How can one say that nobody has written that exact same song, book, whatever? Have you checked everything that has ever been expressed since the beginning of time? The only logical thing to conclude is that nobody ever creates ideas. Ideas exist outside of time, so there is always "prior art".
That's probably one of the worst abuses of "philosophy" I've heard in a while. Your conclusion that ideas exist outside of time isn't justified by your hand wavey "proof." Besides, even if they did exist outside of time it wouldn't matter since everthing we experience is in the context of perceived time. Unless you can avoid this sense of time, then the conclusion isn't applicable to us.
I agree. How long did it take to get out all the nasty filesystem corruption problems in 2.4.x? I heard that there were problems up till.14, and new ones in.20. C'mon, we need actual stable kernels to be production quality. Perhaps we should declare a kernel as "production" after it has been used for 3 months at least without any new showstopping bugs.
for 25 cents I can buy a *newspaper*, read multiple syndicated comics and today's news. This is an experiment bound to fail due to an overpriced "micropayment." Try it at 1 cent a day or something with a comic that many people have heard of like Dilbert.
This is a very market-oriented approach. Are you sure the assumptions you make (people won't innovate without financial incentives, and firms are the source of most innovation) are correct in this case?
It seems to me that most algorithms are not invented in the private sector, but come out of places like academia. After all, if it were otherwise, shouldn't there be a lot of firms out there that specialize in doing nothing BUT researching algorithms? With the exception of RSA (a commercialized academic discovery, not a commercial invention), I can't think of one off the top of my head.
Yes, this is a market oriented approach and is the way policymakers approach the problem, as i have stated earlier. I don't completely agree with it, but the assumptions aren't too off base from an economics pov. (And yes, you may not want the rights a patent gives you but you also don't haveta apply for the patent.)
If you want an example of algorithms invented in the private sector, look at Xerox PARC. Being a pure research lab, their major revenue stream is the royalties on patents. That is what allows them to support their researchers.
Most large companies will have some sort of research division, but pure research companies are hard to find due to the lack of incentive created by patents. Think about how far back the rewards are from the investment and how uncalculable the risks are for that investment. Its really easy to see that it'll be a tough business to survive in even with patents as easy to get and as encompassing.
The valuable part is usually not inventing an algorithm, but discovering a problem that it solves
True. That's why a lot of patent disclosures go like: method X to solve Y. The target problem is essential to the patented idea and hence costs time and effort to find. Also, you don't market the algorithm but the product with the algorithm. That's how you make money. You just need a way to keep the competition from taking the algorithm from you immediately so you reap some reward of having the algorithm first and hence pay for its development costs.
But I still think algorithms should be public domain!... There is absolutely no reason that algorithms should be protected IP. I dont think you've provided enough justification for this. All you've said is that I did it in school and they didn't mind. But look at it from a lawmaker's pov.
Are all algorithms trivial and cost basically nothing to invent? (Clearly not.) Do we want people to invent them? (Definitely.) How do we compensate the inventors for their efforts to allow them to do what they do?
The only answer we have been able to come up with is patents, which are imperfect but an approximation of what we want.
But clearly there are huge benefits to developers to have all patents be public domain. Perhaps the only solution to this is to use the performer protocol, in which the society offers a one time reward for inventing something?
I doubt its because were less productive (as movies/trash media may suggest). Its probably because companies are encouraged to keep head count low and put more responsability on fewer employees. It does make sense since its often more efficient to have 2 employees work 1.5x their hours (and pay them 1.5x more) than to hire 3 employees. Sucks for the employees though, but at least they're employed.
Please stop perpetuating the american companies are evil FUD. Most american companies actually care about their customers. Yes, they want to make money but every company needs to to survive. Thats just how the economy works. Most american companies are fairly ethical due to the critical public. You should criticize but don't make pointless generalizations like this. Its really unproductive.
Besides, its not like companies in other countries don't use the same scummy tactics as american companies. But apparently youre too blind to see this. Go get yourself a dose of reality: go try doing business in a third world country. You'll quickly find out that ethics quickly goes out the window due to even less accountability. The little guy gets *royally* screwed by the local warlord/ corrupt politican/dictator.
Too Draconian. If you understand the law as the mechanism to enforce parties from doing bad things, then depriving them of this right is wrong. And if your business depends on free software, this is like saying if you want to sue me you have to stop breathing.
Instead, make them take it to arbitration to avoid the huge legal fees.
Can users of products that contain unlicensed code or patents be sued directly? If so, this seems to cause a huge problem with *all* software, since anything I use could potentially have legal problems.
Identity theft is becoming more of a problem here since there is so little protection. Theives just have to know your SSN, address, ect and soon they're using your credit cards and taking money from your bank account.
Americans should be paranoid. Most aren't. That is the problem.
Implementation is simply a matter of time and programmers/monkeys. The real innovation is the patentable ideas about system design.
If software patents evaporated tomorrow, what motivation would software companies have to release stuff quickly? We'll only see incremental changes and big design changes will be kept under wraps for years until they're fully mature, long enough so that no competitor could justify the effort to reproduce the functionality to enter the market. This will ensure even bigger monopolies and less compatibility. In fact, incompatibility will be their only shield left.
What we have now, though imperfect, is at least better than this.
Sure, their policies aren't all in line, but at least we have seen some attempt at being OSS friendly (eg. parts of Darwin opensource). But even if this weren't the case, you can look at it from the point of view of who is the bigger threat?
Apple's OS market share in general (roughly the same as Linux's) isn't enough to dictate the direction of industry as strongly as MS's 90% OS market share does. True, they would like to be like MS (and worse) if they could, but the fact is they're not. They have more of an incentive to be compatible with other software even though they're strict about their end-to-end hardware solutions.
Besides, their stuff tends to work better and shows better design that MS =)
We had the most innovative time when there were no patents and lockins. Now the software market is dead, because the OS vendor locks the market down. Giving them more lock down tools in the form of patents is death for applications software.
Um... last time I checked we still have a decent market for software. Innovation is still happening, just at a slower rate as the industry matures as expected. Companies are generally immune towards any "lockdown" due to licensing agreements.
While I understand your feelings about patents, your conclusions are unjustified.
WTF?!?! The software industry LOVES patents. Its gives them control over their intellectual property and hence more incentive to develop new software.
If patent laws are *too* strict, it'll be hard for companies to remain competitive against the hordes of smaller companies ripping off your ideas and selling a cheaper solution.
These numbers look like a case of a rigged benchmark.
If you assume that a "typical" connection has poor latency but little actual packet loss, accurately tweaking the TCP window will drastically reduce resends. A typical TCP/IP stack will do horribly if you set the latency high enough and hence you can manufacture %100 or 6,000x performance numbers as you please. Big deal.
I've never found a $5 bottle of austrailian wine that tastes like it should cost $35. Inexpensive australian wines at best seem to taste like $10 wines. But perhaps you have suggestions?
Re:Security features in a language?
on
P2P Meets Push
·
· Score: 1
But why allow for potential security holes in the first place? Sure, you can write secure C code, but if I can do it in java (which is probably 20-50% faster to code in imho) and not have the risk of common security flaws, you'll generally get better software for less effort.
But see that's the problem. I've read the infoweek article (got a free subscription;)) and it basically says: 1. These two employees found the porn and reported it. This part is clear. 2. Some time later, they got fired for other reasons.
The article leads us to think: 3. Well, duh. It's a setup, they got fired for the former.
But really it doesn't actually claim that this is the case (since it would clearly be libel since the court hasn't decided yet).
These "facts" are merely us presuming there is a cause and effect relation between #1 and #2.
But in fact we're the *least* qualified to judge, yet it seems we've already tried the company and convicted. THIS IS WRONG
Instead, when talking about this, we should make sure to preface all our judgments with the supposition that the court rules in favor of the IT workers.
Slashdot Mirror
How can one say that nobody has written that exact same song, book, whatever? Have you checked everything that has ever been expressed since the beginning of time? The only logical thing to conclude is that nobody ever creates ideas. Ideas exist outside of time, so there is always "prior art".
That's probably one of the worst abuses of "philosophy" I've heard in a while. Your conclusion that ideas exist outside of time isn't justified by your hand wavey "proof." Besides, even if they did exist outside of time it wouldn't matter since everthing we experience is in the context of perceived time. Unless you can avoid this sense of time, then the conclusion isn't applicable to us.
I agree. How long did it take to get out all the nasty filesystem corruption problems in 2.4.x? I heard that there were problems up till .14, and new ones in .20. C'mon, we need actual stable kernels to be production quality. Perhaps we should declare a kernel as "production" after it has been used for 3 months at least without any new showstopping bugs.
for 25 cents I can buy a *newspaper*, read multiple syndicated comics and today's news. This is an experiment bound to fail due to an overpriced "micropayment." Try it at 1 cent a day or something with a comic that many people have heard of like Dilbert.
This is a very market-oriented approach. Are you sure the assumptions you make (people won't innovate without financial incentives, and firms are the source of most innovation) are correct in this case?
It seems to me that most algorithms are not invented in the private sector, but come out of places like academia. After all, if it were otherwise, shouldn't there be a lot of firms out there that specialize in doing nothing BUT researching algorithms? With the exception of RSA (a commercialized academic discovery, not a commercial invention), I can't think of one off the top of my head.
Yes, this is a market oriented approach and is the way policymakers approach the problem, as i have stated earlier. I don't completely agree with it, but the assumptions aren't too off base from an economics pov. (And yes, you may not want the rights a patent gives you but you also don't haveta apply for the patent.)
If you want an example of algorithms invented in the private sector, look at Xerox PARC. Being a pure research lab, their major revenue stream is the royalties on patents. That is what allows them to support their researchers.
Most large companies will have some sort of research division, but pure research companies are hard to find due to the lack of incentive created by patents. Think about how far back the rewards are from the investment and how uncalculable the risks are for that investment. Its really easy to see that it'll be a tough business to survive in even with patents as easy to get and as encompassing.
The valuable part is usually not inventing an algorithm, but discovering a problem that it solves
True. That's why a lot of patent disclosures go like: method X to solve Y. The target problem is essential to the patented idea and hence costs time and effort to find. Also, you don't market the algorithm but the product with the algorithm. That's how you make money. You just need a way to keep the competition from taking the algorithm from you immediately so you reap some reward of having the algorithm first and hence pay for its development costs.
But I still think algorithms should be public domain! ... There is absolutely no reason that algorithms should be protected IP.
I dont think you've provided enough justification for this. All you've said is that I did it in school and they didn't mind. But look at it from a lawmaker's pov.
Are all algorithms trivial and cost basically nothing to invent? (Clearly not.) Do we want people to invent them? (Definitely.) How do we compensate the inventors for their efforts to allow them to do what they do?
The only answer we have been able to come up with is patents, which are imperfect but an approximation of what we want.
But clearly there are huge benefits to developers to have all patents be public domain. Perhaps the only solution to this is to use the performer protocol, in which the society offers a one time reward for inventing something?
I don't think currency effects make a significant difference. Its more of a cultural thing. (BTW the dollar has weakened just recently.)
I doubt its because were less productive (as movies/trash media may suggest). Its probably because companies are encouraged to keep head count low and put more responsability on fewer employees. It does make sense since its often more efficient to have 2 employees work 1.5x their hours (and pay them 1.5x more) than to hire 3 employees. Sucks for the employees though, but at least they're employed.
Please stop perpetuating the american companies are evil FUD. Most american companies actually care about their customers. Yes, they want to make money but every company needs to to survive. Thats just how the economy works. Most american companies are fairly ethical due to the critical public. You should criticize but don't make pointless generalizations like this. Its really unproductive.
Besides, its not like companies in other countries don't use the same scummy tactics as american companies. But apparently youre too blind to see this. Go get yourself a dose of reality: go try doing business in a third world country. You'll quickly find out that ethics quickly goes out the window due to even less accountability. The little guy gets *royally* screwed by the local warlord/ corrupt politican/dictator.
Too Draconian. If you understand the law as the mechanism to enforce parties from doing bad things, then depriving them of this right is wrong. And if your business depends on free software, this is like saying if you want to sue me you have to stop breathing.
Instead, make them take it to arbitration to avoid the huge legal fees.
I thought it was: Every time you download a song off the Internet, you're promoting communism. =)
Can users of products that contain unlicensed code or patents be sued directly? If so, this seems to cause a huge problem with *all* software, since anything I use could potentially have legal problems.
Well most are. But the labels own most of the traditional distribution channels so you often don't here of these artists.
Identity theft is becoming more of a problem here since there is so little protection. Theives just have to know your SSN, address, ect and soon they're using your credit cards and taking money from your bank account.
Americans should be paranoid. Most aren't. That is the problem.
Hmm, I think the fair thing to do would be to subsidize an American company that competes. Rather than imposing tarrifs. But what do I know?
Apparently not much. Subsidies create a deadweight loss. Everyone looses. Basic Econ 101.
What'd you expect from Tom? Isn't he a doctor turned hardware reviewer or something?
Implementation is simply a matter of time and programmers/monkeys. The real innovation is the patentable ideas about system design.
If software patents evaporated tomorrow, what motivation would software companies have to release stuff quickly? We'll only see incremental changes and big design changes will be kept under wraps for years until they're fully mature, long enough so that no competitor could justify the effort to reproduce the functionality to enter the market. This will ensure even bigger monopolies and less compatibility. In fact, incompatibility will be their only shield left.
What we have now, though imperfect, is at least better than this.
Sure, their policies aren't all in line, but at least we have seen some attempt at being OSS friendly (eg. parts of Darwin opensource). But even if this weren't the case, you can look at it from the point of view of who is the bigger threat?
Apple's OS market share in general (roughly the same as Linux's) isn't enough to dictate the direction of industry as strongly as MS's 90% OS market share does. True, they would like to be like MS (and worse) if they could, but the fact is they're not. They have more of an incentive to be compatible with other software even though they're strict about their end-to-end hardware solutions.
Besides, their stuff tends to work better and shows better design that MS =)
We had the most innovative time when there were no patents and lockins. Now the software market is dead, because the OS vendor locks the market down. Giving them more lock down tools in the form of patents is death for applications software.
Um... last time I checked we still have a decent market for software. Innovation is still happening, just at a slower rate as the industry matures as expected. Companies are generally immune towards any "lockdown" due to licensing agreements.
While I understand your feelings about patents, your conclusions are unjustified.
WTF?!?! The software industry LOVES patents. Its gives them control over their intellectual property and hence more incentive to develop new software.
If patent laws are *too* strict, it'll be hard for companies to remain competitive against the hordes of smaller companies ripping off your ideas and selling a cheaper solution.
Undergrads at most universities build their own CPUs. It's just a matter of coughing up the $$ to fabricate them.
These numbers look like a case of a rigged benchmark.
If you assume that a "typical" connection has poor latency but little actual packet loss, accurately tweaking the TCP window will drastically reduce resends. A typical TCP/IP stack will do horribly if you set the latency high enough and hence you can manufacture %100 or 6,000x performance numbers as you please. Big deal.
I've never found a $5 bottle of austrailian wine that tastes like it should cost $35. Inexpensive australian wines at best seem to taste like $10 wines. But perhaps you have suggestions?
But why allow for potential security holes in the first place? Sure, you can write secure C code, but if I can do it in java (which is probably 20-50% faster to code in imho) and not have the risk of common security flaws, you'll generally get better software for less effort.
But see that's the problem. I've read the infoweek article (got a free subscription ;)) and it basically says:
1. These two employees found the porn and reported it. This part is clear.
2. Some time later, they got fired for other reasons.
The article leads us to think:
3. Well, duh. It's a setup, they got fired for the former.
But really it doesn't actually claim that this is the case (since it would clearly be libel since the court hasn't decided yet).
These "facts" are merely us presuming there is a cause and effect relation between #1 and #2.
But in fact we're the *least* qualified to judge, yet it seems we've already tried the company and convicted. THIS IS WRONG
Instead, when talking about this, we should make sure to preface all our judgments with the supposition that the court rules in favor of the IT workers.