Uh, no, you don't have to get a patent to stop other people from patenting something. There is no such thing as a "defensive patent"--the fact that you invented and published it is all the defense you get, what you need the patent for is offensive, suing other people that use your invention. If you don't want to sue people, or milk money out of them, you can just publish your invention and not patent it.
The fact that RedHat holds a few patents will not stop them from being sued by someone else for patent violation.
The difference between patents and copyrights is important here. If you want to have a program just like another copyrighted program, you can write it yourself, and you don't have to worry about the other person's copyright--This is how lots of open source programs are made, as replacements for existing closed-source ones.
If software patents were commonplace, this couldn't be done--even if you reinvent something patented yourself, you still are in violation of the patent. Even if a few "free software patents" were held, the FS community would never be able to make another free software workalike version of a patented program.
Software patents don't benefit anyone but pattent lawyers, and Red Hat is not doing anyone any favors by trying to legitimize it.
But what would prevent MS (or IBM, Sun, etc. but really, we all worry about MS) from claiming a patent on a prior invention that (MS would claim) both predated and anticipated RH's invention?
Nothing prevents MS, etc. from doing that anyway, except for the patent office's notoriously lax investigations of new patents.
More critical, though, is the reality of patent warfare. [...] It is truly an arms race.
Undefended patents are lost... Won't RH have to sue (or get a licence agreement out of) anyone who infringes on these patents in the meantime, in order to preserve them for the fight against MS?
If I understand how patents work, there is no reason to take out a patent on principle--the only thing a patent is good for is to stop people from using an invention, or make them pay you... If you aren't going to charge, you don't need the patent--I don't think there's a "patentleft" sort of scheme that uses patents to protect openness (a la copyleft)
IANAL, but you don't need to take out a patent to stop someone else from patenting your invention--if you publish it before someone else patents it, their patent is invalid.
Nobody would argue that it's entirely reasonable for Coca-cola to keep their formula secret. If anybody could manufacture Coke, what would you need Coca-cola for?
Coca-cola is more a trademark than anything else. Most of what goes into Coke has to be disclosed on the can, and the ~100 year old recipe certanly doesn't have any patent protection. The whole secrecy thing is mostly a marketing ploy. Anybody with the right equipment and know-how can manufacture Coke, what they need Coca-cola for is the right to market their product under their name and not as yet another off-brand cola.
Similarly, if anybody could manufacture (i.e., compile) my software product, then what would you need me for?
Anybody can copy your binary. The fact that Microsoft discloses the source code to Windows to some major customers and some universities doesn't threaten their business, it's easier to burn an iso of their retail CD than build it yourself--and distributing the source would be just as illegal as distributing the binary.
NAT alone is not an effective method of preventing people from using p2p programs. All it does is prevent incoming TCP connections, so as long as someone in the network (well, some reasonable minority of peers) can get incoming connections to bootstrap people into the network, everyone can still comminicate despite the inability to get new incoming connections.
Good NAT bypassing is annoying to program (in the extreme case, it requires implementing something like TCP over UDP) but it's not a huge techncal hurdle, the main reason it's not commonly done is because too few people have hostile NATs for it to be worth the effort.
Now remember, other P2P services, like Napster, Gnutella, and IRC, were all originally based on good, sound, legal, moral ideals. But in the course of time, they each became corrupt with those who would use the infrastructure for illegal filesharing and copyright infringement.
Nonsense. The original purpose of both Napster and Gnutella was to enable the sharing of copyrighted music. That's about all they've ever been used for (well, Gnutella and Gnutella-like networks have since branched out into other forms of mostly copyrighted content)
This, OTOH, appears to be primarily designed to let people pool bandwidth, which is both legal and useful, and since bandwith costs are a big problem for the distribution of free content, it's entirely a good thing.
All we ever hear about are obviously bogus software patents--ones that ignoring the "software" issue, are just new patents on old ideas. Do you have some examples of good software patents, describing a new, non-obvious software invention? Either ones you've worked on or just others you've run across...
Land at the apolo sites and prove once and for all wether the americans managed to land there first? I've see the pictures and they look a bit dodgy to me
So in 2011 we can look forward to people claiming that the Chinese Moon mission pictures are fake, then?
"Of course the Marco Polo trip was fake. You expect me to believe humans could cross the Gobi Desert? This whole "China" thing sounds a bit dodgy to me..." -- 13th century conspiracy theorist
I'm sure I'm not the only person to come away with the understanding that to the site's author, more crossed-out names are better.
Well, duh. There's people I'd be happy to see dead, too (osama bin laden, for ex.), should it be illegal for me to say that? Am I some sort of accomplice if I mention that the world would probably be a better place tomorrow if both Yassir Arafat and Ariel Sharon had unfortunate "accidents"?
Besides, these people could never be put on trial anyway, at least not in the United States. That would be "ex post facto" - making something illegal after it's already been done - and that is unconstitutional.
I'm not real clear on the history, but i think the real Nuremberg trials were pretty ex post facto, too--not that putting abortion doctors on trial for crimes against humanity is anything but stupid.
Who says it should be against the law to advocate violence? The point of the first amendment is primarily to protect political speech, and politics usually winds up with somebody (or lots of somebodys) getting killed.
Next they'll be saying that people who play flight simulator a lot are more likely to be good at flying real planes.
So what if a video game makes you better at something? (even though flight simulators are probably a lot better at simulating flight than CS is at simulating combat) Why would millitary-style combat training compel someone to go shoot up a school?
This is a failure? Is Could any human being you know do as well? Even close?
Given enough humans, yes. Human face recognition scales--you assign, say, 10 targets each to 25 people, have them memorize them, and they'll be able to pick one of their targets out of a crowd with the same ease you identify people you know from afar. It would be damn expensive, but unlike this system, it would actually work, given sufficent resources.
That's quite a feat. When that hits 95%, and it's pattern matching Osama Bin Laden, what do you think airport security would do if there's a match?
The problem isn't so much that it only matches successfully 47% of the time, it's that the 47% doesn't appear to be random--the article makes it seem you can make it very likely that you will consistently be missed by the system just by wearing glasses and not looking straight at the camera. Once it's well-understood how to avoid being caught by the system, it's worse than nothing (false sense of security) even if it correctly identifies 95% of people not taking countermeasures.
Not that Osama bin Laden would be on a flight in florida anyway, and remember that identification would not have helped prevent the events of September 11, since we knew who the hijackers were when they walked on the plane, we just didn't know what they had planned.
I don't think the First Amendment protects my right to publish a web page that truthfully states:
Slashdot.org poster "Kilroy" is actually John Q. Smith, who lives at 123 Main Street, Apartment 3B, in Anytown, Utah.[...]
A website called "The Nuremberg Files", which lists personal information about abortion doctors throughout America (with a strikeout font for ones who have been killed) won an appeal against the doctors trying to shut it down, and throwing out a $109m verdict against the site.
Looking at Trummel's site, it looks like the "personal information" was just people's names, replaced with pseudonyms like "Tall Pygmy".
Generally, something that has little or no positive effect and is considered offensive by many people can safely be deemed obscene.
That's pretty close to the legal test of obscenity. A lot of what is usually considered pornography is not obscene under that standard, since it's pretty difficult to establish that something has no value as speech.
You will no doubt find it, easy or not, but I would rather my children not find it when they are not looking for it.
Is that currently a problem? The only time I run into porn accidentally is either goatse.cx style practical jokes or spam, and it's not like this law is going to do anything about spam.
Slashdot Mirror
Oops, damn, I think you got me there.
Uh, no, you don't have to get a patent to stop other people from patenting something. There is no such thing as a "defensive patent"--the fact that you invented and published it is all the defense you get, what you need the patent for is offensive, suing other people that use your invention. If you don't want to sue people, or milk money out of them, you can just publish your invention and not patent it.
The fact that RedHat holds a few patents will not stop them from being sued by someone else for patent violation.
--
Benjamin Coates
Because patents are for inventions, and programs aren't inventions any more than books (which are not patentable) or math formulas (ditto) are.
--
Benjamin Coates
The difference between patents and copyrights is important here. If you want to have a program just like another copyrighted program, you can write it yourself, and you don't have to worry about the other person's copyright--This is how lots of open source programs are made, as replacements for existing closed-source ones.
If software patents were commonplace, this couldn't be done--even if you reinvent something patented yourself, you still are in violation of the patent. Even if a few "free software patents" were held, the FS community would never be able to make another free software workalike version of a patented program.
Software patents don't benefit anyone but pattent lawyers, and Red Hat is not doing anyone any favors by trying to legitimize it.
--
Benjamin Coates
But what would prevent MS (or IBM, Sun, etc. but really, we all worry about MS) from claiming a patent on a prior invention that (MS would claim) both predated and anticipated RH's invention?
Nothing prevents MS, etc. from doing that anyway, except for the patent office's notoriously lax investigations of new patents.
More critical, though, is the reality of patent warfare. [...] It is truly an arms race.
Undefended patents are lost... Won't RH have to sue (or get a licence agreement out of) anyone who infringes on these patents in the meantime, in order to preserve them for the fight against MS?
--
Benjamin Coates
If I understand how patents work, there is no reason to take out a patent on principle--the only thing a patent is good for is to stop people from using an invention, or make them pay you... If you aren't going to charge, you don't need the patent--I don't think there's a "patentleft" sort of scheme that uses patents to protect openness (a la copyleft)
--
Benjamin Coates
IANAL, but you don't need to take out a patent to stop someone else from patenting your invention--if you publish it before someone else patents it, their patent is invalid.
--
Benjamin Coates
Is it just me or do both patents end with the patch for the atomic file lookup?
--
Benjamin Coates
Nobody would argue that it's entirely reasonable for Coca-cola to keep their formula secret. If anybody could manufacture Coke, what would you need Coca-cola for?
Coca-cola is more a trademark than anything else. Most of what goes into Coke has to be disclosed on the can, and the ~100 year old recipe certanly doesn't have any patent protection. The whole secrecy thing is mostly a marketing ploy. Anybody with the right equipment and know-how can manufacture Coke, what they need Coca-cola for is the right to market their product under their name and not as yet another off-brand cola.
Similarly, if anybody could manufacture (i.e., compile) my software product, then what would you need me for?
Anybody can copy your binary. The fact that Microsoft discloses the source code to Windows to some major customers and some universities doesn't threaten their business, it's easier to burn an iso of their retail CD than build it yourself--and distributing the source would be just as illegal as distributing the binary.
--
Benjamin Coates
NAT alone is not an effective method of preventing people from using p2p programs. All it does is prevent incoming TCP connections, so as long as someone in the network (well, some reasonable minority of peers) can get incoming connections to bootstrap people into the network, everyone can still comminicate despite the inability to get new incoming connections.
Good NAT bypassing is annoying to program (in the extreme case, it requires implementing something like TCP over UDP) but it's not a huge techncal hurdle, the main reason it's not commonly done is because too few people have hostile NATs for it to be worth the effort.
--
Benjamin Coates
Now remember, other P2P services, like Napster, Gnutella, and IRC, were all originally based on good, sound, legal, moral ideals. But in the course of time, they each became corrupt with those who would use the infrastructure for illegal filesharing and copyright infringement.
Nonsense. The original purpose of both Napster and Gnutella was to enable the sharing of copyrighted music. That's about all they've ever been used for (well, Gnutella and Gnutella-like networks have since branched out into other forms of mostly copyrighted content)
This, OTOH, appears to be primarily designed to let people pool bandwidth, which is both legal and useful, and since bandwith costs are a big problem for the distribution of free content, it's entirely a good thing.
--
Benjamin Coates
All we ever hear about are obviously bogus software patents--ones that ignoring the "software" issue, are just new patents on old ideas. Do you have some examples of good software patents, describing a new, non-obvious software invention? Either ones you've worked on or just others you've run across...
--
Benjamin Coates
Yeah, looks like it's really a trojan, relies on the one-born-every-minute principle to spread.
--
Benjamin Coates
Hmm, uses your drive space and bandwidth, pops up ads, modifies your system configuration without your permission...
Looks to me like the only difference between this trojan and the programs it comes in is that one has a EULA.
Time for virus writers to wise up and disclaim liability with an incomprehensible clickthrough like all the other writers of malicious code...
--
Benjamin Coates
Would that be drawbacks, or benefits?
I think it would be both a danger and an opportunity.
--
Benjamin Coates
Land at the apolo sites and prove once and for all wether the americans managed to land there first?
I've see the pictures and they look a bit dodgy to me
So in 2011 we can look forward to people claiming that the Chinese Moon mission pictures are fake, then?
"Of course the Marco Polo trip was fake. You expect me to believe humans could cross the Gobi Desert? This whole "China" thing sounds a bit dodgy to me..." -- 13th century conspiracy theorist
--
Benjamin Coates
I'm sure I'm not the only person to come away with the understanding that to the site's author, more crossed-out names are better.
Well, duh. There's people I'd be happy to see dead, too (osama bin laden, for ex.), should it be illegal for me to say that? Am I some sort of accomplice if I mention that the world would probably be a better place tomorrow if both Yassir Arafat and Ariel Sharon had unfortunate "accidents"?
Besides, these people could never be put on trial anyway, at least not in the United States. That would be "ex post facto" - making something illegal after it's already been done - and that is unconstitutional.
I'm not real clear on the history, but i think the real Nuremberg trials were pretty ex post facto, too--not that putting abortion doctors on trial for crimes against humanity is anything but stupid.
--
Benjamin Coates
Who says it should be against the law to advocate violence? The point of the first amendment is primarily to protect political speech, and politics usually winds up with somebody (or lots of somebodys) getting killed.
--
Benjamin Coates
Next they'll be saying that people who play flight simulator a lot are more likely to be good at flying real planes.
So what if a video game makes you better at something? (even though flight simulators are probably a lot better at simulating flight than CS is at simulating combat) Why would millitary-style combat training compel someone to go shoot up a school?
--
Benjamin Coates
This is a failure? Is Could any human being you know do as well? Even close?
Given enough humans, yes. Human face recognition scales--you assign, say, 10 targets each to 25 people, have them memorize them, and they'll be able to pick one of their targets out of a crowd with the same ease you identify people you know from afar. It would be damn expensive, but unlike this system, it would actually work, given sufficent resources.
--
Benjamin Coates
That's quite a feat. When that hits 95%, and it's pattern matching Osama Bin Laden, what do you think airport security would do if there's a match?
The problem isn't so much that it only matches successfully 47% of the time, it's that the 47% doesn't appear to be random--the article makes it seem you can make it very likely that you will consistently be missed by the system just by wearing glasses and not looking straight at the camera. Once it's well-understood how to avoid being caught by the system, it's worse than nothing (false sense of security) even if it correctly identifies 95% of people not taking countermeasures.
Not that Osama bin Laden would be on a flight in florida anyway, and remember that identification would not have helped prevent the events of September 11, since we knew who the hijackers were when they walked on the plane, we just didn't know what they had planned.
--
Benjamin Coates
What's the point of the finger, then? Just use the PIN and/or photo for the authentication...
--
Benjamin Coates
I don't think the First Amendment protects my right to publish a web page that truthfully states:
Slashdot.org poster "Kilroy" is actually John Q. Smith, who lives at 123 Main Street, Apartment 3B, in Anytown, Utah.[...]
A website called "The Nuremberg Files", which lists personal information about abortion doctors throughout America (with a strikeout font for ones who have been killed) won an appeal against the doctors trying to shut it down, and throwing out a $109m verdict against the site.
Looking at Trummel's site, it looks like the "personal information" was just people's names, replaced with pseudonyms like "Tall Pygmy".
--
Benjamin Coates
Generally, something that has little or no positive effect and is considered offensive by many people can safely be deemed obscene.
That's pretty close to the legal test of obscenity. A lot of what is usually considered pornography is not obscene under that standard, since it's pretty difficult to establish that something has no value as speech.
You will no doubt find it, easy or not, but I would rather my children not find it when they are not looking for it.
Is that currently a problem? The only time I run into porn accidentally is either goatse.cx style practical jokes or spam, and it's not like this law is going to do anything about spam.
--
Benjamin Coates
and you can't claim rights of Freedom of Speech for diseminating information that the federal government has sealed for security reasons.
Yes you can. Information being "Classified" does not make it exempt to the first amendment, look up the "Pentagon Papers" case.
--
Benjamin Coates