Like many things, it all depends on your point of view.
Now really... if you came home and found a vase of 6 roses from your S.O. with a nice little note "I was just thinking how wonderful you are" how are you going to react?
Will you wonder what he thinks you caught him at, that he needs to bribe your forgiveness?
As much as I dislike "Hallmark Holidays" they do have one nice side effect. They give you a good oppurtunity to tell that wonderful person in your life how much you love them, without instantly generating suspicion.
We trust our financial transaction (ATMs don't run on the internet, incidentally, they run on private networks) and taxes to the Internet because we have reasonably-good identity-verification, and want to maintain that throughout the transaction.
We don't want to maintain identity throughout the voting "transaction." This was mentioned in the article. You want a strongly-trusted identity verification at the beginning of the voting process, but you want the vote itself not correlated to identity.
This presents an added complexity beyond ATMs and e-file. It's kind of hard to do this in a way that does not make vote fraud too easy.
I like what you are thinking with this little gadget, but I want it with about 40 extra years of tech in it.
I want a pair of sunglasses.
Put some nice molecular computing in it. Molecular memory in the petabyte range. Cameras on each corner of the glasses, looking forward and side. Microphones. Running ALL the time, saved forever.
Lasers on the insides of the arms, that can paint full-color video on the inside of the lenses.
Power it from body heat from your head, or something equally silly.
Face recognition through the camera. Voice recognition through the microphones. Complete audio/video records of everything you see. (You better have good security on this thing!)
Memory prompts. I'm horrible with names. When I meet someone new, this thing should remember it. When it recognizes a face of someone I don't know well, put up their name to remind me. Tell me where we met last, who they work for, and remind me that the last time we talked I said I'd do something for them, so I can start working on my excuse early.
Tell me who that band is on the radio. (Hey, it's listening too, it might as well help out there...)
Calendar functions. Calculator. Wireless interface? Definitely, best way to grab information about anything. Add email while you're doing the wireless interface.
Keyboard? WHY?!?! Paint an image of a keyboard on any flat surface, and the thing can follow your fingers as you "type" on a flat desktop. (Okay, that would suck for touch-typists like me, but I'm sure you could get used to it.) Or just have real voice recognition on the thing. (Hey, I'm pretending working molecular computing, I can pretend intelligent voice recognition.)
Additional applications are an exercise for people that will actually be able to build this, in 40 or 400 years.
I've wondered this myself, and the best I can come up with, as a reasonable answer considering current ISP-enforced mbox sizes, is that people are supposed to be emailing those little bitty AVI captures that digital cameras do now.
You remember, 3fps 160x120pixel 15-second "movies".
That must be about the right size to let you "email movies" to your friends.
I actually read the article (is that allowed?) and have to wonder something.
The problem people keep mentioning is how to get people to pay for something that is already available for free. The commonly-mentioned solution seems to be to provide better quality or convenience for a reasonable cost. Convenience certainly doesn't seem to be satisfied with the 2 mentioned services.
But I have to wonder if the companies aren't finding that they have a societal problem more than they have a technical problem. (Admit it, you just nodded and said "Duh".) But I don't mean this the way you are thinking.
Corporations preach the pursuit of the almighty dollar (currency of your choice). Nothing is more important than minimizing costs and increasing profits.
With a free service available that kinda-sorta-mostly satisfies people... Have consumers learned the corporate lesson too well, and zeroed the music entertainment budget in the name of minimizing costs?
Even with a high-quality convenient legal service, will we still go for the no-cost service, simply because we learned too well to slim-down the budget at the expense of moral concerns?
If this is the case, should we feel bad for the RIAA? "As ye sow, so shall ye reap." Gotta feel for the bands, but the corporations are getting just what they give.
I'm also PO'd that the check-in desk isn't suggesting to passengers that they think about any sharp objects that might be confiscated, and consder checking them in with the luggage.
But that isn't the purpose of the check-in desk. The purpose of the check-in desk is to clear the check-in line as fast as possible. That doesn't include helping passengers plan ahead for hassles at the security checkpoints.
Besides, we wouldn't want to warn the terrorists that they can't bring knives on board, would we?
"I returned to my hometown later, using another form of transportation."
That is my solution too.
Unless given no choice, I do not fly by commercial passenger plane now. Not because of any perceived danger (I maintain I have a greater chance of dying in a car accident driving to the airport (almost 0.7 miles) than I do in the time period between arriving at my local airport and leaving the destination airport.) but because the HASSLE is too much to deal with.
The "security precautions" in place for air travel are way beyond what I'm willing to deal with. I have a screwdriver on my keyring. Oops, that has to go in checked bags. I carry a pocket knife. Oops, that has to go in checked bags. Leatherman Micra multi-tool? Oops, that goes in the checked bag. I like to keep toiletries in my carry-on bag, because I've had my checked bag arrive the next day too many times. Oops, now I have to take the fingernail clippers out of there and put them in the checked bag. Roll of quarters in the carry-on? (Useful on toll roads) "Sorry, have to search the bag, saw something odd." That now goes in the checked bag too.
The last time I flew before 9/11 I was only staying for 2 days, and everything fit in a carry-on. Now it seems like half the stuff I bring, I can't put in a carry-on.
I'd rather rent a car and drive. Besides, the scenery is better anyway.
Destroying a computer is not the worst you can do.
Corrupting the data on the computer is MUCH worse.
Think of a database for an ecommerce server. A virus that understands the database format, and turns every 7 into a 3 in the database. Credit card numbers (I'm sorry, sir, your card has been declined), prices, product IDs, addresses, zip codes, telephone numbers (hope this doesn't happen to your phone company), social security numbers. Everything on that database.
Then it transmits itself to another host, and removes itself from that machine, attempting to cover its tracks.
Destroying the computer is *nice* compared to letting it run for the next month with incorrect data. You just corrupted the next 7 million transactions that system processes. And how much does it cost to correct that? Restoring a nuked server is cheap by comparison.
Which would be worse for a serious ecommerce business? Being down for a day? Or having to check every transaction that was processed for the last 30 days, and dealing with mischarged customers, fraud charges from CC#s billed incorrectly, incorrect products shipped, lost packages that were misaddressed...
Destroying a system is bad for a home user... corrupting it can be deadly for a business.
We are now 3 weeks into December. This was reported to MS 5 weeks ago, or about 2 weeks into November. WinXP "hit stores Oct. 25" or about 3 weeks before this was reported.
Not that I like this sitting unpatched for 5 weeks, but it would be a bit hard for MS to delay releasing an OS for a bug that has not been found yet.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, solve equations, pitch manure, program a computer, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -- Lazarus Long
That says it pretty well... along with other comments in here about Feynman and other well balanced intelligent people.
At least, it is 2 problems from the cable ISP viewpoint.
First, they plan networks with a certain usage in mind. This much bandwidth supports this many subscribers, physical infrastructure costs this much, therefore a subscriber has to be charged that much money. When you use more bandwidth than the plan says, you're messing up their model, and they basically lose money on your business. Doesn't really matter if you are using more bandwidth because you download/upload huge amounts of stuff, or if you share your connection with your neighbors, and therefore use three "normal" subscribers worth of bandwidth. The cable ISP is still losing money on your business.
The second problem is that ISPs are still trying to figure out how to do 3 tiers of service, instead of just 2. Right now, you get residential and business. What would probably be preferred is "basic" residential, "power user" residential, and business.
Of course, the problem is one that has been mentioned here several times before... People want to pay for a connection, not for bandwidth, or, more importantly, for bandwidth usage. And the cable ISPs like advertising connection speeds, and don't want to admit that you aren't actually supposed to *use* all that speed. Like a Van Gogh in a museum, it's there to be looked at, not to be touched or used.
The point of charging for each connected device is really just another way of trying to charge for expected bandwidth usage. Per device is only the issue until they can figure out how to convince people to accept subscriptions for a set usage per month. (Which I won't be happy with, as I tend to move a lot of data, but I can understand. Commercial USENET servers do this already, $X per month for Y gig per month.)
Look for it coming soon in your Acceptable Use Policy. They'll determine what the "average" subscriber uses in bandwidth, and set the acceptable rate at 1-sigma above that. And you'll pay for more than that usage.
Hmm... that'll make online gaming *really* expensive.
Actually, there's an even better reason to spread an article across 2 pages instead of only one. (No, this doens't work for articles across more than 2 pages.)
Spreading an article across 2 pages allows the web site to compile statistics on who actually *finished* reading an article.
Loading a page for an article that is complete in a single page doesn't tell the web site if you actually finished reading the article. Loading the second page of a 2-page article is a much better indicator that you actually read the entire article.
David Drake does some great military sci-fi. He also did a book set in a society like we may be in about 50 years. (And he beat Brin to it by about 5 years... published 1986.)
It features a pleasant little psychopath whose mental problem was rechanneled to be a good watcher/cop in a 100% surveillance society. Nice setup... *every* room everywhere gets 3 cameras covering everything, networked to central police computers, and archived for as long as needed by the storyline. No such thing as privacy from the government. No, this isn't a camera in your bedroom... this is 3 of them. And your kitchen, your bathroom, your office, and your car.
It's a nice book to read just for the stories, if you don't mind a little bit of blood. It also well illustrates some of the problems with the concept. Not technical problems (don't you love how sci-fi books can assume the tech was perfected, esp when the exact working of a system isn't the central them of a book) but societal problems that you still have to overcome.
Not least of which is that some people are simply evil, and nothing you do will prevent them from being evil.
Can I take it scuba-diving with me? I'd love to have something like this that I can play with while sitting bored-to-tears on a deco stop after a long dive.
For that matter, does anyone have any recommendations for inexpensive pressure housings for something fun like a computer chess game, to take along diving? I don't want a $1000 housing for a $99 chess game... Maybe a GameBoy or something...
"If you make a product that uses VIA's chipset, and we sue them for patent infringement, it is possible your motherboard could be blocked from import into the US as a result of the suit. You might want to re-think your decision."
Really, this is just Intel being a nice corporate citizen and warning other companies of a possible downside they could have neglected to consider.
Umm... no. Corporations are, legally, people. Okay, make the law take advantage of that. When a corporation engages in monopoly practices, it is killing another corporation, presumably premeditated. Make this a capital murder case instead. Maximum fine, depending on your state of course, is the death penalty or life imprisonment.
Of course, you have some problems with how this will be handled. (Okay, major problems.) And you'd get some great arguments over what is and is not fair competition. Plus, if a corporation gets a death penalty, what happens? Execute the corp president, CEO, and Chairman of the Board? That could get messy *really* fast. Or does the corporation just have to go out of business?
Which raises an interesting question here... Is it legal for a corporation to go out of business? Most states have laws against suicide... Why aren't these laws applied to corporations?
Or, look at it from the reverse viewpoint... Corporations (legal person) dump poisons into rivers and lakes with serious harm (up to death) to people living in those areas. They get fines in the area of 1-30% of yearly revenue...
I'm a legal person... Why can't I kill people for a simple fine of 1-30% of my yearly revenue? >:)
Some equality under the law would be rather nice here.
No, this isn't serious, but it makes for an interesting argument if you're bored.
I'm not actually disagreeing with you, but you seem to be ignoring something with patents.
Patents are not simply for spending money on something that is complicated and good quality, which I'll take on faith AC-3 is. (Think the evils of "sweat of the brow" database copyrights.)
Patents are for inventions that are non-obvious to an expert working in that field.
Doing a good job is not enough to deserve a patent. Spending a lot of time and money on a technology is not enough to deserve a patent.
With the quality of patents that have been coming out of the USPTO in the last 20 years, I no longer automatically trust that they are awarded for the proper reasons. I might support this (or at least not object) if I am first convinced of the validity of the patent. I no longer consider that a given.
Okay, so you can develop it in Australia... If it is patent-encumbered, and known to be not properly licensed, it will not ship in any US distribution. The legal exposure is simply too great.
Unfortunately, this is becoming a hazard of running free-as-in-beer commercial software in Windows.
After you install software like this, check to see what it added to your system. Look in the Startup group, look in the win.ini file, look in the appropriate place in the registry (sorry, I don't remember the exact key right now, someone will supply it in a reply maybe), and just check after your next reboot if there are any processes running that you don't remember from the last time you checked. (ctrl-alt-del in win9x, or task manager in nt/2k)
This is unfortunately simply becoming something you expect with windows freeware. It isn't free, you just pay for it in something other than direct cash payments.
Slashdot Mirror
Like many things, it all depends on your point of view.
Now really... if you came home and found a vase of 6 roses from your S.O. with a nice little note "I was just thinking how wonderful you are" how are you going to react?
Will you wonder what he thinks you caught him at, that he needs to bribe your forgiveness?
As much as I dislike "Hallmark Holidays" they do have one nice side effect. They give you a good oppurtunity to tell that wonderful person in your life how much you love them, without instantly generating suspicion.
Don't pass up an oppurtunity like that.
This would, of course, be for the girl that has a nice rack?
:)
No, I didn't even try to resist.
You didn't read the article, did you?
We trust our financial transaction (ATMs don't run on the internet, incidentally, they run on private networks) and taxes to the Internet because we have reasonably-good identity-verification, and want to maintain that throughout the transaction.
We don't want to maintain identity throughout the voting "transaction." This was mentioned in the article. You want a strongly-trusted identity verification at the beginning of the voting process, but you want the vote itself not correlated to identity.
This presents an added complexity beyond ATMs and e-file. It's kind of hard to do this in a way that does not make vote fraud too easy.
I like what you are thinking with this little gadget, but I want it with about 40 extra years of tech in it.
I want a pair of sunglasses.
Put some nice molecular computing in it. Molecular memory in the petabyte range. Cameras on each corner of the glasses, looking forward and side. Microphones. Running ALL the time, saved forever.
Lasers on the insides of the arms, that can paint full-color video on the inside of the lenses.
Power it from body heat from your head, or something equally silly.
Face recognition through the camera. Voice recognition through the microphones. Complete audio/video records of everything you see. (You better have good security on this thing!)
Memory prompts. I'm horrible with names. When I meet someone new, this thing should remember it. When it recognizes a face of someone I don't know well, put up their name to remind me. Tell me where we met last, who they work for, and remind me that the last time we talked I said I'd do something for them, so I can start working on my excuse early.
Tell me who that band is on the radio. (Hey, it's listening too, it might as well help out there...)
Calendar functions. Calculator. Wireless interface? Definitely, best way to grab information about anything. Add email while you're doing the wireless interface.
Keyboard? WHY?!?! Paint an image of a keyboard on any flat surface, and the thing can follow your fingers as you "type" on a flat desktop. (Okay, that would suck for touch-typists like me, but I'm sure you could get used to it.) Or just have real voice recognition on the thing. (Hey, I'm pretending working molecular computing, I can pretend intelligent voice recognition.)
Additional applications are an exercise for people that will actually be able to build this, in 40 or 400 years.
I've wondered this myself, and the best I can come up with, as a reasonable answer considering current ISP-enforced mbox sizes, is that people are supposed to be emailing those little bitty AVI captures that digital cameras do now.
You remember, 3fps 160x120pixel 15-second "movies".
That must be about the right size to let you "email movies" to your friends.
I actually read the article (is that allowed?) and have to wonder something.
The problem people keep mentioning is how to get people to pay for something that is already available for free. The commonly-mentioned solution seems to be to provide better quality or convenience for a reasonable cost. Convenience certainly doesn't seem to be satisfied with the 2 mentioned services.
But I have to wonder if the companies aren't finding that they have a societal problem more than they have a technical problem. (Admit it, you just nodded and said "Duh".) But I don't mean this the way you are thinking.
Corporations preach the pursuit of the almighty dollar (currency of your choice). Nothing is more important than minimizing costs and increasing profits.
With a free service available that kinda-sorta-mostly satisfies people... Have consumers learned the corporate lesson too well, and zeroed the music entertainment budget in the name of minimizing costs?
Even with a high-quality convenient legal service, will we still go for the no-cost service, simply because we learned too well to slim-down the budget at the expense of moral concerns?
If this is the case, should we feel bad for the RIAA? "As ye sow, so shall ye reap." Gotta feel for the bands, but the corporations are getting just what they give.
(Yikes, I sound like Katz!)
Besides, we wouldn't want to warn the terrorists that they can't bring knives on board, would we?
Read to the bottom of that article...
"I returned to my hometown later, using another form of transportation."
That is my solution too.
Unless given no choice, I do not fly by commercial passenger plane now. Not because of any perceived danger (I maintain I have a greater chance of dying in a car accident driving to the airport (almost 0.7 miles) than I do in the time period between arriving at my local airport and leaving the destination airport.) but because the HASSLE is too much to deal with.
The "security precautions" in place for air travel are way beyond what I'm willing to deal with. I have a screwdriver on my keyring. Oops, that has to go in checked bags. I carry a pocket knife. Oops, that has to go in checked bags. Leatherman Micra multi-tool? Oops, that goes in the checked bag. I like to keep toiletries in my carry-on bag, because I've had my checked bag arrive the next day too many times. Oops, now I have to take the fingernail clippers out of there and put them in the checked bag. Roll of quarters in the carry-on? (Useful on toll roads) "Sorry, have to search the bag, saw something odd." That now goes in the checked bag too.
The last time I flew before 9/11 I was only staying for 2 days, and everything fit in a carry-on. Now it seems like half the stuff I bring, I can't put in a carry-on.
I'd rather rent a car and drive. Besides, the scenery is better anyway.
One problem with this is that there will never be a "post-scarcity" society. There is one resource that will always be scarce.
Space.
Not as in "the final frontier". Instead, the "my house is on 20 acres" space. The "my scheduled tee-off on the golf course is 2pm".
Anything that uses the surface of the planet will be "scarce". And will always be scarce.
Other than that, I can mostly accept your position.
Destroying a computer is not the worst you can do.
Corrupting the data on the computer is MUCH worse.
Think of a database for an ecommerce server. A virus that understands the database format, and turns every 7 into a 3 in the database. Credit card numbers (I'm sorry, sir, your card has been declined), prices, product IDs, addresses, zip codes, telephone numbers (hope this doesn't happen to your phone company), social security numbers. Everything on that database.
Then it transmits itself to another host, and removes itself from that machine, attempting to cover its tracks.
Destroying the computer is *nice* compared to letting it run for the next month with incorrect data. You just corrupted the next 7 million transactions that system processes. And how much does it cost to correct that? Restoring a nuked server is cheap by comparison.
Which would be worse for a serious ecommerce business? Being down for a day? Or having to check every transaction that was processed for the last 30 days, and dealing with mischarged customers, fraud charges from CC#s billed incorrectly, incorrect products shipped, lost packages that were misaddressed...
Destroying a system is bad for a home user... corrupting it can be deadly for a business.
This was not reported before WinXP was launched.
We are now 3 weeks into December. This was reported to MS 5 weeks ago, or about 2 weeks into November. WinXP "hit stores Oct. 25" or about 3 weeks before this was reported.
Not that I like this sitting unpatched for 5 weeks, but it would be a bit hard for MS to delay releasing an OS for a bug that has not been found yet.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, solve equations, pitch manure, program a computer, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -- Lazarus Long
That says it pretty well... along with other comments in here about Feynman and other well balanced intelligent people.
(From the last paragraph of question 3.)
Microsoft would be the exception that proves the rule?
I tried to resist saying that, really I did...
At least, it is 2 problems from the cable ISP viewpoint.
First, they plan networks with a certain usage in mind. This much bandwidth supports this many subscribers, physical infrastructure costs this much, therefore a subscriber has to be charged that much money. When you use more bandwidth than the plan says, you're messing up their model, and they basically lose money on your business. Doesn't really matter if you are using more bandwidth because you download/upload huge amounts of stuff, or if you share your connection with your neighbors, and therefore use three "normal" subscribers worth of bandwidth. The cable ISP is still losing money on your business.
The second problem is that ISPs are still trying to figure out how to do 3 tiers of service, instead of just 2. Right now, you get residential and business. What would probably be preferred is "basic" residential, "power user" residential, and business.
Of course, the problem is one that has been mentioned here several times before... People want to pay for a connection, not for bandwidth, or, more importantly, for bandwidth usage. And the cable ISPs like advertising connection speeds, and don't want to admit that you aren't actually supposed to *use* all that speed. Like a Van Gogh in a museum, it's there to be looked at, not to be touched or used.
The point of charging for each connected device is really just another way of trying to charge for expected bandwidth usage. Per device is only the issue until they can figure out how to convince people to accept subscriptions for a set usage per month. (Which I won't be happy with, as I tend to move a lot of data, but I can understand. Commercial USENET servers do this already, $X per month for Y gig per month.)
Look for it coming soon in your Acceptable Use Policy. They'll determine what the "average" subscriber uses in bandwidth, and set the acceptable rate at 1-sigma above that. And you'll pay for more than that usage.
Hmm... that'll make online gaming *really* expensive.
Actually, there's an even better reason to spread an article across 2 pages instead of only one. (No, this doens't work for articles across more than 2 pages.)
Spreading an article across 2 pages allows the web site to compile statistics on who actually *finished* reading an article.
Loading a page for an article that is complete in a single page doesn't tell the web site if you actually finished reading the article. Loading the second page of a 2-page article is a much better indicator that you actually read the entire article.
That is useful information for content providers.
Snagged from a google cache...
===
Remember what Pastor Martin Niemöller said about silence:
"When they arrested the communists,
I said nothing because I wasn't a communist.
They came for the socialists
and I said nothing because I wasn't a socialist.
They came for the union leaders
and I said nothing because I wasn't a union leader.
They came for the Jews
and I said nothing because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me.
And there was nobody left to say anything."
===
Not that I really see what your point is here. But it's nice to have the proper quote.
David Drake does some great military sci-fi. He also did a book set in a society like we may be in about 50 years. (And he beat Brin to it by about 5 years... published 1986.)
It features a pleasant little psychopath whose mental problem was rechanneled to be a good watcher/cop in a 100% surveillance society. Nice setup... *every* room everywhere gets 3 cameras covering everything, networked to central police computers, and archived for as long as needed by the storyline. No such thing as privacy from the government. No, this isn't a camera in your bedroom... this is 3 of them. And your kitchen, your bathroom, your office, and your car.
It's a nice book to read just for the stories, if you don't mind a little bit of blood. It also well illustrates some of the problems with the concept. Not technical problems (don't you love how sci-fi books can assume the tech was perfected, esp when the exact working of a system isn't the central them of a book) but societal problems that you still have to overcome.
Not least of which is that some people are simply evil, and nothing you do will prevent them from being evil.
Okay, it can "lie under water" for hours...
Can I take it scuba-diving with me? I'd love to have something like this that I can play with while sitting bored-to-tears on a deco stop after a long dive.
For that matter, does anyone have any recommendations for inexpensive pressure housings for something fun like a computer chess game, to take along diving? I don't want a $1000 housing for a $99 chess game... Maybe a GameBoy or something...
I can't be the only one wanting this, can I?
Tim
Soemone joked about going back in time and patenting the AND gate.
Why joke... Just do it with the Next Big Thing...
"If you make a product that uses VIA's chipset, and we sue them for patent infringement, it is possible your motherboard could be blocked from import into the US as a result of the suit. You might want to re-think your decision."
Really, this is just Intel being a nice corporate citizen and warning other companies of a possible downside they could have neglected to consider.
Don't you like it when companies are so helpful?
Every time I load a page here now, slashdot.org sends me a new cookie user= and a bunch of %25 codes.
What's this doing, anyway?
Umm... no. Corporations are, legally, people. Okay, make the law take advantage of that. When a corporation engages in monopoly practices, it is killing another corporation, presumably premeditated. Make this a capital murder case instead. Maximum fine, depending on your state of course, is the death penalty or life imprisonment.
Of course, you have some problems with how this will be handled. (Okay, major problems.) And you'd get some great arguments over what is and is not fair competition. Plus, if a corporation gets a death penalty, what happens? Execute the corp president, CEO, and Chairman of the Board? That could get messy *really* fast. Or does the corporation just have to go out of business?
Which raises an interesting question here... Is it legal for a corporation to go out of business? Most states have laws against suicide... Why aren't these laws applied to corporations?
Or, look at it from the reverse viewpoint... Corporations (legal person) dump poisons into rivers and lakes with serious harm (up to death) to people living in those areas. They get fines in the area of 1-30% of yearly revenue...
I'm a legal person... Why can't I kill people for a simple fine of 1-30% of my yearly revenue? >:)
Some equality under the law would be rather nice here.
No, this isn't serious, but it makes for an interesting argument if you're bored.
I'm not actually disagreeing with you, but you seem to be ignoring something with patents.
Patents are not simply for spending money on something that is complicated and good quality, which I'll take on faith AC-3 is. (Think the evils of "sweat of the brow" database copyrights.)
Patents are for inventions that are non-obvious to an expert working in that field.
Doing a good job is not enough to deserve a patent. Spending a lot of time and money on a technology is not enough to deserve a patent.
With the quality of patents that have been coming out of the USPTO in the last 20 years, I no longer automatically trust that they are awarded for the proper reasons. I might support this (or at least not object) if I am first convinced of the validity of the patent. I no longer consider that a given.
Okay, so you can develop it in Australia... If it is patent-encumbered, and known to be not properly licensed, it will not ship in any US distribution. The legal exposure is simply too great.
Unfortunately, this is becoming a hazard of running free-as-in-beer commercial software in Windows.
After you install software like this, check to see what it added to your system. Look in the Startup group, look in the win.ini file, look in the appropriate place in the registry (sorry, I don't remember the exact key right now, someone will supply it in a reply maybe), and just check after your next reboot if there are any processes running that you don't remember from the last time you checked. (ctrl-alt-del in win9x, or task manager in nt/2k)
This is unfortunately simply becoming something you expect with windows freeware. It isn't free, you just pay for it in something other than direct cash payments.