If literature and math aren't protected by patents, then why in the world should software qualify for patents, when it is essentially just a combination of the two?
I would have loved something like this when I was traveling frequently on business. It's not great for regular use, but it sure beats lugging around a laptop. As for the tiny keys, it has USB so you should be able to just pop in a USB keyboard.
Yes, I know about those fees but they are way too low. At those levels they'll keep paying the fees just in case they can use them against somebody in a lawsuit. But if they bid $1 million for a patent and had to pay $60K a year to keep it, they'll gladly let it expire ASAP.
This technique presents a health risk to my eyes and brain.
This technique is a deadly risk to epileptics.
They will spend MORE to implement this than they are losing from this type of piracy. Pirating DVDs is one thing, but are they really that stupid to believe that people who would watch a crappy camcorder copy are otherwise willing to pay the price of a movie ticket?
Let me clarify.... I meant that if the winning bidder is not you, the winning bidder pays you the money. If you want to keep the patent, you pay the government.
Here's an idea, and I'm not going to patent it (it's free with a BSD license!).
When the USPTO approves a patent, the patent goes on the open market for auction whether you like it or not. If the applicant wants to keep the patent, they must pay 1% above the highest bid.
The winning bidder must also pay an additional percentage of the bid to the government, as part of the quid pro quo for having the government enforce the patent. Payment can be amortized over the lifespan of the patent, but the patent expires one year after the last payment if they stop paying. The patent can be sold to another party before it expires, but the new owner must continue to make the payments.
This way, unprofitable patents would fall into the public domain faster (so they won't prevent innovation that builds on top of them), and there will be a disincentive to hold on to a portfolio of a bazillion patents for the purpose of lawsuit ammunition.
"If we start rejecting patents and heed to certain standards it might ultimately take us longer time before any groundbreaking technology comes our way."
Actually, they need to REJECT more patents so that the development of groundbreaking technology isn't inhibited because one of its components is similar to something trivial that somebody else has patented. Keep the patents reserved for the truly groundbreaking technology, and get the one-click and those junk patents out of the way so people can innovate.
166,000 patents in one year? That's why there are so many problems with patents. There aren't 166,000 inventions over the last century that are truly worthy of patent protection.
"I know several people who have gone both ways, and they each say that patenting it yourself is a good way to screw yourself."
That is true, but only if you're trying to get a patent approved by lawyerese instead of true innovation. If you invented something really innovative, it would be approved with or without a lawyer.
Of course, 99% of so-called "inventions" are either not inventions at all or are obvious to any expert in the field, so most people applying for patents will be screwed without hiring a lawyer to write it up in the most confusing language possible.
"If vendors are only rarely (or never) overclocking a CPU and selling it for for more then I think that while it's probably not a wise business decision by Intel to implement such a technology just to limit consumers, it is Intel's right as the manufacturer and there is nothing ethically wrong with it."
But if they try to use the DMCA to sue consumers for attempting to defeat the anti-overclocking mechanism, that would be unethical. That kind of thing is what people are more worried about.
"If private companies don't pursue these drugs, AIDS victims will have to rely on new medications being created by government grant research only. This is often much slower that having several private companies competing to develop the best drug."
Then again, it may not be that much slower if there were a better system in which private companies could compete for government research dollars.
Thanks for the warning. I was planning to buy the Norah Jones album, but now I don't want it if it has any of that stupid copy-protection crap.
Re:PHP Is *not* an application server
on
Introduction to PHP5
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
If Sun dies, Java will still live on. Unlike the completely closed up languages like Visual Basic, Java has a specification that has been used by other companies to create compilers and virtual machines. It is not dependent on any particular company for its ongoing survival, just as C++ and COBOL are not dependent on any company.
Software can be encrypted and sent over the Internet so the IRS cannot detect it coming into our borders.
Then even if they detect it, how do they decide a value on which the tax will be applied? A piece of software can cost anywhere from $0 to a over a billion dollars. The IRS will always end up undervaluing or overvaluing it.
Some countries are actually retarded enough to impose import duties on software; anything downloaded off the Internet gets in duty-free because they can't catch it, while anything physically brought in on CDs or diskettes gets taxed based on a value that the customs officer pulls out of their ass. I recently sent my brother 2 CDs with Linux and other free software because broadband is not widely available in his country, and they slapped on US$50 duty, ignoring the $2 value I put on the customs form (for the cost of the media) and the glaring FREE SOFTWARE label on the CDs.
Then there is the consideration that software can be duplicated infinitely. Someone can import a single copy of a software package that is worth $200 by itself, then get it installed on 10,000 machines.
And how would you assess the foreign value component of software that was developed by teams in the US collobarating with overseas developers?
"Patents are a critical part of the foundation of successful free markets. Why would anyone want to innovate if not to profit from his innovations?"
No, patents are a restriction on the freedom of markets - others are prevented from creating something which they could have done if the patent didn't exist. Patents are artificial monopolies. The idea behind patents was that the benefits to society by providing the incentive to create would outweigh the disadvantages of the freedom that they take away. Unfortunately, the way patents are now given out willy-nilly makes us better off without them.
Patents are not necessary for being profitable in software. Most software until about 5-6 years ago was created without the creators bothering to seek a patent. For protecting software, copyright is available. But there just isn't any software that would have not been created by the original creator or someone else if software patents didn't exist.
> "One of the first assignments given to the Indian group was an easy maintenance update, I could have done it in 8 hours, a Jr. Programmer new to the group might need 16 hrs to do the same job, the Indian group billed 128 hrs split by 3 people for the change. Lets recap: Me $720; JP $1,440; Indian group $3,840. However, I am sure that the upper levels are assuming that it would have taken the same amount of time and cost $11,520."
That's exactly the problem that I am most pissed about. If the offshore developers can genuinely do the job cheaper with equal or better quality, then I'll accept that my high salary is no longer justified for this type of job and I'll find something else to do to make money. If our employers are genuinely saving money by doing this, it means their products will be cheaper and/or we can enjoy a higher stock value in our portfolios.
But in scenarios like yours above, the manager would report that he saved the company $7680. The more inefficient the offshore programmers are, the bigger the savings can be made to look! The result is that many US companies will get burned without even knowing they are getting burned, creating a lose-lose situation where their employees are replaced by offshore AND their costs are actually higher. Those two factors can combine to create serious harm to the economy.
H-1B is not specific to programming or technology-related jobs. Over 40% of H-1Bs are NOT in technology. Accountants, doctors, nurses, fashion models, teachers, and people in other professions can be hired with an H-1B visa. Programming has not been singled out. It just so happens that the technology industry has chosen to use these visas more than other industries.
I suppose that if the US had an H1B program for MBAs, then there would have surely been more of them in the US.
MBAs can and have been hired as H-1B. H-1B visas aren't restricted to technical professions - there are accountants, teachers, doctors, and fashion models who have been hired with H-1B visas. The majority (about 60%) of H-1Bs are in software or engineering, but that's because that is how companies chose to use the visas; it isn't a visa that was created for the tech sector.
It's not the resizing of the array that makes it O(n^2), it's the entire process of populating the array from a data source of an unknown size, in particular the repeated copying of the array elements into the new bigger array.
But if you were to think of it that way, then doubling the size of the array with each reallocation does yield a complexity of O(n). It would be O(n log n).
No, it's still O(n). You have demonstrated how the lack of Calculus can harm a programmer.
If the array doubles and gets copied each time its size is to be exceeded, it will be like the sum of this geometric series:
1 + 2 + 2^2 + 2^3 +... 2^x
where 2^x represents the smallest integral power of 2 that is greater than n. The sum of the powers of 2 going from 2^0 up to 2^x is equal to 2^(x+1)-1.
n will be no greater than 2^x, and will be bigger than than half of 2^x.
Therefore:
2n > 2^x so log(2n) > x.
Therefore the above sum is less than 2^(log(2n)+1)-1.
2^(log(2n)+1)-1 = 2^(log(4n))-1 = 4n-1.
The sum of the series is less than 4n-1, which makes it fit within O(n).
Making and selling both music albums and MP3 hardware and other similar technology isn't necessarily schizo -- if anything, it's just being sensible enough to realize that those technologies don't make people spend less money on music. Ever notice that many record stores also sell blank cassettes and CDs? Ever notice that many electronics stores that sell blank CDs and MP3 hardware, like Best Buy and Circuit City, also sell music? They aren't afraid of MP3 and music copying technology killing their music sales.
In Sony's case, they are being schizo because of their infighting and their contradictory public positions on this issue. But to be involved in both the music business and selling hardware that allows music copying isn't necessarily self-contradictory.
"Hmmm, maybe the reason that management doesn't see how ineffective the offshore labour is is that you have rewritten 90% of their code. Effectively, you're covering for them. What management needs to see is failed projects."
But if it fails, they'll blame and/or lay off the American programmer who worked with the offshore team. If it succeeds, they'll boast to upper management how they saved $X00,000 and get themselves a nice bonus.
True, meat may be simpler from the end-consumer's perspective, but on an end-to-end basis it definitely isn't simpler or cheaper. What is simpler and more efficient for the individual consumer isn't necessarily simpler and more efficient for society as a whole.
However, if socioeconomic events took place that permanently took most of the meat off the market - such as widespread animal diseases, or farmers realizing that they can't get a good enough price for meat to pay for the increased cost of production - I would expect that the shifted market dynamics would drive the innovative production and packaging of nutritious, good-tasting vegetarian foods.
Note that I am not a vegetarian or vegan, although I do eat less meat than average. I am just noting the overall inefficiency of meat production.
You still have to raise crops in order to feed the cows, and the majority of what is fed to the cows won't be turned into an edible product. If it weren't for the cows in the middle of the process, you'd be able to feed more than twice as many people with the same amount of crops.
"Animals are one of the simplest ways to turn the energy of the sun into food."
Actually, that is one of the most inefficient and complicated ways. First you have to grow the food to feed them, of which more than half will be burned as energy, excreted, or transformed into inedible bodyparts. While you wait for them to grow, you have to manage their day-to-day welfare, including preventing them from catching diseases or being attacked by predators like coyotes. After they are slaughtered, a cold environment has to be maintained to store and transport the meat.
It would be much simpler to use the land to just grow food for direct human consumption (except in cases where the land is not useful for anything but weeds and grass). Not necessarily more profitable, as there is a multibillion dollar market for various meats, but definitely simpler.
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If literature and math aren't protected by patents, then why in the world should software qualify for patents, when it is essentially just a combination of the two?
I would have loved something like this when I was traveling frequently on business. It's not great for regular use, but it sure beats lugging around a laptop. As for the tiny keys, it has USB so you should be able to just pop in a USB keyboard.
Yes, I know about those fees but they are way too low. At those levels they'll keep paying the fees just in case they can use them against somebody in a lawsuit. But if they bid $1 million for a patent and had to pay $60K a year to keep it, they'll gladly let it expire ASAP.
This technique presents a health risk to my eyes and brain.
This technique is a deadly risk to epileptics.
They will spend MORE to implement this than they are losing from this type of piracy. Pirating DVDs is one thing, but are they really that stupid to believe that people who would watch a crappy camcorder copy are otherwise willing to pay the price of a movie ticket?
Let me clarify .... I meant that if the winning bidder is not you, the winning bidder pays you the money. If you want to keep the patent, you pay the government.
Here's an idea, and I'm not going to patent it (it's free with a BSD license!).
When the USPTO approves a patent, the patent goes on the open market for auction whether you like it or not. If the applicant wants to keep the patent, they must pay 1% above the highest bid.
The winning bidder must also pay an additional percentage of the bid to the government, as part of the quid pro quo for having the government enforce the patent. Payment can be amortized over the lifespan of the patent, but the patent expires one year after the last payment if they stop paying. The patent can be sold to another party before it expires, but the new owner must continue to make the payments.
This way, unprofitable patents would fall into the public domain faster (so they won't prevent innovation that builds on top of them), and there will be a disincentive to hold on to a portfolio of a bazillion patents for the purpose of lawsuit ammunition.
"If we start rejecting patents and heed to certain standards it might ultimately take us longer time before any groundbreaking technology comes our way."
Actually, they need to REJECT more patents so that the development of groundbreaking technology isn't inhibited because one of its components is similar to something trivial that somebody else has patented. Keep the patents reserved for the truly groundbreaking technology, and get the one-click and those junk patents out of the way so people can innovate.
"Why in the world should the government have an automatic percentage stake in something I invent?"
Because the government is intervening in the economy to help you to make money on that invention by restraining others from producing it.
166,000 patents in one year? That's why there are so many problems with patents. There aren't 166,000 inventions over the last century that are truly worthy of patent protection.
"I know several people who have gone both ways, and they each say that patenting it yourself is a good way to screw yourself."
That is true, but only if you're trying to get a patent approved by lawyerese instead of true innovation. If you invented something really innovative, it would be approved with or without a lawyer.
Of course, 99% of so-called "inventions" are either not inventions at all or are obvious to any expert in the field, so most people applying for patents will be screwed without hiring a lawyer to write it up in the most confusing language possible.
"If vendors are only rarely (or never) overclocking a CPU and selling it for for more then I think that while it's probably not a wise business decision by Intel to implement such a technology just to limit consumers, it is Intel's right as the manufacturer and there is nothing ethically wrong with it."
But if they try to use the DMCA to sue consumers for attempting to defeat the anti-overclocking mechanism, that would be unethical. That kind of thing is what people are more worried about.
"If private companies don't pursue these drugs, AIDS victims will have to rely on new medications being created by government grant research only. This is often much slower that having several private companies competing to develop the best drug."
Then again, it may not be that much slower if there were a better system in which private companies could compete for government research dollars.
Thanks for the warning. I was planning to buy the Norah Jones album, but now I don't want it if it has any of that stupid copy-protection crap.
If Sun dies, Java will still live on. Unlike the completely closed up languages like Visual Basic, Java has a specification that has been used by other companies to create compilers and virtual machines. It is not dependent on any particular company for its ongoing survival, just as C++ and COBOL are not dependent on any company.
Software can be encrypted and sent over the Internet so the IRS cannot detect it coming into our borders.
Then even if they detect it, how do they decide a value on which the tax will be applied? A piece of software can cost anywhere from $0 to a over a billion dollars. The IRS will always end up undervaluing or overvaluing it.
Some countries are actually retarded enough to impose import duties on software; anything downloaded off the Internet gets in duty-free because they can't catch it, while anything physically brought in on CDs or diskettes gets taxed based on a value that the customs officer pulls out of their ass. I recently sent my brother 2 CDs with Linux and other free software because broadband is not widely available in his country, and they slapped on US$50 duty, ignoring the $2 value I put on the customs form (for the cost of the media) and the glaring FREE SOFTWARE label on the CDs.
Then there is the consideration that software can be duplicated infinitely. Someone can import a single copy of a software package that is worth $200 by itself, then get it installed on 10,000 machines.
And how would you assess the foreign value component of software that was developed by teams in the US collobarating with overseas developers?
"Patents are a critical part of the foundation of successful free markets. Why would anyone want to innovate if not to profit from his innovations?"
No, patents are a restriction on the freedom of markets - others are prevented from creating something which they could have done if the patent didn't exist. Patents are artificial monopolies. The idea behind patents was that the benefits to society by providing the incentive to create would outweigh the disadvantages of the freedom that they take away. Unfortunately, the way patents are now given out willy-nilly makes us better off without them.
Patents are not necessary for being profitable in software. Most software until about 5-6 years ago was created without the creators bothering to seek a patent. For protecting software, copyright is available. But there just isn't any software that would have not been created by the original creator or someone else if software patents didn't exist.
> "One of the first assignments given to the Indian group was an easy maintenance update, I could have done it in 8 hours, a Jr. Programmer new to the group might need 16 hrs to do the same job, the Indian group billed 128 hrs split by 3 people for the change. Lets recap: Me $720; JP $1,440; Indian group $3,840. However, I am sure that the upper levels are assuming that it would have taken the same amount of time and cost $11,520."
That's exactly the problem that I am most pissed about. If the offshore developers can genuinely do the job cheaper with equal or better quality, then I'll accept that my high salary is no longer justified for this type of job and I'll find something else to do to make money. If our employers are genuinely saving money by doing this, it means their products will be cheaper and/or we can enjoy a higher stock value in our portfolios.
But in scenarios like yours above, the manager would report that he saved the company $7680. The more inefficient the offshore programmers are, the bigger the savings can be made to look! The result is that many US companies will get burned without even knowing they are getting burned, creating a lose-lose situation where their employees are replaced by offshore AND their costs are actually higher. Those two factors can combine to create serious harm to the economy.
H-1B is not specific to programming or technology-related jobs. Over 40% of H-1Bs are NOT in technology. Accountants, doctors, nurses, fashion models, teachers, and people in other professions can be hired with an H-1B visa. Programming has not been singled out. It just so happens that the technology industry has chosen to use these visas more than other industries.
I suppose that if the US had an H1B program for MBAs, then there would have surely been more of them in the US.
MBAs can and have been hired as H-1B. H-1B visas aren't restricted to technical professions - there are accountants, teachers, doctors, and fashion models who have been hired with H-1B visas. The majority (about 60%) of H-1Bs are in software or engineering, but that's because that is how companies chose to use the visas; it isn't a visa that was created for the tech sector.
It's not the resizing of the array that makes it O(n^2), it's the entire process of populating the array from a data source of an unknown size, in particular the repeated copying of the array elements into the new bigger array.
... 2^x
But if you were to think of it that way, then doubling the size of the array with each reallocation does yield a complexity of O(n). It would be O(n log n).
No, it's still O(n). You have demonstrated how the lack of Calculus can harm a programmer.
If the array doubles and gets copied each time its size is to be exceeded, it will be like the sum of this geometric series:
1 + 2 + 2^2 + 2^3 +
where 2^x represents the smallest integral power of 2 that is greater than n. The sum of the powers of 2 going from 2^0 up to 2^x is equal to 2^(x+1)-1.
n will be no greater than 2^x, and will be bigger than than half of 2^x.
Therefore:
2n > 2^x so log(2n) > x.
Therefore the above sum is less than 2^(log(2n)+1)-1.
2^(log(2n)+1)-1 = 2^(log(4n))-1 = 4n-1.
The sum of the series is less than 4n-1, which makes it fit within O(n).
(all logarithms above are to the base 2.)
Making and selling both music albums and MP3 hardware and other similar technology isn't necessarily schizo -- if anything, it's just being sensible enough to realize that those technologies don't make people spend less money on music. Ever notice that many record stores also sell blank cassettes and CDs? Ever notice that many electronics stores that sell blank CDs and MP3 hardware, like Best Buy and Circuit City, also sell music? They aren't afraid of MP3 and music copying technology killing their music sales.
In Sony's case, they are being schizo because of their infighting and their contradictory public positions on this issue. But to be involved in both the music business and selling hardware that allows music copying isn't necessarily self-contradictory.
"Hmmm, maybe the reason that management doesn't see how ineffective the offshore labour is is that you have rewritten 90% of their code. Effectively, you're covering for them. What management needs to see is failed projects."
But if it fails, they'll blame and/or lay off the American programmer who worked with the offshore team. If it succeeds, they'll boast to upper management how they saved $X00,000 and get themselves a nice bonus.
True, meat may be simpler from the end-consumer's perspective, but on an end-to-end basis it definitely isn't simpler or cheaper. What is simpler and more efficient for the individual consumer isn't necessarily simpler and more efficient for society as a whole.
However, if socioeconomic events took place that permanently took most of the meat off the market - such as widespread animal diseases, or farmers realizing that they can't get a good enough price for meat to pay for the increased cost of production - I would expect that the shifted market dynamics would drive the innovative production and packaging of nutritious, good-tasting vegetarian foods.
Note that I am not a vegetarian or vegan, although I do eat less meat than average. I am just noting the overall inefficiency of meat production.
You still have to raise crops in order to feed the cows, and the majority of what is fed to the cows won't be turned into an edible product. If it weren't for the cows in the middle of the process, you'd be able to feed more than twice as many people with the same amount of crops.
"Animals are one of the simplest ways to turn the energy of the sun into food."
Actually, that is one of the most inefficient and complicated ways. First you have to grow the food to feed them, of which more than half will be burned as energy, excreted, or transformed into inedible bodyparts. While you wait for them to grow, you have to manage their day-to-day welfare, including preventing them from catching diseases or being attacked by predators like coyotes. After they are slaughtered, a cold environment has to be maintained to store and transport the meat.
It would be much simpler to use the land to just grow food for direct human consumption (except in cases where the land is not useful for anything but weeds and grass). Not necessarily more profitable, as there is a multibillion dollar market for various meats, but definitely simpler.