amigo, practical or political the point is that patented technologies - by choice - do not make it into the linux kernel. fewer design choices means fewer design choices.
i disagree with you that i have no rights to my IP - using your argument i have no rights to my other property either since without the title that says i "own" this land, i can't keep people from building on it. in the absence of law, i can't keep people off my land without having to use violence.
the patent does not give me the right of property - it allows me to enforce the right of property. it is an 18th century view that patents "create" property. (thomas jefferson's views of slavery, for example, are also 18th century views which have no place in the 21st century.) we cannot have a "knowledge" economy without the understanding that "knowledge" is property.
copyright is insufficient protection. it prevents a narrow class of copying - but they do not prevent the scope of commercial exploitation which patents do. if copyright were sufficient, there would be no call for patents. it is NOT an expansion of rights, it is an an expansion of the tools i have available to enforce my rights. this is an important distinction.
as for my trees on your road... dude, my trees were there first. this debate has to assume that patents are NEW and NOVEL - no one is arguing that i can ex post facto claim rights on someone else's work. if the road was already there, then my patents are not valid, period. but if there was no road, i should not have to cut my trees (especially at no cost to you) so you can build one. the right is not absolute - the government can claim emminent (sp?) domain on anything i own - men with guns usually have the last say. fortunately there are procedures for this which could also be applied in the realm of intellectual property. i would not argue that my rights should cause undue buden on society - but some burden society has to be willing to accept.
the problem is that Open Source doesn't want to be burdened at all. they think it is too difficult to avoid software patents so damn them all. i fully support the right of Open Source community to exclude patents, more power to them, but i do not accept that these people should be able to deny me the right to not play their game.
the arguments against software patents are arguments against my right to own property. the right to own, sell, transfer, develop, and control property is fundamental to a free, democratic society. it is clouding the issue is to pretend that it is not.
You too are reducing this argument to an absurdity.
That my rights make your life inconvenient is a the cost of living in a free, democratic society which values individual rights. Sorry officer, you're gonna need a warrant...
Chicken Little exclamations which end in "you get sued" do nothing to further this debate. Scaring a bunch of teenagers into thinking IBM is going to sue them for tinkering on their PCs... you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
Experimental use - where there is no commercial exploitation is already exempt.
Convincing developers to give away their hard work to big companies like IBM and HP for free... tsk, tsk.
And what do Open Source developers get out of the deal you're selling? The freedom to continue to develop new things for HP and IBM to commercially exploit without the "threat" of being sued by HP and IBM.
In the Open Source verision of the Biblical Story of David and Goliath, both David and the Giant drop their slings, and the Giant pummels David sensleless with his bear fists.
I think it is. Patented technologies don't get into the Linux kernel if they aren't made available on royalty free terms. In other words, if the patented technology is not available royalty free, it doesn't get used. Fair and square. It is a choice which limits the technologies available for use in Open Source. While Microsoft may be as reluctant to open their wallets and pay for patented technologies as the Open Source Community, they at least leave themselves with the option to use both royalty free and royalty bearing technology.
Please give me a rational argument for why Amazon.com should have a monopoly right over their so-called "invention", "one-click shopping".
Reductio ad absurdum. Why should I be forced to defend a questionable patent in order to justify my argument? It is silly to believe that ALL patents are invalid and that there is never any new innovative thinking.
As for Amazon's patent - it does not matter what you think because it's not for you (or me) to decide - if a jury says it's valid and infringed it's valid and infringed. It might suck, but that's how the law works.
EU Lobbying IS diminishing my rights since I live in this Union. The way I see it, my inventions are my property and patents are the tools by which I can enforce my ownership. Lobbying the EU to forbid patents on software takes treads on my rights to protect my property.
The problem with Open Source people is they cannot understand why I do not see the fairness in them making me cut down my trees because they block their view.
If you can't see through my trees (i.e., my property) then you should be the one to move.
If you don't want to use my patents, then don't.
But don't force me to surrender my property to the "greater" good of Open Source Developers. The last experiment based on that type of thinking failed miserably in every part of this Union where it was tried and I for one do not want to go down that road again.
This is the dirty little secret about Open Source.
By taking such a clear and unequivocal position against the incorporated of patented inventions, Open Source excludes itself from large areas of technology.
But this makes Open Source the red-hatted (pun intended) step child that never has new clothes and has to make due with hand-me-downs.
In order to avoid this fate, the Open Source community (or at least some vocal advocates) have taken up the flag against "software patents" - which is nothing more than a campaign to gain free access to technology which otherwise would not be free.
I think Open Source is a wonderful idea - building an operating system on technology which is in the public domain has countless merits.
But trying to make Open Source something that it is not - that is trying to make it compete on equal terms with proprietary software like MS Windows misses the whole fucking point.
If Open Source developers don't want to use patented inventions - don't use them.
"But then Mozilla would be unable to display a GIF." Boo hoo. You want to be patent free, then BE patent free. Use something else in the public domain. Keep Open Source open by the design choices you make and not by political lobbying which diminishes the rights others enjoy.
it is no secret that lawful interception (LI) has been in the telecommunications network since technology made it possible.
is this news?
every telephone exchange has a built in LI function which enables law enforcement agencies to "tap into" a call without the operator/owner of the exchange having any knowledge of it.
johnny law doesn't have the time to decode PCM signals on a T1 line.
anyway, tapping into a line doesn't help much in the fight against terrorism if you don't know the physical location of the phones. having an LI function in the exchange provides this as well.
why do you think the FCC mandates having a location receivers in mobile phones? to help the police come to your rescue faster?
don't be naive. those boys in the black combat gear and bosy armour will have DHS on their backs.
big brother is alive and well and living all over the world.
"And as far as marketing is considered, the internet has shown to be a remarkably good medium to spread things..."
but a remarkably poor medium for getting paid.
however silly the "tax" proposal from the EFF (and this is not nearly as silly as most of their proposals), the focus on how to get paid from internet distribution is a good sign.
record companies will never be helpful in this debate because they do not sell and distribute music - they sell plastic discs.
putting music on their discs just happens to be a very good way to get people to pay 20 euros for a plastic disc which costs cents to make.
no "record" company will ever consider the internet as anything else than a way to sell plastic discs - or as an evil tool which undermines the sales of their discs.
i have noticed over the years that the fundamental problem with computers is that they do what you tell them to do... and not what you want them to.
all things being equal.
i prefer it that way.
programming language should evolve to give us better control over our machines, not to let them do the thinking for us.
what those machines are programmed to do is another matter, but language should forever remain in full control of the programmer. and not devolve into object oriented blocks so large there is nothing but uniformity in the implementation.
"In N.A. transformers were put all over the place in such a way that it presents a significant problem for getting a clean signal all the way down the line."
?
another american who assumes the rest of the world is still buring whale oil for light.
the only difference between Europe and US is how the voltage is wired in the house. the power grids are identical - except that most of the world runs on 50Hz AC instead 60Hz which is used in US, Canada, Mexico, and Japan.
three phase 440VAC 50Hz is standard residential service throughtout Europe. wired to the outlets at 220VAC.
residential service in the US is 2 phase 220VAC 60 Hz. wired for 110 VAC to the outlets.
but three phase is available at the transformer on the top of the telephone pole outside if you want to come up to european standard.
we also have DSL, GPRS, GSM...
and pretty good coffee without having to go to Starbucks.
"Wireless is competitive enough," said Michael O'Connor, director of federal regulatory policy and planning for Verizon Communications Inc.
"We simply can't absorb the costs of accepting the millions of new customers who will flock to Verizon with their existing numbers if this law is passed."
then all these brown shirt, born again, republicans who can't move fast enough to turn control over their lives to a "good, honest, christian" man like bush, will dimple their chads in the rush to make sure a dishonest, womanizing, atheist, pro-abortion LIBERAL never gets these sort of powers.
"It's like arresting someone for putting a better engine in their car because "They might decide to speed", or worse, arresting the person who sold the performace parts."
i used to work with a guy who sold modified chips for mustangs and corvettes.
we put the cars up on a dyno, hooked up a logic analyzer and some telemetry on the fuel injection system to figure out how the factory chip worked, and made a modified version which produced 25% more horsepower.
great business until he was arrested and his business confiscated for selling equipment which circumvented EPA laws.
car owners didn't like it, but environmentalists thought it was a prudent application of the law.
they are about the size of a dime and as thick as a credit card.
i don't think the author of the article has the slightest idea of what she was writing about.
what remains to be sorted is convincing the operators - who own the SIM cards - to allow them to be used for communications over WLAN networks where they presumably will not receive any air time revenue.
the "No Electronic Theft (NET) Act" signed into law by Clinton expanded the types of activity that result in copyright infringement becoming a criminal offence.
the Act criminalizes the reproduction or distribution of one or more copyrighted works that have an aggregrate retail value of $1000 over a period of 180 days.
"I think the author is presenting an exaggerated view, because of her perspective. That's OK: it's a relatively average user's perspective."
i like skiing.
i've tried snowboarding, but for me, it's about as much fun as watching paint dry.
funny thing is that despite my opinion about snowboarding, lots of other people seem to really dig it.
no shit.
you see them all over the place, wasting their time on those miserable snowplows when they could be skiing.
sitting on their asses at the top of every run.
slogging along on the cattracks like wounded animals.
to a skier, you could think of them as the lowest form of life.
or you could notice that these worms pump money into the lift systems.
and force "ski" areas to change their way of thinking.
i credit these scumbags with the phenomenal expansion of back country skiing in america. 10 years ago you couldn't cut through the woods without getting your ticket clipped, but today most mountains are opening up their backcountry. it is the biggest advancement of liberty since the signing of the declaration of independence. a fucking revolution (excuse my french.)
now i'm off piste.
my point is that the author's "exaggerated view" is more distored than exaggerated. she's a skier who got on a snowboard and got pissed off and frustrated when she couldn't turn. she wants to do all the same things she can do easily on skis, but no matter how hard she tries, snowboarding puts her on her ass.
instead of complaining that snowboarding is not skiing, she should get back on her skis and thank all those dirtbag snowboarders for making skiing a better experience.
no one knows what goes on in these black boxes, or who really controls how they are constructed and operated. the whole operation is a black box which spits out names.
and accusations.
if they don't find something, they'll make it up.
they won't even have to say what is was that they made up because that would compromise security.
secret police with a secret agenda.
"we're with homeland secutity, ma'am"
"we'd like you to come down to the station and answer a few questions"
"what have i done"
"we can't tell you, but it's bad. real bad."
in a land that's known as freedom how can such a thing be fair?
and 70% of my fellow americans are supporting the president who is doing it.
what is happening to america? is the statute of liberty so shellshocked that she averts her eyes from the insults being thrust at our beloved constitution?
what sort of liberty are we asking our brave young men and women to kill and die for?
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i disagree with you that i have no rights to my IP - using your argument i have no rights to my other property either since without the title that says i "own" this land, i can't keep people from building on it. in the absence of law, i can't keep people off my land without having to use violence.
the patent does not give me the right of property - it allows me to enforce the right of property. it is an 18th century view that patents "create" property. (thomas jefferson's views of slavery, for example, are also 18th century views which have no place in the 21st century.) we cannot have a "knowledge" economy without the understanding that "knowledge" is property.
copyright is insufficient protection. it prevents a narrow class of copying - but they do not prevent the scope of commercial exploitation which patents do. if copyright were sufficient, there would be no call for patents. it is NOT an expansion of rights, it is an an expansion of the tools i have available to enforce my rights. this is an important distinction.
as for my trees on your road... dude, my trees were there first. this debate has to assume that patents are NEW and NOVEL - no one is arguing that i can ex post facto claim rights on someone else's work. if the road was already there, then my patents are not valid, period. but if there was no road, i should not have to cut my trees (especially at no cost to you) so you can build one. the right is not absolute - the government can claim emminent (sp?) domain on anything i own - men with guns usually have the last say. fortunately there are procedures for this which could also be applied in the realm of intellectual property. i would not argue that my rights should cause undue buden on society - but some burden society has to be willing to accept.
the problem is that Open Source doesn't want to be burdened at all. they think it is too difficult to avoid software patents so damn them all. i fully support the right of Open Source community to exclude patents, more power to them, but i do not accept that these people should be able to deny me the right to not play their game.
the arguments against software patents are arguments against my right to own property. the right to own, sell, transfer, develop, and control property is fundamental to a free, democratic society. it is clouding the issue is to pretend that it is not.
That my rights make your life inconvenient is a the cost of living in a free, democratic society which values individual rights. Sorry officer, you're gonna need a warrant...
Chicken Little exclamations which end in "you get sued" do nothing to further this debate. Scaring a bunch of teenagers into thinking IBM is going to sue them for tinkering on their PCs... you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
Experimental use - where there is no commercial exploitation is already exempt.
Convincing developers to give away their hard work to big companies like IBM and HP for free... tsk, tsk.
And what do Open Source developers get out of the deal you're selling? The freedom to continue to develop new things for HP and IBM to commercially exploit without the "threat" of being sued by HP and IBM.
In the Open Source verision of the Biblical Story of David and Goliath, both David and the Giant drop their slings, and the Giant pummels David sensleless with his bear fists.
I ain't buying your snake oil.
I think it is. Patented technologies don't get into the Linux kernel if they aren't made available on royalty free terms. In other words, if the patented technology is not available royalty free, it doesn't get used. Fair and square. It is a choice which limits the technologies available for use in Open Source. While Microsoft may be as reluctant to open their wallets and pay for patented technologies as the Open Source Community, they at least leave themselves with the option to use both royalty free and royalty bearing technology.
Please give me a rational argument for why Amazon.com should have a monopoly right over their so-called "invention", "one-click shopping".
Reductio ad absurdum. Why should I be forced to defend a questionable patent in order to justify my argument? It is silly to believe that ALL patents are invalid and that there is never any new innovative thinking.
As for Amazon's patent - it does not matter what you think because it's not for you (or me) to decide - if a jury says it's valid and infringed it's valid and infringed. It might suck, but that's how the law works.
EU Lobbying IS diminishing my rights since I live in this Union. The way I see it, my inventions are my property and patents are the tools by which I can enforce my ownership. Lobbying the EU to forbid patents on software takes treads on my rights to protect my property.
The problem with Open Source people is they cannot understand why I do not see the fairness in them making me cut down my trees because they block their view.
If you can't see through my trees (i.e., my property) then you should be the one to move.
If you don't want to use my patents, then don't.
But don't force me to surrender my property to the "greater" good of Open Source Developers. The last experiment based on that type of thinking failed miserably in every part of this Union where it was tried and I for one do not want to go down that road again.
This is the dirty little secret about Open Source.
By taking such a clear and unequivocal position against the incorporated of patented inventions, Open Source excludes itself from large areas of technology.
But this makes Open Source the red-hatted (pun intended) step child that never has new clothes and has to make due with hand-me-downs.
In order to avoid this fate, the Open Source community (or at least some vocal advocates) have taken up the flag against "software patents" - which is nothing more than a campaign to gain free access to technology which otherwise would not be free.
I think Open Source is a wonderful idea - building an operating system on technology which is in the public domain has countless merits.
But trying to make Open Source something that it is not - that is trying to make it compete on equal terms with proprietary software like MS Windows misses the whole fucking point.
If Open Source developers don't want to use patented inventions - don't use them.
"But then Mozilla would be unable to display a GIF." Boo hoo. You want to be patent free, then BE patent free. Use something else in the public domain. Keep Open Source open by the design choices you make and not by political lobbying which diminishes the rights others enjoy.
?
you don't read between the lines so well, do you?
obviously, any attempt at sarcasm which isn't framed in a dilbert strip and spelled out slowly using small words is lost on this audience.
i'll try to type more slowly next time.
now no one has to take the idea seriously.
and we can get back to CUTTING taxes to create jobs and prosperity for the top 1% of spammers.
any more talk about taxes, and we'll pull out the anti-gun epithets and silence you with those.
what damages has this guy caused to you?
yes, he may be "distributing a copyrighted work without your permission" but can you show that you have also suffered material harm as a result?
you have not suffered financially since you give your stuff away for free.
without some evidence that you have been materially harmed as a result i don't think you have enough to file a civil complaint.
and since there is no financial harm, it cannot be a criminal violation.
and go where?
it is no secret that lawful interception (LI) has been in the telecommunications network since technology made it possible.
is this news?
every telephone exchange has a built in LI function which enables law enforcement agencies to "tap into" a call without the operator/owner of the exchange having any knowledge of it.
johnny law doesn't have the time to decode PCM signals on a T1 line.
anyway, tapping into a line doesn't help much in the fight against terrorism if you don't know the physical location of the phones. having an LI function in the exchange provides this as well.
why do you think the FCC mandates having a location receivers in mobile phones? to help the police come to your rescue faster?
don't be naive. those boys in the black combat gear and bosy armour will have DHS on their backs.
big brother is alive and well and living all over the world.
protecting the fatherland, oops, i mean homeland.
goldstein is good. long live goldstein.
but a remarkably poor medium for getting paid.
however silly the "tax" proposal from the EFF (and this is not nearly as silly as most of their proposals), the focus on how to get paid from internet distribution is a good sign.
record companies will never be helpful in this debate because they do not sell and distribute music - they sell plastic discs.
putting music on their discs just happens to be a very good way to get people to pay 20 euros for a plastic disc which costs cents to make.
no "record" company will ever consider the internet as anything else than a way to sell plastic discs - or as an evil tool which undermines the sales of their discs.
they should have stayed with vinyl....
all things being equal.
i prefer it that way.
programming language should evolve to give us better control over our machines, not to let them do the thinking for us.
what those machines are programmed to do is another matter, but language should forever remain in full control of the programmer. and not devolve into object oriented blocks so large there is nothing but uniformity in the implementation.
thank you for the clarification.
three phase transformers use a wye or delta configuration.
the voltage between any pole of the transformer and neutral is sinusoidal:
Voltage=120sin(60t) Volts, t in seconds
the voltage between any two poles (i.e., phases) of the transformer is:
Voltage=240sin(60t) Volts, t in seconds
measured with a handheld multimeter (which averages the peak), you'll read 208 V.
most homes in North America receive two phases and a neutral to the fuse box.
your stove, washing machine, etc. are connected across two phases. and every thing else is connected across one phase and neutral.
and the rest of your comments do not deserve a reply.
i never said all americans think with the same mind. that's your imagination.
THIS particular guy assumes "transformers" are only used in the north american power grid.
i thought, "what, does this guy think people don't use alternating current outside the US?"
why would anyone - who knows enough to comment on transmitting digital signals down a wire - assume this?
from my perspective, it was a moronic comment.
and if you read my post, you would not have noticed that i did not use any adjectives such as "stupid" and "ugly." that's your inferority complex.
my comments were primarily technical in nature and undeserving of your ad hominem abuse.
except for the crack about starbucks.
but a girl's gotta have some fun.
?
another american who assumes the rest of the world is still buring whale oil for light.
the only difference between Europe and US is how the voltage is wired in the house. the power grids are identical - except that most of the world runs on 50Hz AC instead 60Hz which is used in US, Canada, Mexico, and Japan.
three phase 440VAC 50Hz is standard residential service throughtout Europe. wired to the outlets at 220VAC.
residential service in the US is 2 phase 220VAC 60 Hz. wired for 110 VAC to the outlets.
but three phase is available at the transformer on the top of the telephone pole outside if you want to come up to european standard.
we also have DSL, GPRS, GSM...
and pretty good coffee without having to go to Starbucks.
"We simply can't absorb the costs of accepting the millions of new customers who will flock to Verizon with their existing numbers if this law is passed."
"Not without government assistance, of course."
put Clinton back in office.
then all these brown shirt, born again, republicans who can't move fast enough to turn control over their lives to a "good, honest, christian" man like bush, will dimple their chads in the rush to make sure a dishonest, womanizing, atheist, pro-abortion LIBERAL never gets these sort of powers.
can i get an amen?
PVC pipe and WD-40 have lots of other uses than building weapons of "mash" destruction. (sorry)
selling something which ENCOURAGES and FACILITATES illegal activity - and in this case had no legal use - then you are on a slippery slope.
"honestly," your honor, "i had no idea he was going to use my ford mustang performace chip to illegally enhance the performance of his ford mustang."
"i shoot them at trees in my backyard."
just because you do not think it is right, does not make it wrong.
i used to work with a guy who sold modified chips for mustangs and corvettes.
we put the cars up on a dyno, hooked up a logic analyzer and some telemetry on the fuel injection system to figure out how the factory chip worked, and made a modified version which produced 25% more horsepower.
great business until he was arrested and his business confiscated for selling equipment which circumvented EPA laws.
car owners didn't like it, but environmentalists thought it was a prudent application of the law.
it all depends on your point of view.
according to The Economist, "overpriced printer cartridges" currently generate most of Hewlett-Packard's profits.
but once you realize this, everything else makes sense.
an inkjet printer's only function is to sell ink cartridges.
and despite the shit that's being sold, it is a business model which seems to work.
what a bunch of suckers we are.
they are about the size of a dime and as thick as a credit card.
i don't think the author of the article has the slightest idea of what she was writing about.
what remains to be sorted is convincing the operators - who own the SIM cards - to allow them to be used for communications over WLAN networks where they presumably will not receive any air time revenue.
and don't make a move for your gatt too soon.
the "No Electronic Theft (NET) Act" signed into law by Clinton expanded the types of activity that result in copyright infringement becoming a criminal offence.
the Act criminalizes the reproduction or distribution of one or more copyrighted works that have an aggregrate retail value of $1000 over a period of 180 days.
that's about 50 CDs copied in 6 months.
really?
or isn't it more like...
if you download (i.e., make copies of) copyrighted files without the permission of the copyright owner you're a criminal...
or, as in this case...
if you HELP people to download (i.e., make copies of) copyrighted files without the permission of the copyright owner you're a criminal...
bits, dollars, if they're not yours and you take 'em, it's called stealing.
what is SO hard about this concept?
i like skiing.
i've tried snowboarding, but for me, it's about as much fun as watching paint dry.
funny thing is that despite my opinion about snowboarding, lots of other people seem to really dig it.
no shit.
you see them all over the place, wasting their time on those miserable snowplows when they could be skiing.
sitting on their asses at the top of every run.
slogging along on the cattracks like wounded animals.
to a skier, you could think of them as the lowest form of life.
or you could notice that these worms pump money into the lift systems.
and force "ski" areas to change their way of thinking.
i credit these scumbags with the phenomenal expansion of back country skiing in america. 10 years ago you couldn't cut through the woods without getting your ticket clipped, but today most mountains are opening up their backcountry. it is the biggest advancement of liberty since the signing of the declaration of independence. a fucking revolution (excuse my french.)
now i'm off piste.
my point is that the author's "exaggerated view" is more distored than exaggerated. she's a skier who got on a snowboard and got pissed off and frustrated when she couldn't turn. she wants to do all the same things she can do easily on skis, but no matter how hard she tries, snowboarding puts her on her ass.
instead of complaining that snowboarding is not skiing, she should get back on her skis and thank all those dirtbag snowboarders for making skiing a better experience.
or find nothing, and say that they did.
no one knows what goes on in these black boxes, or who really controls how they are constructed and operated. the whole operation is a black box which spits out names.
and accusations.
if they don't find something, they'll make it up.
they won't even have to say what is was that they made up because that would compromise security.
secret police with a secret agenda.
"we're with homeland secutity, ma'am"
"we'd like you to come down to the station and answer a few questions"
"what have i done"
"we can't tell you, but it's bad. real bad."
in a land that's known as freedom how can such a thing be fair?
and 70% of my fellow americans are supporting the president who is doing it.
what is happening to america? is the statute of liberty so shellshocked that she averts her eyes from the insults being thrust at our beloved constitution?
what sort of liberty are we asking our brave young men and women to kill and die for?
support our troops, demand the truth.
and of course we have to do away with those inconvient due process rights which make lawyers rich defending people.
one is either an enemy combatant, or not.
and then we can do away with the property rights which prevent me from cutting down my neighbor's trees which block my view.
and why we're at it, let's throw all black men into jail because WE KNOW that some of them are going to commit a crime.
silly? of course.
the point is that laws are also intended to benefit indivuduals - not just society as a whole.
you don't like my patent? don't use it.