your point is well taken, the solution fermat's theorm involved a great deal of sweat, but the proof is not a patentable result.
but google's search method is not a mathematical proof, it is not an element of nature, it is a method of locating, ranking, and presenting web sites. it is (i assume) novel and the fact that it works better than yahoo, alta vista, dogpile, or any of it's competitors is stong evidence that the solution is not obvious.
so it's an invention according to us law.
claimed as a method.
and if you add technical effect "the results displayed on a screen" you can even get the method patented in the software patent unfriendly EPO.
Let's look at this logically. What happened on 9/11 was 19 guys with boxcutters brutally attacked the flight crew on four aircraft and forced their way into the cockpit. on the first three planes no one had a clue what the intention of the hijackers was. By the time the good folk on the 4th plane got wind of what was up, they heroically put an end to this type of terrorism forever. It can't be repeated. No one is going to let a guy with a box cutter commandeer a plane. Ever again. The heros of flight 93 already won that battle over the skies of pennsylvania.
Boxcutters and a well thought out plan that cannot be repeated. There's your threat of terrorism. Airplanes. There are your weapons of mass destruction.
George bush would have me believe that there is a direct and short line between boxcutters and suitcase sized nuclear weapons?
I don't believe it. It is a lie.
Look at Israel - the next logical type of terrorism would be suicide bombers on the new york subway, not a low flying drone spraying anthrax over the super bowl, or a nuclear weapon hidden in a coke machine, or some unnamed, unidentified, "weapon of mass destruction" from iraq.
i grew up during the cold war with the threat of nuclear devastation hanging over my head from the soviet union's 40,000 nuclear weapons. that was a far more real threat to american peace and security than some rat bastard like osamabinladen.
we surivived, we didn't "pre-emptively" invade russia, or cuba. we didn't tear up the constitution. well, not too much. it taped up nicely, you can hardly tell.
but you people make me fear for my country.
this has nothing to do with terrorism, terrorism is an excuse which excuses everything. just look at the behaviour of ariel sharon.
sending brave men and women to die to protect you from your irrational fears is a shame on you.
i am the owner of Iraqi patent 01 entitled
"method and apparatus for satellite navigation" issued just today.
it has recently come to my attention that your country is infringing my patent.
every night - and increasingly all day long - tomahawk and ballistic weapons with GPS guidance have been used in an infringing manner in many cities in iraq.
unfortunately, this patent is not available for license. we hope to be able to resolve this matter in an amicable manner, but please be advised that iraq respects patent rights and we will take legal action if necessary.
most reasonable people accept that networks are monitored to prevent them for being used to distribute child pornography - because everyone agrees this is a crime.
the monitoring of networks to prevent criminal activity is established as a reasonable measure even in a free society.
it seems the problem is that college students do not agree that what they are doing is a crime.
disageeing with the law, is unfortunately, no excuse for violating it.
google's search method a discovery? really? it was always there waiting for someone to get hit on the head by an apple and notice it?
or was it the result of some smart people doing a lot of hard thinking, making some mistakes, enduring frustration, having flashes of brilliance, and developing a technique which provides a great deal of value to a lot of people?
a reasonable assumption would be that google's patent is a result of the latter.
in other words, this was an invention, not a discovery.
the method by which the search is performed (i.e., the algorithm) is definitely patentable.
claims may be method or apparatus. an algorithm is claimed as method.
when the method is used "in a contraption" the INFRINGEMENT occurs which i think is the source of your confusion about "algorithms" being unpatentable.
there is a difference between algorithms and scientinfic ideas.
the theory of relativity, ruthford's model of the atom, and maxwells laws - while all expressed as slgorithms - are not discoveries of nature and not patentable subject matter. not then, not now.
google's search engine - also expressable as a mathematical algorithm - IS patentable because it is an invention, not a discovery in nature.
the fundamental question is whether or not people have a right to own their ideas - not whether or not algorithms should be patentable. indeed, algorithms since they are so easily copied, are in great need ot patent protection.
that the US constitutional mandate that patents and copyrights should "promote the progress of the useful arts and sciences" is an unmodern way of viewing intellectual property.
fortunately, the US Constitution is infinitely malleable to commercial (and political) interests. it is hard to imagine that a business method patent would be seen as promoting the "progress of science and the useful arts" in any way, shape, or form which would have been recognizeable to a slave owner like Thomas Jefferson, yet this did not hinder the US Congress from embracing this as an entirely new area for patenting."
ironically, in Europe, where copyright is seen as a natural right, and patents as industrial rights, there is intense debate over whether or not to allow business method patents for fear that they will not promote the progress of science.
i believe people have a natural right to own their inventions regardless of the impact on the public. like free speech, it may be inconvient in certain instances, but on the whole society is better of with it, than without it.
Cellular is an Anerican failure, not a Scandinavian success.
NMT was more or less a copy of AMPS which was developed by Motorola and AT&T.
It's in the paper, so you know that's a fact.
In 1990 - two years before GSM was launched - the United States had a single country-wide cellular radio system (AMPS) and Europe had a hodgepodge of incombatible standards (NMT, TACS, etc.) In 1990 an American could drive between New York and Washington DC and have AMPS coverage the whole way... while a European could not drive from Antwerp to Aachen (about 1/3 the distance) without having to use a different phone.
America invented cellular, but our pro-competitive government thought it would be a good idea to let a variety of 2G standards (DAMPS, CDMA, Nextel) to compete against each other in the market, and killed it. Thank you Ronald Reagan.
While competition was creating a patchwork quilt of cellular standards in the US, the Europeans developed GSM and agreed to use the SAME standard in all the European countries.
Today, I can take use my GSM phone in 100 countries (even the US), but I can't use a CDMA phone in all 50 states.
Thus did "Old Europe" kick the shit out of the New World.
i.e., We did it to ourselves.
And the horse you rode in on.
on
BSA IDC FUD
·
· Score: 0
Sure you might think the BSA is heavy handed, but what if it's YOUR software which everyone is pirating?
I wrote commercial code back in the day of floppy disks and FORTRAN. I tried to make a living writing code, not unlike many of the Slashdot community.
Once when I was on a consulting assignment for a large company, one of their engineers showed me a program which he had which was very useful, he said, for designing microwave filters. It was my program.
I did not let on that it was mine and asked him where he got it. "It was posted on a BBS," I can point you to it, or better yet, I'll make a copy for you."
Nice guy.
Since the list price of that software was 1,200 united states dollars, and I knew the company had not purchased a copy, I wrote letters to the company and tried to get paid, but they ignored me.
Was I wrong to want to get paid? I don't think so.
If the BSA could have helped me back then, I would have applauded (read: APPLAUDED) them.
sorry pee wee.
it's not very funny either to have invested in research and development to create a new invention, to bear the expense of filing an application for patent, and then watch the world steal it.
there are two sides to every story.
please do try to keep this in mind.
p.s. (i liked "big adventure", but i guess your "big adventure" means there will never be a sequel.)
Didn't you read the article? It is PRIVATE companies which are going to be violating your rights. They didn't have any private companies in Soviet Russia so this is not at all the same thing.
Rumor has it that Halliburton, the former oil company now data mining company, will get the first contracts!
dude,
DCMA is not mandatory. there is nothing to prevent your band from releasing your music in copyable form. nothing except the desire of you and your buddies to get paid.
if you don't like DCMA, don't use it. you want to give your music away for free - do it.
but please don't force other musicians, artists, authors, and performers to give THEIR work for free. that is ALL the DCMA strives to achieve. to give artists control over their work.
my question for professor felton is does the consumer's fair use trump the right of artists to maintain control over their work?
IANAL, but it seems to me that ownership of my own ideas and inventions and creations is as close to a natural right as there is. "fair use", on the other hand, is a construction of legal fiction aimed at addressing specific problems of production which create a need for re-production.
in the court of my own opinion, natural rights should prevail.
Problem with satisfying your desire for security is that King George the W took and oath to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States of America.
In other words, Junior is supposed to defend and protect American principles, not American's citizens.
Your precious security.
How many people died in automobile accidents yesterday? Last year? Compare this number to the number of deaths due to terrorism and there you have the greatest threat to your personal security.
But I bet you hop in your car without thinking, while you send brave men and women to die to protect you from a far lesser threat.
Shame on you.
hey mr. true conservative,
when your fair rights threaten my property, your rights end.
you call yourself a "true conservative." ha ha ha. like who? the facist bush and his neo-conservative, born again brown shirts to whom the constitution is an inconvenient translation of the king james bible.
you are not a "true conservative," you are an anarchist.
"The DMCA is just a symptom of trying to impose copyrights in the information age. If we don't get to the source of the problem, copyrights, we will forever be providing a revenue stream to those determined to impose controll over all information we use."
a stupid statement. to make it intelligent it should read - "It is those determined to impose controll (sic) over all the information they OWN."
you want civil disobedience?
if you don't want to use copyrighted information, then don't. it's that simple.
you don't like DCMA, then don't buy products protected by it.
but don't force people or companies to donate their property to the public so everything will be free. public ownership of private property (aka, communism) doesn't work.
"i've seen a lot of comments here asking why Intel would do such a thing...."
doesn't it occur to any of you dimwits that there is rarely a corporate strategy behind filing individual patents.
this patent is more than likely the result of an idea, which was submitted to a patent review board, which said "yeah, good idea, let's patent it" and which was then sent off to some patent attorney in a windowless office to file and prosecute it through the patent office.
a few years later, the patent issues and it is seen by a paranoid geek who believes aliens populated the earth and suddenly it's evidence of an evil corporate strategy.
frankly, intel probably has no idea why they filed this patent. there are dozens of other ways to stop companies from selling overclocked intel processors than to take a patent on overclocking.
pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
"I have to have a 802.11b receiver to listen, why not use an FM transceiver."
why not indeed? there are far more spectrally efficient ways to transmit digital radio than using a horribly inefficient wireless LAN protocol like 802.11b.
the sad truth is that they are 802.11b to broadcast radio because no one is using 802.11b for what it was intended. if it was being used for what it was designed for - wireless internet access - legitimate users would howl over attack on their bandwidth instead of saying "cool" i can listen to the radio over my PC.
this explains why wireless is taking off like howard hughes' spruce goose. it's all this "if you built it, they will come, bullshit."
they built a baseball diamond, but users want to play basketball.
there is nothing to prevent "the dead" or any band, or any writer, or any artist, from releasing their music for free on the internet.
nothing but the big fat contracts these people sign with the evil companies which sell-outs like barlow say wants to rule the world.
"yeah, my stuff is valuable, but everyone else's stuff should be free."
DMCA ain't the problem folks, it's how people use it.
you don't like copyright - fine, don't use it.
give your stuff away for free, but don't force other people to give their stuff away for free.
it's failed everywhere it's been tried.
Slashdot Mirror
but google's search method is not a mathematical proof, it is not an element of nature, it is a method of locating, ranking, and presenting web sites. it is (i assume) novel and the fact that it works better than yahoo, alta vista, dogpile, or any of it's competitors is stong evidence that the solution is not obvious.
so it's an invention according to us law.
claimed as a method.
and if you add technical effect "the results displayed on a screen" you can even get the method patented in the software patent unfriendly EPO.
Boxcutters and a well thought out plan that cannot be repeated. There's your threat of terrorism. Airplanes. There are your weapons of mass destruction.
George bush would have me believe that there is a direct and short line between boxcutters and suitcase sized nuclear weapons?
I don't believe it. It is a lie.
Look at Israel - the next logical type of terrorism would be suicide bombers on the new york subway, not a low flying drone spraying anthrax over the super bowl, or a nuclear weapon hidden in a coke machine, or some unnamed, unidentified, "weapon of mass destruction" from iraq.
i grew up during the cold war with the threat of nuclear devastation hanging over my head from the soviet union's 40,000 nuclear weapons. that was a far more real threat to american peace and security than some rat bastard like osamabinladen.
we surivived, we didn't "pre-emptively" invade russia, or cuba. we didn't tear up the constitution. well, not too much. it taped up nicely, you can hardly tell.
but you people make me fear for my country.
this has nothing to do with terrorism, terrorism is an excuse which excuses everything. just look at the behaviour of ariel sharon.
sending brave men and women to die to protect you from your irrational fears is a shame on you.
support our troops, demand the truth.
imagine if saddam hussein had a patent on GPS....
dear mr. bush,
i am the owner of Iraqi patent 01 entitled "method and apparatus for satellite navigation" issued just today.
it has recently come to my attention that your country is infringing my patent.
every night - and increasingly all day long - tomahawk and ballistic weapons with GPS guidance have been used in an infringing manner in many cities in iraq.
unfortunately, this patent is not available for license. we hope to be able to resolve this matter in an amicable manner, but please be advised that iraq respects patent rights and we will take legal action if necessary.
yours, etc.
saddam
the annual number of deaths due to traffic fatalities, murder, and suicide each exceed 3005.
cancer rates are expected to increase by 50% in 2020.
and let's not forge the biggest killer of all -heart disease
statistically, the biggest risk to your life is a result of ordinary, day to day american standard of living.
america's post 9/11 reaction is nothing but shellshock - post traumatic stress. i.e., not a rational reaction.
mobilizing a nation of 300 million people based on irrational fears is destructive and foolish.
you've been bamboozled by the neo-conservatives.
george bush took advantage of your shellshock to create the neo-conservative new world order.
support the troops. demand the truth.
because that's where the money was.
why does the RIAA go after college networks?
because that's where the stealing goes on.
most reasonable people accept that networks are monitored to prevent them for being used to distribute child pornography - because everyone agrees this is a crime.
the monitoring of networks to prevent criminal activity is established as a reasonable measure even in a free society.
it seems the problem is that college students do not agree that what they are doing is a crime.
disageeing with the law, is unfortunately, no excuse for violating it.
google's search method a discovery? really? it was always there waiting for someone to get hit on the head by an apple and notice it?
or was it the result of some smart people doing a lot of hard thinking, making some mistakes, enduring frustration, having flashes of brilliance, and developing a technique which provides a great deal of value to a lot of people?
a reasonable assumption would be that google's patent is a result of the latter.
in other words, this was an invention, not a discovery.
the method by which the search is performed (i.e., the algorithm) is definitely patentable.
claims may be method or apparatus. an algorithm is claimed as method.
when the method is used "in a contraption" the INFRINGEMENT occurs which i think is the source of your confusion about "algorithms" being unpatentable.
the theory of relativity, ruthford's model of the atom, and maxwells laws - while all expressed as slgorithms - are not discoveries of nature and not patentable subject matter. not then, not now.
google's search engine - also expressable as a mathematical algorithm - IS patentable because it is an invention, not a discovery in nature.
the fundamental question is whether or not people have a right to own their ideas - not whether or not algorithms should be patentable. indeed, algorithms since they are so easily copied, are in great need ot patent protection.
that the US constitutional mandate that patents and copyrights should "promote the progress of the useful arts and sciences" is an unmodern way of viewing intellectual property.
fortunately, the US Constitution is infinitely malleable to commercial (and political) interests. it is hard to imagine that a business method patent would be seen as promoting the "progress of science and the useful arts" in any way, shape, or form which would have been recognizeable to a slave owner like Thomas Jefferson, yet this did not hinder the US Congress from embracing this as an entirely new area for patenting."
ironically, in Europe, where copyright is seen as a natural right, and patents as industrial rights, there is intense debate over whether or not to allow business method patents for fear that they will not promote the progress of science.
i believe people have a natural right to own their inventions regardless of the impact on the public. like free speech, it may be inconvient in certain instances, but on the whole society is better of with it, than without it.
NMT was more or less a copy of AMPS which was developed by Motorola and AT&T.
It's in the paper, so you know that's a fact.
In 1990 - two years before GSM was launched - the United States had a single country-wide cellular radio system (AMPS) and Europe had a hodgepodge of incombatible standards (NMT, TACS, etc.) In 1990 an American could drive between New York and Washington DC and have AMPS coverage the whole way... while a European could not drive from Antwerp to Aachen (about 1/3 the distance) without having to use a different phone.
America invented cellular, but our pro-competitive government thought it would be a good idea to let a variety of 2G standards (DAMPS, CDMA, Nextel) to compete against each other in the market, and killed it. Thank you Ronald Reagan.
While competition was creating a patchwork quilt of cellular standards in the US, the Europeans developed GSM and agreed to use the SAME standard in all the European countries.
Today, I can take use my GSM phone in 100 countries (even the US), but I can't use a CDMA phone in all 50 states.
Thus did "Old Europe" kick the shit out of the New World.
i.e., We did it to ourselves.
Sure you might think the BSA is heavy handed, but what if it's YOUR software which everyone is pirating?
I wrote commercial code back in the day of floppy disks and FORTRAN. I tried to make a living writing code, not unlike many of the Slashdot community.
Once when I was on a consulting assignment for a large company, one of their engineers showed me a program which he had which was very useful, he said, for designing microwave filters. It was my program.
I did not let on that it was mine and asked him where he got it. "It was posted on a BBS," I can point you to it, or better yet, I'll make a copy for you."
Nice guy.
Since the list price of that software was 1,200 united states dollars, and I knew the company had not purchased a copy, I wrote letters to the company and tried to get paid, but they ignored me.
Was I wrong to want to get paid? I don't think so.
If the BSA could have helped me back then, I would have applauded (read: APPLAUDED) them.
sorry pee wee. it's not very funny either to have invested in research and development to create a new invention, to bear the expense of filing an application for patent, and then watch the world steal it. there are two sides to every story. please do try to keep this in mind. p.s. (i liked "big adventure", but i guess your "big adventure" means there will never be a sequel.)
His lawyer said that Mr. Herman did not infringe because he wasn't streaming.... he was only dribbling.
Didn't you read the article? It is PRIVATE companies which are going to be violating your rights. They didn't have any private companies in Soviet Russia so this is not at all the same thing.
Rumor has it that Halliburton, the former oil company now data mining company, will get the first contracts!
if you don't like DCMA, don't use it. you want to give your music away for free - do it.
but please don't force other musicians, artists, authors, and performers to give THEIR work for free. that is ALL the DCMA strives to achieve. to give artists control over their work.
my question for professor felton is does the consumer's fair use trump the right of artists to maintain control over their work?
IANAL, but it seems to me that ownership of my own ideas and inventions and creations is as close to a natural right as there is. "fair use", on the other hand, is a construction of legal fiction aimed at addressing specific problems of production which create a need for re-production.
in the court of my own opinion, natural rights should prevail.
But I bet you hop in your car without thinking, while you send brave men and women to die to protect you from a far lesser threat. Shame on you.
hey mr. true conservative, when your fair rights threaten my property, your rights end. you call yourself a "true conservative." ha ha ha. like who? the facist bush and his neo-conservative, born again brown shirts to whom the constitution is an inconvenient translation of the king james bible. you are not a "true conservative," you are an anarchist.
Yeah, pretty soon there won't be any legal way to steal.
Call you cynical, no. Theif maybe, but not cynical.
"The DMCA is just a symptom of trying to impose copyrights in the information age. If we don't get to the source of the problem, copyrights, we will forever be providing a revenue stream to those determined to impose controll over all information we use." a stupid statement. to make it intelligent it should read - "It is those determined to impose controll (sic) over all the information they OWN." you want civil disobedience? if you don't want to use copyrighted information, then don't. it's that simple. you don't like DCMA, then don't buy products protected by it. but don't force people or companies to donate their property to the public so everything will be free. public ownership of private property (aka, communism) doesn't work.
"i've seen a lot of comments here asking why Intel would do such a thing...." doesn't it occur to any of you dimwits that there is rarely a corporate strategy behind filing individual patents. this patent is more than likely the result of an idea, which was submitted to a patent review board, which said "yeah, good idea, let's patent it" and which was then sent off to some patent attorney in a windowless office to file and prosecute it through the patent office. a few years later, the patent issues and it is seen by a paranoid geek who believes aliens populated the earth and suddenly it's evidence of an evil corporate strategy. frankly, intel probably has no idea why they filed this patent. there are dozens of other ways to stop companies from selling overclocked intel processors than to take a patent on overclocking. pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
sounds like you lost some heat resistant tiles.
what? pay for something you can steal for free? where is your /. esprit de corps? join the resistance man. no one is free until everything is free.
"I have to have a 802.11b receiver to listen, why not use an FM transceiver." why not indeed? there are far more spectrally efficient ways to transmit digital radio than using a horribly inefficient wireless LAN protocol like 802.11b. the sad truth is that they are 802.11b to broadcast radio because no one is using 802.11b for what it was intended. if it was being used for what it was designed for - wireless internet access - legitimate users would howl over attack on their bandwidth instead of saying "cool" i can listen to the radio over my PC. this explains why wireless is taking off like howard hughes' spruce goose. it's all this "if you built it, they will come, bullshit." they built a baseball diamond, but users want to play basketball.
there is nothing to prevent "the dead" or any band, or any writer, or any artist, from releasing their music for free on the internet. nothing but the big fat contracts these people sign with the evil companies which sell-outs like barlow say wants to rule the world. "yeah, my stuff is valuable, but everyone else's stuff should be free." DMCA ain't the problem folks, it's how people use it. you don't like copyright - fine, don't use it. give your stuff away for free, but don't force other people to give their stuff away for free. it's failed everywhere it's been tried.