If they really want to cash in on all the IPO hysteria these days, they're going to have to issue some sort of open-sourcy "we play nice with linux" annoucement, won't they?:^)
By the way, how come they never release the even numberes? I want a Palm VI, dammit!
It seems to me that the Open Source movement is one of the best vehicles for maintaining sanity in software patent law. Here we have tons of source code for: operating systems, compilers, multimedia apps, etc, etc, available for public searching/indexing. This is, in effect, a huge, worldwide library of prior art!
Just imagine: ten years from now, some dinky startup company may get sued by for infringement on some 'obvious' color blending algorithm, and they can go to court and possibly get the case (and the patent) thrown out by demonstrating that the exact same algorithm was used way back in 1998 in release 1.2.17.42.11 of the GIMP!
As such, it seems to me that someone could make a valuable (if not exactly glamorous) contribution to the open source world by creating a repository for old versions of stuff, to ensure that, ten years from now, the source code to version 1.2.17.42.11 is still available, with some system of time/date-stamped hashcodes to verify the date of 'invention.'
His math reminds me of something I saw about 10 years ago - there was some stir in the comp.compression newsgroups over a press release by a company called WEB something-or-other (short for Wider Electronic Bandwidth) anyway, this company claimed they had 'almost perfected' a breakthrough compression algorithm that could losslesly compress any file by a ratio of exactly 16:1. They claimed you could even do this recursively on the output of their compressor, until you reached a size of 'about 1k'. Imagine it! They actually believed that they could take absolutely any n-byte file, and map it one-to-one with some file of m bytes, where m is 1024 or so.
you could argue, I suppose, that with godlike foreknowledge, you could 'number' all the files humanity will ever produce, and the serial number for any document ever produced could fit into under 1k, but, of course, you decompression tables would be *enormous*. -- oh, and I guess that table would be a file, so it would need a new serial number, and thus a new table, ad infinitum.:^)
As I recall, they even issued press releases announcing they had received VC, and were about to release a product as soon as they figured out how to solve the 'highly unusual situation when four identical numbers are at the corner of a matrix' -- they never explained this cryptic gobbledygook, and never released any details of their scheme.
But the really amazing thing was how many yoyos in the newsgroups bought it, hook, line, and sinker, and spouted nonsense such as: "people thought Galileo was crazy, too, but it turned out he was right! Maybe there are things about your precious number theory that we haven't discovered yet!"
Some poor soul tried to explain that there is no "advanced number theory" involved, just plain counting - there is no way to do a one-to-one mapping from one-byte to 16-bytes. You would think a reasonable person could generalize this principle to understand that you also can't do a one-to-one mapping from 1kb to 16kb, but alas, many pundits wrote back, calling the first guy an idiot for not 'noticing' that the company had 'already admitted' you could only carry out the process until a size of 1k.
The whole thing was pretty funny, but rather pathetic at the same time...
Lets face it, books are a commodity item; there is no good reason to buy a given book from one online vendor vs. another. (ok, you can quibble about 1-click ordering being more convenient, or some such, but lets keep some perspective -- the worst, clunkiest online retailer is still hundreds of times more convenient than getting off your butt and driving to the store, and we used to do that all the time!) If low prices are an issue, use pricescan or somesuch to find the cheapest e-tailer that respects your privacy.
By all means, vote with your wallets, but take an extra second and let them know why.Tell them that they have invaded your privacy, violated your trust, and, as a result, lost your business. They deserve to know why, and enough feedback might just get them to reverse their decision. If other online stores see them get away with this, it could spread. But if we squash it now, no one else will dare. Speak out! Amazon has a special email address specifically for accepting comments about this "feature." Use it. Don't flame - no one listens to flames. Be firm, be polite, be concise, but most of all, be heard.
Slashdot Mirror
By the way, how come they never release the even numberes? I want a Palm VI, dammit!
Just imagine: ten years from now, some dinky startup company may get sued by for infringement on some 'obvious' color blending algorithm, and they can go to court and possibly get the case (and the patent) thrown out by demonstrating that the exact same algorithm was used way back in 1998 in release 1.2.17.42.11 of the GIMP!
As such, it seems to me that someone could make a valuable (if not exactly glamorous) contribution to the open source world by creating a repository for old versions of stuff, to ensure that, ten years from now, the source code to version 1.2.17.42.11 is still available, with some system of time/date-stamped hashcodes to verify the date of 'invention.'
Any thoughts?
His math reminds me of something I saw about 10 years ago - there was some stir in the comp.compression newsgroups over a press release by a company called WEB something-or-other (short for Wider Electronic Bandwidth) anyway, this company claimed they had 'almost perfected' a breakthrough compression algorithm that could losslesly compress any file by a ratio of exactly 16:1. They claimed you could even do this recursively on the output of their compressor, until you reached a size of 'about 1k'. Imagine it! They actually believed that they could take absolutely any n-byte file, and map it one-to-one with some file of m bytes, where m is 1024 or so.
:^)
you could argue, I suppose, that with godlike foreknowledge, you could 'number' all the files humanity will ever produce, and the serial number for any document ever produced could fit into under 1k, but, of course, you decompression tables would be *enormous*. -- oh, and I guess that table would be a file, so it would need a new serial number, and thus a new table, ad infinitum.
As I recall, they even issued press releases announcing they had received VC, and were about to release a product as soon as they figured out how to solve the 'highly unusual situation when four identical numbers are at the corner of a matrix' -- they never explained this cryptic gobbledygook, and never released any details of their scheme.
But the really amazing thing was how many yoyos in the newsgroups bought it, hook, line, and sinker, and spouted nonsense such as: "people thought Galileo was crazy, too, but it turned out he was right! Maybe there are things about your precious number theory that we haven't discovered yet!"
Some poor soul tried to explain that there is no "advanced number theory" involved, just plain counting - there is no way to do a one-to-one mapping from one-byte to 16-bytes. You would think a reasonable person could generalize this principle to understand that you also can't do a one-to-one mapping from 1kb to 16kb, but alas, many pundits wrote back, calling the first guy an idiot for not 'noticing' that the company had 'already admitted' you could only carry out the process until a size of 1k.
The whole thing was pretty funny, but rather pathetic at the same time...
Lets face it, books are a commodity item; there is no good reason to buy a given book from one online vendor vs. another. (ok, you can quibble about 1-click ordering being more convenient, or some such, but lets keep some perspective -- the worst, clunkiest online retailer is still hundreds of times more convenient than getting off your butt and driving to the store, and we used to do that all the time!) If low prices are an issue, use pricescan or somesuch to find the cheapest e-tailer that respects your privacy.
By all means, vote with your wallets, but take an extra second and let them know why. Tell them that they have invaded your privacy, violated your trust, and, as a result, lost your business. They deserve to know why, and enough feedback might just get them to reverse their decision. If other online stores see them get away with this, it could spread. But if we squash it now, no one else will dare. Speak out! Amazon has a special email address specifically for accepting comments about this "feature." Use it. Don't flame - no one listens to flames. Be firm, be polite, be concise, but most of all, be heard.