This is how the patent system was first envisaged as working. Say you're a penniless inventor. You're skint because you've just spent your life savings developing your latest widget which will change the world as we know it. The only one in the world is right there in your workshop.
Now one way that you can make money out of your invention is to persuade a backer to lend you enough money so you can afford the tools and materials to start building it. But in order to do that, you need to convince your sponsor -- who is in all probability a banker or financier, not a scientist or an engineer -- that you can earn enough money by selling your invention to eventually pay them back, and that requires either an unparallelled degree of chutzpah or some kind of official document stating the worth of your invention. Another way is to get someone else to build your invention for you. But in order to do that, you will have to tell them how to make it -- and once they know that, they can cut you out of the loop. They have the invention, they can afford to make and sell it, why should you get anything?
The patent system was set up to solve both these problems. You demonstrate your invention to a trustworthy body, and say that you are prepared to share it with the world at large; and in return, you are given a copy of an official letter which describes it in full and states that you are the true inventor. The original is held in a library where anyone can look at it. This letter also grants you, for a limited time, exclusive control over the commercial application of your idea. Now you can seek assistance, confident that you will be able to earn the true worth of your invention: a group of experts have attested to the fact that it really works (so nobody can think you are trying to rip them off with vapourware), and nobody else can claim it as their invention and rip you off. Then, after you have had a fair chance to get rich off your invention, it gets formally released so everyone can have a bite of the cherry -- which is your little way of saying "thank you" for all the inventions and discoveries which have come before and from which you have already benefitted; such as fire, tools, agriculture, sanitation, electricity, and so forth.
If your invention is a piece of software, which is something which can be reproduced at no cost, then you are by definition not too poor to make it. But, additionally, some things should never be patentable. Mathematical processes, for one. What if integration were the subject of a patent claim? Integration is a mathematical concept that crops up time and time again in the real world. Would you have to pay a royalty every time you poured a liquid from one container into another? What if subtracting one were patented, and the patent holder refused absolutely to licence it? Would adding one and subtracting two be permitted as a work-around? Software is just a formalisation of a mathematical process.
The most fundamental thing wrong with the US patent office today is that patent applications are not being properly tested. I believe firstly that the requirement to produce a working prototype should be reinstated. A patent application not supported by a prototype is nothing more than a work of science fiction -- and in any case, if you are not good enough to build a prototype, then perhaps you do not deserve to be recognised as an inventor. The question of licencing needs to be addressed -- I firmly believe in non-discriminatory licencing, in other words that a patent should be licenced to everybody, and everybody for the same price, or nobody. Additionally, a procedure needs to be created for verifying that an invention is original -- and for dealing with exceptions. Since this is an example of civil rather than criminal law, the terms "innocent" and "guilty" do not really apply, so the question of burden of proof is a thorny one. Finally, there need to be clear and unambiguous rules about what can and what cannot be patented; and, for the inevitable case of an invention which is so new that none of the existing rules can be applied to it, why.
I was thinking to write the prototype in Perl, but not show it to anybody else until / unless it's working well enough to use.
But you are right..... last place I worked, some people actually wrote Windows programs by developing the UI before the algorithms! I've always preferred to start nearest the hardware and work towards the user..... users are so much more flexible, and can be persuaded to put up with all kinds of things.
But if you weren't spending so much of your precious time in your factory or office working for your boss, then you would be free to pursue alternative survival techniques that do not depend on a regular supply of pound notes..... such as growing your own food, sewing your own clothes, building your own shelter. The Working Class are better equipped to do this than the Ruling Class, because we already have at least some of the necessary skills from the work we already do for the Ruling Class; whereas the Ruling Class is absolutely dependent on the Working Class for everything. Can you imagine the owner of a chain of restaurants knowing how to peel a potato, or the owners of a chain of electronics stores knowing how to wire up a 13 amp plug? Do you think that the owners of Ford or GM know how to change a tyre?
I think one of the reasons why many of the things people do in Perl don't end up becoming SourceForge projects is because they're specific to a particular environment -- my company does pretty much everything {that others might do on Windows desktops} using in-house-written Perl scripts accessed through a web browser; but they really aren't general-purpose enough to warrant releasing to the world at large. For instance, we need to store the Ordnance Survey grid references of our customers -- but not everyone will need that functionality. Perl itself provides a kind of "generality-of-purpose abstraction layer"; there's not much sense in writing a program that can handle fifty squillion different data formats if you're only ever going to use one, especially given that processor power and disk space are so cheap nowadays. I also use Perl for jobs that could be done using bash or awk or sed, but Perl is just so handy; and if I need to add one more fearure, I know I can. I'll also use perl -e 'print "something\n"' in an Xterm as a calculator {one day I'll even define a key map that puts the sequence on a function key}.
Alternatively, Perl -- thanks to all those wonderful library bindings -- might well be used for an initial "feasibility study", say to develop and test the most important function(s) that will end up forming the core of a project; and, once the proof-of-concept is there, the whole thing is then rewritten "from the ground up" in something like C or C++ {which has bindings for the dead same libraries anyway, but feels more "proper" because it's compiled rather than interpreted}.
The important difference is, the Working Class can live without the wages paid to them by the Ruling Class for a lot longer than the Ruling Class can live without the work done for them by the Working Class.
A rotary engine, like a two-stroke engine, has no option but to burn off the lube oil -- unless someone manages to make a lubricant which will survive the temperature of the fuel-air explosion (or come up with some materials that don't require any lubrication; maybe some kind of ceramic). Fortunately, this thing isn't burning any fuel.
This thing is basically a DC brushless motor. The armature is just the right shape to act as an impeller; pulses of current are applied to the stator windings in turn, creating a revolving magnetic field, and the armature turns so as to line itself up with the field, North pole to South pole and South pole to North pole. Since the armature and stator have different numbers of poles, the direction of rotation can be determined by the energisation sequence -- wherever the two parts are positioned with respect to one another, one of the North poles on the armature will always be nearer -- and hence move towards -- one of the South poles on the stator than the other one. Which is good, because you really don't want a 50:50 chance of your blood going the wrong way when you first connect the thing up! You can vary the speed of rotation by varying the time period between energising one coil and energising the next, and you can vary the power by simple pulse width modulation.
What's neat is the way that the whole armature/impeller assembly just floats in the blood; although it's not all that new. Central heating pumps use a very similar principle, with the whole armature assembly floating in the water which is pushed through the boiler and radiators (or the hot water heat exchanger); but they don't need all the fancy electronics as they are running off AC, with just two stator windings and a simple capacitor to generate a phase shift. They also tend to wear out very quickly if the spindle is not absolutely dead horizontal {when installing a gas combi-boiler, a few washers behind the bottom of the unit will create a very slight backward tilt that the householder will never spot, but will be just enough so as to guarantee you a service call to that house within three years}. I would hope that these heart replacements are a little more tolerant!
I do not own any Apple kit; and, if this legal action goes ahead, I don't think I ever will.
The iPod is a "walled garden" - where the pretty flowers and nice bushes are there mostly to distract your attention from the razor wire and armed guards. The iPod will play unencumbered song files without question, but will refuse to play DRM-encumbered AAC files unless those files were obtained via iTMS. Now, it seems to me that what Real have basically done is forged Apple's electronic signature (or, maybe, just one particular loop or squiggle that the iPod was looking for) to cause it to think that Real's DRM-encumbered music files were supplied by iTMS and therefore fit to play on an iPod.
Now, I don't like Real one bit. I firmly believe that anyone who offers media files for download should be obliged to provide sufficient details to enable a competent person to decode them. After all, it is widely documented how to build a radio receiver, analogue record player, CD player, tape recorder &c. Real goes right against this. Call me a zealot, but I find no shame in supporting Open Standards -- nor in violently opposing closed standards. I certainly don't believe it is at all legitimate to sell a person something and then try to keep secrets about that thing from its new rightful owner. I can see some vestige of legitimacy in binding the owner to keep those secrets, but it is a simple common law property right that one is automatically privy to any secret contained in any article that one owns, by sole virtue of ownership.
But I can't hold Apple blameless either. I don't agree with DRM, at least not in the way that it is being abused here. For one thing, it does not work -- it has already been demonstrated that the "protection" offered by Apple's misleadingly-named "FairPlay" scheme is somewhere between questionable and worthless. It does not prevent unauthorised copying -- unsurprisingly, since that is physically impossible. Nor does it improve the fidelity of reproduction or lessen the downloading time. It adds to the cost with no real benefit, and ought to be a candidate for extinction.
And if I have purchased an article -- such as an iPod -- with my own money, that I earned through my own hard work, by hand or by brain, then it is not for anyone to tell me what I can do with my own property. Obviously, there are valid exceptions -- just because I own a knife, does not give me the right to stab people with it -- but, in the case of a person transferring music not purchased from iTMS onto an iPod, Apple is not harmed any more than they would be harmed by that person not owning an iPod. Indeed, if -- as many have suggested -- iTMS is a loss-making operation, subsidised by the sales of iPod hardware, then it would actually be beneficial for Apple that people are not buying music from iTMS!
Apple have brought this situation entirely upon themselves. I hope they take Real to court, because I don't like Real -- and I also hope they lose, because I believe that is what they deserve. In fact, it's better than they deserve. Back when I was in Primary School, there was a newly-started home computer company, founded by two self-proclaimed "hackers", who used to supply complete circuit diagrams and ROM disassembly listings with the machines they sold. The name of that company was Apple. It is quite clear that the Apple of today has abandoned everything that the Apple of yesteryear stood for.
You are talking out of your arse. It makes not one blind bit of difference to anybody whether or not I see an advert for a product that I am never going to buy {and let me tell you, one unsolicited advert can be enough to make me not buy a product}. I block advertisements without pity or compunction. It's my computer, and I get to decide what gets displayed and what doesn't. Same with the telly: if it's not a recording and it's not the BBC, I'll specifically wait for the advert breaks before I get up to go for a piss {a dump even, if it's SKY ONE} or to make a cup of tea. And I'm in good company, because the figures show that during the advert break in Coronation Street, there is a sudden and definite upsurge in demand for electricity and water, as people all over the country boil kettles and flush toilets. Satellite station UKTV Gold even acknowledges this phenomenon -- one of their "cut-in" screens even carries the message "Hurry up, it's starting".
Understand this: you are never going to persuade me to buy your products by flashing advertisements in my face. Got that? Good. Because I don't owe you anything, and I prefer to give my money to companies whose products speak for themselves, rather than companies who feel the need to throw away money telling me stuff whether or not I already know it or even want to know it. If I want to know, I'll look it up -- on my terms, thank you very much daddy-oh.
And there's tons of this stuff which is going to be criss-crossing the nation via rail, and truck, terrorist opportunities abound.
Oh, come on. There are already more than enough of your precious "terrorist opportunities" if you go looking for them. Any terrorist who needs to wait for a nuclear waste wagon before they can cause an incident, hasn't much imagination already. The sad fact is, most people would rather ignore you than attack you.
When was the last time people got thyroid cancer from hydroelectricity?
Hydro doesn't cause cancer, but it does cause habitat destruction -- which affects humans as well as non-human animals. It also doesn't account for a great deal of power. Coal power, which is much more common, is far more dangerous than nuclear -- and it's still way preferable to getting electricity out of disposable batteries. Banning those nasty little things outright -- or at least, taxing them so as to make them more expensive than rechargeables, amp-hour for amp-hour -- would be a step in the right direction.
And, although nuclear power is non-renewable, it's still going to give up its energy, even whether or not we make use of it.
I once shorted A8 and A9 on an old Speccy 48, trying to rig it up to a homemade lighting controller using an expansion card originally meant for a ZX81 {and hence requiring much crosswiring and bodging since the edge connectors were very different..... ZX81 had the lines in the kind of order you would expect them to be, Spectrum had them in the order they could get them out in.....} I had mounted the expansion card in a metal project box with a 37-pin DIN connector on the front and a length of ribbon cable to the edge connector. The poor little Sinclair crashed at once; but amazingly, it worked again once I removed the short. I eventually had to abandon the lighting controller project due to the fact that it wiped out MW radios for three streets around..... Had it succeeded, I would have burned my program to a 27128 and patched out some of the Spectrum's RAM, so the controller could have run tapeless.
I have also had great luck with plugging and unplugging 8-bit expansion cards from old-style 286 PC motherboards. As long as you line the card up well, and it isn't trying to draw more than a few milliamps, it doesn't seem to cause a problem. These were simple logic I/O cards using low-power 74HC TTL chips, so there was not much to go wrong.
And I once fed mains into one of those cards..... using a resistor of 470 kOhms in series, to limit the current just under 0.5mA, and a 4V7 zener across the input..... It worked like a charm, but it gave me the willies every time I thought about it, so I ended up doing it properly with an opto-isolator. Then I had to re-write my software, since of course this was now pulling low when the mains was on.
This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin' it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do.
Does this wording alone not constitute (a) protection against retroactive copyright extension, meaning that the copyright in the work has already expired and the song is now in the public domain (Woody Guthrie has been dead more than 28 years so the song can't possibly have been written less than 28 years ago..... ) and (b) a permissive licence, cf. this?
Either way, JibJab have some form of permission from the original author -- which cannot be withdrawn -- to make a parody of the song. If Guthrie sold the rights, the purchaser must have known dern [sic] well that that permission notice stood. In fact, Woody Guthrie is probably singing their version wherever he is right now..... Ordinarily, at this point I'd be tempted to say "Ting! Next, please"; but now I'm wondering about whether a subpoena could be served on a ghost!
Now that sounds like a great idea. You could have buttons on your handset for "seat fully closed" {for cutting toenails}, "lid up / ring seat deployed" {for shitting, and for women pissing} and "fully open" {for puking, and for men pissing}, as well as for activating partial and full flush. It has the potential to solve all sorts of marital arguments.....
Yes, but the zeros and ones are still being transmitted on the bus "in the clear". So even if you can't do it in software, you could build a piece of hardware that pretends to be a sound card whose hardware is widely documented -- something like, say, an SB16 -- but has a whole load of RAM, or maybe even a hard drive, instead of a DAC. The signed driver will not know the difference between your fake sound card and a real sound card.
There will always be some vulnerability that can be exploited, unless the record companies take to selling drugs which allow you to listen to music still encrypted and have the decryption done right in your brain. Even that method is defeatable, otherwise I'd have applied for a patent on it.
is that Real aren't decrypting anything they don't have a right to. Their software removes the Real encryption {their stuff, their common-law property right to decrypt it} and applies Apple-style encryption.
However, in some ways this is more worrying, as it calls into question the validity of digital signatures. If, say, Bill can send a file to Pat and make it look as though it came from Linus, where does that leave everyone? (Of course, the likelihood is that all iPods have the same "public key", so Apple needs only one "private key" for signing; and all iPods have the same "private key", so Apple needs only a single "public key" for encryption. This means that only one or maybe two key pairs have been compromised and not the whole algorithm. Alternatively, there may be a finite number of keypairs, more than one.)
Yes, the iPod is a physical piece of property; IANAL, but if Apple are trying to use someone else's property {such as your iPod, which you bought and paid for with money you earned by hand or by brain} in such a way as to intimidate, deter, obstruct or disrupt a person engaged in a legitimate activity {such as you listening to music with the blessing of the copyright holder} then it sounds rather as though they are committing aggravated trespass. I think that would be covered by the Criminal Justice Act 1994. Even if not, anything Apple do to an iPod which you own and without your consent is at least ordinary trespass {a civil offence, so only bother prosecuting if you are really rich or really poor} and possibly, if it materially affects the functionality of the device, criminal damage.
What's scary is that ten years ago, I was fighting against that very law because it threatened our freedom..... and yet today, that could be the law that protects what's left of our freedom! What do you reckon are the chances that it could be used today to prosecute violations of our fair-dealing rights? Hmm..... does anyone in the CPS enjoy listening to music on portable devices?
Since the explicit stated goal of the reverse engineering project is interoperability, no offence has been committed.
But Open Source and DRM -- at least, not the corporations' idea of DRM -- don't sit well together. The power to control what works and what does not work lies with the eventual user (who has the source code and the decryption key), not the supplier. A user could lock out certain suppliers, but not the other way round. So, say, picking some names at random;-) Pat can make sure that the file "super_new_kernel_2.7.tar.bz2" came from Linus, and not from Bill or Ken. Pat can send a reply that only Linus can read, but once Linus has received it, then Linus is automatically granted the ability to control who may or may not read it.
The only reason why Apple's, and Microsoft's, proprietary DRM systems "seem" to work {there are holes you could get a bus through, sideways. Mic trained on speaker? Analogue line-in? Logic analyser on PCI bus listening out for digital data meant to go to sound card? USB protocol analyser prtending to be USB sound card?} is because the source code is hidden from the users. The security is entirely dependent on the idea of making it difficult -- not impossible -- for the user to decrypt the file other than by running a particular program, supplied by the content vendor, which has a limited user interface that restricts its functionality. Hell, you don't even need the full source code; just the right portion will do.
My point is, once you give a user the source code to the player and the encryption key, then the user is in charge. {Of course, even a closed-source player running under Linux -- assuming anybody would tolerate such a thing -- would be vulnerable to a hijack of/dev/dsp, which is not beyond the wit of a competent C programmer -- just write a dummy "sound card driver" that snarfs data into a file, and process it later.}
I honestly think that Closed Source vs. Open Source is part of the New Class War.
Open Source generally allows the working classes to control what they can do with their computer. As an OSS user you can examine the source code, improve it even. The only limitations governing what you can do are those imposed by your hardware (physical limitations) and those imposed by your programming skills (surmountable human limitations). Nobody can prevent you from forwarding an e-mail message, for instance, or sharing a media file. Your data, and your computer, remain under your control at all times. The general purpose personal computer, in conjunction with Open Source software, is a very empowering tool. It is not possible for the Ruling Classes to impose arbitrary limitations on users of Open Source Software -- except by eradicating it altogether.
This is what they are trying to do. Note how it's only recently that the Ruling Classes have become so concerned about things like software patents, copying of DVDs, CDs and the like -- it is no coincidence that this comes at the same time that technology is well within affordability of the Working Classes. The Ruling Classes will always seek to maintain their position. The question is, how long can this go on without utterly annihilating the Working Classes?
If you grow food, and you give it away, you will not have it any more. If you build a house, and you give it away, you will not have it any more. But if you write a book, or a piece of software, you can give away a copy and still have it, because information is not diminished by the act of sharing. That is the difference.
A person has a right to own what he creates. To do with it as he choses.
No you don't. As a human being, everything you create ultimately belongs to all of humankind. You have an obligation to help your neighbour to the fullest extent possible without harming yourself. In return you can expect your neighbours to help you. You have benefitted from what other people have done before you, and you owe it to those who come after you to let them benefit from your own discoveries. Do you really think we would have come this far if the inventor of simple stone weapons, or the discoverer of fire, had tried to "protect" their "intellectual property" from "pirates" ? What if you had to pay somebody a licence fee just because you lived in a building, or every time you wore clothes, or used absolutely anything electrical, or drank clean water, or flushed a toilet, or did any one of the millions of things we rightfully take for granted?
And by the way, lead is a lot less harmful than what they put in petrol in its place..... I'd far sooner breathe leaded exhaust fumes than unleaded (unless you have a working catalytic converter fitted). Bear in mind also that in the UK, an engine of 2 litres is considered "large". Ordinary cars are around 1.3 - 1.6. But this is getting further and further off-topic.
Therefore, eating ice cream increases your risk of drowning.
(Nothing to do with people being more likely to be playing in and around water when it's hot enough to eat ice cream.....)
Mind, in my day, there were still such things as "German Measles Parties"..... (German Measles was what we used to call Rubella)..... the idea being that you had to get as many kids infected as possible, so as to build up an immunity the hard way. I've had German Measles, English Measles, Mumps, Chicken Pox {twice..... the first attack was not severe enough to earn me any immunity} and Glandular Fever. And I'm none the worse for any of it.
This is indeed a worrying trend. But surely it's technically illegal anyway? Doesn't charging people a fee to access their own money constitute running a protection racket?
I've never understood why the banks charge each other fees, either. The law of averages says they will get it all back. Sure, HSBC cash machines get extra wear and tear from Nat West customers using them sometimes -- but chances are that HSBC customers will be causing wear and tear on Nat West machines. The law of averages ought to take care of it all, surely?
Oh well, here's a parable while you think about it.
Once there was a community centre on a housing estate in a town. The Centre provided a kettle, tea bags, coffee, sugar and milk; and members of the various groups that used the centre used to have to pay 10p towards the cost of a cup of tea or coffee.
One day, some residents started complaining that the system was not fair, because other residents were getting extra sugar or extra milk in their drink, but were still the same price.
After several meetings, it was agreed that an accountant should be called in to decide upon a suitable scale of charges, in order that everyone would pay a fair price for their drinks; and that the accountant's fee would be covered by adding a surcharge to the cost of a cup of tea or coffee.
Finally the Accountant's report was presented, and it read as follows:
Cost of heating 200ml of water to boil = 0.2p
Cost of one tea bag = 1.8p
Cost of one spoonful of coffee = 2.4p
Cost of 50ml milk = 3.2p
Cost of one spoonful of sugar = 0.1p
Cost of washing and drying one mug = 4.1p
Cost of accountant = £3500.00
Time to recoup costs = 5 years
Average number of cups per week = 140
New suggested prices: tea 20p per cup, coffee 20p per cup.
How on earth do you get a $10 bill and a $20 bill mixed up? Bank notes of different denominations are different physical sizes, so people with poor eyesight can check their change.
Closed source is not evil. Closed source software companies do not kill, torture, rape, or steal.
You assume killing, torturing, raping and stealing are the only forms of evil.
However, I believe that taking something which rightfully belongs to everyone [i.e. the fruits of human endeavour] and trying to ensure that only a select few have access to it, is a form of evil in its own right. It actually comes under the banner of discrimination. Just because it doesn't directly impact on people's survival does not make it less evil. That is thesame kind of fallacy as "you should not be happy as long as there is even one miserable person in the world". After all, theft only became "properly" evil (by your definition) once civilisation had reached the stage where people actually started having possessions.
The option of closing your source if you have not used any Open source software in your program is also not evil.
Yes it is. If you write a piece of software, it belongs to everyone. If you give less than everyone access to it, then you are depriving some people of access to some of the fruits of human endeavour. That is wrong, because it is discriminatory. Saying "You can't look at the source code to this programme because you did not write it" is an act of discrimination.
declaring all closed source developers evil is as STUPID as Microsoft calling open source unamerican!
You know, some people -- probably the ones with a misguided view of the USA as being a land of weak-beer-swilling, gun-toting, queer-bashing, gas-guzzler-driving, racist trailer-trash, bending down before mighty megabuck corporations who gleefully pollute the environment and whose directors sold their own grandmothers, all united in the pursuit of whatever it takes to be just a few dollars richer than the next guy -- would actually think that being called "unAmerican" is a compliment.
Tell you what Start boycotting ID since they have not open sourced Doom3:)
I had no intention of buying anything from ID anyway. If it's not open source, I won't run it.
Linux does have a standard driver model that does not break between revisions: you compile the driver from source, and everything is taken from the relevant includes at the time. That is the standard way of doing it, and there is no good reason to do it any other way. Binary-only drivers are a cop-out -- the only way to be sure of having working drivers is for open-source code to be written and audited, based on open specifications.
Using a binary-only driver without source code is not much different than eating a Cape apple prior to 26 April 1994. There may be no nutritional difference between that apple and any other apple, but there is a big ideological difference. And while a binary module to which you don't have the source might function just as well as one to which you do have the source, there is an important ideological difference.
To pre-empt certain responses, I shall say this now: if you don't believe that unrestricted access to the full source code to every piece of software ever writted is as important as racial equality, then you don't understand how deep the real issues run.
Exactly..... the choice is not between different means to the same end {fifty kinds of cigarettes which all give you cancer} but between different ends {dying of cancer or not}. So it is with software: the choice is whether to prop up the evil closed-source industry {and BTW, "piracy" doesn't hurt the big players such as Microsoft and Adobe; they can well afford it} or not. It's the end that counts -- the means by which that end is attained is a mere diversion. A choice of different means to the same end is not at all the same thing as a choice of different ends.
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This is how the patent system was first envisaged as working. Say you're a penniless inventor. You're skint because you've just spent your life savings developing your latest widget which will change the world as we know it. The only one in the world is right there in your workshop.
Now one way that you can make money out of your invention is to persuade a backer to lend you enough money so you can afford the tools and materials to start building it. But in order to do that, you need to convince your sponsor -- who is in all probability a banker or financier, not a scientist or an engineer -- that you can earn enough money by selling your invention to eventually pay them back, and that requires either an unparallelled degree of chutzpah or some kind of official document stating the worth of your invention. Another way is to get someone else to build your invention for you. But in order to do that, you will have to tell them how to make it -- and once they know that, they can cut you out of the loop. They have the invention, they can afford to make and sell it, why should you get anything?
The patent system was set up to solve both these problems. You demonstrate your invention to a trustworthy body, and say that you are prepared to share it with the world at large; and in return, you are given a copy of an official letter which describes it in full and states that you are the true inventor. The original is held in a library where anyone can look at it. This letter also grants you, for a limited time, exclusive control over the commercial application of your idea. Now you can seek assistance, confident that you will be able to earn the true worth of your invention: a group of experts have attested to the fact that it really works (so nobody can think you are trying to rip them off with vapourware), and nobody else can claim it as their invention and rip you off. Then, after you have had a fair chance to get rich off your invention, it gets formally released so everyone can have a bite of the cherry -- which is your little way of saying "thank you" for all the inventions and discoveries which have come before and from which you have already benefitted; such as fire, tools, agriculture, sanitation, electricity, and so forth.
If your invention is a piece of software, which is something which can be reproduced at no cost, then you are by definition not too poor to make it. But, additionally, some things should never be patentable. Mathematical processes, for one. What if integration were the subject of a patent claim? Integration is a mathematical concept that crops up time and time again in the real world. Would you have to pay a royalty every time you poured a liquid from one container into another? What if subtracting one were patented, and the patent holder refused absolutely to licence it? Would adding one and subtracting two be permitted as a work-around? Software is just a formalisation of a mathematical process.
The most fundamental thing wrong with the US patent office today is that patent applications are not being properly tested. I believe firstly that the requirement to produce a working prototype should be reinstated. A patent application not supported by a prototype is nothing more than a work of science fiction -- and in any case, if you are not good enough to build a prototype, then perhaps you do not deserve to be recognised as an inventor. The question of licencing needs to be addressed -- I firmly believe in non-discriminatory licencing, in other words that a patent should be licenced to everybody, and everybody for the same price, or nobody. Additionally, a procedure needs to be created for verifying that an invention is original -- and for dealing with exceptions. Since this is an example of civil rather than criminal law, the terms "innocent" and "guilty" do not really apply, so the question of burden of proof is a thorny one. Finally, there need to be clear and unambiguous rules about what can and what cannot be patented; and, for the inevitable case of an invention which is so new that none of the existing rules can be applied to it, why.
I was thinking to write the prototype in Perl, but not show it to anybody else until / unless it's working well enough to use.
..... last place I worked, some people actually wrote Windows programs by developing the UI before the algorithms! I've always preferred to start nearest the hardware and work towards the user ..... users are so much more flexible, and can be persuaded to put up with all kinds of things.
But you are right
That is cool ..... now I will have to tweak it so as to stop when I hit ctrl-D. Or maybe just open a special xterm just for pell.
But if you weren't spending so much of your precious time in your factory or office working for your boss, then you would be free to pursue alternative survival techniques that do not depend on a regular supply of pound notes ..... such as growing your own food, sewing your own clothes, building your own shelter. The Working Class are better equipped to do this than the Ruling Class, because we already have at least some of the necessary skills from the work we already do for the Ruling Class; whereas the Ruling Class is absolutely dependent on the Working Class for everything. Can you imagine the owner of a chain of restaurants knowing how to peel a potato, or the owners of a chain of electronics stores knowing how to wire up a 13 amp plug? Do you think that the owners of Ford or GM know how to change a tyre?
I think one of the reasons why many of the things people do in Perl don't end up becoming SourceForge projects is because they're specific to a particular environment -- my company does pretty much everything {that others might do on Windows desktops} using in-house-written Perl scripts accessed through a web browser; but they really aren't general-purpose enough to warrant releasing to the world at large. For instance, we need to store the Ordnance Survey grid references of our customers -- but not everyone will need that functionality. Perl itself provides a kind of "generality-of-purpose abstraction layer"; there's not much sense in writing a program that can handle fifty squillion different data formats if you're only ever going to use one, especially given that processor power and disk space are so cheap nowadays. I also use Perl for jobs that could be done using bash or awk or sed, but Perl is just so handy; and if I need to add one more fearure, I know I can. I'll also use perl -e 'print "something\n"' in an Xterm as a calculator {one day I'll even define a key map that puts the sequence on a function key}.
Alternatively, Perl -- thanks to all those wonderful library bindings -- might well be used for an initial "feasibility study", say to develop and test the most important function(s) that will end up forming the core of a project; and, once the proof-of-concept is there, the whole thing is then rewritten "from the ground up" in something like C or C++ {which has bindings for the dead same libraries anyway, but feels more "proper" because it's compiled rather than interpreted}.
The important difference is, the Working Class can live without the wages paid to them by the Ruling Class for a lot longer than the Ruling Class can live without the work done for them by the Working Class.
A rotary engine, like a two-stroke engine, has no option but to burn off the lube oil -- unless someone manages to make a lubricant which will survive the temperature of the fuel-air explosion (or come up with some materials that don't require any lubrication; maybe some kind of ceramic). Fortunately, this thing isn't burning any fuel.
This thing is basically a DC brushless motor. The armature is just the right shape to act as an impeller; pulses of current are applied to the stator windings in turn, creating a revolving magnetic field, and the armature turns so as to line itself up with the field, North pole to South pole and South pole to North pole. Since the armature and stator have different numbers of poles, the direction of rotation can be determined by the energisation sequence -- wherever the two parts are positioned with respect to one another, one of the North poles on the armature will always be nearer -- and hence move towards -- one of the South poles on the stator than the other one. Which is good, because you really don't want a 50:50 chance of your blood going the wrong way when you first connect the thing up! You can vary the speed of rotation by varying the time period between energising one coil and energising the next, and you can vary the power by simple pulse width modulation.
What's neat is the way that the whole armature/impeller assembly just floats in the blood; although it's not all that new. Central heating pumps use a very similar principle, with the whole armature assembly floating in the water which is pushed through the boiler and radiators (or the hot water heat exchanger); but they don't need all the fancy electronics as they are running off AC, with just two stator windings and a simple capacitor to generate a phase shift. They also tend to wear out very quickly if the spindle is not absolutely dead horizontal {when installing a gas combi-boiler, a few washers behind the bottom of the unit will create a very slight backward tilt that the householder will never spot, but will be just enough so as to guarantee you a service call to that house within three years}. I would hope that these heart replacements are a little more tolerant!
I do not own any Apple kit; and, if this legal action goes ahead, I don't think I ever will.
The iPod is a "walled garden" - where the pretty flowers and nice bushes are there mostly to distract your attention from the razor wire and armed guards. The iPod will play unencumbered song files without question, but will refuse to play DRM-encumbered AAC files unless those files were obtained via iTMS. Now, it seems to me that what Real have basically done is forged Apple's electronic signature (or, maybe, just one particular loop or squiggle that the iPod was looking for) to cause it to think that Real's DRM-encumbered music files were supplied by iTMS and therefore fit to play on an iPod.
Now, I don't like Real one bit. I firmly believe that anyone who offers media files for download should be obliged to provide sufficient details to enable a competent person to decode them. After all, it is widely documented how to build a radio receiver, analogue record player, CD player, tape recorder &c. Real goes right against this. Call me a zealot, but I find no shame in supporting Open Standards -- nor in violently opposing closed standards. I certainly don't believe it is at all legitimate to sell a person something and then try to keep secrets about that thing from its new rightful owner. I can see some vestige of legitimacy in binding the owner to keep those secrets, but it is a simple common law property right that one is automatically privy to any secret contained in any article that one owns, by sole virtue of ownership.
But I can't hold Apple blameless either. I don't agree with DRM, at least not in the way that it is being abused here. For one thing, it does not work -- it has already been demonstrated that the "protection" offered by Apple's misleadingly-named "FairPlay" scheme is somewhere between questionable and worthless. It does not prevent unauthorised copying -- unsurprisingly, since that is physically impossible. Nor does it improve the fidelity of reproduction or lessen the downloading time. It adds to the cost with no real benefit, and ought to be a candidate for extinction.
And if I have purchased an article -- such as an iPod -- with my own money, that I earned through my own hard work, by hand or by brain, then it is not for anyone to tell me what I can do with my own property. Obviously, there are valid exceptions -- just because I own a knife, does not give me the right to stab people with it -- but, in the case of a person transferring music not purchased from iTMS onto an iPod, Apple is not harmed any more than they would be harmed by that person not owning an iPod. Indeed, if -- as many have suggested -- iTMS is a loss-making operation, subsidised by the sales of iPod hardware, then it would actually be beneficial for Apple that people are not buying music from iTMS!
Apple have brought this situation entirely upon themselves. I hope they take Real to court, because I don't like Real -- and I also hope they lose, because I believe that is what they deserve. In fact, it's better than they deserve. Back when I was in Primary School, there was a newly-started home computer company, founded by two self-proclaimed "hackers", who used to supply complete circuit diagrams and ROM disassembly listings with the machines they sold. The name of that company was Apple. It is quite clear that the Apple of today has abandoned everything that the Apple of yesteryear stood for.
You are talking out of your arse. It makes not one blind bit of difference to anybody whether or not I see an advert for a product that I am never going to buy {and let me tell you, one unsolicited advert can be enough to make me not buy a product}. I block advertisements without pity or compunction. It's my computer, and I get to decide what gets displayed and what doesn't. Same with the telly: if it's not a recording and it's not the BBC, I'll specifically wait for the advert breaks before I get up to go for a piss {a dump even, if it's SKY ONE} or to make a cup of tea. And I'm in good company, because the figures show that during the advert break in Coronation Street, there is a sudden and definite upsurge in demand for electricity and water, as people all over the country boil kettles and flush toilets. Satellite station UKTV Gold even acknowledges this phenomenon -- one of their "cut-in" screens even carries the message "Hurry up, it's starting".
Understand this: you are never going to persuade me to buy your products by flashing advertisements in my face. Got that? Good. Because I don't owe you anything, and I prefer to give my money to companies whose products speak for themselves, rather than companies who feel the need to throw away money telling me stuff whether or not I already know it or even want to know it. If I want to know, I'll look it up -- on my terms, thank you very much daddy-oh.
And, although nuclear power is non-renewable, it's still going to give up its energy, even whether or not we make use of it.
I once shorted A8 and A9 on an old Speccy 48, trying to rig it up to a homemade lighting controller using an expansion card originally meant for a ZX81 {and hence requiring much crosswiring and bodging since the edge connectors were very different ..... ZX81 had the lines in the kind of order you would expect them to be, Spectrum had them in the order they could get them out in .....} I had mounted the expansion card in a metal project box with a 37-pin DIN connector on the front and a length of ribbon cable to the edge connector. The poor little Sinclair crashed at once; but amazingly, it worked again once I removed the short. I eventually had to abandon the lighting controller project due to the fact that it wiped out MW radios for three streets around ..... Had it succeeded, I would have burned my program to a 27128 and patched out some of the Spectrum's RAM, so the controller could have run tapeless.
..... using a resistor of 470 kOhms in series, to limit the current just under 0.5mA, and a 4V7 zener across the input ..... It worked like a charm, but it gave me the willies every time I thought about it, so I ended up doing it properly with an opto-isolator. Then I had to re-write my software, since of course this was now pulling low when the mains was on.
I have also had great luck with plugging and unplugging 8-bit expansion cards from old-style 286 PC motherboards. As long as you line the card up well, and it isn't trying to draw more than a few milliamps, it doesn't seem to cause a problem. These were simple logic I/O cards using low-power 74HC TTL chips, so there was not much to go wrong.
And I once fed mains into one of those cards
Either way, JibJab have some form of permission from the original author -- which cannot be withdrawn -- to make a parody of the song. If Guthrie sold the rights, the purchaser must have known dern [sic] well that that permission notice stood. In fact, Woody Guthrie is probably singing their version wherever he is right now
Now that sounds like a great idea. You could have buttons on your handset for "seat fully closed" {for cutting toenails}, "lid up / ring seat deployed" {for shitting, and for women pissing} and "fully open" {for puking, and for men pissing}, as well as for activating partial and full flush. It has the potential to solve all sorts of marital arguments .....
Yes, but the zeros and ones are still being transmitted on the bus "in the clear". So even if you can't do it in software, you could build a piece of hardware that pretends to be a sound card whose hardware is widely documented -- something like, say, an SB16 -- but has a whole load of RAM, or maybe even a hard drive, instead of a DAC. The signed driver will not know the difference between your fake sound card and a real sound card.
There will always be some vulnerability that can be exploited, unless the record companies take to selling drugs which allow you to listen to music still encrypted and have the decryption done right in your brain. Even that method is defeatable, otherwise I'd have applied for a patent on it.
is that Real aren't decrypting anything they don't have a right to. Their software removes the Real encryption {their stuff, their common-law property right to decrypt it} and applies Apple-style encryption.
However, in some ways this is more worrying, as it calls into question the validity of digital signatures. If, say, Bill can send a file to Pat and make it look as though it came from Linus, where does that leave everyone? (Of course, the likelihood is that all iPods have the same "public key", so Apple needs only one "private key" for signing; and all iPods have the same "private key", so Apple needs only a single "public key" for encryption. This means that only one or maybe two key pairs have been compromised and not the whole algorithm. Alternatively, there may be a finite number of keypairs, more than one.)
Yes, the iPod is a physical piece of property; IANAL, but if Apple are trying to use someone else's property {such as your iPod, which you bought and paid for with money you earned by hand or by brain} in such a way as to intimidate, deter, obstruct or disrupt a person engaged in a legitimate activity {such as you listening to music with the blessing of the copyright holder} then it sounds rather as though they are committing aggravated trespass. I think that would be covered by the Criminal Justice Act 1994. Even if not, anything Apple do to an iPod which you own and without your consent is at least ordinary trespass {a civil offence, so only bother prosecuting if you are really rich or really poor} and possibly, if it materially affects the functionality of the device, criminal damage.
..... and yet today, that could be the law that protects what's left of our freedom! What do you reckon are the chances that it could be used today to prosecute violations of our fair-dealing rights? Hmm ..... does anyone in the CPS enjoy listening to music on portable devices?
What's scary is that ten years ago, I was fighting against that very law because it threatened our freedom
Since the explicit stated goal of the reverse engineering project is interoperability, no offence has been committed.
;-) Pat can make sure that the file "super_new_kernel_2.7.tar.bz2" came from Linus, and not from Bill or Ken. Pat can send a reply that only Linus can read, but once Linus has received it, then Linus is automatically granted the ability to control who may or may not read it.
/dev/dsp, which is not beyond the wit of a competent C programmer -- just write a dummy "sound card driver" that snarfs data into a file, and process it later.}
But Open Source and DRM -- at least, not the corporations' idea of DRM -- don't sit well together. The power to control what works and what does not work lies with the eventual user (who has the source code and the decryption key), not the supplier. A user could lock out certain suppliers, but not the other way round. So, say, picking some names at random
The only reason why Apple's, and Microsoft's, proprietary DRM systems "seem" to work {there are holes you could get a bus through, sideways. Mic trained on speaker? Analogue line-in? Logic analyser on PCI bus listening out for digital data meant to go to sound card? USB protocol analyser prtending to be USB sound card?} is because the source code is hidden from the users. The security is entirely dependent on the idea of making it difficult -- not impossible -- for the user to decrypt the file other than by running a particular program, supplied by the content vendor, which has a limited user interface that restricts its functionality. Hell, you don't even need the full source code; just the right portion will do.
My point is, once you give a user the source code to the player and the encryption key, then the user is in charge. {Of course, even a closed-source player running under Linux -- assuming anybody would tolerate such a thing -- would be vulnerable to a hijack of
I honestly think that Closed Source vs. Open Source is part of the New Class War.
Open Source generally allows the working classes to control what they can do with their computer. As an OSS user you can examine the source code, improve it even. The only limitations governing what you can do are those imposed by your hardware (physical limitations) and those imposed by your programming skills (surmountable human limitations). Nobody can prevent you from forwarding an e-mail message, for instance, or sharing a media file. Your data, and your computer, remain under your control at all times. The general purpose personal computer, in conjunction with Open Source software, is a very empowering tool. It is not possible for the Ruling Classes to impose arbitrary limitations on users of Open Source Software -- except by eradicating it altogether.
This is what they are trying to do. Note how it's only recently that the Ruling Classes have become so concerned about things like software patents, copying of DVDs, CDs and the like -- it is no coincidence that this comes at the same time that technology is well within affordability of the Working Classes. The Ruling Classes will always seek to maintain their position. The question is, how long can this go on without utterly annihilating the Working Classes?
And by the way, lead is a lot less harmful than what they put in petrol in its place
- In summer time, ice cream consumption increases.
- In summer time, deaths by drowning increase.
- Therefore, eating ice cream increases your risk of drowning.
(Nothing to do with people being more likely to be playing in and around water when it's hot enough to eat ice creamMind, in my day, there were still such things as "German Measles Parties"
I've never understood why the banks charge each other fees, either. The law of averages says they will get it all back. Sure, HSBC cash machines get extra wear and tear from Nat West customers using them sometimes -- but chances are that HSBC customers will be causing wear and tear on Nat West machines. The law of averages ought to take care of it all, surely?
Oh well, here's a parable while you think about it.
How on earth do you get a $10 bill and a $20 bill mixed up? Bank notes of different denominations are different physical sizes, so people with poor eyesight can check their change.
Linux does have a standard driver model that does not break between revisions: you compile the driver from source, and everything is taken from the relevant includes at the time. That is the standard way of doing it, and there is no good reason to do it any other way. Binary-only drivers are a cop-out -- the only way to be sure of having working drivers is for open-source code to be written and audited, based on open specifications.
Using a binary-only driver without source code is not much different than eating a Cape apple prior to 26 April 1994. There may be no nutritional difference between that apple and any other apple, but there is a big ideological difference. And while a binary module to which you don't have the source might function just as well as one to which you do have the source, there is an important ideological difference.
To pre-empt certain responses, I shall say this now: if you don't believe that unrestricted access to the full source code to every piece of software ever writted is as important as racial equality, then you don't understand how deep the real issues run.
Exactly ..... the choice is not between different means to the same end {fifty kinds of cigarettes which all give you cancer} but between different ends {dying of cancer or not}. So it is with software: the choice is whether to prop up the evil closed-source industry {and BTW, "piracy" doesn't hurt the big players such as Microsoft and Adobe; they can well afford it} or not. It's the end that counts -- the means by which that end is attained is a mere diversion. A choice of different means to the same end is not at all the same thing as a choice of different ends.