By putting forward such a suggestion, police and politicians are only demonstrating an ignorance of technology.
The computer which controls the engine of a car is not rocket science. There a projects in existence to build Do-It-Yourself Electronic Fuel Injection computers. In addition, a standard piece of auto electrician kit is a small box which provides a set of fixed strobes to drive the fuel injectors, allowing a car with broken (or disabled) EFI to drive away (with potentially reduced performance). The circuit is not much more than a 555 timer driving a few flip-flops. Ultimately, any criminal can easily find a substitute for the 'standard' EFI controller in a car, thus bypassing any disabling features.
This leaves honest people as the only ones susceptible to a 'remote control for cars'. Consequently the only real use for such a feature would be to simplify life for car-jackers.
I am distributing an operating system. If you want to use my operating system, a compulsory 'donation' of $599 is required.
Compare this with
I am distributing an encyclopedia. Could some of the people using it please donate some money? Around $20,000 is required. That is much less than $1 per user.
To my mind requiring $10 from a small fraction of users is more sustainable (long term) than requiring $599 from all users. In general I don't think asking for donations is a 'stopgap' measure.
(Mind you, in this case I think distributing the database is a better solution than throwing money at it.)
> It's a cold way to look at it, but in this economic context, I'd rather spend on something other then someone else's website.
There is a flaw in your reasoning in that due to the GPL and its 'wiki' nature, the website is just as much yours as anyone else's. I'm not saying you must donate or that you should choose to make it your website. Just that you have the opportunity to make it 'your' website, so 'it's not mine' is a weak reason to not donate.
Personally, I think asking for money is the wrong way to address the problem. The real problem isn't lack of money, it's lack or reliability. Instead of a temporary monetary bandaid, exploit the strength of the Internet and 'open source' to solve the problem. Migrate the wiki databases to a truly distributed system in which it is mirrored and updated around the world in real time. I'm not saying it will be easy. Just that it is a better long term solution than buying another server.
>... The letters focus on application binary interfaces
Anyone get the impression that SCO is claiming that lines such as:
time_t time(time_t __timer);
in files such as time.h are violating their 'copyright'?
In that case, wouldn't it also be a copyright violation to quote the title of a book? US Law seems to be quite clear that a thing like a book title cannot be copyrighted and plenty of boos share titles.
While looking through the POSIX site, looking for info on the POSIX aspects of 2.6.0, I came across the following quote:
"The name POSIX was suggested by Richard Stallman. It is expected to be pronounced pahz-icks as in positive, not poh-six, or other variations. The pronounciation has been published in an attempt to promulgate a standardized way of referring to a standard operating system interface".
Who would have thought so? I just goes show, some names pop up in the oddest places and the Free Software movement really is in there influencing things.
There are plenty of comments along the lines "Iraq needs stability and government, not an operating system." True, but "Open Source" doesn't have to be just computer software.
Perhaps it is controversial, but I like to think of 'open source' in terms of a wider picture, as an aversion to secrecy. Not keeping computer source code is just one aspect of this wider 'open source'.
What could an 'open source' philosophy yield for Iraq? It could lead to transparency in government, reducing corruption and increasing stability. It could buy water and electricity, as shortcomings with utilities will not be hidden and the Iraqui people will demand that something be done about it. It could lead to greater trust in the government, eroding support for terrorism. Closer to the computer field, open source could provide grass roots communication for the country, allowing those without bias and vested interest (eg children) to communicate, cooperate, build understanding and reduce tribal tensions. This is what 'open source' could provide for Iraq.
I just visited the site and every track I saw cost $1.99. Presumably there is at least one song on the site that costs 99c, so they can say 'from 99c'.
I couldn't find any mention of source code on their website.
I notice the Chinese version of their news page is more comprehensive than the English version. Perhaps source is on the Chinese code version of the site or on an FTP site somewhere?
Does anyone know if the the phone comes with a written offer of source for the GPL'd bits, or a CD?
I can't see any reason why the 'simulator' program would be required. Why not just run the computer overnight with the monitor and speakers turned off?
Yeah, the difference is antenna gain. That just means a more powerful transmitter and sensitive receiver is required at one end (ie. the end which isn't the RFID tag.) It only has to work over the width of a doorway or the thickness of a road.
Yes, the required electronics is expensive and would never be used as an everyday RFID tag reader, but the additional cost could be justified for tracking applications.
> The sheer amount of data will be impossible to manage
I doubt it. Most people don't appreciate the processing power of state of the art computers.
200GB (readily available hard drive) is a lot of information (around 250 bits for each person on earth). Large databases contain thousands of such disks, thousands of processors to keep the throughput up and typically aren't storing data on the entire population of the earth. It would be difficult to swamp a well designed processing system. It's just that people are generally used to seeing poorly designed systems, with poorly designed data analysis, fall apart at low load. Consequently people say it is easy to swamp a computer with data and that useful information cannot be extracted from large data sets.
So what is the motivation for stringing Mr. Simpson up? Taxes or 'terrorism' (aka being a squeaky wheel)? Maybe it was taxes, but I notice that the BBC uses the phrase:
New Zealand officials have said they cannot comment for reasons of "secrecy".
An interesting turn of phrase for an agency which has a reputation for accuracy. Normally tax details are protected for reasons of confidentiality, and 'national security' (aka lots of things) is protected for reasons of secrecy. So is the BBC saying 'national security' (aka war on terror) is behind things? Either way, surrounding "secrecy" with quotes seems to be a form of 'nudge-nudge-wink-wink'.
</tinfoil hat>
So what are the implications for other geeks?
Apart from his taxes, Mr. Simpson appears to have done no wrong. Indeed, reading his discussion forum, he appears to have bent over backwards to do nothing underhanded, break no laws and keep everyone (including government) informed of what he is doing. Given the media coverage of the project, it would be difficult to claim Mr. Simpson was hiding his actions.
I would compare Mr. Simpson to crypto researchers, P2P software authors and security researchers. Why? Because his work has both 'black hat'and 'white hat' uses, lends itself admirably to beng a political football and demonstrates glaring weaknesses in existing systems. If Mr. Simpson goes down without a fight, will it encourage governments to move against the other areas mentioned above?
*If* Mr. Simpson is going down due to his missile work, and not for taxes, shouldn't the geek community chip in and help him? (He has a paypal account, under the name 'paypal@aardvark.co.nz', to offset the costs of a news site he runs. There is also a 'make a donation' link to PayPal from the news site.) I would think he would be at least as deserving as the college students who have attracted public funding for their court cases over downloading copyrighted music.
No, I'm not affiliated with Mr. Simpson. I also don't pretent that Mr Simpson is some sort of an angel. It's just that the facts seem so damned hard to find in this case. Here are a few possible scenarios:
Mr. Simpson is being screwed in the name of the 'war on terror' for pointing out how vunerable we are to unmanned vehicles.
Mr. Simpson didn't pay his taxes and that is all there is to it.
Mr. Simpson could see a tax bill coming and started a the cruise missile project in an attempt to make himself untouchable
Personally, I dismiss the last possibility, but don't have enough information to decide between the first two. If it turns out to be the first possibility, that scares the shit out of me and, in the name of democracy, Mr. Simpson would deserve all the support anyone can give him.
What you should have said is "...there is a lack of will."
The problem is that the companies don't want to release the source not that they cannot. Once they start looking serious sales volumes, due to being excluded from the Linux kernel, companies will find the will to release source.
So McBride equates progress with his making money. Consequently all of science, literature, the arts, human thought, indeed human progress and the human race, exist so McBride can make money.
This has to be the most fucked up philosophy in the history of the world. On the bright side, if McBride continues on this path Redhat, the FSF and co. will be the least of McBride's worries. Last time I read religious literature unbridled greed was a qualification for a one way ticket to Hell.
The difference is with selective breeding over many generations the changes are gradual. This minimises the chances of any 'suprises'.
If you get a 'suprise result' with gene technology there is a fair chance that the organism has come in contact with wild populations by the time the 'suprise' is evident. At this point there is no turning
back as the rogue gene is out there breeding.
Here's an example. What if the glow fish turn out to be poisonous to a substantial fish species in location XYZ, also a native habitat of the unmodified fish? California didn't test the effects on this fish as location XYZ is nowhere near California. Also there was pressure from the 'glow fish manufacturer' to keep the costs of the testing program to a minimum. Grandma, on a visit from location XYZ to Californis, buys her grandchild one of those neat glow fish not even aware that it is gene modified. The child isn't interested in fish but isn't into killing cute fish either, so the glow fish is dumped in a local river. The glow fish breeds with local poopulations. The fish which eat the glow fish die. From there the effects ripple through out location XYZ. Effects include disruption of the ecosystem, death for the local fishing industry and the collapse of the local tourism industry, which depended on recreational fishing and diving to view marine life. This scenario is not far fetched at all. (Just consider a place like the Great Barrier Reef and its northern counterparts.)
Agree with your second paragraph (Information that has...).
I suspect we have different definitions of 'information'. I generally take 'information' in the sense of information theory: bits. In this context, scarcity of information translates into scarcity of bits. Knowledge can be translated into bits, so on this basis, I claim human knowledge is not inherently scarce.
Scarcity of information, as you describe it, is a very subjective concept. Is information on a subject 'scarce' because what is unknown exceeds what is known? On this basis, it could be claimed that we know very little in the scheme of things, therefore all information is scarce. Perhaps this is true and all knowledge really is a rare thing to be treasured. Unless information we restrict ourselves to what is known, I think we can argue either way on this one until we go blue in the face.
Perhaps scarcity of information is really about the proportion of the population who know a piece information? In that case, if ten people know something what gives nine of them the right to stop the tenth from telling another person (apart from mob rule)? In my view, this is the crux of IP and DRM. Depending on whether you think you can morally force people to keep secrets your stance on IP/DRM will vary.
Look at scarcity of information in this way, IP and DRM can have a lot to do with information about planets and solar systems. What if NASA claimed copyright on all their pictures, applied DRM to them and restricted their distribution to select few, who have all signed NDAs? What if all their papers were under the same regime? What if every scrap of data from every space probe was sealed up in the same way? What about text books? I can keep going until every source of knowledge is covered. Now we are striking at the heart of human endeavour and learning.
I will acknowledge that these arguments are not without holes, but I think they are a reasonable effort and right now I can't afford to spend more time on them.
IMHO, apt and apt-get are a very good solution for a command line interface. Generally speaking, apt-get just works (once the man page has been read). Sometimes strange things happen, but I've always put this down to my running unstable and there being a temporary dependency problem. Problems have always gone away when I have done an 'apt-get update' a few days later.
FRONT ENDS
I find the user interface of gnome-apt not to be intuitive and it has a different 'feel' to all other gnome programs. I find the 'seach' feature difficult to use. I liked it better when the search options were in a menu. Even then it wasn't great.
I admit I haven't really tried other front ends. Can you recommend some good ones? Perhaps selecting an apt front end could be the subject of a FAQ or HOWTO? Most 'newbies' will have to chose an apt front end early on in the piece. This is a difficult thing to do and it would be a real shame if the wrong choice was made, putting the user off Debian. Related, one of the most difficult tasks in Debian tends to be selecting a good package for a task, from the many candidates available.
Suggestion 1: Perhaps include 'subcategories' in the dpkg database? (eg admin>apt-frontends) Perhaps use 'virtual folders' in case a program covers multiple categories?
Suggestion 2: Better searching facilities for choosing packages
Suggestion 3: In general (I don't know how), come up with a way to make it easier for a user to make informed choices between packages. (Perhaps a natural language interface that suggests a package for a given task?)
APT-SRC
On an unrelated note. Do you know the status of apt-src? Does it work? Is it under active development? I'm to the stage where I would like to start tinkering with the source code of Debian, with a view to eventually becoming a maintainer. It would be really neat if I could say to apt-src: "Please upload source for all packages which I have installed, unpack it and set things up so that when I issue a 'make' instruction my entire system will be recompiled from these sources, and have exactly the same functionality as it does now"
OTHER THOUGHTS
Also, running unstable, I'm finding that my system is 'bloating'. If a dependency A->B gets changed to A->C, package C gets installed but package B doesn't get deleted. Eventualy I end up with dozens of unused pakages on my system and no easy way to find which are redundant.
Suggestion 1: Make the front end give a tree view of all installed packages, arranged according to dependencies. The user can then remove any package trees which do not correspond to desired applications.
Suggestion 2: have a second installed state, 'installed-due-to-dependancy'. When an upgrade is done, any such package will be deleted/purged unless it has to be there to satisfy a dependancy. By default packages are installed as 'installed-due-to-dependancy', unless explicitly mentioned in the command line of an 'apt-get install...' statement. An 'apt-get remove' on a 'user installed' package, which is still required for dependency reasons, would change the package status to 'installed-due-to-dependancy'.
I apologise that these thoughts are so disorganised, but I put them down in the hope that they may be useful. Quite possibly much of what I have said is already in place and I just don't know about it (which in itself can be a difficulty with Debian).
And in the future, we will be paying for people's time to design things, as under this scenario assemblers will be doing all manufacturing.
The thing is, a design is not a physical thing. No, the plans for an object are not a design. They are only an expression of the design. The actual design consists of ideas and concepts. How does one assign value to an idea? I would assert that it is impossible to do, as ideas spread from one mind to another, like a virus.
Slashdot Mirror
The computer which controls the engine of a car is not rocket science. There a projects in existence to build Do-It-Yourself Electronic Fuel Injection computers. In addition, a standard piece of auto electrician kit is a small box which provides a set of fixed strobes to drive the fuel injectors, allowing a car with broken (or disabled) EFI to drive away (with potentially reduced performance). The circuit is not much more than a 555 timer driving a few flip-flops. Ultimately, any criminal can easily find a substitute for the 'standard' EFI controller in a car, thus bypassing any disabling features.
This leaves honest people as the only ones susceptible to a 'remote control for cars'. Consequently the only real use for such a feature would be to simplify life for car-jackers.
Compare this with
To my mind requiring $10 from a small fraction of users is more sustainable (long term) than requiring $599 from all users. In general I don't think asking for donations is a 'stopgap' measure.(Mind you, in this case I think distributing the database is a better solution than throwing money at it.)
There is a flaw in your reasoning in that due to the GPL and its 'wiki' nature, the website is just as much yours as anyone else's. I'm not saying you must donate or that you should choose to make it your website. Just that you have the opportunity to make it 'your' website, so 'it's not mine' is a weak reason to not donate.
Personally, I think asking for money is the wrong way to address the problem. The real problem isn't lack of money, it's lack or reliability. Instead of a temporary monetary bandaid, exploit the strength of the Internet and 'open source' to solve the problem. Migrate the wiki databases to a truly distributed system in which it is mirrored and updated around the world in real time. I'm not saying it will be easy. Just that it is a better long term solution than buying another server.
Anyone get the impression that SCO is claiming that lines such as:
in files such as time.h are violating their 'copyright'?
In that case, wouldn't it also be a copyright violation to quote the title of a book? US Law seems to be quite clear that a thing like a book title cannot be copyrighted and plenty of boos share titles.
Perhaps it is controversial, but I like to think of 'open source' in terms of a wider picture, as an aversion to secrecy. Not keeping computer source code is just one aspect of this wider 'open source'.
What could an 'open source' philosophy yield for Iraq? It could lead to transparency in government, reducing corruption and increasing stability. It could buy water and electricity, as shortcomings with utilities will not be hidden and the Iraqui people will demand that something be done about it. It could lead to greater trust in the government, eroding support for terrorism. Closer to the computer field, open source could provide grass roots communication for the country, allowing those without bias and vested interest (eg children) to communicate, cooperate, build understanding and reduce tribal tensions. This is what 'open source' could provide for Iraq.
The real issue is you are getting less than 1/10th the number of bits for your money, compared to a CD.
Thanks!
I just visited the site and every track I saw cost $1.99. Presumably there is at least one song on the site that costs 99c, so they can say 'from 99c'.
They have a download page. It seems to contain ringtones, pictures and some games. There is also a FAQ. Can anyone read Chinese?
Does anyone know if the the phone comes with a written offer of source for the GPL'd bits, or a CD?
I ran it by stepping through the code on paper!
So, if you illuminate the billboard with non-standard frequencies, will 'Easter Eggs' be found?
I can't see any reason why the 'simulator' program would be required. Why not just run the computer overnight with the monitor and speakers turned off?
Yes, the required electronics is expensive and would never be used as an everyday RFID tag reader, but the additional cost could be justified for tracking applications.
> The sheer amount of data will be impossible to manage
I doubt it. Most people don't appreciate the processing power of state of the art computers. 200GB (readily available hard drive) is a lot of information (around 250 bits for each person on earth). Large databases contain thousands of such disks, thousands of processors to keep the throughput up and typically aren't storing data on the entire population of the earth. It would be difficult to swamp a well designed processing system. It's just that people are generally used to seeing poorly designed systems, with poorly designed data analysis, fall apart at low load. Consequently people say it is easy to swamp a computer with data and that useful information cannot be extracted from large data sets.
So, does anyone *really* believe that RFID tags won't be used for tracking?
CLUG projects include samba and rsync, so they could be called a 'shining light' for the ACT.
So what is the motivation for stringing Mr. Simpson up? Taxes or 'terrorism' (aka being a squeaky wheel)? Maybe it was taxes, but I notice that the BBC uses the phrase:
An interesting turn of phrase for an agency which has a reputation for accuracy. Normally tax details are protected for reasons of confidentiality, and 'national security' (aka lots of things) is protected for reasons of secrecy. So is the BBC saying 'national security' (aka war on terror) is behind things? Either way, surrounding "secrecy" with quotes seems to be a form of 'nudge-nudge-wink-wink'.
</tinfoil hat>
So what are the implications for other geeks?
Apart from his taxes, Mr. Simpson appears to have done no wrong. Indeed, reading his discussion forum, he appears to have bent over backwards to do nothing underhanded, break no laws and keep everyone (including government) informed of what he is doing. Given the media coverage of the project, it would be difficult to claim Mr. Simpson was hiding his actions.
I would compare Mr. Simpson to crypto researchers, P2P software authors and security researchers. Why? Because his work has both 'black hat'and 'white hat' uses, lends itself admirably to beng a political football and demonstrates glaring weaknesses in existing systems. If Mr. Simpson goes down without a fight, will it encourage governments to move against the other areas mentioned above?
*If* Mr. Simpson is going down due to his missile work, and not for taxes, shouldn't the geek community chip in and help him? (He has a paypal account, under the name 'paypal@aardvark.co.nz', to offset the costs of a news site he runs. There is also a 'make a donation' link to PayPal from the news site.) I would think he would be at least as deserving as the college students who have attracted public funding for their court cases over downloading copyrighted music.
No, I'm not affiliated with Mr. Simpson. I also don't pretent that Mr Simpson is some sort of an angel. It's just that the facts seem so damned hard to find in this case. Here are a few possible scenarios:
- Mr. Simpson is being screwed in the name of the 'war on terror' for pointing out how vunerable we are to unmanned vehicles.
- Mr. Simpson didn't pay his taxes and that is all there is to it.
- Mr. Simpson could see a tax bill coming and started a the cruise missile project in an attempt to make himself untouchable
Personally, I dismiss the last possibility, but don't have enough information to decide between the first two. If it turns out to be the first possibility, that scares the shit out of me and, in the name of democracy, Mr. Simpson would deserve all the support anyone can give him.Rubbish.
What you should have said is "...there is a lack of will."
The problem is that the companies don't want to release the source not that they cannot. Once they start looking serious sales volumes, due to being excluded from the Linux kernel, companies will find the will to release source.
This has to be the most fucked up philosophy in the history of the world. On the bright side, if McBride continues on this path Redhat, the FSF and co. will be the least of McBride's worries. Last time I read religious literature unbridled greed was a qualification for a one way ticket to Hell.
If you get a 'suprise result' with gene technology there is a fair chance that the organism has come in contact with wild populations by the time the 'suprise' is evident. At this point there is no turning back as the rogue gene is out there breeding.
Here's an example. What if the glow fish turn out to be poisonous to a substantial fish species in location XYZ, also a native habitat of the unmodified fish? California didn't test the effects on this fish as location XYZ is nowhere near California. Also there was pressure from the 'glow fish manufacturer' to keep the costs of the testing program to a minimum. Grandma, on a visit from location XYZ to Californis, buys her grandchild one of those neat glow fish not even aware that it is gene modified. The child isn't interested in fish but isn't into killing cute fish either, so the glow fish is dumped in a local river. The glow fish breeds with local poopulations. The fish which eat the glow fish die. From there the effects ripple through out location XYZ. Effects include disruption of the ecosystem, death for the local fishing industry and the collapse of the local tourism industry, which depended on recreational fishing and diving to view marine life. This scenario is not far fetched at all. (Just consider a place like the Great Barrier Reef and its northern counterparts.)
I suspect we have different definitions of 'information'. I generally take 'information' in the sense of information theory: bits. In this context, scarcity of information translates into scarcity of bits. Knowledge can be translated into bits, so on this basis, I claim human knowledge is not inherently scarce.
Scarcity of information, as you describe it, is a very subjective concept. Is information on a subject 'scarce' because what is unknown exceeds what is known? On this basis, it could be claimed that we know very little in the scheme of things, therefore all information is scarce. Perhaps this is true and all knowledge really is a rare thing to be treasured. Unless information we restrict ourselves to what is known, I think we can argue either way on this one until we go blue in the face.
Perhaps scarcity of information is really about the proportion of the population who know a piece information? In that case, if ten people know something what gives nine of them the right to stop the tenth from telling another person (apart from mob rule)? In my view, this is the crux of IP and DRM. Depending on whether you think you can morally force people to keep secrets your stance on IP/DRM will vary.
Look at scarcity of information in this way, IP and DRM can have a lot to do with information about planets and solar systems. What if NASA claimed copyright on all their pictures, applied DRM to them and restricted their distribution to select few, who have all signed NDAs? What if all their papers were under the same regime? What if every scrap of data from every space probe was sealed up in the same way? What about text books? I can keep going until every source of knowledge is covered. Now we are striking at the heart of human endeavour and learning.
I will acknowledge that these arguments are not without holes, but I think they are a reasonable effort and right now I can't afford to spend more time on them.
IMHO, apt and apt-get are a very good solution for a command line interface. Generally speaking, apt-get just works (once the man page has been read). Sometimes strange things happen, but I've always put this down to my running unstable and there being a temporary dependency problem. Problems have always gone away when I have done an 'apt-get update' a few days later.
FRONT ENDS
I find the user interface of gnome-apt not to be intuitive and it has a different 'feel' to all other gnome programs. I find the 'seach' feature difficult to use. I liked it better when the search options were in a menu. Even then it wasn't great.
I admit I haven't really tried other front ends. Can you recommend some good ones? Perhaps selecting an apt front end could be the subject of a FAQ or HOWTO? Most 'newbies' will have to chose an apt front end early on in the piece. This is a difficult thing to do and it would be a real shame if the wrong choice was made, putting the user off Debian. Related, one of the most difficult tasks in Debian tends to be selecting a good package for a task, from the many candidates available.
Suggestion 1: Perhaps include 'subcategories' in the dpkg database? (eg admin>apt-frontends) Perhaps use 'virtual folders' in case a program covers multiple categories?
Suggestion 2: Better searching facilities for choosing packages
Suggestion 3: In general (I don't know how), come up with a way to make it easier for a user to make informed choices between packages. (Perhaps a natural language interface that suggests a package for a given task?)
APT-SRC
On an unrelated note. Do you know the status of apt-src? Does it work? Is it under active development? I'm to the stage where I would like to start tinkering with the source code of Debian, with a view to eventually becoming a maintainer. It would be really neat if I could say to apt-src: "Please upload source for all packages which I have installed, unpack it and set things up so that when I issue a 'make' instruction my entire system will be recompiled from these sources, and have exactly the same functionality as it does now"
OTHER THOUGHTS
Also, running unstable, I'm finding that my system is 'bloating'. If a dependency A->B gets changed to A->C, package C gets installed but package B doesn't get deleted. Eventualy I end up with dozens of unused pakages on my system and no easy way to find which are redundant.
Suggestion 1: Make the front end give a tree view of all installed packages, arranged according to dependencies. The user can then remove any package trees which do not correspond to desired applications.
Suggestion 2: have a second installed state, 'installed-due-to-dependancy'. When an upgrade is done, any such package will be deleted/purged unless it has to be there to satisfy a dependancy. By default packages are installed as 'installed-due-to-dependancy', unless explicitly mentioned in the command line of an 'apt-get install ...' statement. An 'apt-get remove' on a 'user installed' package, which is still required for dependency reasons, would change the package status to 'installed-due-to-dependancy'.
I apologise that these thoughts are so disorganised, but I put them down in the hope that they may be useful. Quite possibly much of what I have said is already in place and I just don't know about it (which in itself can be a difficulty with Debian).
The thing is, a design is not a physical thing. No, the plans for an object are not a design. They are only an expression of the design. The actual design consists of ideas and concepts. How does one assign value to an idea? I would assert that it is impossible to do, as ideas spread from one mind to another, like a virus.