The ancient town of Mehrgarh has been excavated in the Baluchistan area. It is part of the Indus-Saraswati civilization, and dates back to 6500 BC. Spread over 168 acres, it had a population of 30,000. The earliest Sumerian settlements date to 4000 BC. Lots of sources for information on the web. One sample.
Does this mean that you are breaking the law when you happen to overhear a conversation between two business men about an ipo and use this information to your advantage in the stock market?
Yes it does! Once you overhear the conversation, you are in possession of inside information and are not supposed to take advantage of it. Make a big enough purchase or sale, and the SEC will come knocking at your door...
India and Pakistan, in contrast, haven't developed the same level of C3I.
Give them time. They will. After all, the USA and USSR stood eyeball-to-eyeball for many years without many(any?) of these safeguards in place.
do you know how many nuclear weapons are known to be missing, and the circumstances around their loss?
A lot of which have happened in the US inspite of its arguably most developed C3I systems and nuclear safeguards. The fact that we're playing with fire is well-known to everyone, and that danger exists whether or not India and Pakistan have weapons. I'd argue that India and Pakistan could better secure their nuclear material since there is so little of it. There is a huge difference between a dozen warheads and several thousand.
India and Pakistan are on the brink of bringing the world into a nuclear holocost.
No they are not. This is merely the American media's penchant for hyperbole. Why don't they, for example, say "nuclear armed nation" in a hushed tone whenever they refer to the USA?
Yes, India and Pakistan exchange fire at the border every day. That doesn't mean they are about to nuke each other. Now, if Taliban-type religious psychos get hold of Pakistan's arsenal... That's why the US government is working on a contingency plan to neutralize them.
It's easy to make flippant statements such as this. How do you explain all the church burnings in the USA? Let the person who has not sinned cast the first stone...
...religion remains at equal footing with politics, thus, religous goals are achieved through political acts and setting of social policy.
This is a fallacy. A country like India, which is far more heterogenous in terms of religion followed by its citizens than the USA, simply cannot afford to mix religion and politics.
If its so common sense, then why do so few people do these things?
Because, alas, common sense is not very common.
Practices, or processes, degenerate to a point where the point of the process becomes irrelevant and the process itself becomes an end rather than the means.
The XP movement is an effort to reclaim some sanity. Lightweight methodologies try to restore some balance.
I don't have much XP experience, but *good*. You're supposed to think up the unit tests that break your code - then fix the code so that it isn't broken any more. When you can't think of any more tests, the code works.
This is bunk. You think of the unit tests as the way to define the requirements that your code must fulfil. The tests serve as a check that those requirements continue to be met as the code changes. After all, you are only implementing the simplest thing, integrating often, and ensuring that your tests always pass 100%, aren't you?
The idea is to write the unit tests before you write the code. That will serve as a design for your code. You have to think in advance how, say, a particular class is going to be used. It also helps writing reusable code. Your code has two clients(users) to start off with - whatever is going to make use of it in your application plus the tests.
The tests are also of central importance to the XP theme of refactoring mercilessly and having confidence that the code continues working as you add more features.
There is an IETF draft for doing FTP over SSL. Widespread use of SSL(except through browsers) is still not possible because of the RSA patent(which lapses soon).
India seems unable to cooperate with other nations. I guess they think the US would want concessions on their arms capabilities to help them with rocket tech
It is more a case of NASA not being able to cooperate with India than the other way round. There is a long list of technologies and products which the U.S. government restricts India from buying to prevent it from acquiring nuclear/missile technologies. This is a ban on "dual use" technologies. So the Indian meteorological department cannot buy a super computer to model weather systems because it can potentially be used for nuclear simulations.
Yes, money could be better spent for many projects. But if science and technology(no matter if it is behind that of the U.S.) is not one of them, a country condemns itself to remain backward.
>Have they fought an all-out war, or has it been >that kind of push-pull border conflict? I was under the impression that at least some of the conflicts with Pakistan were at the level of full wars.
Formal wars between India and Pakistan:
1948, Pakistan troops enter Kashmir in the guise of tribals. Kashmir signs instrument of accession with India. Indian troops drive out Pakistani forces.
1965, Pakistan troops invade Kutchh, hoping to take advantage of Indian state in disarray after its 1962 war with China. India opens second front in Punjab and almost captures Lahore. Agrees to U.N. sponsored cease-fire.
1971, India helps with the liberation of Bangladesh from Pakistan after 1 million Bangladeshis are massacred and more than 10 million cross the border into India.
1990's, Indian and Pakistan troops face off on the Siachin Glacier(at a height of over 20,000 ft). Both face enormous cost and the cold claims more casualties than bullets.
1999, Flashback to 1948, ``Kashmiri separatists''(that later turn out to be mostly Pakistani troops) cross the border into areas of Kashmir just before the snows melt on the mountains. Indian troops flush them out at great human cost because they are limited to not striking targets beyond the "Line of Control"(demarcated through a bilateral agreement in 1972).
Microsoft doesn't lose much by pissing off a bunch of avowed anti-Microsoft Linux-lovers.
The question is - how can we make this yet another PR fiasco for them? Not until the mainstream media take this up as a case of the big corporate types trying to censor the small guys.
The material is out there, and I could find it for you easily. But you are supposed to be learning to do your own research...
Search engines give all sorts of junk. It takes forever to wade through it and figure out whether or not anything is of use. It's even worse if you don't know anything about the subject. You have little or no basis to evaluate what you see. I think it's helpful to point someone to good sources of information and then let him/her do his/her research.
Anyone for a ride on a warship running linux? I sure wouldn't. I'd want its own OS, and i'm sure its builders would too.
Not the US navy, evidently. There is the famous story of a ship standing dead in the water because it's control system running on NT crashed. Proves your point.
No, it's not. We do "donate" more of our resources than ANY other UN country. Who makes up a massive percentage of every "peacekeeping" force?
Eighty-five countries have contributed peace-keeping troops, the majority of whom are from third-world countries. Look at the list of current peacekeeping missions. The UN pays $1000 per soldier per month, which makes it a strong incentive for poorer countries to send troops for peacekeeping duty.
As for the dues, that is all bullshit. We were owed many times more than our UN dues by many other countries, debts that we chose to let go.
Most of this debt is subsidies for US industry and agriculture. The money often never even changes hands. You want 40 F-16s? No money? No problem - we can arrange a loan for you. The loan is announced with great fanfare. Dignitaries sign documents and shake hands before cameras. The F-16s get shipped a few months later. On the other hand, the US dues for 1999 are $298 million. With a population of 300 million, that's about $1 per citizen. Compared to that, the US spends $12 billion for ``foreign aid''. More than 50% of this goes to Israel and Egypt. Most of that money - you guessed it - ends up as a subsidy for the arms industry.
The government abuses the UN, bombs other countries, etc. The population (most that I know) say "Fuck the UN" stop bombing other countries every time Clinton needs to divert attention from a scandel, stop sending our kids to die...
I agree with you, but for different reasons! The UN has a role to play - preventing WWIII. The US, with its bullying of the UN after non-payment of dues to the tune of $1.5 billion, is subverting its authority. Here is the UN's take on the money issue. This was taken to another level after ramming the Yugoslavia operation down the UN's throat. Other nations are less likely to trust the ability of the UN to take an impartial(one not dictated by the USA) stand on any matter. Ergo, the UN loses legitimacy in the eyes of the world.
It ought to be a simple matter for each national government to make its own decision about whether to accept or refuse the legal validity of US patents. I had thought these were only recognised when there was some sort of reciprocal arrangement. But the situation you describe doesn't look very reciprocal.
The letter of the law(section 102 of the US Constitution) says that patents cannot be granted for ``inventions'' that have US or foreign patents, or appear in the US or foreign publications. In practice, who is going to do a comprehensive check of foreign publications? Is there some mechanism by which patents are put up for scrutiny before they are granted? (I don't know). If the validity of a patent is contested, does it remain in effect till the courts decide to quash it? And if so, does the US(since most multinational companies seem to be US-based) decide to ram it down third-world nations'(those without the clout to fight back) throats through the WTO?
Consider the case of the patents on seeds. Farmers for generations have been keeping aside a portion of their crops for sowing the next year. This may become illegal with the new patent regime. What if some country chooses not to recognise such patents? The WTO rules would not allow that.
how can a patent on a cocoa gene taken out by a US company be used against farmers in Ghana?
I thought that should be obvious: The Ghanaian farmers would lose access to international markets. The Ghana government may decide that the patent does not apply within their country. But what if they tried to sell their products in, say, Europe? Mars would move aggressively to defend their patent. I came across the term biopiracy that so aptly describes this situation.
The description says non-obvious to someone familiar with the art, not non-obvious to Joe Public.
What consitutes an invention worthy of a patent is a grey area. This thread originally started with a debate about whether or not gene sequences should be patented. A strong argument against this is that gene sequences are not an invention, but fundamentally exist. A similar argument is made against patenting algorithms, or mathematical truths. What would have been the consequences of Isaac Newton patenting F=ma? This has little to do with non-obviousness.
Obviousness is an issue with several software patents. Like the XOR patent(#4,197,590), or the one that covers saving to a buffer the portion of the screen that is being used to display another window(#4,555,775). RMS' seminal paper Against Software Patents says pretty much everything about this subject.
Then there is the issue of piracy - with companies trying to patent varieties of seeds, plants, medicinal use of natural plants, or, in a particularly egregious case - trying to patent curry.
Your first point - worldwide agreement on what consitutes a patentable(sic) invention - is the most important issue.
Patents being more of an issue in software because things are developed more quickly is irrelevant. If things are developed more quickly, the original patent should soon become redundant. Its validity for an extended time period would be meaningless. A catalogue of ridiculous software patents is available at the LPF site. Many of these are quite old and still causing untold harm.
What happens when someone tries to patent, say, the grape?
They are already doing so. A Texas company called RiceTec was granted a patent for Basmati rice. Basmati is a kind of rice that grows only in the foothills of the Himalayas in India and Pakistan. Like how the label ``Champagne'' may be used only for products from a particular place. Read an analysis of the patent and its consequences.
For centuries in India, turmeric has been used as a home-remedy and traditional medicine for wounds. In March 1995, a patent was granted to the University of Mississipi Medical Centre for precisely this use. What made this a particularly disgusting case was that the patent was in the name of two Indian researchers at the university. The US Patent Office did uphold a challenge to this patent and it was revoked. There are many such patents that need to be cancelled.
Cancelling these patents is the first step in stopping biopiracy. The author of this piece reiterates that patents must be granted on the basis of Novelty, Non-obviousness, and Utility.
Novelty implies that the innovation must be new. It cannot be part of 'prior art' or existing knowledge. Non-obviousness implies that someone familiar in the art should not be able to achieve the same step. Most patents based on indigenous knowledge appropriation violate the criteria of novelty combined with non-obviousness because they range from direct piracy to minor tinkering involving steps obvious to anyone trained in the techniques and disciplines involved.
In the US, foreign knowledge, use and invention are all excluded when ``prior art'' is considered in relation to a US patent application. This helps US companies in the short run and hence the government is unlikely to try and change this.
Software patents are not the only area in which patent laws are hopelessly out of sync with reality. The two-fold problem is:
how to educate lawmakers about issues involved
how to combat special interests in lobbying Congress to pass sensible laws
Slashdot Mirror
The ancient town of Mehrgarh has been excavated in the Baluchistan area. It is part of the Indus-Saraswati civilization, and dates back to 6500 BC. Spread over 168 acres, it had a population of 30,000. The earliest Sumerian settlements date to 4000 BC. Lots of sources for information on the web. One sample.
No they are not. This is merely the American media's penchant for hyperbole. Why don't they, for example, say "nuclear armed nation" in a hushed tone whenever they refer to the USA?
Yes, India and Pakistan exchange fire at the border every day. That doesn't mean they are about to nuke each other. Now, if Taliban-type religious psychos get hold of Pakistan's arsenal... That's why the US government is working on a contingency plan to neutralize them.
It's easy to make flippant statements such as this. How do you explain all the church burnings in the USA? Let the person who has not sinned cast the first stone...
That is not to say that religion and politics don't get mixed! They should not, and the Indian consititution protects religious freedom and separates religion from state affairs.
Because, alas, common sense is not very common.
Practices, or processes, degenerate to a point where the point of the process becomes irrelevant and the process itself becomes an end rather than the means.
The XP movement is an effort to reclaim some sanity. Lightweight methodologies try to restore some balance.
This is bunk. You think of the unit tests as the way to define the requirements that your code must fulfil. The tests serve as a check that those requirements continue to be met as the code changes. After all, you are only implementing the simplest thing, integrating often, and ensuring that your tests always pass 100%, aren't you?
The tests are also of central importance to the XP theme of refactoring mercilessly and having confidence that the code continues working as you add more features.
Read Code the unit test first for more details.
The Unix Programming Environment, by Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike? It was first published in 1983 but is still very relevant.
There is an IETF draft for doing FTP over SSL. Widespread use of SSL(except through browsers) is still not possible because of the RSA patent(which lapses soon).
It is more a case of NASA not being able to cooperate with India than the other way round. There is a long list of technologies and products which the U.S. government restricts India from buying to prevent it from acquiring nuclear/missile technologies. This is a ban on "dual use" technologies. So the Indian meteorological department cannot buy a super computer to model weather systems because it can potentially be used for nuclear simulations.
Yes, money could be better spent for many projects. But if science and technology(no matter if it is behind that of the U.S.) is not one of them, a country condemns itself to remain backward.
>that kind of push-pull border conflict?
I was under the impression that at least some of the conflicts with Pakistan were at the level of full wars.
Formal wars between India and Pakistan:
Non-declared wars:
PBS interview by Jim Lehrer about 1999 conflict plus some background.
I have a bunch of more references if anyone is interested.
P = NP if N = 1, or P is 0.
Microsoft doesn't lose much by pissing off a bunch of avowed anti-Microsoft Linux-lovers.
The question is - how can we make this yet another PR fiasco for them? Not until the mainstream media take this up as a case of the big corporate types trying to censor the small guys.
Ah, but how did you know which two books to pick up? Or why did you bother when you could have picked up some other book from your local library?
Read Bruce Schneier's Cryptogram newsletter.
Bruce Schneier's hotlinks.
Look at Cryptome. Lots of information about Echelon, the MPAA/DeCSS issue, laws, export controls...
Mach 5 cryptography archives.
Designing Secure Software.
Simson Garfinkel and Gene Spafford's book Web Security and Commerce is a very good introduction to cryptography and security issues.
Not the US navy, evidently. There is the famous story of a ship standing dead in the water because it's control system running on NT crashed. Proves your point.
Eighty-five countries have contributed peace-keeping troops, the majority of whom are from third-world countries. Look at the list of current peacekeeping missions. The UN pays $1000 per soldier per month, which makes it a strong incentive for poorer countries to send troops for peacekeeping duty.
Most of this debt is subsidies for US industry and agriculture. The money often never even changes hands. You want 40 F-16s? No money? No problem - we can arrange a loan for you. The loan is announced with great fanfare. Dignitaries sign documents and shake hands before cameras. The F-16s get shipped a few months later. On the other hand, the US dues for 1999 are $298 million. With a population of 300 million, that's about $1 per citizen. Compared to that, the US spends $12 billion for ``foreign aid''. More than 50% of this goes to Israel and Egypt. Most of that money - you guessed it - ends up as a subsidy for the arms industry.
I agree with you, but for different reasons! The UN has a role to play - preventing WWIII. The US, with its bullying of the UN after non-payment of dues to the tune of $1.5 billion, is subverting its authority. Here is the UN's take on the money issue. This was taken to another level after ramming the Yugoslavia operation down the UN's throat. Other nations are less likely to trust the ability of the UN to take an impartial(one not dictated by the USA) stand on any matter. Ergo, the UN loses legitimacy in the eyes of the world.
The letter of the law(section 102 of the US Constitution) says that patents cannot be granted for ``inventions'' that have US or foreign patents, or appear in the US or foreign publications. In practice, who is going to do a comprehensive check of foreign publications? Is there some mechanism by which patents are put up for scrutiny before they are granted? (I don't know). If the validity of a patent is contested, does it remain in effect till the courts decide to quash it? And if so, does the US(since most multinational companies seem to be US-based) decide to ram it down third-world nations'(those without the clout to fight back) throats through the WTO?
Consider the case of the patents on seeds. Farmers for generations have been keeping aside a portion of their crops for sowing the next year. This may become illegal with the new patent regime. What if some country chooses not to recognise such patents? The WTO rules would not allow that.
I thought that should be obvious: The Ghanaian farmers would lose access to international markets. The Ghana government may decide that the patent does not apply within their country. But what if they tried to sell their products in, say, Europe? Mars would move aggressively to defend their patent. I came across the term biopiracy that so aptly describes this situation.
The description says non-obvious to someone familiar with the art, not non-obvious to Joe Public.
What consitutes an invention worthy of a patent is a grey area. This thread originally started with a debate about whether or not gene sequences should be patented. A strong argument against this is that gene sequences are not an invention, but fundamentally exist. A similar argument is made against patenting algorithms, or mathematical truths. What would have been the consequences of Isaac Newton patenting F=ma? This has little to do with non-obviousness.
Obviousness is an issue with several software patents. Like the XOR patent(#4,197,590), or the one that covers saving to a buffer the portion of the screen that is being used to display another window(#4,555,775). RMS' seminal paper Against Software Patents says pretty much everything about this subject.
Then there is the issue of piracy - with companies trying to patent varieties of seeds, plants, medicinal use of natural plants, or, in a particularly egregious case - trying to patent curry.
Your first point - worldwide agreement on what consitutes a patentable(sic) invention - is the most important issue.
Patents being more of an issue in software because things are developed more quickly is irrelevant. If things are developed more quickly, the original patent should soon become redundant. Its validity for an extended time period would be meaningless. A catalogue of ridiculous software patents is available at the LPF site. Many of these are quite old and still causing untold harm.
They are already doing so. A Texas company called RiceTec was granted a patent for Basmati rice. Basmati is a kind of rice that grows only in the foothills of the Himalayas in India and Pakistan. Like how the label ``Champagne'' may be used only for products from a particular place. Read an analysis of the patent and its consequences.
For centuries in India, turmeric has been used as a home-remedy and traditional medicine for wounds. In March 1995, a patent was granted to the University of Mississipi Medical Centre for precisely this use. What made this a particularly disgusting case was that the patent was in the name of two Indian researchers at the university. The US Patent Office did uphold a challenge to this patent and it was revoked. There are many such patents that need to be cancelled.
Cancelling these patents is the first step in stopping biopiracy. The author of this piece reiterates that patents must be granted on the basis of Novelty, Non-obviousness, and Utility.
In the US, foreign knowledge, use and invention are all excluded when ``prior art'' is considered in relation to a US patent application. This helps US companies in the short run and hence the government is unlikely to try and change this.Software patents are not the only area in which patent laws are hopelessly out of sync with reality. The two-fold problem is:
Perhaps that explains it - I've been using Navigator 4.05. Will try a newer version.
Incidentally, I'm using 2.0.x kernels on Slackware. Video card is a ho-hum Diamond Stealth - its drivers are tried and tested.