The reason most encryption works is because when you linearly increase key size, you exponentially increase the amount of time required to crack the key if you have no special knowledge, meaning it is much more difficult (impossible for practical purposes) to decrypt without a key than encrypt or decrypt with the necessary keys.
Doubling the key size may only double the work of the one encrypting and decrypting using a key but exponentially increases the work of the one trying to break it without a key. Almost no matter how easy it is to crack a short key, you can increase key size until the advantage of linear versus exponential is overwhelming.
But quantum computing -- encoding the problem into the quantum matrix, not to be confused with the quantum encryption described in this article -- threatens to be able to solve such problems in linear time instead of exponential time.
This means that when the user doubles the size of his key instead of exponentially (enormously) increasing the amount of work to solve the problem, it only doubles the amount of work required to crack it, which would make decryption a simple footrace even if you do not have the key, if the amount of work required to crack the key is proportional to the amount of work required to encrypt / decrypt instead of an exponential relationship.
Primes would not seem to be adequate at all, if quantum computing allows them to be solved linearly. At best, if you could find something that had the difficulty of non-quantum primes under quantum computing, then perhaps you could use that.
If it were free software, Microsoft probably would not go anywhere near it.
From the first day, Sun wanted Microsoft involved. That is a primary reason why it is not free.
If it were free software, Microsoft could not blow any hole in the "write once, run everywhere" theory, unless there was truly no one who cared about providing compatible libraries between the platforms.
Java still lacks a reasonable cross-platform UI, which it lacked at the outset. I have no doubt that free software would have served Sun and everyone else better in this respect.
Public / private key is in common use. I think a terrorist might use pgp or something likewise using RSA.
I also refer you to the Cryptography FAQ, which states in section 5.6: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/cryptography-faq/part05/
Nobody knows how to prove mathematically that a product cipher is completely secure. I think this generally refers to all block cyphers, but I could be wrong.
I take this to mean that while mathematics can be used to analyze the more-obvious characteristics of a cypher such as apparent randomness of the result and certain classes of mathematical short-circuits, there is no known proof of how hard it has to be to break it or that proves absence of a backdoor or unintentional weakness.
This is consistent with the treatment by cryptographers of cyphers based upon how new they are and how much scrutiny they have undergone, to try to minimize the future likelyhood of discovery of a weakness, but I have never heard of anyone saying a cypher was mathemantically proven to be secure, which would be a very simple criterion (but many initially thought to be secure have been proven insecure, as that is easier to prove).
I clearly gave no credit to RSA. Perhaps you meant NSA. I don't think you or I can know whether NSA has the ability to intercept major breakthroughs of this sort and keep them private. The strongest argument I find against it is not that they couldn't, but only that given today's environment, they don't really need to.
There are in many key types, such as RSA which relies on prime number factoring difficulties, where there is no published proof on how hard it has to be to crack the keys, (and no proof on how hard it has to be to find a previously-unknown weakness).
No one has published how to easily crack RSA for long key lengths. A smart mathematician working for NSA could have solved the problem years ago if they can keep a good secret.
And quantum computing seems to be on the horizon as well, and I would not put it past NSA to be ahead of the pack on this, and with quantum computing, you may find all existing key lengths falling to brute force attacks, because problems that were previously solved in exponential time may become linear, and the world may have to move to a completely different scheme if increasing key length only linearly increases the time to crack the key with a quantum computer.
>Great, the power user can trow away unneeded >language files. Other users have read only access.
And how did you identify that this user was a power user, just because he was the primary user of the machine? Are Macs only for primary power users? Even if the primary user were a power user, vulnerability to an account used for common purposes means significantly increased vulnerability to viruses. The reason viruses happen is because they are not expected. OS X specifically disables logging in to the root account for performing administrative operations like this to keep secure ownership -- even that would not help when the primary user is administrator group.
>What?! Mozilla.app must be badly written / >packaged. In no way should the application dir >change during execution. Preferences or caches >may not be stored in the application directory, >they must be stored in user space for example: >~/library/preferences.
I did not say that Mozilla behaved that way. Mozilla apparently decided to make the directory vulnerable to avoid writing an install program. Even those written by Apple with install programs fail to secure the installations.
Some others do require write access. Obviously Eclipse violates this rule in it's default install, placing the workspace there, and just for Apple, not for Linux, because Apple encourages this behavior by making the primary directory writable by the primary user, whereas Linux does not.
It is easier for moderators to mark things as a troll than to accept an OBVIOUS fact, since it flies in the face of the religion surrounding infallability of Apple.
But for a critical thinker who uses a personal OS X machine, (especially who has installed a fair amount of software):
Go to to your Applications directory and ls -la to see just how many are owned by the primary user instead of root. And then see if the primary user happens to also be a member of the Admin group, which has write access to all the files there owned by root/admin. This also applies to the Applications directory itself.
On my powerbook, taking installation defaults, over 95% of the apps installed in the Applications directory are writable by the primary user.
This seems inexcusable from a virus security perspective.
On Linux, 0% of my apps are writable by the primary user.
I install Mozilla on OSX. It says, rather than using an install program, I should just drag the icon into a directory, such as the applications directory, making it writable by any unprivileged program the user may execute.
This is not unlike I have seen for other programs for Mac as well.
When I try to take the initiative and protect these directories, the programs often stop working, because the program writes these directories when run by the user.
I am told by admins that program directories on OS X should generally be made user-writable.
When I do a default install Eclipse on OS X, it places the user workspace underneath the Eclipse program directory, not naturally leading to program directories that are not virus writable. I run it on Linux, and the workspace is separated from the program directory off of my home directory, and the eclipse stuff installs nicely into a protected area.
If you can use numrange to search for a certain price range in Froogle, that would make Froogle much more useful, which presently does not even have the ability to sort by price.
Yes, it was labor, so if you take it away from me by filing a patent, you have stolen it, by using a patent.
Patents reward at most one source of the invention, and all others are punished for not having enough lawyers, being public minded, not claiming a patent on something that will interfere with other legitimate inventions, etc.
And if it is pushed as a standard, where many other solutions would have been good enough (especially a de-facto standard pushed by a monopolist to maintain control) that is another problem, etc.
Fostering inventions is a worthwhile goal, which is why I oppose patents. It punishes more than it rewards, and it is very prone to reward the wrong person. Some people claim the system could be fixed, but it currently does far more harm than good, and the ability to abuse the system is why it is so popular and supported by companies with monopolies or aspirations that are not a contribution to society.
No one appropriated intellectual labor, except the one who patents something and prevents others from profiting from their own intellectual labor in the field (such as TV, where there were two simultaneous patents filed, and many others who came after). No one said you had to publish your own labor, or do it in the first place.
It is good to see all that money I thought was being wasted in the campaigns being spent to prop up internet sites. I think Firefox needs a new feature where it downloads the ad, but does not display it, so that the ad money can still be paid out but the user is not annoyed. That way the web site doesn't have to think of ways to circumvent the blockers.
The geographical maps of contributions: I assume they would look quite different if displayed by contributor instead of by dollar contributed. In any case, the fish in the great lakes seem to be going democratic -- must be all those buckyballs they have been consuming lately.
Claiming essentially that those who oppose software patents never had anything worth patenting, (whatever that means, part of the problem) does not make it true.
The concept that we use laws arbitrarily to get justice for unrelated evils (as opposed to applying laws universally for the issue at hand) will generally favor large corporations, which cannot possibly be evil in the mind of the best government money can buy.
According to this article in the Salt Lake Tribune, it needs to stay below 6.75 for 20 consecutive days. A little over a dollar to go. Buyback could be used to try to make a bounce, but I would hope that the threat of 6.75 would cause the stock to dip enough in anticipation once it is in the neighborhood and so the buyback is just throwing away more money.
I believe that you are wrong in your assessment of how patenting works in the legal drug industry.
One company applying for a bunch of patents in a specific area, chills the area to research, just like it does in other industries. Researchers shouldn't be forbidden from using ideas that others have registered.
You argue for strong government interventionism and call it libertarianism.
I couldn't care less if someone produces a product that is too expensive for me as long as he can't apply for a government monopoly in the field, so that someone else with better ethics and morality can do a better job.
The patent system is a mess because it deals in establishing government monopolies. Call it libertarianism? Sure, whatever, since lp.org trademarked the term, as though it did not have a far different meaning before, but it is not even close to fair or good in it's current form. If you can propose something that does not do more harm than good, I would like to see it. Sure, the patent attorneys at lp.org will way it is great just the way it is, just like the patent office does.
I suspect that there is NEVER anything patented that it is not possible that some expert in the field will independently invent. Television is a good example. It was clearly very innovative, but two independent people developed it at the same time. To grant one person the right to his invention and deny another person is wrong, granting a government monopoly, and unlibertarian. Even if someone had invented it independently a year or 10 years later, it is wrong to establish such a thought police as the lp.org writers defend. It is none of government's business that someone is copying the ideas of someone else. I know of no one, including the greatest minds, who has produced more kinowledge than he has used freely in the public domain.
I have spoken to a number of people in chemistry and drug industries who confirm that the situation between the industries is not that different. Drugs and genomes are very interrelated, too.
Certainly giving us unaffordable medicine is not the answer, and claiming that no one would make reasonable medical progress without patents is ludicrous. The arguments against corporate welfare are not that different from other arguments against government intervention.
Back to your characterization of libertarian views, in my view, it is clearly unlibertarian to prevent a second person from inventing what a first person has laid broad claim to having invented, most of which came from others in the first place. At best it is extremely unfair, while if everyone had the legal resources to be treated "equally" with the corporations who can afford the legal expenses, all progress would be stopped.
It isn't that hard. Go to the LP web site (www.lp.org where they have also trademarked the term libertarian so they can redefine it) and search for the term patent. Also, while browsing issues notice the number of spokespeople talking at great length about freedom from government-imposed regulation who are also patent attorneys actively filing patents. Find one article on the site properly questioning the effect of such patent monopolies on the market place.
When two people invent the same thing, one person is prevented from using his own invention.
When a so-called invention becomes part of a standard or de-facto standard (or government health regulations), the monopolist controls that part of the industry, only through the government-granted monopoly.
In every article found on the lp site, searching for the term patent I found, a position defending the patent system is being discussed, apparently by a libertarian representative.
Here are a few random examples:
http://www.lp.org/action/pagetools.php?function= print&page=%2Flpnews%2F0209%2Flibsolutions.htm l
Jennings implied that patents provide drug companies with a monopoly so they can charge higher prices. However, later in the show he noted there are 170 drugs available for high blood pressure. Many of those drugs have existing patents. So which is it? Monopoly or strong competition?
The country's Founding Fathers thought intellectual property rights were so important that patents and copyrights are the only property rights affirmatively protected in the U.S. Constitution (Article 1, Section 8). Yet, one talking head on "Bitter Medicine" called patents "a government patronage system." That's a radical view, and just plain wrong.
Patents reward innovation by protecting inventors from competition during the 20 years following the granting of a patent. In the case of pharmaceutical drugs, approximately nine of those years will be taken up with testing, trials, and FDA delays. This leaves the companies with 11 years, on average, to recover their R&D expenses and earn a profit.
The patent system has worked well in the drug industry. Generic drugs - copies of the original patented drugs that are "bioequivalent," meaning they are absorbed into the body at about the same rate as the brand-name drug and produce the same effect, have increased their market share rapidly in recent years and now account for nearly 50% by volume of prescription drugs.
http://www.lp.org/lpnews/0211/talkingpoints.html
These drugs are being developed only because pharmaceutical companies can acquire patents and then sell their drugs at a profit. Typically, only one of 5,000 to 10,000 compounds ends up as a marketable drug, and of those only 30% make money. Those few must pay for everything -- research and development, dry holes, overhead, lawsuits.
http://www.lp.org/lpnews/0006/forum_ayala.html
Libertarians have two reasons for resenting government intrusion in the marketplace. First, we like our freedom and we don't like people telling us what to do. Second, we like open competition and consumer choice and we don't like to see impediments to innovation and value creation.
But what happens when these objectives conflict? What becomes more important? There are instances in which an unrestrained free market will lead to severely curtailed competition and consumer choice. And conversely, there are instances in which government action can make the market more efficient in providing value to consumers and investors.
Examples of the heavy hand of government acting to successfully encourage or invigorate the market are easy to find. Take the patent system. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office grants exclusive rights and ownership to the developers of intellectual property. Inventors and innovators can then expect huge potential profits from their hard work and research dollars.
I agree with your position, as long as you do not deny the accessor's rights to use their own technological means to bypass poorly implemented (usually poorly conceived) restrictions. This has been discussed here before.
As a libertarian and strong defender of personal rights.
Good to hear a libertarian that defends personal rights. The common libertarian party position in favor of software patents and other unjustified government interventions would not lead me to generally characterize lp members as the defenders of personal rights (other than in the sense that Republicans and Democrats claim to be, too).
The present health care disaster is a direct result of government regulations including patents, over-regulation of medicine, etc. and yet on lp pages, all I read about is how important it is to continue to enshrine the positions of the drug companies so they can continue their government-granted monopolies keeping medicine unaffordable.
Correct me if I am wrong, but Windows probably has never used the middle mouse button for anything.
The Linux drivers support the device just fine, but the touch is too sensitive on the Microsoft mice pushing on the wheel to produce the third mouse button click.
So it makes the wheel much more difficult to use, because you can hardly rub on it hard enough to cause a scrolling action without also inadvertantly pasting the current / most recent selection, which makes it impractical to use the wheel much at all.
I have not had a similar problem on wheel mice purchased from other companites, which have a stiffer touch for pressing the wheel to produce the middle mouse button click.
The free version of WordPerfect for Linux has a nice grammar checker that on other platforms adapted well to a number of languages (I remember it supporting options for old and new German writing styles during the recent changes, for example). Unfortunately it is closed source and I don't remember availibility of language packs for the free version.
1. Spam usenet under false identity.
2. Complain to copyright office.
3. Repeat 1 and 2 as often as necessary to get violations by major ISP's.
4. Sue.
This only works if the ISP's are actually held responsible.
Slashdot Mirror
The reason most encryption works is because when you linearly increase key size, you exponentially increase the amount of time required to crack the key if you have no special knowledge, meaning it is much more difficult (impossible for practical purposes) to decrypt without a key than encrypt or decrypt with the necessary keys.
Doubling the key size may only double the work of the one encrypting and decrypting using a key but exponentially increases the work of the one trying to break it without a key. Almost no matter how easy it is to crack a short key, you can increase key size until the advantage of linear versus exponential is overwhelming.
But quantum computing -- encoding the problem into the quantum matrix, not to be confused with the quantum encryption described in this article -- threatens to be able to solve such problems in linear time instead of exponential time.
This means that when the user doubles the size of his key instead of exponentially (enormously) increasing the amount of work to solve the problem, it only doubles the amount of work required to crack it, which would make decryption a simple footrace even if you do not have the key, if the amount of work required to crack the key is proportional to the amount of work required to encrypt / decrypt instead of an exponential relationship.
Primes would not seem to be adequate at all, if quantum computing allows them to be solved linearly. At best, if you could find something that had the difficulty of non-quantum primes under quantum computing, then perhaps you could use that.
If it were free software, Microsoft probably would not go anywhere near it.
From the first day, Sun wanted Microsoft involved. That is a primary reason why it is not free.
If it were free software, Microsoft could not blow any hole in the "write once, run everywhere" theory, unless there was truly no one who cared about providing compatible libraries between the platforms.
Java still lacks a reasonable cross-platform UI, which it lacked at the outset. I have no doubt that free software would have served Sun and everyone else better in this respect.
Public / private key is in common use. I think a terrorist might use pgp or something likewise using RSA.
I also refer you to the Cryptography FAQ, which states in section 5.6: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/cryptography-faq/part05/ Nobody knows how to prove mathematically that a product cipher is completely secure. I think this generally refers to all block cyphers, but I could be wrong.
I take this to mean that while mathematics can be used to analyze the more-obvious characteristics of a cypher such as apparent randomness of the result and certain classes of mathematical short-circuits, there is no known proof of how hard it has to be to break it or that proves absence of a backdoor or unintentional weakness.
This is consistent with the treatment by cryptographers of cyphers based upon how new they are and how much scrutiny they have undergone, to try to minimize the future likelyhood of discovery of a weakness, but I have never heard of anyone saying a cypher was mathemantically proven to be secure, which would be a very simple criterion (but many initially thought to be secure have been proven insecure, as that is easier to prove).
I clearly gave no credit to RSA. Perhaps you meant NSA. I don't think you or I can know whether NSA has the ability to intercept major breakthroughs of this sort and keep them private. The strongest argument I find against it is not that they couldn't, but only that given today's environment, they don't really need to.
There are in many key types, such as RSA which relies on prime number factoring difficulties, where there is no published proof on how hard it has to be to crack the keys, (and no proof on how hard it has to be to find a previously-unknown weakness).
No one has published how to easily crack RSA for long key lengths. A smart mathematician working for NSA could have solved the problem years ago if they can keep a good secret.
And quantum computing seems to be on the horizon as well, and I would not put it past NSA to be ahead of the pack on this, and with quantum computing, you may find all existing key lengths falling to brute force attacks, because problems that were previously solved in exponential time may become linear, and the world may have to move to a completely different scheme if increasing key length only linearly increases the time to crack the key with a quantum computer.
>Great, the power user can trow away unneeded >language files. Other users have read only access.
And how did you identify that this user was a power user, just because he was the primary user of the machine? Are Macs only for primary power users? Even if the primary user were a power user, vulnerability to an account used for common purposes means significantly increased vulnerability to viruses. The reason viruses happen is because they are not expected. OS X specifically disables logging in to the root account for performing administrative operations like this to keep secure ownership -- even that would not help when the primary user is administrator group.
>What?! Mozilla.app must be badly written / >packaged. In no way should the application dir >change during execution. Preferences or caches >may not be stored in the application directory, >they must be stored in user space for example: >~/library/preferences.
I did not say that Mozilla behaved that way. Mozilla apparently decided to make the directory vulnerable to avoid writing an install program. Even those written by Apple with install programs fail to secure the installations.
Some others do require write access. Obviously Eclipse violates this rule in it's default install, placing the workspace there, and just for Apple, not for Linux, because Apple encourages this behavior by making the primary directory writable by the primary user, whereas Linux does not.
It is easier for moderators to mark things as a troll than to accept an OBVIOUS fact, since it flies in the face of the religion surrounding infallability of Apple.
But for a critical thinker who uses a personal OS X machine, (especially who has installed a fair amount of software):
Go to to your Applications directory and ls -la to see just how many are owned by the primary user instead of root. And then see if the primary user happens to also be a member of the Admin group, which has write access to all the files there owned by root/admin. This also applies to the Applications directory itself.
On my powerbook, taking installation defaults, over 95% of the apps installed in the Applications directory are writable by the primary user.
This seems inexcusable from a virus security perspective.
On Linux, 0% of my apps are writable by the primary user.
I install Mozilla on OSX. It says, rather than using an install program, I should just drag the icon into a directory, such as the applications directory, making it writable by any unprivileged program the user may execute.
This is not unlike I have seen for other programs for Mac as well.
When I try to take the initiative and protect these directories, the programs often stop working, because the program writes these directories when run by the user.
I am told by admins that program directories on OS X should generally be made user-writable.
When I do a default install Eclipse on OS X, it places the user workspace underneath the Eclipse program directory, not naturally leading to program directories that are not virus writable. I run it on Linux, and the workspace is separated from the program directory off of my home directory, and the eclipse stuff installs nicely into a protected area.
Could there be a difference here? Hopefully they are not putting code into virus-writable directories, as often happens on Apple.
If you can use numrange to search for a certain price range in Froogle, that would make Froogle much more useful, which presently does not even have the ability to sort by price.
Yes, it was labor, so if you take it away from me by filing a patent, you have stolen it, by using a patent.
Patents reward at most one source of the invention, and all others are punished for not having enough lawyers, being public minded, not claiming a patent on something that will interfere with other legitimate inventions, etc.
And if it is pushed as a standard, where many other solutions would have been good enough (especially a de-facto standard pushed by a monopolist to maintain control) that is another problem, etc.
Fostering inventions is a worthwhile goal, which is why I oppose patents. It punishes more than it rewards, and it is very prone to reward the wrong person. Some people claim the system could be fixed, but it currently does far more harm than good, and the ability to abuse the system is why it is so popular and supported by companies with monopolies or aspirations that are not a contribution to society.
No one appropriated intellectual labor, except the one who patents something and prevents others from profiting from their own intellectual labor in the field (such as TV, where there were two simultaneous patents filed, and many others who came after). No one said you had to publish your own labor, or do it in the first place.
It is good to see all that money I thought was being wasted in the campaigns being spent to prop up internet sites. I think Firefox needs a new feature where it downloads the ad, but does not display it, so that the ad money can still be paid out but the user is not annoyed. That way the web site doesn't have to think of ways to circumvent the blockers.
The geographical maps of contributions: I assume they would look quite different if displayed by contributor instead of by dollar contributed. In any case, the fish in the great lakes seem to be going democratic -- must be all those buckyballs they have been consuming lately.
Will that be after all the patents run out in 20 years?
At least cold fusion did not cost that much.
So when was the break even point that they recover all the money that has been spent developing it?
Claiming essentially that those who oppose software patents never had anything worth patenting, (whatever that means, part of the problem) does not make it true.
According to the link, it seems to be at SCO's option, not a negative for SCO at all, right?
The concept that we use laws arbitrarily to get justice for unrelated evils (as opposed to applying laws universally for the issue at hand) will generally favor large corporations, which cannot possibly be evil in the mind of the best government money can buy.
According to this article in the Salt Lake Tribune, it needs to stay below 6.75 for 20 consecutive days. A little over a dollar to go. Buyback could be used to try to make a bounce, but I would hope that the threat of 6.75 would cause the stock to dip enough in anticipation once it is in the neighborhood and so the buyback is just throwing away more money.
I believe that you are wrong in your assessment of how patenting works in the legal drug industry.
One company applying for a bunch of patents in a specific area, chills the area to research, just like it does in other industries. Researchers shouldn't be forbidden from using ideas that others have registered.
You argue for strong government interventionism and call it libertarianism.
I couldn't care less if someone produces a product that is too expensive for me as long as he can't apply for a government monopoly in the field, so that someone else with better ethics and morality can do a better job.
The patent system is a mess because it deals in establishing government monopolies. Call it libertarianism? Sure, whatever, since lp.org trademarked the term, as though it did not have a far different meaning before, but it is not even close to fair or good in it's current form. If you can propose something that does not do more harm than good, I would like to see it. Sure, the patent attorneys at lp.org will way it is great just the way it is, just like the patent office does.
I suspect that there is NEVER anything patented that it is not possible that some expert in the field will independently invent. Television is a good example. It was clearly very innovative, but two independent people developed it at the same time. To grant one person the right to his invention and deny another person is wrong, granting a government monopoly, and unlibertarian. Even if someone had invented it independently a year or 10 years later, it is wrong to establish such a thought police as the lp.org writers defend. It is none of government's business that someone is copying the ideas of someone else. I know of no one, including the greatest minds, who has produced more kinowledge than he has used freely in the public domain.
I have spoken to a number of people in chemistry and drug industries who confirm that the situation between the industries is not that different. Drugs and genomes are very interrelated, too.
Certainly giving us unaffordable medicine is not the answer, and claiming that no one would make reasonable medical progress without patents is ludicrous. The arguments against corporate welfare are not that different from other arguments against government intervention.
Back to your characterization of libertarian views, in my view, it is clearly unlibertarian to prevent a second person from inventing what a first person has laid broad claim to having invented, most of which came from others in the first place. At best it is extremely unfair, while if everyone had the legal resources to be treated "equally" with the corporations who can afford the legal expenses, all progress would be stopped.
It isn't that hard. Go to the LP web site (www.lp.org where they have also trademarked the term libertarian so they can redefine it) and search for the term patent. Also, while browsing issues notice the number of spokespeople talking at great length about freedom from government-imposed regulation who are also patent attorneys actively filing patents. Find one article on the site properly questioning the effect of such patent monopolies on the market place.
When two people invent the same thing, one person is prevented from using his own invention.
When a so-called invention becomes part of a standard or de-facto standard (or government health regulations), the monopolist controls that part of the industry, only through the government-granted monopoly.
In every article found on the lp site, searching for the term patent I found, a position defending the patent system is being discussed, apparently by a libertarian representative.
Here are a few random examples:
http://www.lp.org/action/pagetools.php?function= print&page=%2Flpnews%2F0209%2Flibsolutions.htm l
Jennings implied that patents provide drug companies with a monopoly so they can charge higher prices. However, later in the show he noted there are 170 drugs available for high blood pressure. Many of those drugs have existing patents. So which is it? Monopoly or strong competition?
The country's Founding Fathers thought intellectual property rights were so important that patents and copyrights are the only property rights affirmatively protected in the U.S. Constitution (Article 1, Section 8). Yet, one talking head on "Bitter Medicine" called patents "a government patronage system." That's a radical view, and just plain wrong.
Patents reward innovation by protecting inventors from competition during the 20 years following the granting of a patent. In the case of pharmaceutical drugs, approximately nine of those years will be taken up with testing, trials, and FDA delays. This leaves the companies with 11 years, on average, to recover their R&D expenses and earn a profit.
The patent system has worked well in the drug industry. Generic drugs - copies of the original patented drugs that are "bioequivalent," meaning they are absorbed into the body at about the same rate as the brand-name drug and produce the same effect, have increased their market share rapidly in recent years and now account for nearly 50% by volume of prescription drugs.
http://www.lp.org/lpnews/0211/talkingpoints.html
These drugs are being developed only because pharmaceutical companies can acquire patents and then sell their drugs at a profit. Typically, only one of 5,000 to 10,000 compounds ends up as a marketable drug, and of those only 30% make money. Those few must pay for everything -- research and development, dry holes, overhead, lawsuits.
http://www.lp.org/lpnews/0006/forum_ayala.html
Libertarians have two reasons for resenting government intrusion in the marketplace. First, we like our freedom and we don't like people telling us what to do. Second, we like open competition and consumer choice and we don't like to see impediments to innovation and value creation.
But what happens when these objectives conflict? What becomes more important? There are instances in which an unrestrained free market will lead to severely curtailed competition and consumer choice. And conversely, there are instances in which government action can make the market more efficient in providing value to consumers and investors.
Examples of the heavy hand of government acting to successfully encourage or invigorate the market are easy to find. Take the patent system. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office grants exclusive rights and ownership to the developers of intellectual property. Inventors and innovators can then expect huge potential profits from their hard work and research dollars.
Bu
I agree with your position, as long as you do not deny the accessor's rights to use their own technological means to bypass poorly implemented (usually poorly conceived) restrictions. This has been discussed here before.
As a libertarian and strong defender of personal rights.
Good to hear a libertarian that defends personal rights. The common libertarian party position in favor of software patents and other unjustified government interventions would not lead me to generally characterize lp members as the defenders of personal rights (other than in the sense that Republicans and Democrats claim to be, too).
The present health care disaster is a direct result of government regulations including patents, over-regulation of medicine, etc. and yet on lp pages, all I read about is how important it is to continue to enshrine the positions of the drug companies so they can continue their government-granted monopolies keeping medicine unaffordable.
Correct me if I am wrong, but Windows probably has never used the middle mouse button for anything.
The Linux drivers support the device just fine, but the touch is too sensitive on the Microsoft mice pushing on the wheel to produce the third mouse button click.
So it makes the wheel much more difficult to use, because you can hardly rub on it hard enough to cause a scrolling action without also inadvertantly pasting the current / most recent selection, which makes it impractical to use the wheel much at all.
I have not had a similar problem on wheel mice purchased from other companites, which have a stiffer touch for pressing the wheel to produce the middle mouse button click.
The free version of WordPerfect for Linux has a nice grammar checker that on other platforms adapted well to a number of languages (I remember it supporting options for old and new German writing styles during the recent changes, for example). Unfortunately it is closed source and I don't remember availibility of language packs for the free version.
1. Spam usenet under false identity. 2. Complain to copyright office. 3. Repeat 1 and 2 as often as necessary to get violations by major ISP's. 4. Sue. This only works if the ISP's are actually held responsible.