The difference between a toaster (which would be patentable if it was a new invention) and software is that the toaster isn't implementing a mathematical algorithm. The resulting actions of the toaster can be explained by physics and chemistry, but isn't the result of pure manipulation of numbers. RSA is just a way of manipulating numbers. A toaster, or any other physical invention should do more than manipulate numbers. unless it's a computer, and it's purpose is manipulating numbers. I have no idea why nobody ever patented the computer. Basically it should work like this. If you can't patent something without adding "software","a computer", or "the Internet" to it, you shouldn't be able to patent something simply by adding "software","a computer", or "the Internet" to it. If you could patent RSA you wouldn't need to patent software that implements it, because that would be covered by the existing patent. Since you can't patent RSA, you can't patent a piece of software that implements it.
RSA encryption is a mathematical algorithm. You can't patent that. You can't patent a program that implements a mathematical algorithm either (or you shouldn't be able to). I don't think i've seen a piece of software that should be patentable.
Maybe you could use some radar/laser interference device to try to encrypt you speed. When they find a way around your device, to actually figure out your speed, then they would be breaking the DMCA.
If you wanted to keep you customer list from other companies, you'd have to use the trade secret laws. That is, don't publish your customers, for others to see. The phone book has no copyright, and is just a compiled list. Companies copy it all the time, sometimes resulting in multiple phone books for the same town. A big waste of money.
Actually, they didn't actually rewrite from scratch. They used BSD, I think. The problem with this, is that if Microsoft chooses something too close to Unix, then it will be easier for people to move away from their operating system. The reason that many people don't switch now, is that moving is very abrupt, and you not only have to change the OS, but many of the applications at the same time. If the OS was unix based, the move could be much more gradual. The funny thing I remember is that the microsoft research lab created an OS that was based on security from the bottom up, and it still ran faster than windows XP. Which I realize isn't that hard, since it's so slow, but shows that you can build a secure OS, that still performs well.
The problem is that software in the end comes down to mathematical formulas. Which are not patentable. Software is just the solution to a problem. I guess in the case of truly revolutionary software, one could be granted a patent. I don't think I've seen that piece of software yet. Software is so much built upon older software, that I don't think that anybody really makes steps in software that I would really call patentable. When you look at software patents, most people presented with the same problem would have come up with the same solution.
The problem is that pressing your own CDs is not cost effective in any way. It only becomes cost effective once you print many (1000 or more) identical discs. The costs per CD go down as you do more identical discs. Setting up the platter to stamp out just one disc would be extremely expensive, as well as very time consuming.
I haven't looked at slashcode, but I don't think it would take major changes to add the same moderation system that already exist for comments, and apply it, or something similar at the story level. I look at sites like Geek.com, and the comments are pretty bad. English is terrible, and it's filled with fanboys who spout out of lot of opinions but not really any facts to back them up. On slashdot you don't see a lot of this, because either they get modded to 0, or because they know they will get modded to 0, and therefore don't bother posting. In the same way, this could help get rid of a lot of stories we don't want to see. We could start with something simple like -1 dupe. That would get rid of not only having dupes not show up, but also get rid of all those posts of people complaining that a story is a dupe. Many times you miss a story, and the second time around, you catch it. The problem is, is that when you go read the comments, they are filled with dupe messages, instead of messages that are pertinent to the article. It would be nice to just mark a story as a dupe, and then those who hadn't read it before could read it anyway, without wading through the dupe posts.
I find what kills CDs most is scratches. Even if you are careful, scratches happen. Some CD drives even give scratches to the CDs. Over time lost of little scratches tend to build up and cause parts of the disc to become unreadable. An environmental chamber won't create scratches on the disc. I seriously think that it was the wrong idea to build CDs without a Caddy. I know they used to have them, and they died, but they only had them when all CDs were stamped, and built of good quality materials. Also, discs mostly had music, or computer programs which wasn't really all the costly to lose. You can always get new discs of published material. Try getting back data that was never published, and there are only a few copies of. Once the caddy was dead, they introduced cheap writeable and rewriteable media which was much more prone to scratches and therefore errors. To contrast, I've had Minidisc that I left lying around in drawers for years and they are still readable. Building a disc that doesn't have protection between the data surface and the outside world is a very stupid idea.
Maybe we could moderate entire articles. Maybe it would take two mod points to mod an article, or once in a while, less often then you got post moderating points you could get article moderating points. There's always going to be articles that slip through. Dupes are another thing. Maybe if enough article moderators call something a dupe, it should just be marked as such, so that we don't even have to bother seeing them. Same goes for stories that we find not interesting, or funny. Maybe I feel only like reading funny articles today, and so, people should be able to mod the entire story as such. I think moderating stories would go a long way to help people weed out the stuff they don't want to see. And make the job a little easy on the editors, who always get blamed for everything that gets posted that shouldn't be.
Standing is much easier on you than actually pedalling a bicycle. Especially when it comes to hills. Standing in one spot can be hard, since blood will pool from lack of muscle movement. However this can be overcome by just moving your legs around a bit every once in a while, which is still less work than pedalling.
Which is exactly the reason people need partitions. When they fill up their one partition with stuff downloaded from P2P, they have no room for a swapfile, or for the system to use, or to install new programs. If they have different partitions for this stuff, then they will able to fill up their own personal data space, while still having room for swapping, installing new programs, and for allowing the system to do proper logging and other routine procedures.
That's like saying a 4 MegaPixel digital cameras suck because you can't print out pictures that are 100x80 inches. I never plan to print out pictures this big. On the same note, I never plan to have a 50+ inch TV. Really, my 27 inch seems like all I'll ever need. Maybe someday i'll get at 36 inch. But seriously, I never forsee in my life having the need for a 50+ inch television. So DVD is just fine for me.
That's because people who use Linux realize there's a better fix for most things than "reinstall the OS". This seems to be the standard way of fixing things in windows when things start going wrong. On the other hand, I don't think I've ever seen someone recommending "reinstalling the OS" for Linux as a general solution to everything.
I have a canon scanner which uses LIDE (LED Indirect Exposure) technology to do the scanner rather than the older style light bulb. You can't actually see the LEDs, it uses a lot of really small ones, but I think it has R, G, and B LEDs. I think he is just applying the same technology, only without as many lights, and with not as much precision.
An on-access virus scanner can be more less optimal than one that isn't. In the sense that it slows down your system by scanning every file, every time it is accessed.
This school must have a pretty bad webserver if simply clicking on refresh brings the server to its knees. I mean, it's not like they were generating millions of hits.
Here's what's missing. They forgot to tell you how well the drive performed after being used for 1 year, and having constantly moved data from one place to another, and constantly deleting and creating new data. It would have been a better test if the drive was about 75% full, with data from 2 years of use, and then the same tests were performed.
Also, It's hard to compare Macintosh with Nike. I'm sure that the revenues of the two companies might be the same. But Nike has a much larger market share. I Don't know very many people (if any) who have never owned a pair of Nike Shoes. On the other hand, I can probably count on my hands the number of People I know with a Mac.
The difference is, MAC users won't often install 250 different randomly downloaded applications from no name websites that infect their computer with adware and spyware. This is mostly because they aren't having it shoved down their throats on every website they visit. Windows works pretty good too as long as you don't install tons of crappy software along with it. Also Mac hardware costs more, and therefore we should assume it is higher quality. Therefore there should be less problems with bad RAM, and other hardware problems that cause your computer to crash. With a macintosh, there's a lot less variables in there that will mess around with your software, and how well it will function.
I know for a fact that CSIS (Canadian Security and Intelligence Service) takes co-op students, which I think are the same as interns. Except i'm not sure if interns get paid, It's my understanding that they don't. Anyway, it's a good way to get some pretty good people. Get them early and indoctrinate them. I think it's harder to get people into working in an environment like that once they had a taste of the free world.
But you don't really have to look at a big piece of software as one giant project. Look at windows vs. Linux. Windows tries to group everything together such that you can't have windows with IE, or media player, or the UI, or a bunch of other components that can't be stripped away from the central part of the OS. Linux on the other hand is very modular, from the kernel right up to the window manager and browser. I think it makes much more sense if you can break up your large project into many smaller projects. The smaller projects can then have a much better chance of having less bugs then if they were tied into everything else.
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The difference between a toaster (which would be patentable if it was a new invention) and software is that the toaster isn't implementing a mathematical algorithm. The resulting actions of the toaster can be explained by physics and chemistry, but isn't the result of pure manipulation of numbers. RSA is just a way of manipulating numbers. A toaster, or any other physical invention should do more than manipulate numbers. unless it's a computer, and it's purpose is manipulating numbers. I have no idea why nobody ever patented the computer. Basically it should work like this. If you can't patent something without adding "software","a computer", or "the Internet" to it, you shouldn't be able to patent something simply by adding "software","a computer", or "the Internet" to it. If you could patent RSA you wouldn't need to patent software that implements it, because that would be covered by the existing patent. Since you can't patent RSA, you can't patent a piece of software that implements it.
RSA encryption is a mathematical algorithm. You can't patent that. You can't patent a program that implements a mathematical algorithm either (or you shouldn't be able to). I don't think i've seen a piece of software that should be patentable.
Maybe you could use some radar/laser interference device to try to encrypt you speed. When they find a way around your device, to actually figure out your speed, then they would be breaking the DMCA.
If you wanted to keep you customer list from other companies, you'd have to use the trade secret laws. That is, don't publish your customers, for others to see. The phone book has no copyright, and is just a compiled list. Companies copy it all the time, sometimes resulting in multiple phone books for the same town. A big waste of money.
Actually, they didn't actually rewrite from scratch. They used BSD, I think. The problem with this, is that if Microsoft chooses something too close to Unix, then it will be easier for people to move away from their operating system. The reason that many people don't switch now, is that moving is very abrupt, and you not only have to change the OS, but many of the applications at the same time. If the OS was unix based, the move could be much more gradual. The funny thing I remember is that the microsoft research lab created an OS that was based on security from the bottom up, and it still ran faster than windows XP. Which I realize isn't that hard, since it's so slow, but shows that you can build a secure OS, that still performs well.
The problem is that software in the end comes down to mathematical formulas. Which are not patentable. Software is just the solution to a problem. I guess in the case of truly revolutionary software, one could be granted a patent. I don't think I've seen that piece of software yet. Software is so much built upon older software, that I don't think that anybody really makes steps in software that I would really call patentable. When you look at software patents, most people presented with the same problem would have come up with the same solution.
The problem is that pressing your own CDs is not cost effective in any way. It only becomes cost effective once you print many (1000 or more) identical discs. The costs per CD go down as you do more identical discs. Setting up the platter to stamp out just one disc would be extremely expensive, as well as very time consuming.
I haven't looked at slashcode, but I don't think it would take major changes to add the same moderation system that already exist for comments, and apply it, or something similar at the story level. I look at sites like Geek.com, and the comments are pretty bad. English is terrible, and it's filled with fanboys who spout out of lot of opinions but not really any facts to back them up. On slashdot you don't see a lot of this, because either they get modded to 0, or because they know they will get modded to 0, and therefore don't bother posting. In the same way, this could help get rid of a lot of stories we don't want to see. We could start with something simple like -1 dupe. That would get rid of not only having dupes not show up, but also get rid of all those posts of people complaining that a story is a dupe. Many times you miss a story, and the second time around, you catch it. The problem is, is that when you go read the comments, they are filled with dupe messages, instead of messages that are pertinent to the article. It would be nice to just mark a story as a dupe, and then those who hadn't read it before could read it anyway, without wading through the dupe posts.
I find what kills CDs most is scratches. Even if you are careful, scratches happen. Some CD drives even give scratches to the CDs. Over time lost of little scratches tend to build up and cause parts of the disc to become unreadable. An environmental chamber won't create scratches on the disc. I seriously think that it was the wrong idea to build CDs without a Caddy. I know they used to have them, and they died, but they only had them when all CDs were stamped, and built of good quality materials. Also, discs mostly had music, or computer programs which wasn't really all the costly to lose. You can always get new discs of published material. Try getting back data that was never published, and there are only a few copies of. Once the caddy was dead, they introduced cheap writeable and rewriteable media which was much more prone to scratches and therefore errors. To contrast, I've had Minidisc that I left lying around in drawers for years and they are still readable. Building a disc that doesn't have protection between the data surface and the outside world is a very stupid idea.
Maybe we could moderate entire articles. Maybe it would take two mod points to mod an article, or once in a while, less often then you got post moderating points you could get article moderating points. There's always going to be articles that slip through. Dupes are another thing. Maybe if enough article moderators call something a dupe, it should just be marked as such, so that we don't even have to bother seeing them. Same goes for stories that we find not interesting, or funny. Maybe I feel only like reading funny articles today, and so, people should be able to mod the entire story as such. I think moderating stories would go a long way to help people weed out the stuff they don't want to see. And make the job a little easy on the editors, who always get blamed for everything that gets posted that shouldn't be.
That sounds a lot like the Ambilight Feature from phillips.
Standing is much easier on you than actually pedalling a bicycle. Especially when it comes to hills. Standing in one spot can be hard, since blood will pool from lack of muscle movement. However this can be overcome by just moving your legs around a bit every once in a while, which is still less work than pedalling.
But in Linux, There are permissions which stop malware and users from destroying system critical files.
Which is exactly the reason people need partitions. When they fill up their one partition with stuff downloaded from P2P, they have no room for a swapfile, or for the system to use, or to install new programs. If they have different partitions for this stuff, then they will able to fill up their own personal data space, while still having room for swapping, installing new programs, and for allowing the system to do proper logging and other routine procedures.
That's like saying a 4 MegaPixel digital cameras suck because you can't print out pictures that are 100x80 inches. I never plan to print out pictures this big. On the same note, I never plan to have a 50+ inch TV. Really, my 27 inch seems like all I'll ever need. Maybe someday i'll get at 36 inch. But seriously, I never forsee in my life having the need for a 50+ inch television. So DVD is just fine for me.
That's because people who use Linux realize there's a better fix for most things than "reinstall the OS". This seems to be the standard way of fixing things in windows when things start going wrong. On the other hand, I don't think I've ever seen someone recommending "reinstalling the OS" for Linux as a general solution to everything.
I have a canon scanner which uses LIDE (LED Indirect Exposure) technology to do the scanner rather than the older style light bulb. You can't actually see the LEDs, it uses a lot of really small ones, but I think it has R, G, and B LEDs. I think he is just applying the same technology, only without as many lights, and with not as much precision.
An on-access virus scanner can be more less optimal than one that isn't. In the sense that it slows down your system by scanning every file, every time it is accessed.
This school must have a pretty bad webserver if simply clicking on refresh brings the server to its knees. I mean, it's not like they were generating millions of hits.
Here's what's missing. They forgot to tell you how well the drive performed after being used for 1 year, and having constantly moved data from one place to another, and constantly deleting and creating new data. It would have been a better test if the drive was about 75% full, with data from 2 years of use, and then the same tests were performed.
I'd like to see how they perform on a 12 GB Disk on a P2 266. You really start to see the differences when working on older hardware.
Also, It's hard to compare Macintosh with Nike. I'm sure that the revenues of the two companies might be the same. But Nike has a much larger market share. I Don't know very many people (if any) who have never owned a pair of Nike Shoes. On the other hand, I can probably count on my hands the number of People I know with a Mac.
The difference is, MAC users won't often install 250 different randomly downloaded applications from no name websites that infect their computer with adware and spyware. This is mostly because they aren't having it shoved down their throats on every website they visit. Windows works pretty good too as long as you don't install tons of crappy software along with it. Also Mac hardware costs more, and therefore we should assume it is higher quality. Therefore there should be less problems with bad RAM, and other hardware problems that cause your computer to crash. With a macintosh, there's a lot less variables in there that will mess around with your software, and how well it will function.
I know for a fact that CSIS (Canadian Security and Intelligence Service) takes co-op students, which I think are the same as interns. Except i'm not sure if interns get paid, It's my understanding that they don't. Anyway, it's a good way to get some pretty good people. Get them early and indoctrinate them. I think it's harder to get people into working in an environment like that once they had a taste of the free world.
But you don't really have to look at a big piece of software as one giant project. Look at windows vs. Linux. Windows tries to group everything together such that you can't have windows with IE, or media player, or the UI, or a bunch of other components that can't be stripped away from the central part of the OS. Linux on the other hand is very modular, from the kernel right up to the window manager and browser. I think it makes much more sense if you can break up your large project into many smaller projects. The smaller projects can then have a much better chance of having less bugs then if they were tied into everything else.