I agree with you. If it is a David-vs-Goliath then Slashdot will favor the David as a patent owner. Slashdot has no problems with patents on the microprocessors in their machines, it is just software that is a problem.
Patent Office has other options if your CS degree isn't ABET/CSAB certified. All that you need is 8 credit physics (applied physics and some electronics courses are fine too) or chemistry and then 24 (i forget the exact number) of other science/math courses. They also have a dafult option where if you pass the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE exam www.ppi2pass.com) which is part 1 of 2 part Prof. Engineer (PE) exam then PTO will not even ask you for course details. I passed the FE exam with not much prep though I am not an engineer. A few states like Michigan and New Hampshire allow anyone to take the FE exam irrespective of their education. FE just needs good math (calculus) skills and some interest in basic fluid mechanics, electricity etc. It is easy to pass, IMHO.
How about conceptual novelty? Where is that coming from? Where is even one fundamentally novel piece of software (like a creation of say a new database paradigm ) that open source has created?
PHP/Perl are just types of scripting languages. Hardly an major innovation when computer language theory and practice is so well established. Apache is a great webserver, but was it the first one?
Just as civil engineers building one building after another is not innovation since contruction techniques are so well established, open source is that kind of work. It is "innovation" of course because each building is a new building different from other, but any conceptual novelty here? None.
I understand and respect that enormous project management and coding effort is required to recreate what has been done before. But to call open source as innovation is just plain wrong. Open source is innovation as far its free-as-in-freedom concept goes. Open source projects mostly take other projects/commerical software and then recreate in under an open source model. That isn't innovation. To ingite an idea, create it into a product and popularize its use is innovation.
The orginal K&R C and Bell Labs Unix are real innovations. It bugs me to no end that most new comers (users I mean) to open source get an impression that RMS and Linus created everything that is GNU/Linux today. Well they just rehashed what as innovated before. The credit as "innovators" for concepts and tools in GNU/Linux and UNIX rightly belong to K&R and Bell Labs. I will be happy to take back my statements when open source does something fundamentally innovative, not rehash of yet another commerical product.
I fully agree with you. Some "Indian math Guy" who is self-taught has a tone of prejudice in it. First, that he is some obscure Indian, not Ramanujan as one of the major contributors to number theory in his times. Second, some Indian math guy and self-taught seem to indicate that as if it was an accidental achievement, otherwise how can a well-educated discover something important? Slashdot needs a replacement, soon.
This is what opensource is good at doing. Copycats! How about developing a new virtual machine architecture, a new visual interface from scratch? Rehashing what's been done before and then claim we do not have freedom to do what we want to do. Interesting.
My friend this is the American cheap labor policy. Do you think a ultra advanced country can allow 8 million illegal immigrants to come into the country and stay? Of course, it was done to provide cheap labor and slavery in other names. Just like your H1 arguments, there are lot of Americans who CAN cut grass, clean toilets and make hotel beds. But employers just love to have illegal mexican immigrants for these jobs. And Uncle Sam loves having mexican slaves to do its dirty work. Software just happens to be higher paying and H1 people are not illegal. That is the only difference.
It is funny that anything with a anti-patent bias readily finds the slashdot approval. How is a lone inventor working in a basement lab different from a lone coder trying to create the coolest software? A mechanical or electrical inventor - there are thousands of them - can carry on creating circuits and machines then why cannot the lone coder? My point is that the patent threat is just over-blown. Yes, if the lone coder is trying to implement a RSA patented encryption algorithm then it could a tough cookie, but how many lone coder sit to recreate RSA algorithms? and the patents are so broad that unless lone coder creates a competing successful product, nobody is going to bother. Just as if I create a Trinitron TV in my basement, Sony isn't going to sue me anytime soon.
Actually, a large chunk of research costs are also borne by the tax payers. The vast pipeline of research is fed by National Institue of Health (NIH)'s laboratories. The drug companies use this to do further research. However, when it comes to pricing a drug, the drug companies do not give a discount because they used free NIH research. The whole problem is about American worhsip of "Free Market". Most countries have price-control on drugs, which give good returns but not enormous returns to drug companies. Drug companies channel their profits in bringing out more "lifestyle" drugs that may reduce pain by further 10% or so.
Oh not to mention that these "lifestyle" drugs have advertising budgets that are a shame. I recall reading that some single Pfizer drug had an advertising budget greater than Pepsi and Coke's combined ad-budget.
A drug is prescribed by doctor, so why do u need advertising on TV? Drug advertising to consumers in banned in India. That is where a lot of saving happens. Also they did not allow product patents on medicine till recently (starts from 2005). They have price controls too.
I read somewhere that farting releases methane. May be these micro-jet engines can be powered by far gas. On an airplane, the PDA can be inserted in a pocket on the seat and just a fart will power the PDA micro-jet;-)
Well, for starters the RIAA can sue your kids in U.S.A. Piracy exists because it is possible and easy to do it. Estimated one-third of U.S. population has downloaded pirated songs, go figure who is pirating more? It is amazing how Asians are easy targets for being called theives. Yes, piracy in asia must stop, I am all for it.
The person who posted this does not know that smell can already be trademarked. The perfume that is used in victoria secret stores is already trademarked. I wonder when it comes to Intellectual Property slashdot posters go by emotions rather than facts.
I agree that Open source has achieved vast amount of things. But my point was that it is still broadly effective only in knowledge sharing sphere. When you say OSS runs supercomputing clusters, Apache, etc., we are still talking about software. I wanted to explore the limits of the concept and strategy of OSS in other fields. But most people on slashdot refuse to hear anything against OSS. Anyway, I put in my 2 cents.
I was thinking that had it not been for enormous stash of cash hoarded by Microsoft and it's corresponding stock value, this flight would have been impossible. May be somebody else would have financed it and not Paul Allen. But the reality is that Paul Allen, of the hated MS, has funded this. I wonder if any open source enthusiast or group can do this? Here, it means that open source is essentially effective where knowledge dissemination is concerned (Wikipedia, Linux...etc) but not where the physical world is concerned.
I do not understand how patents can be bad for some technical fields and good for others. They work just fine for machines and medicines then why not for software? In fact, medical research thrives on patent protection. We have no problem with patented golf club and toys, then what is the problem with software?
Perhaps, the nature of software is unique and needs different kind of system. While OSS looks a fine idea today and the community momentum is great, there is no guarantee that it will last forever.
This is very true. You can have a viral vaccine but not anti-viral drung. Viruses exist on the boundary of living and non-living matter and hence are very difficult to attack.
Yes, developing countries do have TB. And I am sorry to know that you contacted. However, your direct attack on H1B workers for this is just bizzare and xenophobic. How about the 8 million Mexican illegal immigrants giving you a little TB infection? Why do only H1's figure in your post?
BTW, TB is a "white-man's disease" we in India were introduced to TB due some assholes coming over from the "developed" world in the 16th century.
I feel that like most thing in America, education in America is a hyped thing. Like $40,000 per child education expense per year is ridculous. I know most of it is infrastructure cost, but still it is stupid. I studied in India, we had a teacher, a blackboard, some homemade education material, pencils and notebooks. Yet, I am as intelligent and well-informed as any other average American. I do not know why does a 2nd grader needs a laptop to study. Yeah, having a ibook for 2nd grader is fine, but then do not complain about not having enough funds for education. All this is wasteful.
The apparently uniform education funding just pumps money into a system where rich schools prosper and poor neigborhood kids suffer. This just makes sure that the class divide is amply maintained under the garb of egalitarian education.
Further, till Brown v. Board of Education, America did not even bother about having optical equality in education. Separate but equal of Plessy v. Fergusson was thought be sufficient for black kids. And such America wants to impose its "values" on the world ! KMA.
Contract is an agreement that is enforceable by law. Contracts are enforced under common law. Violation of contracts leads to various remedies, the chief being damages. Your idea that violation of law and contract are different things is wrong. May be you are thinking of criminal laws where the state is the prosecuting agency.
First thing, the free trade agreement does not mean that US patents acquire legal force in Australia. All over the world you have to get a separate patent in each country to get patent rights in that particular country. Only way Australian software product can infringe on an American patent is when they export that software to America. Otherwise, American patents will have zero value in Australian courts, unless an Australian counterpart patent is also obtained earlier. Slashdot publishes bizarre patent news without verifying even the basics. This is as stupid as someone going to Sears to buy craftsman tools to write an assembly language program since it will have to be "assembled".
I agree with almost everything you say. The real key is "Effort". Mac runs BSD/Unix and does everything of above fine. Heck, even MS-Office runs on it just fine. Apple has put in that quantity and quality of effort to reach there. Who can say that about Linux? The freelance developers are more interested in cloning MS software than putting Apple kind of effort to better MS not just ape it. Linux Kernel itself is better than Windows and hence you see its success on server side. But Linux applications suck and hence the failure of it on the client side. Yes, Linux will be veyr good and stable in next 10 years, but by then there will be some killer App that Linux developers are still trying to clone. Market leaders do not become leader this way, you only become Autozone of computing world, a parts supplier not a car manufactuer.
A patent does not cost $100,000 to file. The maximum a usual patent application will cost is $15,000 for the full process till it is issued. No way is the $1 million in legal fees number is correct. Further, this article seems to think that patents apply only to mechanical inventions. That leaves out half a universe of electrical, electronics and related technology. Not to mention chemical, biotech and pharmaceuticals. I can understand the slashdot crowd jumping with glee at such patent bashing, but the facts ought to be correct.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you. If it is a David-vs-Goliath then Slashdot will favor the David as a patent owner. Slashdot has no problems with patents on the microprocessors in their machines, it is just software that is a problem.
Patent Office has other options if your CS degree isn't ABET/CSAB certified. All that you need is 8 credit physics (applied physics and some electronics courses are fine too) or chemistry and then 24 (i forget the exact number) of other science/math courses. They also have a dafult option where if you pass the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE exam www.ppi2pass.com) which is part 1 of 2 part Prof. Engineer (PE) exam then PTO will not even ask you for course details. I passed the FE exam with not much prep though I am not an engineer. A few states like Michigan and New Hampshire allow anyone to take the FE exam irrespective of their education. FE just needs good math (calculus) skills and some interest in basic fluid mechanics, electricity etc. It is easy to pass, IMHO.
How about "awk" ? How about "Rexx"?
How about conceptual novelty? Where is that coming from? Where is even one fundamentally novel piece of software (like a creation of say a new database paradigm ) that open source has created? PHP/Perl are just types of scripting languages. Hardly an major innovation when computer language theory and practice is so well established. Apache is a great webserver, but was it the first one? Just as civil engineers building one building after another is not innovation since contruction techniques are so well established, open source is that kind of work. It is "innovation" of course because each building is a new building different from other, but any conceptual novelty here? None.
I understand and respect that enormous project management and coding effort is required to recreate what has been done before. But to call open source as innovation is just plain wrong. Open source is innovation as far its free-as-in-freedom concept goes. Open source projects mostly take other projects/commerical software and then recreate in under an open source model. That isn't innovation. To ingite an idea, create it into a product and popularize its use is innovation. The orginal K&R C and Bell Labs Unix are real innovations. It bugs me to no end that most new comers (users I mean) to open source get an impression that RMS and Linus created everything that is GNU/Linux today. Well they just rehashed what as innovated before. The credit as "innovators" for concepts and tools in GNU/Linux and UNIX rightly belong to K&R and Bell Labs. I will be happy to take back my statements when open source does something fundamentally innovative, not rehash of yet another commerical product.
I fully agree with you. Some "Indian math Guy" who is self-taught has a tone of prejudice in it. First, that he is some obscure Indian, not Ramanujan as one of the major contributors to number theory in his times. Second, some Indian math guy and self-taught seem to indicate that as if it was an accidental achievement, otherwise how can a well-educated discover something important? Slashdot needs a replacement, soon.
This is what opensource is good at doing. Copycats! How about developing a new virtual machine architecture, a new visual interface from scratch? Rehashing what's been done before and then claim we do not have freedom to do what we want to do. Interesting.
Yeah...OpenOffice needs a little longer indeed to imitate MS-Suites...may be in next 10 years or so ;-)
An employment councillor.... Right, we need an employment counsellor.
My friend this is the American cheap labor policy. Do you think a ultra advanced country can allow 8 million illegal immigrants to come into the country and stay? Of course, it was done to provide cheap labor and slavery in other names. Just like your H1 arguments, there are lot of Americans who CAN cut grass, clean toilets and make hotel beds. But employers just love to have illegal mexican immigrants for these jobs. And Uncle Sam loves having mexican slaves to do its dirty work. Software just happens to be higher paying and H1 people are not illegal. That is the only difference.
It is funny that anything with a anti-patent bias readily finds the slashdot approval. How is a lone inventor working in a basement lab different from a lone coder trying to create the coolest software? A mechanical or electrical inventor - there are thousands of them - can carry on creating circuits and machines then why cannot the lone coder? My point is that the patent threat is just over-blown. Yes, if the lone coder is trying to implement a RSA patented encryption algorithm then it could a tough cookie, but how many lone coder sit to recreate RSA algorithms? and the patents are so broad that unless lone coder creates a competing successful product, nobody is going to bother. Just as if I create a Trinitron TV in my basement, Sony isn't going to sue me anytime soon.
Actually, a large chunk of research costs are also borne by the tax payers. The vast pipeline of research is fed by National Institue of Health (NIH)'s laboratories. The drug companies use this to do further research. However, when it comes to pricing a drug, the drug companies do not give a discount because they used free NIH research. The whole problem is about American worhsip of "Free Market". Most countries have price-control on drugs, which give good returns but not enormous returns to drug companies. Drug companies channel their profits in bringing out more "lifestyle" drugs that may reduce pain by further 10% or so. Oh not to mention that these "lifestyle" drugs have advertising budgets that are a shame. I recall reading that some single Pfizer drug had an advertising budget greater than Pepsi and Coke's combined ad-budget. A drug is prescribed by doctor, so why do u need advertising on TV? Drug advertising to consumers in banned in India. That is where a lot of saving happens. Also they did not allow product patents on medicine till recently (starts from 2005). They have price controls too.
I read somewhere that farting releases methane. May be these micro-jet engines can be powered by far gas. On an airplane, the PDA can be inserted in a pocket on the seat and just a fart will power the PDA micro-jet ;-)
Well, for starters the RIAA can sue your kids in U.S.A. Piracy exists because it is possible and easy to do it. Estimated one-third of U.S. population has downloaded pirated songs, go figure who is pirating more? It is amazing how Asians are easy targets for being called theives. Yes, piracy in asia must stop, I am all for it.
The person who posted this does not know that smell can already be trademarked. The perfume that is used in victoria secret stores is already trademarked. I wonder when it comes to Intellectual Property slashdot posters go by emotions rather than facts.
I agree that Open source has achieved vast amount of things. But my point was that it is still broadly effective only in knowledge sharing sphere. When you say OSS runs supercomputing clusters, Apache, etc., we are still talking about software. I wanted to explore the limits of the concept and strategy of OSS in other fields. But most people on slashdot refuse to hear anything against OSS. Anyway, I put in my 2 cents.
I was thinking that had it not been for enormous stash of cash hoarded by Microsoft and it's corresponding stock value, this flight would have been impossible. May be somebody else would have financed it and not Paul Allen. But the reality is that Paul Allen, of the hated MS, has funded this. I wonder if any open source enthusiast or group can do this? Here, it means that open source is essentially effective where knowledge dissemination is concerned (Wikipedia, Linux...etc) but not where the physical world is concerned.
I do not understand how patents can be bad for some technical fields and good for others. They work just fine for machines and medicines then why not for software? In fact, medical research thrives on patent protection. We have no problem with patented golf club and toys, then what is the problem with software? Perhaps, the nature of software is unique and needs different kind of system. While OSS looks a fine idea today and the community momentum is great, there is no guarantee that it will last forever.
This is very true. You can have a viral vaccine but not anti-viral drung. Viruses exist on the boundary of living and non-living matter and hence are very difficult to attack.
Yes, developing countries do have TB. And I am sorry to know that you contacted. However, your direct attack on H1B workers for this is just bizzare and xenophobic. How about the 8 million Mexican illegal immigrants giving you a little TB infection? Why do only H1's figure in your post? BTW, TB is a "white-man's disease" we in India were introduced to TB due some assholes coming over from the "developed" world in the 16th century.
I feel that like most thing in America, education in America is a hyped thing. Like $40,000 per child education expense per year is ridculous. I know most of it is infrastructure cost, but still it is stupid. I studied in India, we had a teacher, a blackboard, some homemade education material, pencils and notebooks. Yet, I am as intelligent and well-informed as any other average American. I do not know why does a 2nd grader needs a laptop to study. Yeah, having a ibook for 2nd grader is fine, but then do not complain about not having enough funds for education. All this is wasteful. The apparently uniform education funding just pumps money into a system where rich schools prosper and poor neigborhood kids suffer. This just makes sure that the class divide is amply maintained under the garb of egalitarian education. Further, till Brown v. Board of Education, America did not even bother about having optical equality in education. Separate but equal of Plessy v. Fergusson was thought be sufficient for black kids. And such America wants to impose its "values" on the world ! KMA.
Contract is an agreement that is enforceable by law. Contracts are enforced under common law. Violation of contracts leads to various remedies, the chief being damages. Your idea that violation of law and contract are different things is wrong. May be you are thinking of criminal laws where the state is the prosecuting agency.
First thing, the free trade agreement does not mean that US patents acquire legal force in Australia. All over the world you have to get a separate patent in each country to get patent rights in that particular country. Only way Australian software product can infringe on an American patent is when they export that software to America. Otherwise, American patents will have zero value in Australian courts, unless an Australian counterpart patent is also obtained earlier. Slashdot publishes bizarre patent news without verifying even the basics. This is as stupid as someone going to Sears to buy craftsman tools to write an assembly language program since it will have to be "assembled".
I agree with almost everything you say. The real key is "Effort". Mac runs BSD/Unix and does everything of above fine. Heck, even MS-Office runs on it just fine. Apple has put in that quantity and quality of effort to reach there. Who can say that about Linux? The freelance developers are more interested in cloning MS software than putting Apple kind of effort to better MS not just ape it. Linux Kernel itself is better than Windows and hence you see its success on server side. But Linux applications suck and hence the failure of it on the client side. Yes, Linux will be veyr good and stable in next 10 years, but by then there will be some killer App that Linux developers are still trying to clone. Market leaders do not become leader this way, you only become Autozone of computing world, a parts supplier not a car manufactuer.
A patent does not cost $100,000 to file. The maximum a usual patent application will cost is $15,000 for the full process till it is issued. No way is the $1 million in legal fees number is correct. Further, this article seems to think that patents apply only to mechanical inventions. That leaves out half a universe of electrical, electronics and related technology. Not to mention chemical, biotech and pharmaceuticals. I can understand the slashdot crowd jumping with glee at such patent bashing, but the facts ought to be correct.