You just need to slow down. Good luck on that! Luckily for me, I'm generally the only one who needs to read my handwriting, and I can *usually* manage that:-)
When can I get my nervous system jacked so my reflexes will go with the gear?
Seriously, though, I can't imagine there *not* being some sort of long-term damage from piping too much non-biogenerated electricity through some sub-section of the brains neural net.
Of course, our medical establishment is giving extremely powerful central nervous system stimulants to our youth, so we know *they* don't care.
Cool! It was only a matter of time before someone linked necro/cannibal fantasy websites with paedophilia and Terrorism!
Um, they are related in that they can both use the internet to plan and carry out illegal acts. Are they related on the level of "terrorists are pedophiles" or "pedophiles are terrorists"? Um, of course not.
This whole argument is ridiculous, telling me I can't express whatever the fuck I want on my own website. This isn't child porn. This is a *fantasy* fulfillment, for people with admittedly deviant tastes.
So, if you found a website that allowed and developed a fantasy about nuking a major city, would you just let it go? Or would you say, "Hey, these people might be fucked up? Somebody should look into these folks."
The internet is not just a publishing medium, it is a *collaboration* medium. And what people are allowed to collobarate on freely must be checked because there are some seriously deviant people who don't want to keep their fantasies in between their ears.
Say it with me...there is not, and has never been, any conclusive proof that *viewing* fantasy material forces someone to *act* in mimicry of said material.
I don't see any links here, so how can you say what, exactly, anyone did or did not view? Did Ozzie make that kid kill himself? Do people really have sex with dead people after listening to The Beatles backwards?
The only example of fantasy websites leading to illegal acts I can think of, off the top of my head, is the German cannibal. He did meet the guy he *killed* over the internet, right? Now, whether or not the "victim" wanted to be killed is irrelevant; that person would likely not have found a person to kill him in the want ads.
And, there is the possibility that the victim was only wanting "the fantasy" and not the reality of getting his ass eaten. And, maybe he thought that everyone could keep their fantasies in "fantasy-land" and not cross the border into reality.
Knee-jerk reactionism is not the answer to life's problems, people. Bad things happen, and frequently they happen to good people. This does not mean that you or anyone else has a right to tell me how to live, within a reasonable expectation. I leave you alone, I'd appreciate the same courtesy.
This is far from knee-jerk. I'm talking about preventing the use of the internet for collaborative crime. And, yes, society has not just a right, but a *responsibility* to prevent the aborrent folks from fucking up the world.
You are absolutely and completely dependent on this society. You do not grow your own food and you damn sure didn't fabricate all the little machines and components that it took for you to post this message. As such, you *need* this society, like it or not. And that means you've got to live by the majority's rules, like `em or not. I damn sure don't want these govt assholes forcing DRM down my throat or restricting my ability to blow the whistle on their corrupt asses, but at the same time I know there's some *way* more fucked up people than them. And I believe that giving carte blanche to everyone in the name of freedom of expression is *assinine*.
So, when you go buy your island and produce all your own stuff, then I'll leave you alone, so long as you don't try to fuck with my society. Until then, the forces of anarchy and violence must be not be allowed to use our *very* advanced communication networks to facilitate their agendas.
Of course not, but the internet allows for group information passing, not just simple publication, so the *organization* of illegal activity is facilitated if it isn't stopped.
So, sure, we can't stop them, but we don't have to let them use this *very* advanced technology to further their aims, at least, not without a fight.
And not every permutation and combination of human desire *should* be expressed. Yes, we must have the freedom to express political dissent, but, for crying out loud, if there's not going to be self-restraint, then the restraint has to come from somewhere else. And, sure, I'd rather not the govt be doing this, but are you going to put your ps2 controller down to solve the problems of pedophilia and terrorism?
Sorry, I just don't agree. The darkness, the reality of a society that are slaves to technology -- the pictures the book paints are beyond excellent. "Affordable beauty", "masks" -- incredibly accurate portayals of human vanity.
Yeah, it's just my opinion, but it and the other two books of the series are just brilliant, not so much for technological prediction as much as just for the human effects of a blind technoculture. Compare his characters to Clark's Rama people -- sure Clark has a wonderful technical perspective but his characters are like robots.
Peace & Blessings, bmac www.mihr.com for true peace & happiness
Sorry, man, that's just *not* possible. You must be referring, as another poster did, to a just-in-time compiler. If it is a true interpreter, it is impossible to compete with a compiled program, unless the compiled program is written *very* badly.
Sadly, most people at slashdot forget that just-in-time compilation is still *compilation*. Machine code is generated, so it is *not* interpreted.
I agree with you in general, but I feel that OO's problems reside in that it should just be a way to organize code. If the OO folks just kept the perspective that an object is just a data definition and a bunch of functions whose first parameter is that data type, the mapping would be no different than C's mapping.
Because they have had the desire to create layer upon ugly layer of syntax, the language just doesn't map down, as you say. Look how long it took to get a decent C++ compiler (5+ years). As well, the basic idea of data structure + associated functionality has been totally lost in the jumble of inheritance and public/private/protected.
That said, I do disagree that an assembly programmer will fail the "object-oriented-ness" test. As stated at the start, it's all a matter of organization, and, IMO, that is where success or failure is determined. Sure, organizing a project that uses an OO lang is going to be easier than organizing a project that uses assembler, but that doesn't mean that it can't be done. If you look at my journal you'll see how much I value code organization ~ I say it determines the success of the project, regardless of prog lang choice.
Peace & Blessings, bmac for true peace & happiness: www.mihr.com
Yes, you are absolutely right, but my problem is that I adhere to the old-school definition of "interpreted". And if, as per that def, you are interpreting the interpreter, you will be bogged down very quickly.
Peace & Blessings, bmac www.mihr.com for true peace & happiness
"What do you want to do today while you wait for your computer to finish a simple task?"
And, if my intuition is correct, the JRVM may be an interesting intellectual exercise, but I bet it makes running a normal java program look like hand-optimized assembler by comparison.
The main drawback of not using C is that you don't get a language that maps down to machine code such that your program runs well. Mark my words: the interpreted programming language for professional applications will die someday. Sure, you can use them for early development, but ya'd better compile that sucker for deployment.
Remember, your intel/amd/ppc/... chip has an instuction set. All programs that do not run by executing those low-level commands are created by lazy programmers with inferior techniques and tools.
Yeah, I know, here come the flames. But maybe I'm hotter than the flames already; that would make them feel like a nice cool breeze.
Peace & Blessings, bmac www.mihr.com: for true peace & happiness
Well, there are many names for the Creator of all that exists, but that there is but one creator is the key point. Whether he is called Yahweh, Allah, Jehovah, God, the-spirit-that-moves-through-all-things; all that matters is that He is our creator, timeless, eternal and capable of anything that it chooses to do (tho most of creation is flowing within a framework of laws, some as simple as gravity, some more high-level, like the laws of karma).
But, yes, I am referring to the One God. Some of the laws that govern our personal growth are not generally known, yet in my years of seeking I have learned many of them. The Bible says "seek and ye shall find, knock and the door shall be opened". If you have any questions, feel free to ask away; it is always my pleasure to share the knowledge that our Creator has shared with me.
One thing that is *very* important to know is that God only wants one thing from us: our happiness. All the unhappiness and misery of the world (which is pervasive, to say the least) is the result of our mis-use of free will. The laws that God created to guide us to happiness are designed to create unhappiness when broken. So all of the greed, hatred, enmity, ignorance, etc... in the world is only leading people to more and more unhappiness. That result is a result of the design of the universe (on the human level) itself.
In my younger years, the universe's laws of science fascinated me, now I am more interested in the laws that operate on the human level. These laws are directly related to our unique ability to *choose*. The univere itself has a system that tracks our choices and then unfolds further events based upon them. This is the part of the intelligent design that is absolutely essential to understand as it can put your decision-making in a whole new context *and* lead you to a happier life, regardless of circumstance.
Anyhow, you can reply here if you like or AIM me at bmac4unity.
In any event, may all the peace and blessings of our Creator be with you.
Yup, intelligent design is *obvious*, but here's the kicker: the "designer" loves to inform his creation about the nature of his design. Imagine being in what the poet Rumi called "a constant conversation with God". This is not just possible, but is actually designed into the system. There is a great deal of personal soul-cleaning that must go on before the conversation is possible, but it's worth the effort (so far, at least, for me). If you are really interested, just reply; if not, peace be with you!
[Oops, I hit submit instead of preview, here's the proper version:]
Thanks, but a couple of questions:
What exactly does "new machine" refer to? My idea revolves around a somewhat simple (yet powerful) visual data structure. It will (God Willing) have a very rich functionality that, because of the relatively simple geometry of the visual structure, will be very directly (and obviously) related to the visual organization of the data. In other words, anyone who chooses to re-engineer the app will *have* to implement the same kinds of functions (/menu choices) due to their being very natural offshoots of the visual nature of the data itself. I have not seen such a data organization in my years of programming, though I know that Charles Simonyl (formerly MS's chief software architect) and James Gosling are both pursuing similar approaches to data management (where the data is program code itself).
Essentially, the crux and (IMO) beauty of my idea resides in exactly how the data is organized visually; the nature of how this is done (as mentioned above) makes certain functionality extremely intuitive. So, are you saying that if I can prove that no one has organized their data as such, I can patent it and then all the functions that occur as a logical result of how the data is presented to the user will be unable to be re-engineered (and sold) by other software engineers? Or, would you reckon that the combination of data presentation *and* functionality *together* is what is required for defining the "new machine"?
As a comparison, consider the relational database paradigm. Could E. F. Dodd (if I remember correctly) have patented his relational model of data and then have been able to "own" rdbms software for 17 years? The notion of tables of fields linked by keys was brilliant, yet could he have protected himself legally? And, of course, we all know the fate of the Visicalc creator who *didn't* patent the spreadsheet (a *very* visual data paradigm with obvious functionality). How would you have advised him (or Dodd) to protect their ideas (ideas whose brilliance is proven by their being integral to computing to this day)?
Now, as far as copyright goes, if I understand you correctly, if a competing engineer can achive the same functionality with different code, copyright offers *no* protection whatsoever. Neh?
And then the last question (for now:-) would be what if someone uses the program then adds a couple of small pieces of functionality to the visual paradigm. Does this now constitute a "new machine"? And to what extent do they have to innovate/extend my idea for their work to become "new" in the legal sense? [My guess here is that this is a very thorny issue that would probably have to be determined in court, as there are probably not a lot of precedence in this realm.]
And one last favor, if you could, please: what book(s) would you recommend for a pure engineer (like myself) to background me on the status quo? Lessig? Which ones? And I hear that there is an excellent female software patent lawyer professor (in N. Cali?) who is quite quiet but very much at the vanguard of software ip theory.
Your help is very much appreciated, and, as I may be needing to actually hire an attorney such as yourself someday, what state do you practice in? You never know when "good samaritan" advice will lead to interesting (and even *paying*) connections. Regardless of the future, tho, I do *really* appreciate your time and expertise.
Peace & Blessings, bmac
If only the world religions knew that there is only one *purpose* to religion, tho many paths to achieve it; and that when that one purpose is truly sought, the effects on human development and behavior are *always*exactly* the same, regardless of practice.
What exactly does "new machine" refer to. My idea revolves around a somewhat simple (yet powerful) visual data structure. It will (God Willing) have a very rich functionality that, because of the relatively simple geometry of the visual structure, will be very directly to the visual organization of the data. In other words, anyone who chooses to re-engineer the app will *have* to implement the same kinds of functions (/menu choices) due to their being very natural offshoots of the visual nature of the data itself. I have not seen such a data organization in my years of programming, though I know that Charles Simonyl (formerly MS's chief software architect) and James Gosling are both pursuing similar approaches to data management (where the data is program code itself).
Essentially, the crux and (IMO) beauty of my idea resides in exactly how the data is organized visually; the nature of how this is done (as mentioned above) makes certain functionality extremely intuitive. So, are you saying that if I can prove that no one has organized their data as such, I can patent it and then all the functions that occur as a logical result of how the data is presented to the user will be unable to be re-engineered (and sold) by other software engineers? Or, would you reckon that the combination of data presentation *and* functionality *together* is what is required for defining the "new machine"?
Now, as far as copyright goes, if I understand you correctly, if they can achive the same functionality with different code, copyright offers *no* protection whatsoever. Neh?
And then the last question (for now:-) would be what if someone uses the program then adds a couple of small pieces of functionality to the visual paradigm. Does this now constitute a "new machine"? And to what extent do they have to innovate/extend for their work to become "new" in the legal sense? [My guess here is that this is a very thorny issue that would probably have to be determined in court, as there are probably not a lot of precedence in this realm.]
And one last favor, if you could, please: what book(s) would you recommend for a pure engineer (like myself) to background me on the status quo. Lessig? Which ones? And I hear that there is an excellent female software patent lawyer professor (in N. Cali?) who is quite quiet but very much at the vanguard of software ip theory.
Your help is very much appreciated, and, as I may be needing to actually hire an attorney such as yourself someday, what state do you practice in? You never know when "good samaritan" advice will lead to interesting (and even *paying*) connections. Regardless of the future, tho, I do *really* appreciate your time and expertise.
Peace & Blessings, bmac
If only the world religions knew that there is only one *purpose* to religion, tho many paths to achieve it; and that when that one purpose is truly sought, the effects on human development are *always* the same, regardless of practice.
First, thanks for the free advice. Most of us technical folks are completely non-informed as to the legalities of our inventions -- this severely includes me.
Second, would you please distill your experience wrt this scenario: I have a new way of viewing data, be it file system information, database information, or actual program code. The visual representation as well as the underlying data structures are key to what I believe is a powerful new way of organizing data. Any half-competant programmer who sees my software will be able to reverse engineer it as the concepts are relatively simple. So, the question is: how does one protect such a "new representation of data (both internally and visually)"? Is it a patent issue, copyright issue, or some combo?
I appreciate any comments you may have on the subject.
Peace & Blessings, bmac For true peace & happiness: www.mihr.com
was on a main bank pc (some years ago) and wanted to format her floppy disk. She got to the DOS prompt and typed "format c:" and waited. And waited and waited. Then she started getting a sickly feeling that it was taking too long. She said she almost had a heart attack when they told her what she had done. Luckily they were able to reassemble the FAT table and all ended well.
As for me, my only tech mistakes have been working for evil PHB's. I *swear* that *two* of them actually looked like the PHB in Dilbert.
I mean c'mon, yer either taking care of the details or yer not. Also, any serious mistakes have been subconsciously auto-purged from my memory. Ahh, the joy of convenient amnesia!
Peace & Blessings, bmac www.mihr.com, check it out!
Slashdot Mirror
Looks kinda cool, tho rather matrix-like.
But on the friggin website, the section headers are in English, yet the text is in Japanese!
WTF?
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
You just need to slow down. Good luck on that! Luckily for me, I'm generally the only one who needs to read my handwriting, and I can *usually* manage that :-)
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
When can I get my nervous system jacked so my reflexes will go with the gear?
Seriously, though, I can't imagine there *not* being some sort of long-term damage from piping too much non-biogenerated electricity through some sub-section of the brains neural net.
Of course, our medical establishment is giving extremely powerful central nervous system stimulants to our youth, so we know *they* don't care.
Bonus points if you get both Gibson quotes.
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
that Katz guy? /vomits/
Some change *is* good.
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
Cool! It was only a matter of time before someone linked necro/cannibal fantasy websites with paedophilia and Terrorism!
Um, they are related in that they can both use the internet to plan and carry out illegal acts. Are they related on the level of "terrorists are pedophiles" or "pedophiles are terrorists"? Um, of course not.
This whole argument is ridiculous, telling me I can't express whatever the fuck I want on my own website. This isn't child porn. This is a *fantasy* fulfillment, for people with admittedly deviant tastes.
So, if you found a website that allowed and developed a fantasy about nuking a major city, would you just let it go? Or would you say, "Hey, these people might be fucked up? Somebody should look into these folks."
The internet is not just a publishing medium, it is a *collaboration* medium. And what people are allowed to collobarate on freely must be checked because there are some seriously deviant people who don't want to keep their fantasies in between their ears.
Say it with me...there is not, and has never been, any conclusive proof that *viewing* fantasy material forces someone to *act* in mimicry of said material.
I don't see any links here, so how can you say what, exactly, anyone did or did not view? Did Ozzie make that kid kill himself? Do people really have sex with dead people after listening to The Beatles backwards?
The only example of fantasy websites leading to illegal acts I can think of, off the top of my head, is the German cannibal. He did meet the guy he *killed* over the internet, right? Now, whether or not the "victim" wanted to be killed is irrelevant; that person would likely not have found a person to kill him in the want ads.
And, there is the possibility that the victim was only wanting "the fantasy" and not the reality of getting his ass eaten. And, maybe he thought that everyone could keep their fantasies in "fantasy-land" and not cross the border into reality.
Knee-jerk reactionism is not the answer to life's problems, people. Bad things happen, and frequently they happen to good people. This does not mean that you or anyone else has a right to tell me how to live, within a reasonable expectation. I leave you alone, I'd appreciate the same courtesy.
This is far from knee-jerk. I'm talking about preventing the use of the internet for collaborative crime. And, yes, society has not just a right, but a *responsibility* to prevent the aborrent folks from fucking up the world.
You are absolutely and completely dependent on this society. You do not grow your own food and you damn sure didn't fabricate all the little machines and components that it took for you to post this message. As such, you *need* this society, like it or not. And that means you've got to live by the majority's rules, like `em or not. I damn sure don't want these govt assholes forcing DRM down my throat or restricting my ability to blow the whistle on their corrupt asses, but at the same time I know there's some *way* more fucked up people than them. And I believe that giving carte blanche to everyone in the name of freedom of expression is *assinine*.
So, when you go buy your island and produce all your own stuff, then I'll leave you alone, so long as you don't try to fuck with my society. Until then, the forces of anarchy and violence must be not be allowed to use our *very* advanced communication networks to facilitate their agendas.
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
Of course not, but the internet allows for group information passing, not just simple publication, so the *organization* of illegal activity is facilitated if it isn't stopped.
So, sure, we can't stop them, but we don't have to let them use this *very* advanced technology to further their aims, at least, not without a fight.
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
There must be accountability on the web. Period.
And not every permutation and combination of human desire *should* be expressed. Yes, we must have the freedom to express political dissent, but, for crying out loud, if there's not going to be self-restraint, then the restraint has to come from somewhere else. And, sure, I'd rather not the govt be doing this, but are you going to put your ps2 controller down to solve the problems of pedophilia and terrorism?
STFU.
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
Sorry, I just don't agree. The darkness, the reality of a society that are slaves to technology -- the pictures the book paints are beyond excellent. "Affordable beauty", "masks" -- incredibly accurate portayals of human vanity.
Yeah, it's just my opinion, but it and the other two books of the series are just brilliant, not so much for technological prediction as much as just for the human effects of a blind technoculture. Compare his characters to Clark's Rama people -- sure Clark has a wonderful technical perspective but his characters are like robots.
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
www.mihr.com for true peace & happiness
Doesn't Microsoft have something like $27 billion in the bank? Or am I way off here?
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
www.mihr.com: for *all* the answers
I've had a few questions I'd love to pose to the /. community but I knew were unworthy.
Where would you suggest such questions be posed?
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
www.mihr.com
an attempt to get the open source community to debug their crappy code
an SCO-style trojan, trying to get their code into oss
shaa, like we're going to fall for that one!
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
"Big XXX Company joined Eclipse today PRs."
Does this mean there will be a plug-in for auto pr0n slurping?
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
www.mihr.com
Sorry, man, that's just *not* possible. You must be referring, as another poster did, to a just-in-time compiler. If it is a true interpreter, it is impossible to compete with a compiled program, unless the compiled program is written *very* badly.
8 09 .2/0446.html
Sadly, most people at slashdot forget that just-in-time compilation is still *compilation*. Machine code is generated, so it is *not* interpreted.
Now that I did some googling, check out:
http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/9
And now for the penultimate question: where are all the Forth programs and operating systems?
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
For true peace & lasting happiness: www.mihr.com
Thanks, that really made me lol. There is nothing like a good laugh.
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
I agree with you in general, but I feel that OO's problems reside in that it should just be a way to organize code. If the OO folks just kept the perspective that an object is just a data definition and a bunch of functions whose first parameter is that data type, the mapping would be no different than C's mapping.
Because they have had the desire to create layer upon ugly layer of syntax, the language just doesn't map down, as you say. Look how long it took to get a decent C++ compiler (5+ years). As well, the basic idea of data structure + associated functionality has been totally lost in the jumble of inheritance and public/private/protected.
That said, I do disagree that an assembly programmer will fail the "object-oriented-ness" test. As stated at the start, it's all a matter of organization, and, IMO, that is where success or failure is determined. Sure, organizing a project that uses an OO lang is going to be easier than organizing a project that uses assembler, but that doesn't mean that it can't be done. If you look at my journal you'll see how much I value code organization ~ I say it determines the success of the project, regardless of prog lang choice.
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
for true peace & happiness: www.mihr.com
Yes, you are absolutely right, but my problem is that I adhere to the old-school definition of "interpreted". And if, as per that def, you are interpreting the interpreter, you will be bogged down very quickly.
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
www.mihr.com for true peace & happiness
And I'll give you the slogan:
"What do you want to do today while you wait for your computer to finish a simple task?"
And, if my intuition is correct, the JRVM may be an interesting intellectual exercise, but I bet it makes running a normal java program look like hand-optimized assembler by comparison.
The main drawback of not using C is that you don't get a language that maps down to machine code such that your program runs well. Mark my words: the interpreted programming language for professional applications will die someday. Sure, you can use them for early development, but ya'd better compile that sucker for deployment.
Remember, your intel/amd/ppc/... chip has an instuction set. All programs that do not run by executing those low-level commands are created by lazy programmers with inferior techniques and tools.
Yeah, I know, here come the flames. But maybe I'm hotter than the flames already; that would make them feel like a nice cool breeze.
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
www.mihr.com: for true peace & happiness
Well, there are many names for the Creator of all that exists, but that there is but one creator is the key point. Whether he is called Yahweh, Allah, Jehovah, God, the-spirit-that-moves-through-all-things; all that matters is that He is our creator, timeless, eternal and capable of anything that it chooses to do (tho most of creation is flowing within a framework of laws, some as simple as gravity, some more high-level, like the laws of karma).
But, yes, I am referring to the One God. Some of the laws that govern our personal growth are not generally known, yet in my years of seeking I have learned many of them. The Bible says "seek and ye shall find, knock and the door shall be opened". If you have any questions, feel free to ask away; it is always my pleasure to share the knowledge that our Creator has shared with me.
One thing that is *very* important to know is that God only wants one thing from us: our happiness. All the unhappiness and misery of the world (which is pervasive, to say the least) is the result of our mis-use of free will. The laws that God created to guide us to happiness are designed to create unhappiness when broken. So all of the greed, hatred, enmity, ignorance, etc... in the world is only leading people to more and more unhappiness. That result is a result of the design of the universe (on the human level) itself.
In my younger years, the universe's laws of science fascinated me, now I am more interested in the laws that operate on the human level. These laws are directly related to our unique ability to *choose*. The univere itself has a system that tracks our choices and then unfolds further events based upon them. This is the part of the intelligent design that is absolutely essential to understand as it can put your decision-making in a whole new context *and* lead you to a happier life, regardless of circumstance.
Anyhow, you can reply here if you like or AIM me at bmac4unity.
In any event, may all the peace and blessings of our Creator be with you.
-bmac
And I am (now) bmac4unity.
I don't know if I actually sent you a message, cause I'm a total n00b (never even used irc). Anyhow, you've got my screen name now, so until then...
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
Yup, intelligent design is *obvious*, but here's the kicker: the "designer" loves to inform his creation about the nature of his design. Imagine being in what the poet Rumi called "a constant conversation with God". This is not just possible, but is actually designed into the system. There is a great deal of personal soul-cleaning that must go on before the conversation is possible, but it's worth the effort (so far, at least, for me). If you are really interested, just reply; if not, peace be with you!
-bmac
www.mihr.com: for *all* the answers
[Oops, I hit submit instead of preview, here's the proper version:]
:-) would be what if someone uses the program then adds a couple of small pieces of functionality to the visual paradigm. Does this now constitute a "new machine"? And to what extent do they have to innovate/extend my idea for their work to become "new" in the legal sense? [My guess here is that this is a very thorny issue that would probably have to be determined in court, as there are probably not a lot of precedence in this realm.]
Thanks, but a couple of questions:
What exactly does "new machine" refer to? My idea revolves around a somewhat simple (yet powerful) visual data structure. It will (God Willing) have a very rich functionality that, because of the relatively simple geometry of the visual structure, will be very directly (and obviously) related to the visual organization of the data. In other words, anyone who chooses to re-engineer the app will *have* to implement the same kinds of functions (/menu choices) due to their being very natural offshoots of the visual nature of the data itself. I have not seen such a data organization in my years of programming, though I know that Charles Simonyl (formerly MS's chief software architect) and James Gosling are both pursuing similar approaches to data management (where the data is program code itself).
Essentially, the crux and (IMO) beauty of my idea resides in exactly how the data is organized visually; the nature of how this is done (as mentioned above) makes certain functionality extremely intuitive. So, are you saying that if I can prove that no one has organized their data as such, I can patent it and then all the functions that occur as a logical result of how the data is presented to the user will be unable to be re-engineered (and sold) by other software engineers? Or, would you reckon that the combination of data presentation *and* functionality *together* is what is required for defining the "new machine"?
As a comparison, consider the relational database paradigm. Could E. F. Dodd (if I remember correctly) have patented his relational model of data and then have been able to "own" rdbms software for 17 years? The notion of tables of fields linked by keys was brilliant, yet could he have protected himself legally? And, of course, we all know the fate of the Visicalc creator who *didn't* patent the spreadsheet (a *very* visual data paradigm with obvious functionality). How would you have advised him (or Dodd) to protect their ideas (ideas whose brilliance is proven by their being integral to computing to this day)?
Now, as far as copyright goes, if I understand you correctly, if a competing engineer can achive the same functionality with different code, copyright offers *no* protection whatsoever. Neh?
And then the last question (for now
And one last favor, if you could, please: what book(s) would you recommend for a pure engineer (like myself) to background me on the status quo? Lessig? Which ones? And I hear that there is an excellent female software patent lawyer professor (in N. Cali?) who is quite quiet but very much at the vanguard of software ip theory.
Your help is very much appreciated, and, as I may be needing to actually hire an attorney such as yourself someday, what state do you practice in? You never know when "good samaritan" advice will lead to interesting (and even *paying*) connections. Regardless of the future, tho, I do *really* appreciate your time and expertise.
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
If only the world religions knew that there is only one *purpose* to religion, tho many paths to achieve it; and that when that one purpose is truly sought, the effects on human development and behavior are *always*exactly* the same, regardless of practice.
Thanks, but a couple of questions:
:-) would be what if someone uses the program then adds a couple of small pieces of functionality to the visual paradigm. Does this now constitute a "new machine"? And to what extent do they have to innovate/extend for their work to become "new" in the legal sense? [My guess here is that this is a very thorny issue that would probably have to be determined in court, as there are probably not a lot of precedence in this realm.]
What exactly does "new machine" refer to. My idea revolves around a somewhat simple (yet powerful) visual data structure. It will (God Willing) have a very rich functionality that, because of the relatively simple geometry of the visual structure, will be very directly to the visual organization of the data. In other words, anyone who chooses to re-engineer the app will *have* to implement the same kinds of functions (/menu choices) due to their being very natural offshoots of the visual nature of the data itself. I have not seen such a data organization in my years of programming, though I know that Charles Simonyl (formerly MS's chief software architect) and James Gosling are both pursuing similar approaches to data management (where the data is program code itself).
Essentially, the crux and (IMO) beauty of my idea resides in exactly how the data is organized visually; the nature of how this is done (as mentioned above) makes certain functionality extremely intuitive. So, are you saying that if I can prove that no one has organized their data as such, I can patent it and then all the functions that occur as a logical result of how the data is presented to the user will be unable to be re-engineered (and sold) by other software engineers? Or, would you reckon that the combination of data presentation *and* functionality *together* is what is required for defining the "new machine"?
Now, as far as copyright goes, if I understand you correctly, if they can achive the same functionality with different code, copyright offers *no* protection whatsoever. Neh?
And then the last question (for now
And one last favor, if you could, please: what book(s) would you recommend for a pure engineer (like myself) to background me on the status quo. Lessig? Which ones? And I hear that there is an excellent female software patent lawyer professor (in N. Cali?) who is quite quiet but very much at the vanguard of software ip theory.
Your help is very much appreciated, and, as I may be needing to actually hire an attorney such as yourself someday, what state do you practice in? You never know when "good samaritan" advice will lead to interesting (and even *paying*) connections. Regardless of the future, tho, I do *really* appreciate your time and expertise.
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
If only the world religions knew that there is only one *purpose* to religion, tho many paths to achieve it; and that when that one purpose is truly sought, the effects on human development are *always* the same, regardless of practice.
First, thanks for the free advice. Most of us technical folks are completely non-informed as to the legalities of our inventions -- this severely includes me.
Second, would you please distill your experience wrt this scenario: I have a new way of viewing data, be it file system information, database information, or actual program code. The visual representation as well as the underlying data structures are key to what I believe is a powerful new way of organizing data. Any half-competant programmer who sees my software will be able to reverse engineer it as the concepts are relatively simple. So, the question is: how does one protect such a "new representation of data (both internally and visually)"? Is it a patent issue, copyright issue, or some combo?
I appreciate any comments you may have on the subject.
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
For true peace & happiness: www.mihr.com
was on a main bank pc (some years ago) and wanted to format her floppy disk. She got to the DOS prompt and typed "format c:" and waited. And waited and waited. Then she started getting a sickly feeling that it was taking too long. She said she almost had a heart attack when they told her what she had done. Luckily they were able to reassemble the FAT table and all ended well.
As for me, my only tech mistakes have been working for evil PHB's. I *swear* that *two* of them actually looked like the PHB in Dilbert.
I mean c'mon, yer either taking care of the details or yer not. Also, any serious mistakes have been subconsciously auto-purged from my memory. Ahh, the joy of convenient amnesia!
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
www.mihr.com, check it out!
C'mon, this is the holidays, we've got the time, the bandwidth *and* the storage to have a little somewhat-offtopic discussion :-)
/. is over 50% trolls, what does being modded troll *really* mean?
I've had some sketchy diet coke binges (regrettably with much work done, but also with rather subtle, yet bad, emotional side-effects).
Any perspectives on nutrasweet are welcome. It's so unnatural, it can't be good for us, neh? I'm not trollin', I'm conversin'.
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
If
[also: check out www.mihr.com]