I didn't mean 'will this company make more money by having this patent'. I was asking whether it is beneficial to the American economy for the US Govt. to hand out such a monopoly.
But software patents work _against_ disclosure. Few swpat applications contain a working implementation, most do not even give enough information for a skilled programmer to implement what is described. Often nothing of value is disclosed.
Then you have to ask whether the information revealed would otherwise have been kept secret. Clearly this is not the case for cryptography or for anything which is intended for adoption as an Internet standard. Any useful discovery of a new algorithm will be published anyway - unless you think there could be 'secret' algorithms in use at some companies which programmers are somehow prevented from remembering when they leave the company.
In the case of file formats, the patent does result in disclosure, but how useful is the information? Without swpats you can at least reverse engineer the format and develop compatible software. If it is patented, you will not be able to do anything for the next 20 years. And how useful will information about an obsolete format be in 20 years time? Furthermore, often only a small part of the file format is patented (and thus disclosed), enough to stop anyone developing their own software to read it, but most of the format stays secret.
But I said that swpats actively hinder disclosure. Why is this? Because publishing your source code exposes you to being sued for accidentally infringing on patents held by others. Swpats act as a major disincentive to publishing source code, which is by far the most important form of 'full disclosure' in the software market.
Specific patents are not subject to any economic test on an individual basis, and that is sensible. The patent office cannot make judgements like that, and the law must be the same for anyone. The point is to make the laws so that you get the best balance _in total_.
It is not a good idea, on balance, for the government to grant patent monopolies on computer program techniques. Some are economically beneficial, most are harmful. The net effect is negative.
What you say about the whole system of patents passing or failing is not true, because there is a clear distinction between physical goods and pure information. It is quite possible to make legal judgements based on this, as was and is done in many countries which don't allow patents on software. (Definition: if you can download it, it's software.)
The problem is that no matter how well-trained the examiner, he is not allowed to use common sense to reject patent applications. Was there any prior art for one-click? Not in the way that the patent office understands it, although of course it was just applying an existing well-known idea to a new situation. But the fact that it is an obvious idea to any programmer, or that there is no economic justification for such business method patents, is not something an examiner can use to reject the application.
Absolutely. That's one reason why proposals to keep software patents, but somehow magically restrict them to 'difficult' inventions, are not sensible. The patent offices cannot reliably distinguish the two in the case of software, and certainly cannot work out the difference between those patents that are a useful reward for research, and those (the majority) that do not reward any real development but are just weapons to harass competitors. Not granting patents on _any_ programming technique or mathematical discovery would be more economically sensible than the current situation.
Do you think that there is a net economic benefit from allowing IBM to patent this algorithm? Would compression codecs not be developed if patents were not available? Do the increased incentives outweigh the effects on competition and the risks for smaller developers?
I'm not saying there isn't a case to be made, but you have to balance both sides. The patent system is there solely 'to promote progress in science and the useful arts' (as the US Constitution puts it), so any granting of patents on algorithms must pass this test.
And since patent offices are unable to distinguish between 'difficult' things like codecs and trivial things like one-click (the criterion of 'obviousness' is not something a patent examiner understands very well), you have to ask whether we wouldn't be better off without patents on any field of software. Sure, in some cases there might be an economic loss because codecs might not be developed - although projects like Ogg Vorbis show that patents are not necessary to finance such research. But on balance I think it's clear that swpats do more harm than good.
I wonder whether anyone has grepped through the whole OpenBSD source tree for similar licence statements which might be open to 'reinterpretation'. Perhaps several contributors will be getting messages asking them to change the copying conditions attached to their code to remove any possible ambiguity.
This incident shows one reason why the FSF asks for copyright assignment on code submitted. With a legally binding agreement, you don't get nasty surprises later on. Of course it is a complete pain and some people refuse to do it (one of the reasons for the Emacs / XEmacs fork).
Why have they got 'Silicon Graphics' all over the press release and on the machine's case? I thought they decided a couple of years ago that 'SGI' was kewler.
An undersea _power_ cable between Europe and America might not be such a bad idea. The timezones are different: during Europe's night time its power stations could sell electricity to the US, and vice versa. I don't think that people will be constructing nitrogen-cooled undersea pipeline-power-cables for a while yet though.
Put another way, what did you want to see out of the finale?
Wesley Crusher makes a return and kills Seven of Nine.
Janeway shaves her head and becomes bald. They all do that in the end.
Paris figures out a way to defeat the Borg by modifying the engine from a 1955 Ford Thunderbird.
And in the mother of all deus ex machina plots, the writers of Voyager appear and magically transport the crew back home. They are then forced to apologize for the past five years of dross.
The point is not 'is this inventive, does it deserve a patent'.
What you should be asking is, 'does it make sense for the government to grant 20-year monopolies on ideas such as this'? How much extra incentive does it provide to have patents available? Would nobody have come up with these techniques if they were not patentable? Does the impact on competition and the potential for creating legal quagmires outweigh the increased incentives to the developer?
(Do patents such as these increase incentives at all? Some might argue that software patents, on the whole, reduce the incentive to innovate because of the risk of being sued.)
The US constitution is quite explicit: the government _may_ grant patents on certain areas, to promote progress in science and the useful arts. Does granting patents on software and on techniques implemented with a computer promote progress?
Mandrake may be targeted at newbies, but it's a good distribution for experienced users too. I'm not interested in all the icky graphical setup crap; what matters is that Mandrake has a better collection of packages than Red Hat, and they seem to be generally of higher quality. Plus things like Pentium optimization and ReiserFS, which while not essential are nice cherries on the cake.
Of course Debian has an even better set of packages - but I've had an irrational fear of Debian ever since installing with dselect a couple of years ago.
KDE for Windows or KDE for Mac
on
Qt for Mac
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· Score: 2
If Qt is ported, how hard would it be to port the KDE libraries to Win32 (with or without an Unixy layer such as Cygwin)?
It would certainly be pretty sweet to have 'KDE for Windows'. Not the desktop itself but all the apps like Konqueror and KOffice. A collection of KDE applications for the Mac might be easier, if you're using Mac OS X then most of the Unixy stuff KDE relies on should already be there.
Re:Application Developers..
on
Smart Routers
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· Score: 2
The point is that if traffic is marked as high priority, you let it jump the queue *and bill extra for it*.
Obviously it would be stupid to award better treatment to some types of packets if they are all charged at the same price.
I think the graphics got _worse_ in Civ II. Compare the meetings with enemy leaders, for example. The original Civilization had an animated face for each leader, with cool-looking backgrounds depending on government type, but as far as I can see the sequel just has a boring still picture.
And I agree about the 3d map being sucky. I think the essential problem is that Civ II takes itself too seriously; Civ I tries harder to be fun and accessible.
Have you looked at XMLterm? It's a strange hybrid between a web browser and an xterm. You can use it with 'pagelets' such as xls, which is like ls(1) but produces HTML where each filename is a clickable link - so you have a simple directory browser in your command line window. Also xcat can display many file formats directly in the xmlterm window (anything Mozilla can display, essentially).
I don't know whether this sort of thing will take off, but it's certainly worth a look as a possible way of combining CLI and GUI.
In other words, a critical flow of information and experimental data follows every major scientific discovery and results in the verification, refutation or refinement of the new idea or theory. To facilitate this process, neither copyright nor patent protections are available for abstract ideas or theories. This is as it should be.
I couldn't agree more. But does this mean that Microsoft is opposed to software patents?
I think this plan is silly. Everyone knows there are no penguins in the northern hemisphere, no matter how cold it may be. Here's my proposed solution:
Buy hundreds of laptops and fit them with wireless LAN cards. Remove the standard casing and put the insides into a penguin-shaped case. Put wheels powered by an electric on the bottom of each penguin and let them loose at the South Pole. You now have highly redundant, mobile, distributed data storage. If you can't visualize what I mean, watch a few episodes of the Batman TV series, I'm sure at least one must feature motorized penguins running amok.
The only question is what OS to run on these servers.
You have to have programmers in the XP mode who can do good code quickly, and also have talented designers/analysists producing the specs, people who have understood the business context. The point is that they can and should be separate roles, with different drivers and different (though overlapping) skills required.
I've got a copy of Extreme Programming Explained in front of me, on the back cover it says:
Don't force team members to specialize and become analysts, architects, programmers, testers, and integrators - every XP programmer participates in all of these critical activites every day.
Why is it any more insecure to include the root CAs in Mozilla than to include the SSL code in the first place? Surely that is equally open to tampering?
(Ie, not very, given that all changes to the code must be from known developers or reviewed by known developers.)
Re:The Perl6 answer could be ... Ruby
on
Apocalypse 2
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· Score: 2
I wouldn't want to use any language that has 'begin' and 'end' instead of { and }. Yuck.
*We* don't do anything. It's up to the copyright holder to write to Sony, remind them that he owns the copyright on the code, and ask that they stop distributing it. But they may distribute it under the terms of the GPL.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't mean 'will this company make more money by having this patent'. I was asking whether it is beneficial to the American economy for the US Govt. to hand out such a monopoly.
But software patents work _against_ disclosure. Few swpat applications contain a working implementation, most do not even give enough information for a skilled programmer to implement what is described. Often nothing of value is disclosed.
Then you have to ask whether the information revealed would otherwise have been kept secret. Clearly this is not the case for cryptography or for anything which is intended for adoption as an Internet standard. Any useful discovery of a new algorithm will be published anyway - unless you think there could be 'secret' algorithms in use at some companies which programmers are somehow prevented from remembering when they leave the company.
In the case of file formats, the patent does result in disclosure, but how useful is the information? Without swpats you can at least reverse engineer the format and develop compatible software. If it is patented, you will not be able to do anything for the next 20 years. And how useful will information about an obsolete format be in 20 years time? Furthermore, often only a small part of the file format is patented (and thus disclosed), enough to stop anyone developing their own software to read it, but most of the format stays secret.
But I said that swpats actively hinder disclosure. Why is this? Because publishing your source code exposes you to being sued for accidentally infringing on patents held by others. Swpats act as a major disincentive to publishing source code, which is by far the most important form of 'full disclosure' in the software market.
Specific patents are not subject to any economic test on an individual basis, and that is sensible. The patent office cannot make judgements like that, and the law must be the same for anyone. The point is to make the laws so that you get the best balance _in total_.
It is not a good idea, on balance, for the government to grant patent monopolies on computer program techniques. Some are economically beneficial, most are harmful. The net effect is negative.
What you say about the whole system of patents passing or failing is not true, because there is a clear distinction between physical goods and pure information. It is quite possible to make legal judgements based on this, as was and is done in many countries which don't allow patents on software. (Definition: if you can download it, it's software.)
The problem is that no matter how well-trained the examiner, he is not allowed to use common sense to reject patent applications. Was there any prior art for one-click? Not in the way that the patent office understands it, although of course it was just applying an existing well-known idea to a new situation. But the fact that it is an obvious idea to any programmer, or that there is no economic justification for such business method patents, is not something an examiner can use to reject the application.
Absolutely. That's one reason why proposals to keep software patents, but somehow magically restrict them to 'difficult' inventions, are not sensible. The patent offices cannot reliably distinguish the two in the case of software, and certainly cannot work out the difference between those patents that are a useful reward for research, and those (the majority) that do not reward any real development but are just weapons to harass competitors. Not granting patents on _any_ programming technique or mathematical discovery would be more economically sensible than the current situation.
Do you think that there is a net economic benefit from allowing IBM to patent this algorithm? Would compression codecs not be developed if patents were not available? Do the increased incentives outweigh the effects on competition and the risks for smaller developers?
I'm not saying there isn't a case to be made, but you have to balance both sides. The patent system is there solely 'to promote progress in science and the useful arts' (as the US Constitution puts it), so any granting of patents on algorithms must pass this test.
And since patent offices are unable to distinguish between 'difficult' things like codecs and trivial things like one-click (the criterion of 'obviousness' is not something a patent examiner understands very well), you have to ask whether we wouldn't be better off without patents on any field of software. Sure, in some cases there might be an economic loss because codecs might not be developed - although projects like Ogg Vorbis show that patents are not necessary to finance such research. But on balance I think it's clear that swpats do more harm than good.
I wonder whether anyone has grepped through the whole OpenBSD source tree for similar licence statements which might be open to 'reinterpretation'. Perhaps several contributors will be getting messages asking them to change the copying conditions attached to their code to remove any possible ambiguity.
This incident shows one reason why the FSF asks for copyright assignment on code submitted. With a legally binding agreement, you don't get nasty surprises later on. Of course it is a complete pain and some people refuse to do it (one of the reasons for the Emacs / XEmacs fork).
Why have they got 'Silicon Graphics' all over the press release and on the machine's case? I thought they decided a couple of years ago that 'SGI' was kewler.
An undersea _power_ cable between Europe and America might not be such a bad idea. The timezones are different: during Europe's night time its power stations could sell electricity to the US, and vice versa. I don't think that people will be constructing nitrogen-cooled undersea pipeline-power-cables for a while yet though.
Earlier this year, Nautilus 1.0 was released. On the same day Eazel laid off some developers; later it went out of business.
SGI's XFS for Linux reached 1.0 a few weeks ago and now some of its developers have to leave.
Guess what will happen when they finally make the 1.0 release of Mozilla?
The point is not 'is this inventive, does it deserve a patent'.
What you should be asking is, 'does it make sense for the government to grant 20-year monopolies on ideas such as this'? How much extra incentive does it provide to have patents available? Would nobody have come up with these techniques if they were not patentable? Does the impact on competition and the potential for creating legal quagmires outweigh the increased incentives to the developer?
(Do patents such as these increase incentives at all? Some might argue that software patents, on the whole, reduce the incentive to innovate because of the risk of being sued.)
The US constitution is quite explicit: the government _may_ grant patents on certain areas, to promote progress in science and the useful arts. Does granting patents on software and on techniques implemented with a computer promote progress?
Mandrake may be targeted at newbies, but it's a good distribution for experienced users too. I'm not interested in all the icky graphical setup crap; what matters is that Mandrake has a better collection of packages than Red Hat, and they seem to be generally of higher quality. Plus things like Pentium optimization and ReiserFS, which while not essential are nice cherries on the cake.
Of course Debian has an even better set of packages - but I've had an irrational fear of Debian ever since installing with dselect a couple of years ago.
If Qt is ported, how hard would it be to port the KDE libraries to Win32 (with or without an Unixy layer such as Cygwin)?
It would certainly be pretty sweet to have 'KDE for Windows'. Not the desktop itself but all the apps like Konqueror and KOffice. A collection of KDE applications for the Mac might be easier, if you're using Mac OS X then most of the Unixy stuff KDE relies on should already be there.
The point is that if traffic is marked as high priority, you let it jump the queue *and bill extra for it*.
Obviously it would be stupid to award better treatment to some types of packets if they are all charged at the same price.
I think the graphics got _worse_ in Civ II. Compare the meetings with enemy leaders, for example. The original Civilization had an animated face for each leader, with cool-looking backgrounds depending on government type, but as far as I can see the sequel just has a boring still picture.
And I agree about the 3d map being sucky. I think the essential problem is that Civ II takes itself too seriously; Civ I tries harder to be fun and accessible.
Have you looked at XMLterm? It's a strange hybrid between a web browser and an xterm. You can use it with 'pagelets' such as xls, which is like ls(1) but produces HTML where each filename is a clickable link - so you have a simple directory browser in your command line window. Also xcat can display many file formats directly in the xmlterm window (anything Mozilla can display, essentially).
I don't know whether this sort of thing will take off, but it's certainly worth a look as a possible way of combining CLI and GUI.
I couldn't agree more. But does this mean that Microsoft is opposed to software patents?
Anyone know how well the free transactional RDBMSes (Postgres and sapdb) do on these benchmarks? Do they at least manage to complete the run?
I think this plan is silly. Everyone knows there are no penguins in the northern hemisphere, no matter how cold it may be. Here's my proposed solution:
Buy hundreds of laptops and fit them with wireless LAN cards. Remove the standard casing and put the insides into a penguin-shaped case. Put wheels powered by an electric on the bottom of each penguin and let them loose at the South Pole. You now have highly redundant, mobile, distributed data storage. If you can't visualize what I mean, watch a few episodes of the Batman TV series, I'm sure at least one must feature motorized penguins running amok.
The only question is what OS to run on these servers.
If you did go to a London cinema, obviously you wouldn't be able to see jaws dropping because of the fog.
I've got a copy of Extreme Programming Explained in front of me, on the back cover it says:
Why is it any more insecure to include the root CAs in Mozilla than to include the SSL code in the first place? Surely that is equally open to tampering?
(Ie, not very, given that all changes to the code must be from known developers or reviewed by known developers.)
I wouldn't want to use any language that has 'begin' and 'end' instead of { and }. Yuck.
*We* don't do anything. It's up to the copyright holder to write to Sony, remind them that he owns the copyright on the code, and ask that they stop distributing it. But they may distribute it under the terms of the GPL.