets appear all of the time. My GPLed EDO chipset might just interfere with Intel's (or whoever's) embedded systems plan, and they would be well within their rights to tell me to cease and desist in such a case, because they paid to develop the technology with the expectation that they could control it for a time.
Your copyright argument is similarly spurious. Perhaps it holds for the rubbish which is on the radio -- the sort of music which is barely worth the aluminum it's pressed on -- but what of real composers, like the USian John Adams, or Philip Glass, or John Corigliano? What is the incentive to write music if one can't reasonably expect to derive royalties from recordings and for-pay performances during her lifetime? Comissions are one thing, but very few composers get them these days, and they are really more of an "advance" than a "salary".
The Mickey Mouse example is also a little absurd. That character embodies Disney's corporate identity, which they have spent millions of dollars to develop and promote. Shouldn't they have the rights to that character?
It seems that you're advocating freeing society's junkyard for everyone to play in -- I'd rather give credit where it's due and not get tetanus. Thanks a lot, troll.
Sorry about that; I stand corrected. I'm not a serious investor and read the report rather hastily, hence the faulty data. It still works out to 1.2 billion quid per annum, though. I was mostly going on some internal information we had here. (I work for a competitor of Glaxo's, who I can't name for obvious reasons.)
Why the comparison of software to pharmaceuticals? Both are industries with extremely high research costs, and many companies never see payoffs for the majority of that research. Fraunhofer poured over fifteen years and millions of DM into the MP3 encoding and collecting the psychoacoustic data for spectral encoding. Damn right they have an interest in protecting it!
The only problem I see with software patents as opposed to other patents is that, since the law hasn't caught up with the tech, the patents are overly broad and, in many cases, serve to stifle innovation. However, not all patents are bad. In many cases, the only incentive for research is the potential that it might someday become a successful product, and patents provide the guarantee that the innovators may profit. I realize this may not be a popular view here, but I still feel it's valid.
Unfortunately, Free software advocates will have a problem in this war: in many cases Free software is not funded, and the developers are "hackers" -- skilled programmers, but not necessarily CS researchers. Since researchers cost money, and many problem domains are still the subject of active research, only a very special Free program in one of these domains will embody an innovation which is superior to an equivalent encumbered program. I believe Ogg may be such a program, but they'd have been wise to secure a patent lawyer to make sure they're treading on solid ground legally, and perhaps patent their techniques themselves!
What if you misappropriated Nietzsche the way Rand did, using the "transvaluation of all values" to justify a diluted, "I'm OK, you're OK", philosophically tepid world-view? Would that be bad? Really. I wonder how much of her philosophy stemmed from her husband's documented impotence and the "virtuous selfishness" of her stream of young lovers.
Hankopf's essay relates directly to the problems arising from Oracle being allowed to provide electricity for their HQ and surrounding areas. Basically, she demonstrates that, since Oracle only has a motive to provide QoS for themselves, that they will not be receptive to other consumers' complaints. This places Oracle in a bit of a bind, since PG&E is not interested in providing the level of QoS that Oracle desire.
So, if Rand really relies on the profit motive, then she's just as full of shit as her followers, since not even Ellison's billions can provide an excuse for PG&E to get their heads out of their bums.
Besides, any serious OO programmer knows that an OO language without multiple-implementation inheritance is a crippled husk of a language. Even Java has it with the addition of JAMIE and delegation. .NET is merely a platform for VenerealBasic programmers who can't do real design, and Eiffel# is an Eiffel impostor with broken arms and legs.
If it were a 1 in 250 chance that it would kill Fidel Castro or Saddam Hussein, the USG would put ten more Iridium networks in space for the express purpose of de-orbiting them.
Chas, that's hardly fair. Thrash metal has dealt with many of the same issues as 20th-century literature: nihilism, the futility of life in an industrialized society, addiction, the role of the hero, and the impossibility of individualism. I refer you to Slayer's "Seasons in the Abyss", Anthrax' "Persistence of Time", and Megadeth's "Rust in Peace" for more examples. These issues were "enlightening" when Kafka wrote about them; why not when Dave Mustaine did?
Dismissing thrash metal is akin to dismissing the Expresionist movement in 1920s German art, or to dismissing Romantic literature and music (as music critic Eduard Hanslick did in the 1860s) as the rumblings of disaffected youngsters. This sort of snobbery merely causes one to miss great art.
Unfortunately, I can't find a link for Dr. Hankopf's paper, but it primarily focused on the necessity of some centralized control of mains electrical power, if a technological society is to flourish. Hankopf claims that free power is merely
There is no need to dissect Hankopf's bias -- as a card-carrying Objectivist, she clearly feels that corporations with a profit motive will provide the best foundation for a modern society. However, she raises some interesting points, especially in light of the Oracle debacle.