Microsoft first marketed software as a product to the home user.
No, that's historical revisionism. There were dozens if not hundreds of companies selling similar products at the same time to home and business users. The Apple II, Commodore Pet, S100 computers and the software that ran on them come to mind. They all had wordprocessors, spreadsheets etc. M$ just rode on IBM's coat tails initially.
With the necessity of interroperability leading to an unstable, winner-take-all market; the legitimacy provided by the association with IBM; and software that was as good as, though not better than, the competition; M$ got lucky.
Actually, tab characters carry much MORE useful information than multiple spaces.
Disagree. The difference from spaces could, though usually doesn't, carry an extra bit of information.
They convey the desired level of indentation without forcing any particular size (or even presentation) on the reader.
Spaces don't either. Editors could easily expand/reduce the number of leading spaces in a similar way to variable tab-to-space display conversion, though hanging indents would need to be handled. The fact that very few (zero?) text editors bother doing this is telling.
Some people find that code looks really neat when two whitespaces are used for an indent. Some people have trouble noticing the indentation if it's not 8 whitespaces. Many compromise and use 4. If someone wants to color code indentation but not actually indent, they are free to do so (as silly as that might be).
All of this is true for leading spaces also. However the argument goes far beyond indentation and a pretty printer is the appropriate tool to handle this including comments, long statement splitting, hanging indents, symbol spacing, variable name length changes, keyword case and case consistency. Experienced programmers generally don't care what the indentation is as long as it's consistent. For example, I generally prefer two-space indentation to make better use of screen real estate however if I'm working on code with another code style I'll generally use whatever's there unless the writer was inconsistent. If it's a complete refactor I'll run it through a pretty printer to get the house style.
The primary problem with tabs is that changing the stops can/will mess up a neat group of variable declarations.
No, the primary problem is that spaces and tabs cannot normally be visually distinguished though they act differently. This means that 90%+ programmers and 90%+ text editors use them interchangeably and inconsistently. In particular, beginning programmers and users rightly wonder why something that looks exactly the same on screen acts differently. That's what I mean by error prone. As a result tabs cannot generally be used to adjust indentation in the way you've described. In addition tab's are one of the very few ASCII characters that have different display spacing depending on context - this means that, unlike almost all other characters including newline and much of unicode they can only be processed in context and with higher level knowledge of what the spacing should be. They break programs that assume text column corresponds to display position. This has ramifications in all sorts of areas of text processing where the output of one program with one view of tabs feeds into the input of another program with another view of tabs. Examples are make (where a makefile loses key information when it's editted in a number of otherwise innocuous text editors) or cut (that can't handle text from programs that use tabs to space to position rather than as a separator).
That problem can be solved once and for all by changing the presentation rather than the contents of the file. For example, an editor can treat leading tabs differently from those embedded in a line.
The same could be done with spaces.
It can use empty lines as a seperater so that a group of type\tname will just do the right thing.
No, empty lines can have different semantic meanings depending on the language and the context.
While similar things can be done with any whitespace, keeping space as a literal single whitespace and taking liberties with tab is much less likely to have unfortunate side effects.
Not when pretty much every existing text processing program has a different view of what tabs are. Tabs, if used in the disciplined way you've described, could be usable but they do not give any significant advantage over spaces and have significant disadvantages when not used in a disciplined way. Since re
Do you really want to go back to the time where everyones email had "Not speaking for my employers" pasted into the signature)
Yes. At least then all the fraudulent marketing sock puppets on slashdot would be more legally accountable for their actions. As it is now they can mouth any bullshit and claim it's a personal opinion. Truth in advertising needs more legal teeth.
---
Don't be a programmer-bureaucrat; someone who substitutes marketing buzzwords and software bloat for verifiable improvements.
While I'm not defending this patent, just because the patent is simple to implement should in no way effects if it should be patentable.
Only partially true. The whole raison dêtre of the patent system is to protect work that wouldn't have happened otherwise, either because the work is truly innovative or because it requires significant investment.
If the idea is likely to be independently re-invented (likely if it's simple and true for almost all software patents) or requires no significant investment (likely if it's simple and true for almost all software patents) then no patent should be awarded and interference by the government in the citizen's business is not justified. The fact that the PTO's are choosing to ignore this is just evidence of their bureaucratic empire building.
Besides, the faulty logic that obviousness can't be evaluated after the fact is just bogus, another line of BS the PTO's like to push. Any intelligent adult is perfectly capable of evaluating obviousness and is better equipped to do so when they have all the relevant facts, particularly when they are an expert in the field.
Many ideas are simply ideas "whose time has come" and are going to be independently invented many times. To imply that somebody is being innovative simply because it hasn't been done before is silly.
---
Patents by definition restrict distribution and are incompatible with standards which by definition are supposed to promote distribution. Say no to patents in standards!
Tab characters, as distinct from the tab key, are nothing more than a primitive and error prone text compression method. They should've been put out to pasture years ago.
---
I love the free market zealots think monopoly is a good thing.
Yep, taking $40,000,000,000 per year in monopoly rent with one hand and giving $6,000,000 (0.015%) with the other hand just makes me go so warm and fuzzy inside. They are such a generous company!
---
I'm not worried about the use of DRM. I'm worried about the abuse.
Well for fuck's sake, what would "the right thing" be?
Licenses that aren't manipulative bullshit. Pricing that aren't monopoly rents but actually reflect the true cost of producing the product. Marketing that's honest, rather than being manipulative and deceptive. Products that aren't designed to manipulate the market and lock out even potential competition. Opening all protocols for interoperability. Not manipulating the law with money and influence. Not being in denial about honest criticism. Not trying to lock out even potential competition with DRM and patents. Not pretending that money and influence equals virtue and that greed is good. Need I go on?
Microsoft can't win in your eyes.
They have $40,000,000,000+ per year of catching up to do. Until they give in balance to what they are taking they will continue to be criticised. They are a parasite company, and until they stop being parasites, emotionally manipulative arguments like yours are baseless.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work. It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons. Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
It's not an obvious technique, and it's almost certainly unique and novel.
It's very obvious.
You want to abstract/summarise a non-computer information source automatically using a computer - an obvious task for automation. You've got sound and you've got video. With the current state of the art the computer is not intelligent enough to interpret this information source directly.
What else is the computer going to do except look for loud noises and possibly contrasting lights? Sure, you could come up with Heath Robinson nonsense variations but loud noises are by far the most obvious approach.
With the stroke of a pen the USPTO has now blocked any realistic competition in yet another area for decades to come, retarding the state of the art.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work. It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons. Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
The patent covers a specific method for producing RSS ads.
...
And this patent does not cover RSS advertising in general. It covers Google's technique for doing it.
A standard PTO booster argument: "It's specific, therefore it's okay".
Nonsense.
Taking a specific example of a general principle in common use doesn't mystically make it original or inventive.
The PTO's are using this argument as a means of growing their bureaucratic empires by vastly increasing the number of patents and thus their income.
---
Patents by definition restrict distribution and are incompatible with standards which by definition are supposed to promote distribution. Say no to patents in standards!
I would reply that I said 'Pretty Much.' I would also reply that true altruism is a very rare trait in human beings.
Bullshit, everybody is altruistic sometimes.
It's just enlightened self interest. When a boy scout helps a little old lady across the road, that's altruism. When Carnegie endowed CMU, that's altruism. When Gates endows third world health, that's altruism. When a homeless man tells another one where to get food, that's altruism. When a F/OSS source programmer writes one of the 100,000 programs on sourceforge, that's altruism.
I for one want to live in an altruistic world, not the sort of dog-eat-dog, push the underdog down dystopia that many corporate types try to push.
After all, putting others ahead of yourself is one of the most assured ways to not live, and therefore, to not reproduce. Therefore, people who are altruistic would reproduce less, and contribute to the gene pool whatever genes (if any) lead to the increase in altruism.
You are ignoring the fact that we share many genes. By helping you I help many of my genes to survive. The simple greed-is-good mantra people like you push is nonsense.
And that's completely ignoring the statistics of open source and IP in general, where all it takes is one person in a million being altruistic and you can get something happening. Software/IP only has to be written once and it can be copied a billion times. The broken IP model we are currently stuck with and the vested interests that push it completely ignores that.
---
Every new patent is another opportunity for a lawyer to make money at the expense of the community - real life nomic.
Copying a manual process onto a computer is in no sense creative, despite what zealots like you might claim.
Copyright is the appropriate protection.
---
Patents by definition restrict distribution and are incompatible with standards which by definition are supposed to promote distribution. Say no to patents in standards!
Why do some Operating Systems never show uptimes above 497 days ?
The method that Netcraft uses to determine the uptime of a server is bounded by an upper limit of 497 days for some Operating Systems (see above). It is therefore not possible to see uptimes for these systems that go beyond this upper limit. Although we could in theory attempt to compute the true uptime for OS's with this upper limit by monitoring for restarts at the expected time, we prefer not to do this as it can be inaccurate and error prone.
In other words, it's not an OS problem as your quote accidentally suggested, it's a measurement technique problem.
I'm convinced that the people who gripe so much about copyright law are those who would never create something themselves worth stealing.
I'm a programmer, I've created many copyrighted works worth stealing and I want copyright circumscribed. In general the people pushing for more copyright are the parasites, the lawyers and marketing organisations who think they are entitled to profit off of the creators' work.
The thing you are missing is that all creators build on the work of others (Isaac Newton: "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.") and even for brilliant creators there is a tradeoff between the benefit of the works they create and the cost of the works they consume. Even creative people consume vastly more than they create.
they offer the exact same protection and profit potential to individuals.
Like it or not, protection of the individual creator is irrelevant. The purpose of copyright law is not to guarantee a profit to the creator, it's "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing, for limited Times, to Authors and Inventors, the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.". Background here.
If a ten year copyright term promotes progress to the benefit of the public at large and to the detriment of a small number of authors, so be it.
I do wish some science and actual, honest-to-goodness factual, objective evidence for various copyright terms would enter the debate though, rather than the handwaving that all participants, including you, are currently engaging in.
---
Scientific, evidence based IP law. Now there's a thought.
Agreed. Both BSD and GPL are vastly superior to the average closed source license. I am comfortable using both though I prefer GPL.
If somebody wants to complain, closed source licenses are what they should be complaining about, particularly the deliberately deceptive and manipulative ones.
---
GNU/Linux, the world's #1 OS by hits. M$ windows #2. Open Office the world's #1 office suite. M$ office #2. Apache, the world's #1 web server. M$ IIS #2. Evolution, the world's #1 email client, M$ outlook #2. Unfortunately mozilla family browsers are still #2, M$ internet explorer is #1, but watch firefox (#3) grow.
OP basically said that automating something shouldn't be patentable. That is wrong.
If it's a simple transcription (copying!) of the manual process it shouldn't be patentable.
To pretend that a computer, a tool for encoding intellectual work, mystically makes something special is nonsense.
And that's ignoring the completely unproven idea that software patents and government interference in the citizen's business is needed to encourage "software innovation".
---
I love the free market zealots who think monopoly is a good thing.
Isn't that pretty much the (internal) argument that a lot of/.'ers make in regards pirating Microsoft software? Bill Gates is filthy rich, what me worry?
Nonsense. You're creating a straw man; almost no/.'ers make that argument.
They mostly argue on the basis of badly broken IP law, shady M$ business practices and shoddy M$ products.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work. It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons. Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
Grow some balls yourself and accept the fact that M$ has a history of manipulation and underhanded tactics. They are a lawyer driven company; they think and act as if anything legal is ethical.
---
All F/OSS licenses are good and superior to the average closed source license.
Should someone only be rewarded for the financial investment they put into creating a new product and not be rewarded for their time put into a new product?
Patents are for encouraging innovation for the benefit of society at large, not rewarding somebody at the expense of the general population. If their business model is bad, tough.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work. It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons. Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
Remove copyright, add patents, reform the patent system.
And what we're getting instead is extended copyright, more patents and token patent reform. I wonder why many software creators think IP as implemented is crap?
Personally, I'd be completely happy with software copyrights and software patents, but only if there was scientific, objective evidence for these things to be an improvement on the multitude of alternatives, not the hand waving, self serving nonsense that the USPTO calls evidence. It's hardly even numerical, let alone evidence of correlation, causation or provable deniability.
"Industry has grown, patents have grown, therefore all patents in all industries all the time are good." Evidence? Don't make me laugh. They really are a bunch of self-serving assholes.
And that's ignoring the fact that patents and copyrights are creations of the mind. There is an infinite number of possibilities for encouraging intellectual endeavour. People are engaging in tunnel vision to think "patents" and "copyrights" as currently implemented are the only possibilities.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work. It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons. Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
Slashdot Mirror
There are several ways where GPL code can enter a company against the intent of the company. ...
There are several ways where any licensed code can enter a company against the intent of the company. ...
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
Microsoft first marketed software as a product to the home user.
No, that's historical revisionism. There were dozens if not hundreds of companies selling similar products at the same time to home and business users. The Apple II, Commodore Pet, S100 computers and the software that ran on them come to mind. They all had wordprocessors, spreadsheets etc. M$ just rode on IBM's coat tails initially.
With the necessity of interroperability leading to an unstable, winner-take-all market; the legitimacy provided by the association with IBM; and software that was as good as, though not better than, the competition; M$ got lucky.
---
Are you a marketing sock puppet?
Actually, tab characters carry much MORE useful information than multiple spaces.
Disagree. The difference from spaces could, though usually doesn't, carry an extra bit of information.
They convey the desired level of indentation without forcing any particular size (or even presentation) on the reader.
Spaces don't either. Editors could easily expand/reduce the number of leading spaces in a similar way to variable tab-to-space display conversion, though hanging indents would need to be handled. The fact that very few (zero?) text editors bother doing this is telling.
Some people find that code looks really neat when two whitespaces are used for an indent. Some people have trouble noticing the indentation if it's not 8 whitespaces. Many compromise and use 4. If someone wants to color code indentation but not actually indent, they are free to do so (as silly as that might be).
All of this is true for leading spaces also. However the argument goes far beyond indentation and a pretty printer is the appropriate tool to handle this including comments, long statement splitting, hanging indents, symbol spacing, variable name length changes, keyword case and case consistency. Experienced programmers generally don't care what the indentation is as long as it's consistent. For example, I generally prefer two-space indentation to make better use of screen real estate however if I'm working on code with another code style I'll generally use whatever's there unless the writer was inconsistent. If it's a complete refactor I'll run it through a pretty printer to get the house style.
The primary problem with tabs is that changing the stops can/will mess up a neat group of variable declarations.
No, the primary problem is that spaces and tabs cannot normally be visually distinguished though they act differently. This means that 90%+ programmers and 90%+ text editors use them interchangeably and inconsistently. In particular, beginning programmers and users rightly wonder why something that looks exactly the same on screen acts differently. That's what I mean by error prone. As a result tabs cannot generally be used to adjust indentation in the way you've described. In addition tab's are one of the very few ASCII characters that have different display spacing depending on context - this means that, unlike almost all other characters including newline and much of unicode they can only be processed in context and with higher level knowledge of what the spacing should be. They break programs that assume text column corresponds to display position. This has ramifications in all sorts of areas of text processing where the output of one program with one view of tabs feeds into the input of another program with another view of tabs. Examples are make (where a makefile loses key information when it's editted in a number of otherwise innocuous text editors) or cut (that can't handle text from programs that use tabs to space to position rather than as a separator).
That problem can be solved once and for all by changing the presentation rather than the contents of the file. For example, an editor can treat leading tabs differently from those embedded in a line.
The same could be done with spaces.
It can use empty lines as a seperater so that a group of type\tname will just do the right thing.
No, empty lines can have different semantic meanings depending on the language and the context.
While similar things can be done with any whitespace, keeping space as a literal single whitespace and taking liberties with tab is much less likely to have unfortunate side effects.
Not when pretty much every existing text processing program has a different view of what tabs are. Tabs, if used in the disciplined way you've described, could be usable but they do not give any significant advantage over spaces and have significant disadvantages when not used in a disciplined way. Since re
Do you really want to go back to the time where everyones email had "Not speaking for my employers" pasted into the signature)
Yes. At least then all the fraudulent marketing sock puppets on slashdot would be more legally accountable for their actions. As it is now they can mouth any bullshit and claim it's a personal opinion. Truth in advertising needs more legal teeth.
---
Don't be a programmer-bureaucrat; someone who substitutes marketing buzzwords and software bloat for verifiable improvements.
FAT file system
Going to admit you're wrong now?
---
Any large public or private organisation paying recurring, per-seat licensing for software is being economically stupid.
While I'm not defending this patent, just because the patent is simple to implement should in no way effects if it should be patentable.
Only partially true. The whole raison dêtre of the patent system is to protect work that wouldn't have happened otherwise, either because the work is truly innovative or because it requires significant investment.
If the idea is likely to be independently re-invented (likely if it's simple and true for almost all software patents) or requires no significant investment (likely if it's simple and true for almost all software patents) then no patent should be awarded and interference by the government in the citizen's business is not justified. The fact that the PTO's are choosing to ignore this is just evidence of their bureaucratic empire building.
Besides, the faulty logic that obviousness can't be evaluated after the fact is just bogus, another line of BS the PTO's like to push. Any intelligent adult is perfectly capable of evaluating obviousness and is better equipped to do so when they have all the relevant facts, particularly when they are an expert in the field.
Many ideas are simply ideas "whose time has come" and are going to be independently invented many times. To imply that somebody is being innovative simply because it hasn't been done before is silly.
---
Patents by definition restrict distribution and are incompatible with standards which by definition are supposed to promote distribution. Say no to patents in standards!
How many bogus patents the USPTO rejects is irrelevant.
It's how many bogus patents they accept that's the problem.
---
You communist! Breathing shared air!
Tab characters, as distinct from the tab key, are nothing more than a primitive and error prone text compression method. They should've been put out to pasture years ago.
---
I love the free market zealots think monopoly is a good thing.
Yep, taking $40,000,000,000 per year in monopoly rent with one hand and giving $6,000,000 (0.015%) with the other hand just makes me go so warm and fuzzy inside. They are such a generous company!
---
I'm not worried about the use of DRM. I'm worried about the abuse.
Well for fuck's sake, what would "the right thing" be?
Licenses that aren't manipulative bullshit. Pricing that aren't monopoly rents but actually reflect the true cost of producing the product. Marketing that's honest, rather than being manipulative and deceptive. Products that aren't designed to manipulate the market and lock out even potential competition. Opening all protocols for interoperability. Not manipulating the law with money and influence. Not being in denial about honest criticism. Not trying to lock out even potential competition with DRM and patents. Not pretending that money and influence equals virtue and that greed is good. Need I go on?
Microsoft can't win in your eyes.
They have $40,000,000,000+ per year of catching up to do. Until they give in balance to what they are taking they will continue to be criticised. They are a parasite company, and until they stop being parasites, emotionally manipulative arguments like yours are baseless.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
It's not an obvious technique, and it's almost certainly unique and novel.
It's very obvious.
You want to abstract/summarise a non-computer information source automatically using a computer - an obvious task for automation. You've got sound and you've got video. With the current state of the art the computer is not intelligent enough to interpret this information source directly.
What else is the computer going to do except look for loud noises and possibly contrasting lights? Sure, you could come up with Heath Robinson nonsense variations but loud noises are by far the most obvious approach.
With the stroke of a pen the USPTO has now blocked any realistic competition in yet another area for decades to come, retarding the state of the art.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
"Brass monkey"
Urban legend. Many phrases like that are.
---
I'm not worried about the use of DRM. I'm worried about the abuse.
The patent covers a specific method for producing RSS ads.
And this patent does not cover RSS advertising in general. It covers Google's technique for doing it.
A standard PTO booster argument: "It's specific, therefore it's okay".
Nonsense.
Taking a specific example of a general principle in common use doesn't mystically make it original or inventive.
The PTO's are using this argument as a means of growing their bureaucratic empires by vastly increasing the number of patents and thus their income.
---
Patents by definition restrict distribution and are incompatible with standards which by definition are supposed to promote distribution. Say no to patents in standards!
I would reply that I said 'Pretty Much.' I would also reply that true altruism is a very rare trait in human beings.
Bullshit, everybody is altruistic sometimes.
It's just enlightened self interest. When a boy scout helps a little old lady across the road, that's altruism. When Carnegie endowed CMU, that's altruism. When Gates endows third world health, that's altruism. When a homeless man tells another one where to get food, that's altruism. When a F/OSS source programmer writes one of the 100,000 programs on sourceforge, that's altruism.
I for one want to live in an altruistic world, not the sort of dog-eat-dog, push the underdog down dystopia that many corporate types try to push.
After all, putting others ahead of yourself is one of the most assured ways to not live, and therefore, to not reproduce. Therefore, people who are altruistic would reproduce less, and contribute to the gene pool whatever genes (if any) lead to the increase in altruism.
You are ignoring the fact that we share many genes. By helping you I help many of my genes to survive. The simple greed-is-good mantra people like you push is nonsense.
And that's completely ignoring the statistics of open source and IP in general, where all it takes is one person in a million being altruistic and you can get something happening. Software/IP only has to be written once and it can be copied a billion times. The broken IP model we are currently stuck with and the vested interests that push it completely ignores that.
---
Every new patent is another opportunity for a lawyer to make money at the expense of the community - real life nomic.
Marketing divisions?
Will the front page of the USPTO do?
The USPTO really are a bunch of assholes.
---
90% of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race and so purely parasitic.
It is, if noone had done it before.
Copying a manual process onto a computer is in no sense creative, despite what zealots like you might claim.
Copyright is the appropriate protection.
---
Patents by definition restrict distribution and are incompatible with standards which by definition are supposed to promote distribution. Say no to patents in standards!
You left out some important context:
Why do some Operating Systems never show uptimes above 497 days ?
The method that Netcraft uses to determine the uptime of a server is bounded by an upper limit of 497 days for some Operating Systems (see above). It is therefore not possible to see uptimes for these systems that go beyond this upper limit. Although we could in theory attempt to compute the true uptime for OS's with this upper limit by monitoring for restarts at the expected time, we prefer not to do this as it can be inaccurate and error prone.
In other words, it's not an OS problem as your quote accidentally suggested, it's a measurement technique problem.
I'm convinced that the people who gripe so much about copyright law are those who would never create something themselves worth stealing.
I'm a programmer, I've created many copyrighted works worth stealing and I want copyright circumscribed. In general the people pushing for more copyright are the parasites, the lawyers and marketing organisations who think they are entitled to profit off of the creators' work.
The thing you are missing is that all creators build on the work of others (Isaac Newton: "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.") and even for brilliant creators there is a tradeoff between the benefit of the works they create and the cost of the works they consume. Even creative people consume vastly more than they create.
they offer the exact same protection and profit potential to individuals.
Like it or not, protection of the individual creator is irrelevant. The purpose of copyright law is not to guarantee a profit to the creator, it's "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing, for limited Times, to Authors and Inventors, the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.". Background here.
If a ten year copyright term promotes progress to the benefit of the public at large and to the detriment of a small number of authors, so be it.
I do wish some science and actual, honest-to-goodness factual, objective evidence for various copyright terms would enter the debate though, rather than the handwaving that all participants, including you, are currently engaging in.
---
Scientific, evidence based IP law. Now there's a thought.
This whole thread is rediculous.
Agreed. Both BSD and GPL are vastly superior to the average closed source license. I am comfortable using both though I prefer GPL.
If somebody wants to complain, closed source licenses are what they should be complaining about, particularly the deliberately deceptive and manipulative ones.
---
GNU/Linux, the world's #1 OS by hits. M$ windows #2.
Open Office the world's #1 office suite. M$ office #2.
Apache, the world's #1 web server. M$ IIS #2.
Evolution, the world's #1 email client, M$ outlook #2.
Unfortunately mozilla family browsers are still #2, M$ internet explorer is #1, but watch firefox (#3) grow.
OP basically said that automating something shouldn't be patentable. That is wrong.
If it's a simple transcription (copying!) of the manual process it shouldn't be patentable.
To pretend that a computer, a tool for encoding intellectual work, mystically makes something special is nonsense.
And that's ignoring the completely unproven idea that software patents and government interference in the citizen's business is needed to encourage "software innovation".
---
I love the free market zealots who think monopoly is a good thing.
Isn't that pretty much the (internal) argument that a lot of /.'ers make in regards pirating Microsoft software? Bill Gates is filthy rich, what me worry?
Nonsense. You're creating a straw man; almost no /.'ers make that argument.
They mostly argue on the basis of badly broken IP law, shady M$ business practices and shoddy M$ products.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
Grow some balls yourself and accept the fact that M$ has a history of manipulation and underhanded tactics. They are a lawyer driven company; they think and act as if anything legal is ethical.
---
All F/OSS licenses are good and superior to the average closed source license.
Should someone only be rewarded for the financial investment they put into creating a new product and not be rewarded for their time put into a new product?
Patents are for encouraging innovation for the benefit of society at large, not rewarding somebody at the expense of the general population. If their business model is bad, tough.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
Remove copyright, add patents, reform the patent system.
And what we're getting instead is extended copyright, more patents and token patent reform. I wonder why many software creators think IP as implemented is crap?
Personally, I'd be completely happy with software copyrights and software patents, but only if there was scientific, objective evidence for these things to be an improvement on the multitude of alternatives, not the hand waving, self serving nonsense that the USPTO calls evidence. It's hardly even numerical, let alone evidence of correlation, causation or provable deniability.
"Industry has grown, patents have grown, therefore all patents in all industries all the time are good." Evidence? Don't make me laugh. They really are a bunch of self-serving assholes.
And that's ignoring the fact that patents and copyrights are creations of the mind. There is an infinite number of possibilities for encouraging intellectual endeavour. People are engaging in tunnel vision to think "patents" and "copyrights" as currently implemented are the only possibilities.
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It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
Hi, maybe you should read the replies to the comments you reply to.. before you reply.
True. Problem was I read at a threshold of +2 and didn't see the relevant comments at the time. Next time I'll know better. Mod me redundant...
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Keep your options open!