I like the article (read it before) and it gives a good intro to the theory of computation, but I am not sure the fact that algorithms are "discovered" should decide whether it is patentable.
Well, I think the main point he's making is that software programs are demonstrably equivalent to Turing machine, lambda calculus expressions and effective methods. Effective methods have never been patentable (I'm not sure if business method patents qualify however) and lambda calculus expressions are unquestionably mathematical expressions, and maths is not patentable.
Oh do behave. His opening point was that the legal community on the whole could do with a deeper understanding of technical issues,
in much the same way as the software community could often do with a better grasp of legal issues. At least, that's what I understood
from his introduction.
I don't think he said anywhere "all lawyers are technologically ignorant". If he had, I'd have been amongst the first to protest.
I don't think he misunderstood the court. I think he's saying that the court missed the fundamental point about computers.
A judgement like that is a bit like saying that a printing press becomes a new machine whenever you load a new configuration of
type into it, and therefore that books should be patentable.
PoIR fails. Miserably. Sorry.
I disagree, Still, if you really think so, I encourage you to comment as part of the Groklaw discussion. I'm sure PoIR is far more capable of
defending these odd tangenital points than I am.
Well he is wrong because he fails to consider the incentives that patent protection creates.
I don't think that follows.
The incentives are debatable and are in any event more than offset by the disincentives of having several large companies with patent thickets designed explicitly to stop small inventors from bring a product to market except on their terms.
PoIR's main point is provably false in this case....
A simple google search revealed that the attorney arguing this case before the Supreme Court has a BS in Electrical Engineering from Duke, and a MS in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins.
Well, if that was his main point, then you might be on to something. Not that finding a single counter example really says anything about the general state of affairs, of course.
PoIR then goes on to ramble about Godel's numbers, and Turing Machines. While neat, these really have nothing to do with the issue.
I suggest you read it again. The "ramble" about Godel numbers and Turing Machines and effective methods" is his main point.
Indeed. I though TFA was very weak. His points were:
If you can do it in electronics, you can do it in hardware: the electronics would be patentable
Software patents can make a shitload of money for someone
I think software patents are pretty neat!
Only the first point is anything resembling an argument, and that one we've heard a dozen times before.
If anyone wants a soild exploration of what should and should not be considered software, and why it ought not
to be patentable, I'd recommend PoIR's An
Explanation of Computation Theory for Lawyers" over on Groklaw. It's well-researched, well-argued,
and informative.
unless there's a way to use wildcards with/etc/hosts, then the solution is adblock.
Use both. I can't imagine anything that might tempt me to connect to doubleclick.net, so that goes in the hosts file. That way I'm covered against flash, cookies, javascript, and to a large extent, things that aint been invented yet. It also makes for a shorter RE list in adblock plus (not adblock - the original is, I believe, unmaintained and insecure) which is useful if its going to be checked for every new address to which your browser connects.
Other places. I might actually be interested in the content. So they do go in adblock plus, and I get some fine control over what they serve me.
There seems to be a problem of transparency and speed of notification of problems, yes. How many apps have been rejected, out of the 100,000 accepted? How large is the number of the developers who are chafing under this dictatorship?
To be honest, I have no idea. I'm not in the market myself, and the information I have on the subject is based entirely on past discussions on Slashdot.
Certainly, it sounds as if a little more transparency would go a long way toward helping where the developers are concerned.
We're not looking at the included apps, which will tend to be very solid -- and that tells you something, right? -- but the ones you want to add, either through the apple or blackberry or Microsoft Marketplaces/iTunes, etc.
How about the ones that were produced professionally, and have been blocked by Apple for marketing rather than technical reasons?
We've had a few of those reported on Slashdot.
The danger is that when you get a phone that can do all the things that the iPhone bars you from doing, it may gain marketshare quite rapidly
at Apple's expense.
My point here isn't "Apple are Evil because they don't let you run anything you like" but rather "Apple have been rejecting apps for no
technically valid reason, and this could backfire badly if a phone is launched that makes a feature out of lacking those restrictions."
What is the motivation for somebody to make an app with a Trojan that takes your bank sign-in and sends it to Turkestan, huh? Why, there's no-- Oh, no, they want to take the money out of your bank account. There's lots of motivation for malware, and if it's from third-party suppliers, who knows?
Like I say, that's not really the point I'm making. But, to be fair, the same problem exists on windows boxes, but with a little care and common sense it's entirely possible to install 3rd party apps without turning your machine into a nest of malware and keyloggers. And that without having MS vet all the apps available,
Would you settle for your company getting the ability to sign the app, and if you screw up, everybody will know it's your dumb app?
Sounds fair, so long as keys are not arbitrarily withheld and/or withdrawn. Otherwise, you get the same problem: suppressing useful apps
for marketing reasons.
Of course! A commercial phone company selling an Android based phone would only include rubbish apps because... um... because they're not Apple! Yes! That must be it.
Silly of me to imagine that a competitor might actually want to compete. And maybe bundle software that made it competitive. I guess I'm just getting old...
Hobby developers perhaps. But most real developers (i.e. ones that are earning their living that way) care more about:
Yes, yes, yes. Of course they do. But if a day comes when an Android phone has all the cool bits that Apple have been barring from
their phones, then it'll be worth the "real" developers while to migrate too...
The driver will be if the iPhone starts loosing marketshare to a platform that is less restrictive in terms of what the
customer can do with it. Once that happens, the more mainstream devs will follow, discontented ones first, then all but
the hardcore Apple loyalists.
How does this in any way constitute a threat to the iPhone?
Because using your proprietary control of the platform to play hardball with 3rd party software creators doesn't work
so well when a viable alternative exists.
If Apple keep on artificially limiting what the iPhone can do, they're going to drive away developers. The risk
is that one day soon, there is going to emerge an Android based phone with a killer set of cool apps, which are
composed largely of all the stuff that Apple didn't allow on the iPhone because they saw short term commercial
advantage in inconveniencing their customers.
No I merely state a fact. That currently there is a "fad" in the U.S. Government. They are handing out big bucks to those who are researching man made global warming
Which might be plausible if the global warming debate had only recently erupted. But since the debate has been raging for a decade or so,
that suggests your funding "fad" survived two terms with George W. Bush as president. He always struck me as strongly anti global warming,
so I have difficulty imagining a biased supply of government money flowing freely over that time when it ran contrary to the political interests
of the party in power.
I didn't say it would be easy, but I think it would be inevitable. You can't get such laws passed before the services exist.
Mmmm... I'm sure it wouldn't be the first time for a legislative framework to be proposed in order to enable a fledgling industry.
First you need the services and then you need some horrific company behavior and perhaps a class action lawsuit or two, then you can get the legislation
That sounds a lot more plausible as a scenario, but it's quite a long way from being a small matter, as you described it earlier. And this is where I have the problem. Class action lawsuits aren't always the cure-all people sometimes sometimes seem to suppose. Just look at some of the horrific slaps-on-the-wrist handed out to Microsoft.
It also sounds like could computing is not going to be a smart bet until after we've had a cycle of abuse or two. Which doesn't do anything
to persuade me from my original conclusion: Local storage and local apps have some compelling advantages over the cloud.
It's not especially optimistic and it's not about faith. I think Google will go for it based on their past history but I also think that if they don't people will bail out in droves and go to a competing service. At the moment there aren't really any competitors, but if Google shows how it can be done there will be.
Well, if you're just talking about Google, I don't think your optimisim is entirely unfounded either. There is still a slight concern about data privacy insofar as google likes to index and profile everything, but they do have a track record of playing nice with things like this.
But you were talking about a scenario with lots of cloud service providers, not just Google. And it's hard to see someone like Microsoft entering the arena and playing by Google's rules.
Really though, where I think you are being overly optimistic is in assuming that data portability laws will be a trivial undertaking.
That's the step I'd want to see up front, not the specs and protocols.
No it's not the same, but I'll let you figure out why.
Yeah, I'm getting bored with this conversation, too. Hey, I know! Let's make some vague suggestion that the other party is wrong and
which we are in fact totally unable to support, and let the conversation die while we try and project as much moral superiority as we can.
Other companies can set up public servers which offer the same service to anyone's personal computer, again just change the target domain in the computer's config. From there it's a small step to data portability laws which say that the user must be free to move his cloud of data to another service provider at will.
I have some doubts about that "samll step" of yours:) Get the legislation in place, and then I'll find your scenario
a whole lot more convincing. As long we're leaving the legal framework to be the last step in the sequence...
well you'll have to battle against all the lobbyists from the companies that see an opportunity to get rich
by renting you access to your own data.
Don't get me wrong - I admire your optimism and all that. But adopting a technology because you have faith that
the corporate world to do the right thing, or even that it will see the advantages of playing nice...
that doesn't strike me as being a strategically sound move.
Yes. Yes I am. I'm getting just as silly as you were in suggesting that Java was in some way flawed because it wouldn't run on every computer on the planet. And for the same reason. That was the point, really.
I think it's pretty well understood that Java didn't fully deliver the cross-platform ideal. Of course Sun's claim that Java programs could "run on any computer" was unquestionably false.
That's a bit like calling Microsoft a failure because their vision of "A computer on every desk, Microsoft software on every computer" can never be fully realised. I mean there clearly desks that will never have computers, and computers that are never going to run MS software. So if you want to talk about failure to "fully deliver" on something....
Ideals by their very nature are never fully realised. I think Java gets close enough to live up to Sun's vision.
Of course your belief that Netscape died due to MS's efforts is entirely untestable as well.
Actually, I'm pretty much content that we've managed to agree that Microsoft did in fact make a concerted attempt to destroy Netscape.
Your belief that Netscape was in any case doomed to self-destruction does, I admit, strike me as a little odd.
On the other hand it's a point where I'm happy for us to agree to differ.
"MS customisations would have broken the "compile once, run anywhere" concept that was at the heart of Java."
Yes, that's the chapter and verse of Sun's gospel
Well, that's what they've always said, and Java does indeed work like that. There doesn't seem to be any
great exercise of faith required, so we can probably forego the misapplied religious terminology in this
particular case. Just saying, y'know?
but the only reason Windows programmers might be interested in Java was for it's value as a language for Windows applications
Well, that, sure. Or they might have wanted to write cross platform apps. Or even browser applets. I'm assuming the
second two wouldn't somehow disqualify the developer from being a true windows programmer in your eyes.
Do tell me if I'm wrong about that.
MS's implementation was the best way to make COM calls.
Very probably true. Pity they couldn't have worked with Sun rather than against them in the matter.
If all they wanted was to streamline COM usage then you'd expect that something could have been worked
out. The fact that it had to go to litigation always suggests to me that breaking Java's cross-platform
capabilities was always part of the aim at Microsoft. YMMV, obviously.
Likewise those who were really interested in the "compile once, run any anywhere" concept weren't using Windows for development or deployment anyway.
Sweeping generalisation tend to be untrue. But even if we assume you're correct with this one: so what? How would that make a difference?
The equipment to carry out this snooping is easily spotted, and more easily foiled.
mmm... let's not rely on that. More sophisticated and less bulk solutions may arise in the future, and
with the potential to tamper with the electoral process, it's possible we might see some serious effort
going into creating such solutions.
and could certainly not CHANGE the results.
The concern is that you wouldn't need to change anything. "Vote for me or I break your legs. I will know how you vote."
I do think MS saw them as a threat, but my main point is if they had kept their cool Netscape would still have died as a one-hit wonder.
That's an interesting point of view. Entirely untestable, of course, but you're certainly entitled to your opinion.
Although I do think that "one hit wonder" unfairly trivialises Netscape.
Likewise if they had simply ignored Java rather than trying to customize it to perform better on Windows we wouldn't still be talking about it today.
To be fair, they did a bit more than add a few performance tweaks. MS customisations would have broken the "compile once, run anywhere" concept that was at the heart of Java. And I think that central concept would have been enough to guarantee Java's survival, even without MS trying to "enhance" the language. Still, until we can examine a parallel universe where MS didn't embark on such (possibly pointless) crusades, we're never going to know for sure.
Apple has had an effective application platform for many years and yet has a small percentage of the market
I think that's missing the point. This is how Wikipedia explains it:
Netscape advertised that "the web is for everyone" and stated one of its goals as to "level the playing field" among operating systems by providing a consistent web browsing experience across them. The Netscape web browser interface was identical on any computer. Netscape later experimented with prototypes of a web-based system which would enable users to access and edit their files anywhere across a network, no matter what computer or operating system they happened to be using. This did not escape the attention of Microsoft, which viewed the commodification of operating systems as a direct threat to its bottom line
Surely the web browser is the least effective application platform available for general use.
Well, if you're thinking of AJAX applications, then there are some serious limitations at the moment, certainly. On the other hand, imagine a world where
everyone used Netscape's file:// navigator to browse their computer's hard drive; one where they launched native applications from the Netscape filer
and used the browser's bookmarks in place of a start menu. Imagine a set of equivalents to the basic windows apps (notepad, paint, etc) bundled with
Netscape.
In such a world, few people would care whether they were running on Windows or Unix or any other operating system. Most people probably wouldn't know and wouldn't care. They'd just want a computer that ran Netscape.
That was Microsoft's nightmare. Not what the browser was, but what it could easily become, and what Netscape had promised to make it become.
And that, as I understand it, is why MS went postal over Netscape.
Chrome OS supports USB flash drives. What's the difference if I hook up a SATA disk behind USB? Would it not look just like a giant as flash drive? You can still store all your data locally. Google knows people need personal backups.
Right. Local storage. The GP was saying (and I paraphrase) "what's the point of local anymore?".
My point wasn't "Google is Evil", but rather "Local is Good".
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I think the main point he's making is that software programs are demonstrably equivalent to Turing machine, lambda calculus expressions and effective methods. Effective methods have never been patentable (I'm not sure if business method patents qualify however) and lambda calculus expressions are unquestionably mathematical expressions, and maths is not patentable.
Oh do behave. His opening point was that the legal community on the whole could do with a deeper understanding of technical issues, in much the same way as the software community could often do with a better grasp of legal issues. At least, that's what I understood from his introduction.
I don't think he said anywhere "all lawyers are technologically ignorant". If he had, I'd have been amongst the first to protest.
Meant to say software. Noticed as soon as I posted. Silly mistake, to be sure :)
You mean "will I please grossly over-simplify the argument so that it becomes easier to ridicule?"
I don't think he misunderstood the court. I think he's saying that the court missed the fundamental point about computers. A judgement like that is a bit like saying that a printing press becomes a new machine whenever you load a new configuration of type into it, and therefore that books should be patentable.
I disagree, Still, if you really think so, I encourage you to comment as part of the Groklaw discussion. I'm sure PoIR is far more capable of defending these odd tangenital points than I am.
I don't think that follows.
The incentives are debatable and are in any event more than offset by the disincentives of having several large companies with patent thickets designed explicitly to stop small inventors from bring a product to market except on their terms.
Indeed. I though TFA was very weak. His points were:
Only the first point is anything resembling an argument, and that one we've heard a dozen times before.
If anyone wants a soild exploration of what should and should not be considered software, and why it ought not to be patentable, I'd recommend PoIR's An Explanation of Computation Theory for Lawyers" over on Groklaw. It's well-researched, well-argued, and informative.
Use both. I can't imagine anything that might tempt me to connect to doubleclick.net, so that goes in the hosts file. That way I'm covered against flash, cookies, javascript, and to a large extent, things that aint been invented yet. It also makes for a shorter RE list in adblock plus (not adblock - the original is, I believe, unmaintained and insecure) which is useful if its going to be checked for every new address to which your browser connects.
Other places. I might actually be interested in the content. So they do go in adblock plus, and I get some fine control over what they serve me.
To be honest, I have no idea. I'm not in the market myself, and the information I have on the subject is based entirely on past discussions on Slashdot.
Certainly, it sounds as if a little more transparency would go a long way toward helping where the developers are concerned.
How about the ones that were produced professionally, and have been blocked by Apple for marketing rather than technical reasons? We've had a few of those reported on Slashdot.
The danger is that when you get a phone that can do all the things that the iPhone bars you from doing, it may gain marketshare quite rapidly at Apple's expense.
My point here isn't "Apple are Evil because they don't let you run anything you like" but rather "Apple have been rejecting apps for no technically valid reason, and this could backfire badly if a phone is launched that makes a feature out of lacking those restrictions."
Like I say, that's not really the point I'm making. But, to be fair, the same problem exists on windows boxes, but with a little care and common sense it's entirely possible to install 3rd party apps without turning your machine into a nest of malware and keyloggers. And that without having MS vet all the apps available,
Sounds fair, so long as keys are not arbitrarily withheld and/or withdrawn. Otherwise, you get the same problem: suppressing useful apps for marketing reasons.
Of course! A commercial phone company selling an Android based phone would only include rubbish apps because... um ... because they're not Apple! Yes! That must be it.
Silly of me to imagine that a competitor might actually want to compete. And maybe bundle software that made it competitive. I guess I'm just getting old...
Yes, yes, yes. Of course they do. But if a day comes when an Android phone has all the cool bits that Apple have been barring from their phones, then it'll be worth the "real" developers while to migrate too...
The driver will be if the iPhone starts loosing marketshare to a platform that is less restrictive in terms of what the customer can do with it. Once that happens, the more mainstream devs will follow, discontented ones first, then all but the hardcore Apple loyalists.
Because using your proprietary control of the platform to play hardball with 3rd party software creators doesn't work so well when a viable alternative exists.
If Apple keep on artificially limiting what the iPhone can do, they're going to drive away developers. The risk is that one day soon, there is going to emerge an Android based phone with a killer set of cool apps, which are composed largely of all the stuff that Apple didn't allow on the iPhone because they saw short term commercial advantage in inconveniencing their customers.
Which might be plausible if the global warming debate had only recently erupted. But since the debate has been raging for a decade or so, that suggests your funding "fad" survived two terms with George W. Bush as president. He always struck me as strongly anti global warming, so I have difficulty imagining a biased supply of government money flowing freely over that time when it ran contrary to the political interests of the party in power.
Sorry, but not convinced.
Mmmm... I'm sure it wouldn't be the first time for a legislative framework to be proposed in order to enable a fledgling industry.
That sounds a lot more plausible as a scenario, but it's quite a long way from being a small matter, as you described it earlier. And this is where I have the problem. Class action lawsuits aren't always the cure-all people sometimes sometimes seem to suppose. Just look at some of the horrific slaps-on-the-wrist handed out to Microsoft.
It also sounds like could computing is not going to be a smart bet until after we've had a cycle of abuse or two. Which doesn't do anything to persuade me from my original conclusion: Local storage and local apps have some compelling advantages over the cloud.
Well, if you're just talking about Google, I don't think your optimisim is entirely unfounded either. There is still a slight concern about data privacy insofar as google likes to index and profile everything, but they do have a track record of playing nice with things like this.
But you were talking about a scenario with lots of cloud service providers, not just Google. And it's hard to see someone like Microsoft entering the arena and playing by Google's rules.
Really though, where I think you are being overly optimistic is in assuming that data portability laws will be a trivial undertaking. That's the step I'd want to see up front, not the specs and protocols.
Yeah, I'm getting bored with this conversation, too. Hey, I know! Let's make some vague suggestion that the other party is wrong and which we are in fact totally unable to support, and let the conversation die while we try and project as much moral superiority as we can.
Yeah, that ought to work.
I have some doubts about that "samll step" of yours :) Get the legislation in place, and then I'll find your scenario
a whole lot more convincing. As long we're leaving the legal framework to be the last step in the sequence ...
well you'll have to battle against all the lobbyists from the companies that see an opportunity to get rich
by renting you access to your own data.
Don't get me wrong - I admire your optimism and all that. But adopting a technology because you have faith that the corporate world to do the right thing, or even that it will see the advantages of playing nice ...
that doesn't strike me as being a strategically sound move.
Yes. Yes I am. I'm getting just as silly as you were in suggesting that Java was in some way flawed because it wouldn't run on every computer on the planet. And for the same reason. That was the point, really.
That's a bit like calling Microsoft a failure because their vision of "A computer on every desk, Microsoft software on every computer" can never be fully realised. I mean there clearly desks that will never have computers, and computers that are never going to run MS software. So if you want to talk about failure to "fully deliver" on something....
Ideals by their very nature are never fully realised. I think Java gets close enough to live up to Sun's vision.
Actually, I'm pretty much content that we've managed to agree that Microsoft did in fact make a concerted attempt to destroy Netscape. Your belief that Netscape was in any case doomed to self-destruction does, I admit, strike me as a little odd. On the other hand it's a point where I'm happy for us to agree to differ.
Well, that's what they've always said, and Java does indeed work like that. There doesn't seem to be any great exercise of faith required, so we can probably forego the misapplied religious terminology in this particular case. Just saying, y'know?
Well, that, sure. Or they might have wanted to write cross platform apps. Or even browser applets. I'm assuming the second two wouldn't somehow disqualify the developer from being a true windows programmer in your eyes. Do tell me if I'm wrong about that.
Very probably true. Pity they couldn't have worked with Sun rather than against them in the matter. If all they wanted was to streamline COM usage then you'd expect that something could have been worked out. The fact that it had to go to litigation always suggests to me that breaking Java's cross-platform capabilities was always part of the aim at Microsoft. YMMV, obviously.
Sweeping generalisation tend to be untrue. But even if we assume you're correct with this one: so what? How would that make a difference?
mmm... let's not rely on that. More sophisticated and less bulk solutions may arise in the future, and with the potential to tamper with the electoral process, it's possible we might see some serious effort going into creating such solutions.
The concern is that you wouldn't need to change anything. "Vote for me or I break your legs. I will know how you vote."
That's an interesting point of view. Entirely untestable, of course, but you're certainly entitled to your opinion. Although I do think that "one hit wonder" unfairly trivialises Netscape.
To be fair, they did a bit more than add a few performance tweaks. MS customisations would have broken the "compile once, run anywhere" concept that was at the heart of Java. And I think that central concept would have been enough to guarantee Java's survival, even without MS trying to "enhance" the language. Still, until we can examine a parallel universe where MS didn't embark on such (possibly pointless) crusades, we're never going to know for sure.
I think that's missing the point. This is how Wikipedia explains it:
Well, if you're thinking of AJAX applications, then there are some serious limitations at the moment, certainly. On the other hand, imagine a world where everyone used Netscape's file:// navigator to browse their computer's hard drive; one where they launched native applications from the Netscape filer and used the browser's bookmarks in place of a start menu. Imagine a set of equivalents to the basic windows apps (notepad, paint, etc) bundled with Netscape.
In such a world, few people would care whether they were running on Windows or Unix or any other operating system. Most people probably wouldn't know and wouldn't care. They'd just want a computer that ran Netscape.
That was Microsoft's nightmare. Not what the browser was, but what it could easily become, and what Netscape had promised to make it become. And that, as I understand it, is why MS went postal over Netscape.
Right. Local storage. The GP was saying (and I paraphrase) "what's the point of local anymore?".
My point wasn't "Google is Evil", but rather "Local is Good".