Even though the art of software engineering certainly is "useful" allowing patents might not "promote its progress" (which I believe to be the case.) In that case, the constitutionally prudent position of Congress should be to leave it unpatentable.
it would not be fair to have a special exemption for one type of invention and not another.
What's the US constitution say? Either:
All types of invention are created equal, with the right to be patented,...
or rather
Congress shall have Power To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Inventors the exclusive Right to their Discoveries
Do you think the constitution should be changed on that point?
Finally, what we are talking about are property rights, which are generally protected in our western societies.
Patents are only property if they're valid. "Software as such" cannot be patented under the European Patent Convention. Since you rather want to talk of "process patents" I note that in the examples you give, the entire "process" consists in a general-purpose computer running software. I think they're great examples of what unpatentable "software as such" means. Unfortunately, the European Patent Office is more interested in its "customers" - the big patenters - than in the general public, and has made some really twisted interpretations of what "software as such" means.
Would you want someone to move in and take something that belongs to you, and not pay compensation?
What you describe sounds like "breaking. entering and stealing". That's (deliberately?) deceptive language when describing patents. Acacia Technologies can use their patents to stop me using software that I developed completely independently, or, as they in fact do, demand 2% of gross revenue from web-streaming companies. Who is taking something that doesn't belong to them without compensation?
Whenever you hear half the symphony orchestra join those jagged dissonant minor chords, you know there's something deadly just around the corner. How hard can it be?
I'll give you a full apology if and only if the Danish People's Party actually opposes the VK government on this issue.
How about "they have been opposing the VK government for a long time" ? I suppose I can take it in danish since we're the only ones in this discussion:
DF var modstandere i EU-parlamentet i '03. Tjek FFII's scorecard efter 1.-behandlingen i Europarl i september '03. Sammenlign Camre (DF) med Riis-Jørgensen (V).
DF var modstandere før EU-valget i sommers:
Kenneth Kristensen (DF) udtaler: "DF er imod softwarepatenter"her (Fra juni '04, tjek også Camre og Messerschmidt)
DF er modstandere i Folketinget:
Den danske regering har ikke længere opbakning i Folketinget til støtte for patenter på software.
Det er situationen, efter Socialdemokraterne på grund af valgkampen har trukket sin støtte tilbage.
[...]
Alternativet for regeringen ville være at støtte sig op ad Dansk Folkeparti, som man gør i en lang række andre sager, men her er ingen hjælp at hente.
- Vi er modstandere af patenter på software, og det er vi stadigvæk uanset, hvad Socialdemokraterne gør.
her (24/5 '05)
Denne seneste afstemning i Europa-udvalget har været med til at forhindre at kommissionens såkaldte "kompromis-forslag" blev vedtaget i Ministerrådet. Dermed har EU-parlamentet fået tid til at kræve processen genstartet, et stort skridt fremad ift. at skulle ændre i det meget ensidige forslag med absolut flertal ved en 2.-behandling.
Du kan jo give en øl hjemme - der kommer jeg jo alligevel.
Be honest: you just invented that little "fact", right?
No I didn't. Please note that the Danish People's Party votes against the government in this matter. If you hadn't flamed me before checking your facts I might even have dug out a link on that for you.
Yeah, the missiles had only 10 minutes to touchdown in Denmark. You americans would have had lived all of 20 minutes longer. We were so much braver than you.
Anyways, we were not scared enough of the soviets. US nukes were all that kept the poor polish grunts off our beaches, but did we want any of them in our country? No. NO! NO! (Huge protests etc. etc.)
The danish Social Democrats just denounced Gates' threats
in a press
release.
The social democrats control whether software patents have
a majority or not in the danish parliament.
Did not every serious observer, from John Kerry to MI5, believe that Saddam had WMD's prior to the war?
How about Robin Cook, british minister of foreign affairs? The WMD evidence was unconvincing, but up until his resignation I saw the slim possibility that "maybe the high-ups know something that's too secret to tell us." Then he resigned saying:
Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of that term - namely, a credible device capable of being delivered against strategic city targets. It probably does still have biological toxins and battlefield chemical munitions. But it has had them since the 1980s when the US sold Saddam the anthrax agents and the then British government built his chemical and munitions factories.
That really put the WMD argument off my list of reasons to invade Iraq. I mean, our intel is so secret we can't even tell the british foreign minister. Really.
You were not only lied to, you let yourself be lied to. It's not that hard to hit news.bbc.co.uk and draw your own conclusions.
The question "What is Art?" has always seemed boring to me - at best a battle of definitions, at worst just noise.
I live a new and better life since I switched to "What do I Like?". It's much more relevant to me, and if people disagree enough to care about it, at least the discussion is unlikely to bore.
Today i just finished installing Mandrake 10 on his main computer, tomarrow i get to begin converting marketing support.
Yeah, Mdk very nice. Just wondering: Don't they run MS Office or something? How do you handle that?
Also, I don't find Mdk that stable - of course the kernel hardly ever crashes, but sometimes KDE freezes which isn't much different to the average Joe.
At least the writer of this article isn't biased.:)
Your smiley says it very well. The guy admits to being strongly biased, but he does it in a very open and slightly humourous way. I much prefer news written that way to cool "objective" "neutral" writing that's choc full of spin anyway - probably mostly unintentional. If nothing else we know where he's coming from.
My wife thinks they should have a web site that has the forms filled out and a little button, "I agree" or "make changes".
It works like that in Denmark. When you get your tax form it has an account of taxes paid/due and a password for the tax department web site. If it's complete you won't have to lift a finger, if you have unreported income/deductions you can fill out the form through www, the phone (voice response) or simple snail mail. The privacy implications are staggering, but I try to keep the concerns confined to the back of my mind. Heh.
Anyways, the NO PRIVACY is not completely true, there's privacy enough for lots of untaxed "black work". Ask any dane.
The defense of rights requires wealth, in other words, democracy and freedom are expensive.
No. The defense of rights creates wealth. All experience shows that the rule of law encourages investment and entrepeneurship, and that the wealth grows even more when the laws governing its distribution are influenced by those who live under them.
Of course, most (all?) well-run democracies have a lot of good-paying jobs, but cause and effect are rather intertwined in that matter.
If you plot the cycles vs. the starting conditions, you get this beautiful graph of the data starting at a single point, then branching, and again, faster and faster until it forms into pure chaos...
Then we can just have ISPs drop all packets from the relevant IPs and the rest of us can go on without having stupid anti-terror laws dragged over our heads.
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today."
Imagine if we could, as a global economy, say "You don't honor human rights, you don't honor worker's rights to unionize, and you don't meet environmental standards. Therefore we won't trade with you."
They are using wireless communications and unshielded electronics near suspected bomb devices. Bombs that are set off wirelessly.
And if the bomb goes off, so what? The whole idea is that they stay at safe distance while the robot dumps C4 on the device. Sure, a few robots may get blown up, but since the robots are now $1k instead of $250k (and there when you need them) I think the troops feel ok about it.
Right now Turkey is extremely sensitive to criticism about human rights violations since they are applying for EU membership. This is quite controversial, so it's easy to find politicians who could have an interest in bringing this case to the forefront. Try to find the representatives involved in foreign affairs.
Disclaimer: I'm a supporter of Turkey's EU membership, but I'm an even greater supporter of free speech.
When in Germany, take notice
on
A New Elena Story
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
of the distribution of new and old buildings in the city centres. In many places you'll find lots of old buildings, and then suddenly 3 or 5 houses in fifties/sixties style. That's a WWII Ground zero.
Elsewhere downtown is mostly newer houses dotted with small clusters of stuff looking like 1880-1930. That's the hard hit places. I've also walked the wooded hills around Kaiserslautern where you'll often find those little round waterholes size ~4m. (10-15 ft). That's bomb craters - according to an old guy who lived there "they're bigger when new". Kinda tells something about why the idea of war is so repulsive to the average german.
Slashdot Mirror
Even though the art of software engineering certainly is "useful" allowing patents might not "promote its progress" (which I believe to be the case.) In that case, the constitutionally prudent position of Congress should be to leave it unpatentable.
What's the US constitution say? Either:
All types of invention are created equal, with the right to be patented,...
or rather
Congress shall have Power To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Inventors the exclusive Right to their Discoveries
Do you think the constitution should be changed on that point?
Patents are only property if they're valid. "Software as such" cannot be patented under the European Patent Convention. Since you rather want to talk of "process patents" I note that in the examples you give, the entire "process" consists in a general-purpose computer running software. I think they're great examples of what unpatentable "software as such" means. Unfortunately, the European Patent Office is more interested in its "customers" - the big patenters - than in the general public, and has made some really twisted interpretations of what "software as such" means.
Would you want someone to move in and take something that belongs to you, and not pay compensation?
What you describe sounds like "breaking. entering and stealing". That's (deliberately?) deceptive language when describing patents. Acacia Technologies can use their patents to stop me using software that I developed completely independently, or, as they in fact do, demand 2% of gross revenue from web-streaming companies. Who is taking something that doesn't belong to them without compensation?
Whenever you hear half the symphony orchestra join those jagged dissonant minor chords, you know there's something deadly just around the corner. How hard can it be?
How about "they have been opposing the VK government for a long time" ? I suppose I can take it in danish since we're the only ones in this discussion:
DF var modstandere i EU-parlamentet i '03. Tjek FFII's scorecard efter 1.-behandlingen i Europarl i september '03. Sammenlign Camre (DF) med Riis-Jørgensen (V).
DF var modstandere før EU-valget i sommers:
Kenneth Kristensen (DF) udtaler: "DF er imod softwarepatenter" her (Fra juni '04, tjek også Camre og Messerschmidt)
DF er modstandere i Folketinget:
Den danske regering har ikke længere opbakning i Folketinget til støtte for patenter på software.
Det er situationen, efter Socialdemokraterne på grund af valgkampen har trukket sin støtte tilbage. [...] Alternativet for regeringen ville være at støtte sig op ad Dansk Folkeparti, som man gør i en lang række andre sager, men her er ingen hjælp at hente.
- Vi er modstandere af patenter på software, og det er vi stadigvæk uanset, hvad Socialdemokraterne gør. her (24/5 '05)
Denne seneste afstemning i Europa-udvalget har været med til at forhindre at kommissionens såkaldte "kompromis-forslag" blev vedtaget i Ministerrådet. Dermed har EU-parlamentet fået tid til at kræve processen genstartet, et stort skridt fremad ift. at skulle ændre i det meget ensidige forslag med absolut flertal ved en 2.-behandling.
Du kan jo give en øl hjemme - der kommer jeg jo alligevel.
In the danish legal system typical EULAs are not enforcible - the standard copyright rules for software apply. So what if I run Office on WINE?
No I didn't. Please note that the Danish People's Party votes against the government in this matter. If you hadn't flamed me before checking your facts I might even have dug out a link on that for you.
Jeg tror du skylder mig en undskyldning Peter :-)
Yeah, the missiles had only 10 minutes to touchdown in Denmark. You americans would have had lived all of 20 minutes longer. We were so much braver than you.
Anyways, we were not scared enough of the soviets. US nukes were all that kept the poor polish grunts off our beaches, but did we want any of them in our country? No. NO! NO! (Huge protests etc. etc.)
The danish Social Democrats just denounced Gates' threats in a press release. The social democrats control whether software patents have a majority or not in the danish parliament.
How about Robin Cook, british minister of foreign affairs? The WMD evidence was unconvincing, but up until his resignation I saw the slim possibility that "maybe the high-ups know something that's too secret to tell us." Then he resigned saying:
That really put the WMD argument off my list of reasons to invade Iraq. I mean, our intel is so secret we can't even tell the british foreign minister. Really.
You were not only lied to, you let yourself be lied to. It's not that hard to hit news.bbc.co.uk and draw your own conclusions.
I live a new and better life since I switched to "What do I Like?". It's much more relevant to me, and if people disagree enough to care about it, at least the discussion is unlikely to bore.
Yeah, Mdk very nice. Just wondering: Don't they run MS Office or something? How do you handle that?
Also, I don't find Mdk that stable - of course the kernel hardly ever crashes, but sometimes KDE freezes which isn't much different to the average Joe.
Your smiley says it very well. The guy admits to being strongly biased, but he does it in a very open and slightly humourous way. I much prefer news written that way to cool "objective" "neutral" writing that's choc full of spin anyway - probably mostly unintentional. If nothing else we know where he's coming from.
It works like that in Denmark. When you get your tax form it has an account of taxes paid/due and a password for the tax department web site. If it's complete you won't have to lift a finger, if you have unreported income/deductions you can fill out the form through www, the phone (voice response) or simple snail mail. The privacy implications are staggering, but I try to keep the concerns confined to the back of my mind. Heh.
Anyways, the NO PRIVACY is not completely true, there's privacy enough for lots of untaxed "black work". Ask any dane.
How hard can it be to spell R2-D2?? OTOH, spelling AC/DC is pretty hard
That's 336 K for physicists.
No. The defense of rights creates wealth. All experience shows that the rule of law encourages investment and entrepeneurship, and that the wealth grows even more when the laws governing its distribution are influenced by those who live under them.
Of course, most (all?) well-run democracies have a lot of good-paying jobs, but cause and effect are rather intertwined in that matter.
It's called a "Feigenbaum Tree" or Bifurcation diagram
Then we can just have ISPs drop all packets from the relevant IPs and the rest of us can go on without having stupid anti-terror laws dragged over our heads.
-- Bill Gates, 1991
Didn't work in North Korea. Didn't work in Cuba.
They are using wireless communications and unshielded electronics near suspected bomb devices. Bombs that are set off wirelessly.
And if the bomb goes off, so what? The whole idea is that they stay at safe distance while the robot dumps C4 on the device. Sure, a few robots may get blown up, but since the robots are now $1k instead of $250k (and there when you need them) I think the troops feel ok about it.
It means Micro ElectroMechanical System and Surface Acoustic Wave to me, but I'm really not sure. Care to help?
Right now Turkey is extremely sensitive to criticism about human rights violations since they are applying for EU membership. This is quite controversial, so it's easy to find politicians who could have an interest in bringing this case to the forefront. Try to find the representatives involved in foreign affairs.
Disclaimer: I'm a supporter of Turkey's EU membership, but I'm an even greater supporter of free speech.
Elsewhere downtown is mostly newer houses dotted with small clusters of stuff looking like 1880-1930. That's the hard hit places. I've also walked the wooded hills around Kaiserslautern where you'll often find those little round waterholes size ~4m. (10-15 ft). That's bomb craters - according to an old guy who lived there "they're bigger when new". Kinda tells something about why the idea of war is so repulsive to the average german.