"Technically, Star Trek was fantasy... there is no science behind warp drive..."
Well there isn't much of any substance (unless you count Avey Spheres);-) but warp drive technology isn't so outlandish that it belongs in Fairyland: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive and anyway, I don't really understand what it means to say that ST was "technically" fantasy and is not (or was not) SF:
"It's that whole science thing. Of course, this is a nation that apparently wants to put "Intelligent Design" into our schools..."
I deplore the "Intelligent Design" disease and the poor general level of scientific literacy too, but I don't think asking that SF creators extrapolate only conservatively and realistically from current science would help to cure it. Watching the movies "Minority Report" and "Gattaca" recently reminded me that near-term extrapolation of science and technology is often a device used by creators of dystopian visions of the future. Realistic technologies pessimistically portrayed in popular culture as the instruments and accompaniments of horrible disfunction in society is more worrying to me than the supreme optimism of the more speculative Star Trek. I think it's the general impressions and associations that count most - not whether any particular fictional technology is feasible - and on that score, the rational morality and robust well-being of Star Trek's scientifically founded civilisation is a positive benefit to the public image of science. The large number of real scientists and engineers who have been inspired by Star trek is testimony to that.
"It really is that simple in most cases. The problem so far has been that nearly every argument against (for one example) patents applying to software has been exceptionally weak."
You are shifting the burden of proof and rather distorting the facts: You may only ever have seen exceptionally weak arguments, but that is not because only exceptionally weak arguments have ever been deployed - quite the converse is true*. The problem so far has instead been that no argument with even a semblance of strength for introducing software patents has ever been produced. And however weak you think any argument against the expansion of patentable subject matter is, it automatically wins unless you have a strong argument in favour of that expansion. But the expansion has occurred anyway of course, and in the face of strong arguments and strong opposition from industry and academia. That many companies, academics and individuals had to make such arguments at all illustrates the appalling state of recent policy making in this area (if you can call it policy making). Any credible economist will tell you that patent scope expansion without prior empirical and sound theoretical justification is verboten. Too bad - the damage is done and in the US it seems the fight's effectively over now, but the rest of what I want to say is appropriately Eurocentric anyway.
"You have to be prepared to deal with issues like why expressing a particular piece of logic in C or Ada doesn't deserve patent protection, while expressing the same logic in Verilog or VHDL, which look identical to a non-programmer should deserve that protection."
That is definitely not an issue. One does not ask whether or not some invention deserves a patent, but whether or not it is patentable subject matter at all and your example is a poor one because if the claims of a patent are directed to the expressions of logic, then they are software patent claims.
"Likewise, why a device that fits the description in a patent claim should not be protected if the implementation happens to be (even in part) carried out with an embedded processor with embedded code, even though it's not at all apparent to the outside world that there's any software involved at all."
The distinction between hardware and software is not useful and is not at all relevant to the question of whether a patent claim is a software patent claim or not. One way to discover how the distinction between software patent and non-software patent is determined (and it is not always easy) is to read the way it is expressed by Judge Peter Prescott QC in his recent CFPH decision, in which he carefully and fully interprets the EPC Article 52 exclusions. Unfortunately, Prescott's interpretation seems to me to leave a lot of room for claiming things such as image enhancement techniques derived from purely mathematical considerations, but at least compression algorithms and data manipulation and data st
Is this discussion available online for the entertainment of all intelligent life in space?
Sadly not. It began on a mailing list but I just checked and the list archive is private. Maybe one day I'll get whatever permissions are necessary and put together a web page. I first found a reference to the patent in the BBC science message boards where James Avey is one of the regular errm... eccentrics and my connection to the UKPO was with regard to a completely unrelated subject, but when I saw the Avey patent I couldn't resist bringing it up. Most of the fun was in the gradual extraction of the 'terribly disappointing' information that the patent had been whittled down to nothing more than a claim to a shiny aluminium sphere during its examination. Despite our differences I've found the UKPO man concerned and his colleagues deserve respect for their competence and rigour and I knew all along there was very little chance they'd granted the patent as it appears in the EPO database. My dreams of interstellar exploration were indeed finally shattered:
> The claims were amended substantially. I don't have it in front of me now, > but if my memory is correct, the claims as granted only relate to a novel > shape and construction of craft - ie. with no suggestion of bending gravity, > or warp technology etc..
Damn. I had hoped to be flying my own ship "round the moons of Nibia and round the Antares maelstrom" before too long. Now we're back to square one and I probably won't even get to watch the manned Mars landings on the telly before I die;-)
Have a good weekend.
So it turned out that James Avey wasn't the real Zephron Cochran after all;-)
I got the distinct impression of some parody or crankishness too, but not from anything said by the interviewee or about space elevators;-) If you think space elevators sound outlandish, take a look at this:
...which theoretical but apparently sound science provided the background to an amusing discussion I had with the UKPO a while back concerning this little gem:
Grant of Patent (Notification under Section 18(4)) 07.10.2003
Publication of notice in the Patents and Designs Journal (Section 25(1))
05.11.2003
Title of Granted Patent ANTI GRAVITY CRAFT
(Sadly, the patent actually granted claims very much less than its title or the EPO application documents would suggest;-)
Jones and others' talk of "hypocrisy" and "treachery" is childish and ignorant. If they think that their facile SCO-hating and witch hunting as the clown Darl McBride inexplicably attempts to bash his company's brains out against the wall of IBM is somehow doing more for FLOSS than Marten Mickos has, they are completely deluded.
"As in all business models trying to sort out the final 10% of a probelm is always dispraportinatly expensive."
The British Library is a (largely) publicly funded national resource, not a commercial entertainment and media company.
"Afterall they did not have to do anything other then show the books once every 20 years under glass in the British Library."
Yes - if the governing board decided that such a policy would count as fulfilling the purpose of the Library and its legal obligations under the British Library Act: http://www.bl.uk/about/blact.html - but I doubt most interested parties would agree and I doubt Parliament would put up with it for very long.
That they use proprietary and/or less than optimally accessible formats unnecessarily liberally may seem a trivial complaint to you, but I disagree and it is certainly not unreasonable or close-minded to suggest that they haven't done quite as well for the public as they might have done this time:
"Are there any legitimate governments (not owned by the MNCs) left at all?"
No - sorry. My investment company has spent a great deal of time and money on this technology and in acquiring and carefully placing these assets for our most valued clients. If you wanted your own you should have done something about it years ago. And don't think that you can steal any of our property by simply picking up the phone and saying, "Mr. Bush?... Mr. George Bush?... Mr. George Walker Bush?..." - for example. It won't work - we've added code words to the activation sequences now which we change regularly.
"For your information, patents protect technological innovations. Pure math is not patented, only its application to some specific problem."
For your information, patents protect patentable inventions, not innovations, and technology is a nebulous term that has no practical significance.
"If you disallow software logic claims for anti-lock braking system, you will essentially destroy any protection for it."
That is a deeply ignorant statement: if the ABS invention is not excluded by such consideratons as that it is merely an advance in data processing or mathematics, then there is no reason why it should not be potentially patentable.
"Perhaps, more relevant example for open-source crowd is Transmeta. Linus himself admitted that their chips are 1/3 hardware and 2/3 software (Code Morphing Software, patented by Transmeta, of course)"
The distinction between hardware and software is irrelevant, and so is the distinction between open source and closed source software.
"How are they going to protect their chip designs from being stolen?"
Chip designs are 'protected' by the well-known sui generis law that is neither copyright nor patent.
"I am tired of explaining why copyright is not adequate for protecting software."
You may well be tired of 'explaining' why copyright is "not adequate" but your mental fatigue is of little consequence in the light of economic evidence, the opinions of pioneers and luminaries in the field and the fundamental principles of the patent system itself.
I suffered an introductory course in programming in VB while studying physics at university and despised it. Later I was fortunate enough to come across SICP and the SICP videos when I decided I needed to learn programming in earnest but if I'd been stuck with something like C++ or BASIC or Java, I suspect I'd still have found programming a tedious and unrewarding distraction from real maths and science and never really understood its potential. Now I actually like and respect it and there are good resources available for high school level stuff:
Apparently Scheme/Lisp appeals even to 'liberal arts' types and though I'm not one of those myself it certainly rapidly transformed my attitude to and understanding of computing and I can see why it might make better and more enthusiastic programmers of students whatever their abilities and preferences.
The perverse unpopularity of Lisp is very frustrating. Even searching for Emacs Lisp packages turns up less current activity and more cobwebs than I'd have expected given Emacs's widespread use and Lisp's extraordinary power, and I've so far failed to get any of the GUI toolkits to work with SBCL or CLISP under Gentoo. I read mind-boggling and inexplicable opinions such as this and I wonder if Lisp is a case of pearls before swine in the computing world, but I do hope you're right about it attracting a lot of attention lately.
"What would be extra cool is if there was a way to make a deal with software companies to allow us to distribute their software. If it isn't possible, then perhaps we could create an illegal distribution and host it in some country that doesn't care. I always wonder, if it is legal for mplayer to host all the codecs on their site for free download why would it be illegal to host a distribution including all those codecs on the same site? A lot of what people do with their computers now is multimedia. If Linux can cast away a few zealots it can show that it is the best multimedia playing and managing operating system. Once it catches up to Apple in the content creation department it will be unstoppable.
Clearly you are unfamiliar with patent and copyright law but as you point out: there are legal impediments to shipping certain non-free software. In fact restrictions can just as easily apply to free software (see e.g. http://brian.mastenbrook.net/display/5 ) and creating illegal distributions is hardly likely to help make "us" unstoppable.
The people you call 'zealots' are the people who wrote the software and constructed the distros in the first place and they are entitled to impose whatever policy they see fit. If you don't like Mark Shuttleworth's strong open source stance or the Gentoo social contract, I suggest you quit your ignorant whining and make your own distro.
Your remarks suggest though that you'd be happier with warez than with FOSS and you certainly don't understand what most of the latter is about and what motivates the people who create it. Certainly the creation of FOSS is an activity far removed from the selfish criminality that you advocate, and it is quite sickening to hear someone like you saying that (absurdly):
"...those zealots will have to learn to deal with the fact that the only way to be truly free with multimedia is to use some non-free software."
If you cannot respect the views of the people whose creativity you take advantage of you could at least try not to make a complete fool of yourself.
The use of military metaphor in the mouths of CEOs is commonplace, they are not usually ridiculed and no-one thinks of them as nutcases. Patents in particular have been described as weapons of business by lawyers, businessmen and economists for as long as I can remember.
Part of the problem is that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been lax in granting patents, said Mitchell Kapor, a founder of Lotus Development Corp. and a prominent backer of the Mozilla browser. "There have been tens of thousands of bad software patents issued which never would have been issued if the Patent Office had actually been following its own rules," he said.
Ultimately, these bad patents may come back to haunt the open-source community, he predicted, saying that Microsoft Corp. will eventually be driven to launch wide-ranging patent lawsuits, which he called "patent WMDs" (weapons of mass destruction) against open-source projects. "Their business model no longer holds up in an era where it's clear that open-source is simply an economically superior way to produce software," he said. "Of course they're going go unleash the WMDs. Why would they not?"
I think maybe you have a problem with RMS and interpret everything he says as confirmation of your suspicions. In this case at least, what he said was entirely unexceptionable and would be recognised and understood as a conventional and widely used analogy by everyone who has anything to do with patents and business. It is you who is beginning to sound eccentric.
Well hopefully software patents will soon be legislated out of existence in Europe and it takes a lot of cash to get, maintain, defend and prosecute patents anyway. They're also pretty useless against companies like Microsoft and IBM unless you don't produce any software yourself. If things go badly for us in Europe though, your idea is a good one and it should be easy to make a *lot* of money parasitising the proprietary software industry.
Not very ethical or good for innovation etc. but since there are already lots of "IP companies" like InterTrust appearing now who don't give a monkey's about FLOSS (or any kind of software), it may well be worth considering as a means to salvage something from the mess.
Perhaps you are unaware of the common practice of military analogy in the business world? Patents are certainly among the most powerful weapons of business and there is no more crackpottery in RMS's mode of expression than you'd expect from the average management guru. Evidence of ordinary use of idiom doesn't really serve to reinforce the facile and complacent popular perception of RMS as a loony, except for those who are predisposed to interpret it that way.
You should be very careful about interpreting the replies you get. The letters coming from the Lib Dem, Labour and Conservative politicians are often stock replies, either wholly or partially drafted by the respective party advisors on this issue. They may sound positive and even strongly anti-swpat but in each case the respective advisor is in the hard pro-software patent camp. Sharon Bowles (Lib Dem advisor), for example, is a patent attorney. The letters so drafted are simply expressing more or less sophisticated variations of the obfuscation and deceit we have had to put up with from the beginning. If your MEPs are taking their advice from these people, they will likely do so when it comes to voting on the amendments too, and if that happens, they may as well have taken their advice from Bruce Lehman.
I don't know about anyone else but I certainly don't feel like thanking Nokia - anymore than I'd feel like thanking a gang of thieves for not smearing shit on the walls and smashing the stuff they didn't want when they emptied my house. Have you seen the 'great inventions' in 'mobile phone technology' this bunch of clowns claims ownership to? Perhaps they'd like to make another statement, informing the Mozilla project that it's okay for them to continue using the 'invention' Nokia has stolen from them:
Nokia is playing games with the EU Parliament, they are among the worst of those pushing for unlimited patent scope. They see the patent system as an instrument to exclude or control competition and they see patents primarily as sources of revenue - not as a means to promote innovation. If you don't believe me, just ask Ilkka Rahnasto.
One of the great ironies of the current patent scope expansion (and copyright extension) wars is that the proponents of ever stronger and broader Government protection invariably portray themselves as capitalists and free marketeers. This further irony of having to rely on the support of traditional Communists to counter the enormous political pressure towards an Orwellian style oligarchical collectivism (corporate Communism) is almost too much to bear.
Having taken into account the long history of controversy, theoretical dispute and conflicting economic evidence about the effects of the patent system, overall and in particular sectors, I cannot agree with your sweeping statement: "A patent system or something like it seems to be one of the factors that boost technological progress over time" - and whether it has or has not done so, overall or in particular fields and industries, the salient issue today (in Europe at least) is one of a proposed codification of a vast but utterly unjustified extension of scope. With that in mind I think it would be wiser to heed Machlup's 1958 advice:
If we did not have a patent system, it would be irresponsible... to recommend instituting one. But since we have had a patent system for a long time, it would be irresponsible, on the basis of our present knowledge, to recommend abolishing it... While the student of the economics of the patent system must, provisionally, disqualify himself on the question of the effects of the system as a whole on a large industrial economy, he need not disqualify himself as a judge of proposed changes in the existing system.
Especially so in light of what the evidence that has accumulated since 1958 in the US and elsewhere is now telling us about the effects of the patent system and the effects of recent profound changes; not only to the patent system itself but also in the technologies it is applied to, to whom it is applied and how it is used.
Slashdot Mirror
Well there isn't much of any substance (unless you count Avey Spheres)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_Fiction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._television_scie
"It's that whole science thing. Of course, this is a nation that apparently wants to put "Intelligent Design" into our schools..."
I deplore the "Intelligent Design" disease and the poor general level of scientific literacy too, but I don't think asking that SF creators extrapolate only conservatively and realistically from current science would help to cure it. Watching the movies "Minority Report" and "Gattaca" recently reminded me that near-term extrapolation of science and technology is often a device used by creators of dystopian visions of the future. Realistic technologies pessimistically portrayed in popular culture as the instruments and accompaniments of horrible disfunction in society is more worrying to me than the supreme optimism of the more speculative Star Trek. I think it's the general impressions and associations that count most - not whether any particular fictional technology is feasible - and on that score, the rational morality and robust well-being of Star Trek's scientifically founded civilisation is a positive benefit to the public image of science. The large number of real scientists and engineers who have been inspired by Star trek is testimony to that.
You are shifting the burden of proof and rather distorting the facts: You may only ever have seen exceptionally weak arguments, but that is not because only exceptionally weak arguments have ever been deployed - quite the converse is true*. The problem so far has instead been that no argument with even a semblance of strength for introducing software patents has ever been produced. And however weak you think any argument against the expansion of patentable subject matter is, it automatically wins unless you have a strong argument in favour of that expansion. But the expansion has occurred anyway of course, and in the face of strong arguments and strong opposition from industry and academia. That many companies, academics and individuals had to make such arguments at all illustrates the appalling state of recent policy making in this area (if you can call it policy making). Any credible economist will tell you that patent scope expansion without prior empirical and sound theoretical justification is verboten. Too bad - the damage is done and in the US it seems the fight's effectively over now, but the rest of what I want to say is appropriately Eurocentric anyway.
*
http://researchoninnovation.org/online.htm
http://www.si.umich.edu/~kahin/mip.html
http://swpat.ffii.org/archive/mirror/impact/index. en.html
http://philsalin.com/patents.html
http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/knuth-to-pto.txt
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jul05/1557
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=stor y_16-8-2005_pg5_12
http://swpat.ffii.org/archive/quotes/index.en.html
"You have to be prepared to deal with issues like why expressing a particular piece of logic in C or Ada doesn't deserve patent protection, while expressing the same logic in Verilog or VHDL, which look identical to a non-programmer should deserve that protection."
That is definitely not an issue. One does not ask whether or not some invention deserves a patent, but whether or not it is patentable subject matter at all and your example is a poor one because if the claims of a patent are directed to the expressions of logic, then they are software patent claims.
"Likewise, why a device that fits the description in a patent claim should not be protected if the implementation happens to be (even in part) carried out with an embedded processor with embedded code, even though it's not at all apparent to the outside world that there's any software involved at all."
The distinction between hardware and software is not useful and is not at all relevant to the question of whether a patent claim is a software patent claim or not. One way to discover how the distinction between software patent and non-software patent is determined (and it is not always easy) is to read the way it is expressed by Judge Peter Prescott QC in his recent CFPH decision, in which he carefully and fully interprets the EPC Article 52 exclusions. Unfortunately, Prescott's interpretation seems to me to leave a lot of room for claiming things such as image enhancement techniques derived from purely mathematical considerations, but at least compression algorithms and data manipulation and data st
Sadly not. It began on a mailing list but I just checked and the list archive is private. Maybe one day I'll get whatever permissions are necessary and put together a web page. I first found a reference to the patent in the BBC science message boards where James Avey is one of the regular errm... eccentrics and my connection to the UKPO was with regard to a completely unrelated subject, but when I saw the Avey patent I couldn't resist bringing it up. Most of the fun was in the gradual extraction of the 'terribly disappointing' information that the patent had been whittled down to nothing more than a claim to a shiny aluminium sphere during its examination. Despite our differences I've found the UKPO man concerned and his colleagues deserve respect for their competence and rigour and I knew all along there was very little chance they'd granted the patent as it appears in the EPO database. My dreams of interstellar exploration were indeed finally shattered:
> The claims were amended substantially. I don't have it in front of me now,
> but if my memory is correct, the claims as granted only relate to a novel
> shape and construction of craft - ie. with no suggestion of bending gravity,
> or warp technology etc..
Damn. I had hoped to be flying my own ship "round the moons of Nibia and round
the Antares maelstrom" before too long. Now we're back to square one and I
probably won't even get to watch the manned Mars landings on the telly before
I die
Have a good weekend.
So it turned out that James Avey wasn't the real Zephron Cochran after all
http://omnis.if.ufrj.br/~mbr/warp/
http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=GB2
Publication No GB2347912 dated 20.09.2000
Examination requested 07.11.2000
Grant of Patent (Notification under Section 18(4)) 07.10.2003
Publication of notice in the Patents and Designs Journal (Section 25(1))
05.11.2003
Title of Granted Patent ANTI GRAVITY CRAFT
(Sadly, the patent actually granted claims very much less than its title or the EPO application documents would suggest
Jones and others' talk of "hypocrisy" and "treachery" is childish and ignorant. If they think that their facile SCO-hating and witch hunting as the clown Darl McBride inexplicably attempts to bash his company's brains out against the wall of IBM is somehow doing more for FLOSS than Marten Mickos has, they are completely deluded.
"As in all business models trying to sort out the final 10% of a probelm is always dispraportinatly expensive."
h dreamworks.html
The British Library is a (largely) publicly funded national resource, not a commercial entertainment and media company.
"Afterall they did not have to do anything other then show the books once every 20 years under glass in the British Library."
Yes - if the governing board decided that such a policy would count as fulfilling the purpose of the Library and its legal obligations under the British Library Act: http://www.bl.uk/about/blact.html - but I doubt most interested parties would agree and I doubt Parliament would put up with it for very long.
That they use proprietary and/or less than optimally accessible formats unnecessarily liberally may seem a trivial complaint to you, but I disagree and it is certainly not unreasonable or close-minded to suggest that they haven't done quite as well for the public as they might have done this time:
http://www.pixelwit.com/flip/PageFlip.html
http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/msg/corp/flas
"Are there any legitimate governments (not owned by the MNCs) left at all?"
No - sorry. My investment company has spent a great deal of time and money on this technology and in acquiring and carefully placing these assets for our most valued clients. If you wanted your own you should have done something about it years ago. And don't think that you can steal any of our property by simply picking up the phone and saying, "Mr. Bush?... Mr. George Bush?... Mr. George Walker Bush?..." - for example. It won't work - we've added code words to the activation sequences now which we change regularly.
W. Olfbone,
CEO, Manchurian Global.
"For your information, patents protect technological innovations.
Pure math is not patented, only its application to some specific problem."
For your information, patents protect patentable inventions, not innovations, and technology is a nebulous term that has no practical significance.
"If you disallow software logic claims for anti-lock braking system,
you will essentially destroy any protection for it."
That is a deeply ignorant statement: if the ABS invention is not excluded by such consideratons as that it is merely an advance in data processing or mathematics, then there is no reason why it should not be potentially patentable.
"Perhaps, more relevant example for open-source crowd is Transmeta.
Linus himself admitted that their chips are 1/3 hardware and 2/3 software
(Code Morphing Software, patented by Transmeta, of course)"
The distinction between hardware and software is irrelevant, and so is the distinction between open source and closed source software.
"How are they going to protect their chip designs from being stolen?"
Chip designs are 'protected' by the well-known sui generis law that is neither copyright nor patent.
"I am tired of explaining why copyright is not adequate for protecting software."
You may well be tired of 'explaining' why copyright is "not adequate" but your mental fatigue is of little consequence in the light of economic evidence, the opinions of pioneers and luminaries in the field and the fundamental principles of the patent system itself.
I suffered an introductory course in programming in VB while studying physics at university and despised it. Later I was fortunate enough to come across SICP and the SICP videos when I decided I needed to learn programming in earnest but if I'd been stuck with something like C++ or BASIC or Java, I suspect I'd still have found programming a tedious and unrewarding distraction from real maths and science and never really understood its potential. Now I actually like and respect it and there are good resources available for high school level stuff:
a ls/
http://www.teach-scheme.org/
http://home.adelphi.edu/sbloch/class/hs/testimoni
Apparently Scheme/Lisp appeals even to 'liberal arts' types and though I'm not one of those myself it certainly rapidly transformed my attitude to and understanding of computing and I can see why it might make better and more enthusiastic programmers of students whatever their abilities and preferences.
The perverse unpopularity of Lisp is very frustrating. Even searching for Emacs Lisp packages turns up less current activity and more cobwebs than I'd have expected given Emacs's widespread use and Lisp's extraordinary power, and I've so far failed to get any of the GUI toolkits to work with SBCL or CLISP under Gentoo. I read mind-boggling and inexplicable opinions such as this and I wonder if Lisp is a case of pearls before swine in the computing world, but I do hope you're right about it attracting a lot of attention lately.
From your blog:
"What would be extra cool is if there was a way to make a deal with software companies to allow us to distribute their software. If it isn't possible, then perhaps we could create an illegal distribution and host it in some country that doesn't care. I always wonder, if it is legal for mplayer to host all the codecs on their site for free download why would it be illegal to host a distribution including all those codecs on the same site? A lot of what people do with their computers now is multimedia. If Linux can cast away a few zealots it can show that it is the best multimedia playing and managing operating system. Once it catches up to Apple in the content creation department it will be unstoppable.
Clearly you are unfamiliar with patent and copyright law but as you point out: there are legal impediments to shipping certain non-free software. In fact restrictions can just as easily apply to free software (see e.g. http://brian.mastenbrook.net/display/5 ) and creating illegal distributions is hardly likely to help make "us" unstoppable.
The people you call 'zealots' are the people who wrote the software and constructed the distros in the first place and they are entitled to impose whatever policy they see fit. If you don't like Mark Shuttleworth's strong open source stance or the Gentoo social contract, I suggest you quit your ignorant whining and make your own distro.
Your remarks suggest though that you'd be happier with warez than with FOSS and you certainly don't understand what most of the latter is about and what motivates the people who create it. Certainly the creation of FOSS is an activity far removed from the selfish criminality that you advocate, and it is quite sickening to hear someone like you saying that (absurdly):
"...those zealots will have to learn to deal with the fact that the only way to be truly free with multimedia is to use some non-free software."
If you cannot respect the views of the people whose creativity you take advantage of you could at least try not to make a complete fool of yourself.
Nor me - since I'd rather not end up forcibly strapped to an operating table as the BSA brain surgeons deal with my alleged patent infringements.
Good question. Jennifer Washburn might know (about US institutions, at least).
http://www.macnewsworld.com/story/8757.html
http://www.cio.com/archive/021501/fine.html
http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html
I think maybe you have a problem with RMS and interpret everything he says as confirmation of your suspicions. In this case at least, what he said was entirely unexceptionable and would be recognised and understood as a conventional and widely used analogy by everyone who has anything to do with patents and business. It is you who is beginning to sound eccentric.
Well hopefully software patents will soon be legislated out of existence in Europe and it takes a lot of cash to get, maintain, defend and prosecute patents anyway. They're also pretty useless against companies like Microsoft and IBM unless you don't produce any software yourself. If things go badly for us in Europe though, your idea is a good one and it should be easy to make a *lot* of money parasitising the proprietary software industry.
i d=27910020&brk=1 . html
http://www.investors.com/breakingnews.asp?journal
http://www.intertrust.com/main/ip/patentportfolio
Not very ethical or good for innovation etc. but since there are already lots of "IP companies" like InterTrust appearing now who don't give a monkey's about FLOSS (or any kind of software), it may well be worth considering as a means to salvage something from the mess.
Perhaps you are unaware of the common practice of military analogy in the business world? Patents are certainly among the most powerful weapons of business and there is no more crackpottery in RMS's mode of expression than you'd expect from the average management guru. Evidence of ordinary use of idiom doesn't really serve to reinforce the facile and complacent popular perception of RMS as a loony, except for those who are predisposed to interpret it that way.
You should be very careful about interpreting the replies you get. The letters coming from the Lib Dem, Labour and Conservative politicians are often stock replies, either wholly or partially drafted by the respective party advisors on this issue. They may sound positive and even strongly anti-swpat but in each case the respective advisor is in the hard pro-software patent camp. Sharon Bowles (Lib Dem advisor), for example, is a patent attorney. The letters so drafted are simply expressing more or less sophisticated variations of the obfuscation and deceit we have had to put up with from the beginning. If your MEPs are taking their advice from these people, they will likely do so when it comes to voting on the amendments too, and if that happens, they may as well have taken their advice from Bruce Lehman.
So it has - thanks.
I don't know about anyone else but I certainly don't feel like thanking Nokia - anymore than I'd feel like thanking a gang of thieves for not smearing shit on the walls and smashing the stuff they didn't want when they emptied my house. Have you seen the 'great inventions' in 'mobile phone technology' this bunch of clowns claims ownership to? Perhaps they'd like to make another statement, informing the Mozilla project that it's okay for them to continue using the 'invention' Nokia has stolen from them:
http://gauss.ffii.org/PatentView/EP1253500
Nokia is playing games with the EU Parliament, they are among the worst of those pushing for unlimited patent scope. They see the patent system as an instrument to exclude or control competition and they see patents primarily as sources of revenue - not as a means to promote innovation. If you don't believe me, just ask Ilkka Rahnasto.
This may be of some use:
t ml
;-)
http://xorg.freedesktop.org/X11R6.8.2/doc/fonts.h
These may help with your next question
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/utf-8.xml
Yes, but not about the tastiness of bacon in ice cream.
"The banning of pork products made sense in the dessert..."
Bacon flavoured ice-cream is actually quite tasty.
Yes.
One of the great ironies of the current patent scope expansion (and copyright extension) wars is that the proponents of ever stronger and broader Government protection invariably portray themselves as capitalists and free marketeers. This further irony of having to rely on the support of traditional Communists to counter the enormous political pressure towards an Orwellian style oligarchical collectivism (corporate Communism) is almost too much to bear.
Especially so in light of what the evidence that has accumulated since 1958 in the US and elsewhere is now telling us about the effects of the patent system and the effects of recent profound changes; not only to the patent system itself but also in the technologies it is applied to, to whom it is applied and how it is used.