Ok, I'll bite. I will hide my multiple graduate degrees in technology, politics, and economics and ask you to put up or shut up: where, exactly does the simple equation fall short?
There are many aspiring artists. Until they become known by the market, their skils are common and ordinary. Nobody will pay a street busker $10 million to hum a tune.
There are few companies who can take an aspiring artist to stardom, and each of those must gamble a large amount of money to do so. Their services are scarce and in demand. Hence, they can negotiate on favorable terms with an aspiring artist.
There is nothing in it more complicated than that, fundamentally. I dare you to show otherwise.
At one time people would practically sell their souls over to these power-mongering entities just to get their foot in the door of a given media industry.
there's no need for you to characterize them as "immoral or moral." I mean, you can think that, but it adds nothing to your argument.
Look at it this way: the internet and other technologies now provide artists unprecedented ability to self-publish cheaply or freely. And yet great thousands of artists are still dying to sign on the bottom line to give a media company some giant percentage of their future earnings. Why? is it because the artists are stupid and clueless about the internet? in some small percentage, yes. but for the vast bulk of them, the answer is NO. they are simply looking out for their own PERSONAL best options... 10% of (a chance of) 1 million is a hell of a lot better, they figure, than 90% of (a chance of) $10000.
It's like this: if I have the one cabbage patch kid, then the price goes up for it due to supply and demand. right now, the artists want that one cabbage patch kid, which is the distribution, promotion, and organization that the companies provide. they do this, even though there are free alternative dolls out there! It's not rocket science - the companies provide a valuable resource that artists are willing to sign given terms to get.
You havent made any economic argument at all. You've said "sucks corporate cock." Tha's not an argument- that's junior highschool grade paranoiabullshit.
For a manufactured product, the answer is fairly simple. Take the manufacturing cost (plus R&D cost), add a 10-50% margin, and you'll get a fair value for a product.
You really don't understand supply and demand at all, do you?
a product is "worth" exactly how much somebody is willing to pay for it. not more, not less. unless you understand that simple concept, you do not understand not economics 101, but economics day 1, hour 1, minute 1, second 1.
From your post, all I can say is this: "welcome to economics! Please have a seat! let's begin."
Anything involving copyright isn't a free market, it's a government-granted monopoly. That's what copyright *is*.
Irrelevant. The issue here has no bearing on copyright. A contract was signed of which the director agreed to some terms. It would have been the same if no IP was involved and if it was a simple matter of two interests getting together to make physical items.
Actually the "free market" is currently demonstrating that the role of those "middlemen" has become obselete. The fact that it's doing this *in the face of* blatant law-buying by those who are being obseleted, draconian laws and ridiculously excessive punishments just makes it all the more obvious.
If the free market is demonstrating this, then let it demonstrate this. no need for "people to pirate things because they dont feel the director's cut is fair" type bullshit.
IF THE MIDDLEMEN ARE BECOMING NATURALLY OBSOLETE, THEN NO BULLSHIT 'SUPPORT THE DIRECTORS BY PIRATING' ACTIVITY IS NECESSARY. The directors will, through pure self interest, switch from signing contracts that do involve middlemen to those that don't. Why don't you just stop lying to yourself and accept that as it is clear that many directors HAVENT stopped signing such contracts, that therefore the DIRECTORS THEMSELVES must see the value in what the "middlemen" do? It's not rocket science and I am 100% right on this matter. Why don't you just be intellectually honest and admit it?
. Which is also a cause for downloading - not enough money goes to authors.
BULLSHIT.
If the director is being screwed, then he shouldnt have signed his contract. Why oh why can't you idiots understand that there is a FREE MARKET at work here (even more so since the internet has allowed you to EASILY AND CHEAPLY distribute a movie in a variety of formats) and that the market has CLEARLY AND UNEQUIVOCALLY said that the work done by middlemen, such as distribution companies, advertising and marketing firms, etc IS VALUABLE.
Were it not, directors and authors would not sign on the bottom line.
I mean, i can sit on the bog and sing wonderful tunes. There is some uniqueness in this, but not a hell of a lot. Why oh why can't you pro piracy liars finally just grasp the simple economic reality that it is neither a common nor easy nor cheap task to take my bathroom hummings and turn them into a product? If i become known as the world's greatest bog singer, then perhaps I have more negotiation room with the distributors and marketers, but until I do, I as an artist have a relatively low pecking order simply because what I offer is relatively common?
You can't "fight a war against terrorism" because terrorism is a means, not a thing or group of individuals.
Likewise, you can not design "for F/OSS" because F/OSS is a means. Linux and the like may be most associated with F/OSS, so you might legitimately ask "how to I do hardware so that it is compatible with most linux distributions", but NOT (generally) with F/OSS. Consider the (unlikely) case where MS open source'd XP source code today - there you have it.. F/OSS software, and you see that your question loses its correctness.
And now for the part that will receive real flames from the unthoughtful: F/OSS came of age with linux. But, likewise, the fundamentally good idea is handicapped by its association with it. F/OSS is too important an idea and reality to be associated with a unix clone with generally poor usability (despite its stability) and the blindered hobbyists who dance around it.
and if they do, it's "don't the police have rapists and murderers to catch?"
it's called the slashdot two-step! anybody can dance to it. the idea is just to keep moving with your keyboards in any way you can to justify piracy.
For example, in response to this message, you can ignore the main point, and concentrate on the minor linguisitc point that I used the term "piracy" instead of "copyright infringement." See, you can do it.. it's easy!
We've seen the many "Linux is Communism" comments before and have brushed them off as FUD. OSS = communism, Closed Source = capitalism is too simplistic an analogy.
However,
It's reported on VNUnet that 'Enemies of Linux' are trying to undermine the OS with a campaign of disinformation. It's based on an interview with an exec from the Open Source Development Labs, but who are these enemies?"
is about as close to Stalinist paranoia that I have ever seen. Perhaps a purge of the officer corps or smashing the bourgeois kulaks will rid Linux of this enemy?
As the imperial monkey seems to be oblivious to the importance of the fall of the dollar, at this rate we'll see more digital screns in tirana, chisinau, and bishkek before we see them in ralleigh durham.
/ oh, who am i kidding? the US spends every last penny on useless entertainment gadgetry.
Mein Gott! You must have the soul of a lawyer, the way you squirm to make reality try to fit your desires.
1a. It is clear that it is obviously illegal the minute you find out that it is. As you now have found out that the site has no license to operate outside of Russia, then the action is obviously illegal to you. Note: Russian law clearly does apply to you! Try mailing a letter bomb to yeltsin and see if anybody minds.
1b. That nobody has been accused of downloading music doesn't make it right or legal. The fact of the matter, as you well know, is that going after the sharers has been the first priority.
2. I eat food all the time. I don't steal from the supermarket. (Ok.. ok.. stealing 'not the same as copyright infringement'.. but basic principle here the same).
If it *never* (or even "rarely") lives up to the "quality expected", then perhaps the problem is with the expectation, no?
Product release cycles are well understood. Modern computer programs are too complex (and, occasionally, market-driven) to get 100% right on the first go. So, the reasonable expectation is to expect a release followed by patches that fix issues that are discovered in due course.
Since this applies to virtually all software, either built by "incompetent" microsoft or (in analogue) "revolutionary and cool genuiuses) who make firefox, the intelligent thing is to realize that that's the way it is and to temper your expectations. Instead of saying "why can't they just then all wait a year and spend more time fixing it", how about saying "if I want a really stable version, my policy will be to wait a year before upgrading to newer and better software."
Open source means (in the first approximation) that the SOURCE CODE IS OPEN (AND AVAILABLE TO BE MODIFIED). Nothing more, nothing less.
Idiots like whoever made the "open source is not a career path" comment have it 100% backwards. Open source is not a movement nor is it an ideology. It's not a social club nor is it a training ground for showing elite skillz.
OSS unfortunately "came of age" in such trappings, but the truth is that it's far too important an idea to be any of those things. Put another way, OSS is too important to be held hostage by zealots who tie their own political and philosophical nonsense to it.
If you are a genius that can make billions writing OSS, go for it. If that happened, this would be a win-win for the world: the world would get something open and useful and you'd get paid.
Main Entry: debrief
Pronunciation: (")dE-'brEf
Function: transitive verb
: to interrogate (as a pilot) usually upon return (as from a mission) in order to obtain useful information
Main Entry: brief
Function: transitive verb
1 : to make an abstract or abridgment of
2 a : to give final precise instructions to b : to coach thoroughly in advance c : to give essential information to
sigh. perhaps you've never heard of Dyson, which came out of nowhere with a new patent to become a leading player in an old old market (vaccuum cleaners?) Please do get several clues.
even with your auto example, the distinction is stupid. either way your invention has value that can be equivalently explouted.
as far as energy goes. oil OLIGOPOLIES have little to do with edison's ELECTRICIY example. in fact, oligopoly economics have relatively little to do with patent economics. again, get clues.
read it. from 1992. if you havent read this before, then ask yourself why you are spouting off in public forums about software patents without informing yourself of some of the basics first.
you're going to have a tough time selling a new car even if you have some nifty new engine that has all the performance of a V8 but 100x the gas mileage.
You must live on Bizzaro world. If you did this, you would quickly sell the rights to 1% of the future earnings of this invention to a few mbas/lawyers who would take care of the paperwork for you of selling or licensnig this to the fords and mercedes of the world for billions of dollars. there are basically tens of thousands of small research driven companies and individuals who work like this, with buyout of their company or their idea by a big company capable of taking it to market as their goal.
explain to me how mature the lightbulb industry was when edison invented it for what appears to be a good healthy mix of inventivene spirit and capitalist greed?
there are a lot of BAD software patents out there. Your naming one or two of them (hypothetical ones, in this case) and then asking me to argue against them only indicates that you have not actually read what I have to say.
What I have been saying in my posts is threefold:
there are a lot of bad software patents out there
however, the idea of software patents is fundamentally sound. it is the IMPLEMENTATION that needs to be cleaned up.
that said, the implementation is not easy to do... though it is doable.
With regard to your idea that patented software be OSd after the patent expires: YOU MISS THE POINT ENTIRELY: the CODE is COPYRIGHTED. The IDEA is patented. Your idea to open source the code is IRRELEVANT. Learn the difference between copyright and patent, for god's sake.
With these software patents, I'm prohibited from making anything that accomplishes X, even if I have a novel method, because company Y has a patent on software that does that.
Nonsense. If i come up with a novel compression algorithm 10 times better than any known compression algorithm, you are still welcome to come up with your own compression algorithm. Try to beat mine!
I like where you are going with the list, but it needs significant refinement.
the five minute test is not as simple as it seems. the way you stated it, a problem is presented to an experienced programmer who then tries to find a solution. sometimes, the real genius is in defining the problem. at any rate, there is an 'nonobviousness' clause in every patent scheme in the world, albeit the problem that it is imperfectly enforced.
the idea that it not be a combination of existing techniques is likewise invalid. many significant inventions have been made by realizing a novel combination of existing ones.
the idea that the patented item must exist and must not be wishful thinking is, again, already in every patenting scheme in the world. again, alas, occasionally imperfectly administered.
your 'significant investment' clause, OTOH, is pure evil and one of the worst ideas I have heard in a long time. It is anti-democractic, anti-individual (vs big business) and absolute nonsense. If I invent a novel, useful, nonobvious wunderalgorithm in 2 minutes, more power to me.
But your general idea that there is "a lot of crap" is a good one. the problem is that its a lot harder to cut the crap than it might first appear.
history: the idea that every anti-IP revolution in history soon returned to a patent system within a few years after recognizing that patents are overall an economic good and a necessity. that developing countries, be it the USA then or india now, have a perverse disinsentive to adopt strong IP in their formative years is nothing new.
So far, I've heard: the "copyright" argument-- that software is like the plot of a novel. Bullshiat, says I. Copyright covers only the specific instantiation of an idea, not the idea itself. If you spent 10 years coming up with a novel software algorithm that could, say, accurately detect a person's diseases from a facial photograph, then by the copyright explanation, i'd only be covered in m specific code. anybody else could reverse engineer this in a week and sell their own clone version. The idea of this discourages you from investing the 10 years of work.
then of course there's the "economic" arugment that says that people are developing useful stuff without the help of patents and that patents deter from innovation. but this is really an unfairly directed argument. the argument should not be that all software patents are bad, but that they are currnetly being granted too liberally and for obvious evolutionary things that the law explicitly says they should not be. this is a problem with the implementation of software patents - the basic idea is still valid.
I dont at all disagree that many granted software / bm patents have been bullshiat. however, my argument is baby/bathwater - there are many good reasons for keeping patents for legitimatly patentable software ideas.
Software is protected by copyright. This argument is bullshiat.
Tell that to somebody who has spent years developing a new algorithm for something like facial recognition. Explain to me again why a clever person who comes up with a novel algorithm (note: I said NOVEL - I am NOT denying that there are horrible abuses in the patent system, esp. wrt software - I am just countering your claim that software patents shouldn't exist at all) to produce something useful and novel shouldn't enjoy a temporary monopoly from the fruits of his labour and research just because his invention happens to be in software rather than being hydraulic or pneumatic?
/ incidentally, any "all patents must be abolished" responders need not bother. go visit economic history 101 instead.
First, I can't believe people marked my post as "troll". This might be a troll because i'm calling you a dumbfuck, but I happen to know something about foreign aid.
NOTHING in the one article of yours that I could get to disputed my points. in fact, I quote from the mail tribune article:
"Currently, a charity must show that it has compared its salaries with those paid at organizations of similar size. The comparisons may be made with businesses as well as charities"
Which is to say that big consultant salaries ARE TO BE EXPECTED IN ORDER TO GET COMPARABLE RESULTS.
For marking me a troll on the original post, slashdotters, shame.
Note: Although I happen to know a lot about the aid / relief / development funds game, i do not in any way get compensated from it.
stop with your junior high-school grade bullshit analysis already.
sure,/some/ charities are needlessly wasteful, but the fact of the matter is that to provide the maximum help to the maximum people in the shortest amount of time, you need good people who demand at least close to a market salary. you want logistics experts doing logistics, not well meaning but inexperienced volunteers. running an effective relif agency is at least as hard as running a corporation.
let me clue you in: the majority of people who give to charities are well meaning but clueless. the classic (real life) example that i like to use is a group of english business owners decided to help estonia in the days after their independence by building them a school. now, what do a bunch of english business owners do? they spent their money on cement and other building materials and a fleet of lorries (trucks) to carry then from from the UK to estonia. Look! how photogenic! building materials for building societies! Bullshite. as if estonia needs cement bought at english prices to be shipped over or even unskilled builders in the form of english volunteers to build the thing. fuck no. for the money spent on all that photogenic bullshit and feel-good volunteerism (plane tickets to get the volunteers there, etc), an expert could have been hired at a competitive salary that would have hired local building crews and arranged the necessary logistics. but, morons like you would just scream and yell "fat consultants getting paid!"
the truth is that the relief and development world IS filled with a large number of people who do get paid good salaries... usually a bit below a business salary, but quite good nonetheless. buy, by in large, they damn well earn their money despite know nothing reporters writing exposes about how the money is going to "consultants."
here's another clue folks: by in large, sending canned food to africa is a waste of time and money compared to sending skilled consultants who can teach africa to feed itself. if there is a warzone where a consultant could not go, don't worry, your can won't make it there either.
For all the reasons that slashdotters are doubtlessly now pounding out furiously on their keyboards and more, this is perhaps the dumbest product I have ever seen.
If real.
And I can't be asked to do the due diligence to see if it is.
Slashdot Mirror
There are many aspiring artists. Until they become known by the market, their skils are common and ordinary. Nobody will pay a street busker $10 million to hum a tune.
There are few companies who can take an aspiring artist to stardom, and each of those must gamble a large amount of money to do so. Their services are scarce and in demand. Hence, they can negotiate on favorable terms with an aspiring artist.
There is nothing in it more complicated than that, fundamentally. I dare you to show otherwise.
there's no need for you to characterize them as "immoral or moral." I mean, you can think that, but it adds nothing to your argument.
Look at it this way: the internet and other technologies now provide artists unprecedented ability to self-publish cheaply or freely. And yet great thousands of artists are still dying to sign on the bottom line to give a media company some giant percentage of their future earnings. Why? is it because the artists are stupid and clueless about the internet? in some small percentage, yes. but for the vast bulk of them, the answer is NO. they are simply looking out for their own PERSONAL best options... 10% of (a chance of) 1 million is a hell of a lot better, they figure, than 90% of (a chance of) $10000.
It's like this: if I have the one cabbage patch kid, then the price goes up for it due to supply and demand. right now, the artists want that one cabbage patch kid, which is the distribution, promotion, and organization that the companies provide. they do this, even though there are free alternative dolls out there! It's not rocket science - the companies provide a valuable resource that artists are willing to sign given terms to get.
You havent made any economic argument at all. You've said "sucks corporate cock." Tha's not an argument- that's junior highschool grade paranoiabullshit.
You really don't understand supply and demand at all, do you?
a product is "worth" exactly how much somebody is willing to pay for it. not more, not less. unless you understand that simple concept, you do not understand not economics 101, but economics day 1, hour 1, minute 1, second 1.
From your post, all I can say is this: "welcome to economics! Please have a seat! let's begin."
Irrelevant. The issue here has no bearing on copyright. A contract was signed of which the director agreed to some terms. It would have been the same if no IP was involved and if it was a simple matter of two interests getting together to make physical items.
Actually the "free market" is currently demonstrating that the role of those "middlemen" has become obselete. The fact that it's doing this *in the face of* blatant law-buying by those who are being obseleted, draconian laws and ridiculously excessive punishments just makes it all the more obvious.
If the free market is demonstrating this, then let it demonstrate this. no need for "people to pirate things because they dont feel the director's cut is fair" type bullshit.
IF THE MIDDLEMEN ARE BECOMING NATURALLY OBSOLETE, THEN NO BULLSHIT 'SUPPORT THE DIRECTORS BY PIRATING' ACTIVITY IS NECESSARY. The directors will, through pure self interest, switch from signing contracts that do involve middlemen to those that don't. Why don't you just stop lying to yourself and accept that as it is clear that many directors HAVENT stopped signing such contracts, that therefore the DIRECTORS THEMSELVES must see the value in what the "middlemen" do? It's not rocket science and I am 100% right on this matter. Why don't you just be intellectually honest and admit it?
BULLSHIT.
If the director is being screwed, then he shouldnt have signed his contract. Why oh why can't you idiots understand that there is a FREE MARKET at work here (even more so since the internet has allowed you to EASILY AND CHEAPLY distribute a movie in a variety of formats) and that the market has CLEARLY AND UNEQUIVOCALLY said that the work done by middlemen, such as distribution companies, advertising and marketing firms, etc IS VALUABLE.
Were it not, directors and authors would not sign on the bottom line.
I mean, i can sit on the bog and sing wonderful tunes. There is some uniqueness in this, but not a hell of a lot. Why oh why can't you pro piracy liars finally just grasp the simple economic reality that it is neither a common nor easy nor cheap task to take my bathroom hummings and turn them into a product? If i become known as the world's greatest bog singer, then perhaps I have more negotiation room with the distributors and marketers, but until I do, I as an artist have a relatively low pecking order simply because what I offer is relatively common?
It's not rocket science. It's BASIC ECONOMICS.
Likewise, you can not design "for F/OSS" because F/OSS is a means. Linux and the like may be most associated with F/OSS, so you might legitimately ask "how to I do hardware so that it is compatible with most linux distributions", but NOT (generally) with F/OSS. Consider the (unlikely) case where MS open source'd XP source code today - there you have it .. F/OSS software, and you see that your question loses its correctness.
And now for the part that will receive real flames from the unthoughtful: F/OSS came of age with linux. But, likewise, the fundamentally good idea is handicapped by its association with it. F/OSS is too important an idea and reality to be associated with a unix clone with generally poor usability (despite its stability) and the blindered hobbyists who dance around it.
it's called the slashdot two-step! anybody can dance to it. the idea is just to keep moving with your keyboards in any way you can to justify piracy.
For example, in response to this message, you can ignore the main point, and concentrate on the minor linguisitc point that I used the term "piracy" instead of "copyright infringement." See, you can do it.. it's easy!
However,
It's reported on VNUnet that 'Enemies of Linux' are trying to undermine the OS with a campaign of disinformation. It's based on an interview with an exec from the Open Source Development Labs, but who are these enemies?"
is about as close to Stalinist paranoia that I have ever seen. Perhaps a purge of the officer corps or smashing the bourgeois kulaks will rid Linux of this enemy?
/ oh, who am i kidding? the US spends every last penny on useless entertainment gadgetry.
1a. It is clear that it is obviously illegal the minute you find out that it is. As you now have found out that the site has no license to operate outside of Russia, then the action is obviously illegal to you. Note: Russian law clearly does apply to you! Try mailing a letter bomb to yeltsin and see if anybody minds.
1b. That nobody has been accused of downloading music doesn't make it right or legal. The fact of the matter, as you well know, is that going after the sharers has been the first priority.
2. I eat food all the time. I don't steal from the supermarket. (Ok.. ok.. stealing 'not the same as copyright infringement'.. but basic principle here the same).
Product release cycles are well understood. Modern computer programs are too complex (and, occasionally, market-driven) to get 100% right on the first go. So, the reasonable expectation is to expect a release followed by patches that fix issues that are discovered in due course.
Since this applies to virtually all software, either built by "incompetent" microsoft or (in analogue) "revolutionary and cool genuiuses) who make firefox, the intelligent thing is to realize that that's the way it is and to temper your expectations. Instead of saying "why can't they just then all wait a year and spend more time fixing it", how about saying "if I want a really stable version, my policy will be to wait a year before upgrading to newer and better software."
It's not that tough, people.
Idiots like whoever made the "open source is not a career path" comment have it 100% backwards. Open source is not a movement nor is it an ideology. It's not a social club nor is it a training ground for showing elite skillz.
OSS unfortunately "came of age" in such trappings, but the truth is that it's far too important an idea to be any of those things. Put another way, OSS is too important to be held hostage by zealots who tie their own political and philosophical nonsense to it.
If you are a genius that can make billions writing OSS, go for it. If that happened, this would be a win-win for the world: the world would get something open and useful and you'd get paid.
Pronunciation: (")dE-'brEf
Function: transitive verb
: to interrogate (as a pilot) usually upon return (as from a mission) in order to obtain useful information
Main Entry: brief
Function: transitive verb
1 : to make an abstract or abridgment of
2 a : to give final precise instructions to b : to coach thoroughly in advance c : to give essential information to
even with your auto example, the distinction is stupid. either way your invention has value that can be equivalently explouted.
as far as energy goes. oil OLIGOPOLIES have little to do with edison's ELECTRICIY example. in fact, oligopoly economics have relatively little to do with patent economics. again, get clues.
read it. from 1992. if you havent read this before, then ask yourself why you are spouting off in public forums about software patents without informing yourself of some of the basics first.
You must live on Bizzaro world. If you did this, you would quickly sell the rights to 1% of the future earnings of this invention to a few mbas/lawyers who would take care of the paperwork for you of selling or licensnig this to the fords and mercedes of the world for billions of dollars. there are basically tens of thousands of small research driven companies and individuals who work like this, with buyout of their company or their idea by a big company capable of taking it to market as their goal.
explain to me how mature the lightbulb industry was when edison invented it for what appears to be a good healthy mix of inventivene spirit and capitalist greed?
your argument is nonsense. go back to school.
there are a lot of BAD software patents out there. Your naming one or two of them (hypothetical ones, in this case) and then asking me to argue against them only indicates that you have not actually read what I have to say.
What I have been saying in my posts is threefold:
- there are a lot of bad software patents out there
- however, the idea of software patents is fundamentally sound. it is the IMPLEMENTATION that needs to be cleaned up.
- that said, the implementation is not easy to do... though it is doable.
With regard to your idea that patented software be OSd after the patent expires: YOU MISS THE POINT ENTIRELY: the CODE is COPYRIGHTED. The IDEA is patented. Your idea to open source the code is IRRELEVANT. Learn the difference between copyright and patent, for god's sake.Nonsense. If i come up with a novel compression algorithm 10 times better than any known compression algorithm, you are still welcome to come up with your own compression algorithm. Try to beat mine!
the five minute test is not as simple as it seems. the way you stated it, a problem is presented to an experienced programmer who then tries to find a solution. sometimes, the real genius is in defining the problem. at any rate, there is an 'nonobviousness' clause in every patent scheme in the world, albeit the problem that it is imperfectly enforced.
the idea that it not be a combination of existing techniques is likewise invalid. many significant inventions have been made by realizing a novel combination of existing ones.
the idea that the patented item must exist and must not be wishful thinking is, again, already in every patenting scheme in the world. again, alas, occasionally imperfectly administered.
your 'significant investment' clause, OTOH, is pure evil and one of the worst ideas I have heard in a long time. It is anti-democractic, anti-individual (vs big business) and absolute nonsense. If I invent a novel, useful, nonobvious wunderalgorithm in 2 minutes, more power to me.
But your general idea that there is "a lot of crap" is a good one. the problem is that its a lot harder to cut the crap than it might first appear.
history: the idea that every anti-IP revolution in history soon returned to a patent system within a few years after recognizing that patents are overall an economic good and a necessity. that developing countries, be it the USA then or india now, have a perverse disinsentive to adopt strong IP in their formative years is nothing new.
So far, I've heard: the "copyright" argument-- that software is like the plot of a novel. Bullshiat, says I. Copyright covers only the specific instantiation of an idea, not the idea itself. If you spent 10 years coming up with a novel software algorithm that could, say, accurately detect a person's diseases from a facial photograph, then by the copyright explanation, i'd only be covered in m specific code. anybody else could reverse engineer this in a week and sell their own clone version. The idea of this discourages you from investing the 10 years of work.
then of course there's the "economic" arugment that says that people are developing useful stuff without the help of patents and that patents deter from innovation. but this is really an unfairly directed argument. the argument should not be that all software patents are bad, but that they are currnetly being granted too liberally and for obvious evolutionary things that the law explicitly says they should not be. this is a problem with the implementation of software patents - the basic idea is still valid.
I dont at all disagree that many granted software / bm patents have been bullshiat. however, my argument is baby/bathwater - there are many good reasons for keeping patents for legitimatly patentable software ideas. Software is protected by copyright. This argument is bullshiat.
/ incidentally, any "all patents must be abolished" responders need not bother. go visit economic history 101 instead.
Dear Dumbfuck:
First, I can't believe people marked my post as "troll". This might be a troll because i'm calling you a dumbfuck, but I happen to know something about foreign aid.
NOTHING in the one article of yours that I could get to disputed my points. in fact, I quote from the mail tribune article:
"Currently, a charity must show that it has compared its salaries with those paid at organizations of similar size. The comparisons may be made with businesses as well as charities"
Which is to say that big consultant salaries ARE TO BE EXPECTED IN ORDER TO GET COMPARABLE RESULTS.
For marking me a troll on the original post, slashdotters, shame.
Note: Although I happen to know a lot about the aid / relief / development funds game, i do not in any way get compensated from it.
sure, /some/ charities are needlessly wasteful, but the fact of the matter is that to provide the maximum help to the maximum people in the shortest amount of time, you need good people who demand at least close to a market salary. you want logistics experts doing logistics, not well meaning but inexperienced volunteers. running an effective relif agency is at least as hard as running a corporation.
let me clue you in: the majority of people who give to charities are well meaning but clueless. the classic (real life) example that i like to use is a group of english business owners decided to help estonia in the days after their independence by building them a school. now, what do a bunch of english business owners do? they spent their money on cement and other building materials and a fleet of lorries (trucks) to carry then from from the UK to estonia. Look! how photogenic! building materials for building societies! Bullshite. as if estonia needs cement bought at english prices to be shipped over or even unskilled builders in the form of english volunteers to build the thing. fuck no. for the money spent on all that photogenic bullshit and feel-good volunteerism (plane tickets to get the volunteers there, etc), an expert could have been hired at a competitive salary that would have hired local building crews and arranged the necessary logistics. but, morons like you would just scream and yell "fat consultants getting paid!"
the truth is that the relief and development world IS filled with a large number of people who do get paid good salaries... usually a bit below a business salary, but quite good nonetheless. buy, by in large, they damn well earn their money despite know nothing reporters writing exposes about how the money is going to "consultants."
here's another clue folks: by in large, sending canned food to africa is a waste of time and money compared to sending skilled consultants who can teach africa to feed itself. if there is a warzone where a consultant could not go, don't worry, your can won't make it there either.
If real.
And I can't be asked to do the due diligence to see if it is.