It is a massive pain to have to leave my cell phone at the front desk.
I'd find it odd that a "secure" facility would not confiscate cell phones in addition to cameras. I've been to a few secure military places and they required cell phones to be left at security.
After all, if a picture is worth a thousand words you could always transmit the same info as the camera in a few minutes (or a few seconds if you are from Newfoundland).
To those with existing business models on selling contents, yes. Read the manifesto. There's also a more coherent summary. It's only a problem if you believe the current (or rather recent past) model is the right way to distribute content and sharing is wrong.
There are excellent points in this manifesto. As far as the sharing is concerned, the point is that the days of media companies making money from selling content are just about over. There's a new market in town and if they don't invest in new business models they will die. This doesn't mean content will die, but the monopolies and their business models will die because they thrive only through scarcity, which is gone now. And there are people in line to take their place. Already there are commercial companies jumping into the new markets opened up by P2P.
I think the manifesto is an excellent companion to Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture and the free culture movement it's inspired. The manifesto probably needs to be edited and updated by someone with more eloquent writing skills, but I think that's the point of article and releasing it under a CC license.
This would be a very bizarre cross-breed indeed. Most "reality" shows aren't reality, they're game shows (Survivor, Big Brother, Bachelorette, etc.). Perhaps the "follow people around" shows count as reality (The Osbornes, Nic & Jessica, etc.). The Sims TV show would fall in the latter category so would be more of a reality show than the game shows, but is virtual so is less reality. It's quite the irony.
But of course it would fail. People watch the Osbornes, Nic & Jessica, Ashlee, Carmen & Dave, Anna Nicole, etc., because they're celebrities (though I don't understand why that would be enticing). I doubt the Sims qualify.
In context, it was right. If you read the sentence right before it, and the paragraph, I'm talking about the concept of patents and trade secrets. Your objection is not an argument that trade secrets inherently provide anything better than patents. Your objection is that under the currently implemented system for patents, relying on secrets rather than patents can potentially provide some other benefits. This is consistent with my points about the current system being insane and needing reform. But since it was an unimportant side comment I don't care to quibble about it anymore. I think we both understand the points and both our points are correct in their own context. Your statements are right about the current system and my statements are right about the concepts of secrets vs patents.
My point all along, and I hope you'd agree, is that a properly implemented patents system (including software) is more beneficial than not having one. We all clearly agree that the current patent system is not beneficial (particularly for software). I just want to make the point clear that this is an argument for reforming the patent system, not turfing it (which would make things worse).
Instead of that, the textbooks present a history of events involving the theory, and explain evolutionary theory, but do nothing for showing weaknesses in evolutionary theory.
Funny, nobody complains if a book on relativity or quantum mechanics just explains those models (which is what "theory" means here, not in the sense that Cobb county used it), without pointing out the major weakness that they aren't compatable. (Note that this does not make the models wrong or "guesses", as the evolution stickers would suggest, but just incomplete.) How many books on Newtonian dynamics point out it is an incomplete model because it doesn't take into account relativity effects. Newtonian dynamics is almost universally used in engineering and science except for the few fields where relativity is required.
It is only when the presented model differs from a religious doctrine that some people seem to find the presentation should require listing of weaknesses or suggest that the whole thing is a "guess". People who think "theory" and "facts" are different and are metrics for how to present a model are the ones who need an education on just what knowledge is and how it is formed.
It's funny that I made this long post about the reasoning behind patents and the benefits, and made a small side comment about "No benefits of trade secrets except the inventors pocketbook", which was not meant in any way to be part of the argument of the rest of post. And yet you've kept harping on it as some fundamental point. It was a short little side comment. For the record (again): Yes, in the context of the current patent system avoiding a patent can have economic benefits for the consumers because they are expensive. This is not an argument against patents as a concept, it is an argument against patenting in the currently implemented system.
Now that that topic is (hopefully) over with, and the real issue of the merit of the concept of patents can be looked at, you've provided no counter-argument. All you've said is:
"No matter -- I still disagree with the reasoning. What you call a "reason", I call blatent self-entitlement to the property of others. The kind of thing thieves do -- it's just that these particular thieves were in power when they did it, so it's supposed to be a 'good thing.' "
This is not an argument, it just says that you disagree (for some reason) with the reasoning that incentive (in the form of a limited time monopoly) for public dissemination of inventions is not conducive to promoting progress. Why you would disagree with that I'm not sure. Again, this is not my reasoning you are disagreeing with, it is the reasoning (and experience, as discussed below) of those who came up with the patenting system. Why you think secrets are better at promoting progress than publication is something I can't understand, and you haven't provided any argument. But that's your prerogative.
As far the comment about "thieves in power", I hope you have read the works of Thomas Jefferson. He long toiled over patents. He hated them, and realized the unnaturalness of a monopoly over an idea. But he also realized they were a necessary evil because of "the power they had to encourage invention". This was a man widely known for his views on democracy and equality, and was a true humanitarian. I really hope you do not think he was a thief with power bent on "blatent self-entitlement to the property of others".
People have long toiled over this problem and have seen what patents can do when implemented correctly. These are people interested in the most benefit to society, and not to themselves. You probably also think I'm self-interested and greedy in my support for the concept of patents, but I have no patents nor any plans to obtain any. But I do understand the reason behind them and the rampant ignorance in society about why they exist and why they are the lesser of two evils. We are better off with patents, properly implemented, than without. I'm very much for patent reform; the current situation is insane. But it is a result of poor implementation, not the concept of patents as a whole.
"It works like this: I do work, I sell it for what the market will bear or less, and the portion of the market that is willing to buy benefits from the feature. "
Your talking about the user gets to use it (if they pay for it). That's not a benefit in the context of progress of knowledge. The same thing applies with a patent. The only benefit you give that doesn't apply to patents is the cost savings (you don't have to pay for a patent and can pass the savings to the consumer). This is true, but is an implementation of patent problem. That they are expensive to get is not an argument that they are unnecessary or don't promote progress. It is an argument that they should be cheaper, which I'd agree to (along with a whole host of other reforms).
But the point is still true: trade secrets keep the knowledge of how something works from the public and therefore they can't benefit from the knowledge.
"... find someone else who will invent the same thing or something similar, or already has done so."
... "Other developers are also free to innovate without paying extra costs..."
"... some free software person could look at our products, say to themselves "I like that, think I'll put it in the GIMP" and the only thing they have to do is figure out how."
... "Trade secrets leave academics free to research and publish along any line they care to go merrily thinking."
"... depends either on the idea that only I can invent these things (highly unlikely, but at least it is flattering) or that the idea isn't worth someone else's time..."
Your whole discussion seems based on the notion that your "innovations" can easily be done by someone else. Those things shouldn't be patentable. Patents are supposed to be non-obvious to people in the field. Yes, there might be someone who, after a long time of reverse-engineering, figures out how you did it. But that's not the same thing as you are discussing. And yes, someone else might eventually come up with the same thing, but if the innovation is non-obvious, it is highly unlikely that they'd do it anywhere near the time you did it, which is why patents usually have a "first to invent" (or in some cases "first to apply") rule.
Think about it this way, if anyone could see what you have done and come up with a functional equivalent fairly easily (academia, open source, competitors, etc.), the trade secret is useless and offers no protection whatsoever. In other words, there is no protection, so you were wrong when you said in your first post "Trade secret is plenty of protection". You can't have it both ways. Either it is a secret so nobody can reproduce it (or benefit from the knowledge), or it is easy to figure out and therefore isn't a secret.
"Your thesis that trade-secret based innovations will be lost..."
It isn't my thesis, it is the reason patents exist in the first place. A good quote I found is "The purpose of patents is to make public recent scientific discoveries that promote the development of new technology and new products." Most people overlook the "... to make public..." part. Even on the USPTO website:"Through the preservation, classification, and dissemination of patent information, the Office promotes the industrial and technological progress of the nation and strengthens the economy." Note the "preservations" and "dissemination" to promote progress. Also note that the "protection" offered by patents is not the driving factor for progress, it is the "dissemination".
I don't think trade secrets applies here. Trade secrets are things like the recipe for Coke or ingredients that go into Michelin tire rubber. These are things that, if they got out, could be used by competition to make the same (or similar) product. A secret about new product that a company may be releasing, which was to be announced publically anyway, isn't a trade secret. Perhaps the design plans could be considered trade secrets, but the existence of the product wouldn't be.
Patents not required. Trade secret is plenty of protection
That's fine (for you, as you say), but you are also exposing the other side of the coin for patents. They do provide incentive for some people and companies to come up with new developments, but the incentives can only be realized if these people share their development through the patent publication.
While patents may have the distasteful tradeoff that to use them you have to pay for them (for a limited time), keeping them a secret is worse. People still have to pay to use them but now the time is not limited (as long as how it works stays a secret) and the public never gets to learn how it works. It's the Magician Syndrome.
That's why patents are a good idea in general, though poorly implemented and handled right now. Patents are supposed to give incentive to share the knowledge and contribute to the progress for everybody. Trade secrets don't help anyone but the pockets of the inventor. Without patents (including software), that's all the protection a company has to protect their investment in developments so we all end up losing the knowledge of how stuff works.
This side of the coin is often overlooked.
(FYI, I enjoy solving problems and being innovative too, and we often rely on keeping our solutions secret as well. I find that a shame in the loss to cooperative progress, especially since many of our innovations often start from where others have already gone and published their work, either patents or papers. Since we don't publish or patent our work, nobody can learn from what we've done and improve upon it. Perhaps a better patent system would change that.)
That's funny, the software industry was doing just fine without patents for 20+ years. Why do we need them now?
Yes, and the "device" industry was doing just fine without patents for about 2 million years before patents.
It is a (common) logical falsehood that software would be where it is now without software patents. It might, but the same could be said for any patents on anything. Unfortunately we can't repeat history twice and try it out both ways and see which is better.
The question is whether the protection of patents drive some people and/or companies to put effort (and money) into developing new things, whether they be medical devices or object recognition algorithms. Obviously it does drive some developments. The real question, which seems impossible to answer, is whether more developments + patents is better than just having the fewer developments. More developments + patents mean you have to pay to use the developments or not use them at all. But in the end you get more developments than without patents.
Which is better? I don't know, and I'm sure you don't either. But it's an interesting topic.
Like it or not, Opera is a great piece of software...
Yup, and I still prefer Opera over Firefox, which I've found to be much harder to use and less elegant. The cost issue, and the lack of support at some sites (particularly Gmail) are the only downsides I see.
"Many of the arguments we see around here are from people who were genuinely breaking reasonable law..."
Here's where your reasoning falls apart. Yes, the (U.S.) law is being broken and quite often, and existing laws make it difficult to prosecute. There are several responses to this:
(a) Make it easier to enforce the law, which generally requires a reduction in freedoms or protections for the public.
(b) Modify the laws that are being broken so that the activity isn't illegal anymore, which generally requires a reduction in protection or control for the businesses.
(c) Modify the products or services such that people are more likely to obtain them through legal channels.
You say that the laws are reasonable, implying (b) is an inappropriate response. Many would disagree. IP laws don't exist as inherent rights, they exist as a balance and they have tilted too far one way and are being used in ways never intended.
Lobbying for changing laws is certainly a valid method and there are certainly a number of groups trying to do that in favour of more sane IP laws. But it isn't the only valid method. There is no faster way to instigate change than to force the issue by large scale violation of a law. It may be risky in that it (a) leaves people open to prosecution, and (b) may drive those with a "there's no excuse for violating the law" attitude towards the other side, particularly those who make the laws. But it forces the issues into the open and if the lawmakers are reasonable, they will look at both sides and find a compromise. It also provides a clear example of what can happen if the people aren't happy with the law they end up producing -- people will just violate it anyway. Either the law will have to become reasonable or it will have to become more of a police state to enforce them.
Whoops, I meant to add a comparison. A 100 mW laser with a 50 cm diameter spot (which is a generous estimate for hitting an airplane at 2 km) has an average power density of about 0.5 W/m^2 ( 0.1 W / (pi*(0.25 m)^2) ). By comparison, a 5 mW laser pointer at about 10 m (across the room), assuming it is about 5 mm diameter spot, has an average power density of about 250 W/m^2 ( 0.005 W / (pi*(0.0025 m)^2 ). In other words, a laser pointer from across a large room is about 500 times more dangerous to the eye than a 100 mW laser at 2 km, and it's about 200 times easier to keep the laser pointer in someone's eye across a 10 m room than at 2 km (assuing the same pointing precision), and that doesn't include the motion of the airplane. (Of course this is an approximation since it assumes average power density, and they're Gaussian distribution so peak is not quite this ratio.)
So, I fail to see how these things (even the 100 mW lasers) could pose a potential threat to pilots in airplanes. Where are they pointing from anyway? You can't hit a pilot in the eye from below.
(The divergence equation is theta = lambda*f/w0 where f is the focus distance and w0 is the beam width out of the lens.)
I realized after I posted this that the equation was slightly wrong (going from memory in a hurry), I was thinking of spot diameter and not divergence angle (and still left out pi). The divergence is approximately theta(rad) = lambda/(pi*w0). The spot radius at a given distance Z is approximately w = lambda*Z/(pi*w0).
With really good optics you might be able to keep it to about 50 cm spot diameter at 2 km. (Assuming it leaves the collimator at 3 mm diameter (w0 = 1.5 mm) and a green laser at 532 nm wavelength, sub into above equation to get dia = 2*w = 2*(532e-9 m * 2e3 m)/(pi * 1.5 e-3 m) = 0.45 m = 45 cm). Of course this is with good optics, which I'll assume the 100 mW laser comes with. (Laser pointers tend not to have good optics, so they'd probably not be diffraction limited and produce much bigger spots.) Since the divergence scales linearly with wavelength, a red laser (say ~665 nm) would be about 25% wider spot.
Even at that it looks like the relative steady position of the beam is the bigger problem. How do you get the beam to stay in the pilot's eyes for long enough to do damage? The plane is moving pretty fast so the pointer would have to be on pan-tilt that tracks the plane very precisely and also can get in the plane window somehow.
Actually, I know quite well about what 100 mW lasers can do. You've taken a lot of assumptions into account. Yes, a 100 mW laser can cut plastics and wood and permanently blind you (and even burn skin), but that all depends on (a) the wavelength, (b) the focus distance (or collimation), and (c) length of stationary time.
Near IR lasers tend to be absorbed by the front of the eye and not make it to the retina. (That doesn't mean they can't do harm to the eye, but not in the same way.) But this isn't so important here since we're talking about red and green lasers which can certainly burn the retina.
For focus disance or collimation, lasers are usually either collimated or focused near the lens (a few cm up to a few meters, though some long range lidar lasers might be focused much further). In either case, the beam divergence is usually quite huge (several milliradians at least. The only way to keep the beam divergence low is to start with a very wide beam. (The divergence equation is theta = lambda*f/w0 where f is the focus distance and w0 is the beam width out of the lens.)
Laser pointers are low quality optics (as you say) and are only mean to operate at a few meters, with a spot size that is ~5 mm at a few meters. At several km where planes fly, the laser spot size would be huge. (A 1 mrad divergence at 1 km would be about a 2 m wide spot.) The power density of even 100 mW beam at that width would be pretty small and certainly could not cut through plastic or harm eyes.
Then there's how stationary the beam is. The 100 mW beam requires a few seconds of stationary positioning to cut into the plastic. In the example video from your reference article the beam is mounted on a stationary holder. If even the person held it in their hands just the hand motion would probably keep it from burning through. At 1 km (or more), only a slight hand motion would move the beam around several meters, not to mention the plane itself is moving.
I'm confused about all of this. Lasers would have to be pretty powerful and focused at ultra long range to be of much risk. Hell, we regularly use 100-300 mW lasers and the safe standoff distance is several meters because of beam divergence. It's the power density that is of most concern, and all lasers diverge by diffraction. Laser pointers are usually Is there something I'm missing here?
Tell me one thing that this complicates or causes you to be inable to do.
It complicates:
the ability to understand what is on you computer
the ability to control what is on your computer
the ability to remove what is on your computer
the ability to free up space on your computer
the ability to recognize things that shouldn't be on your computer (spyware, viruses, etc.)
locating programs (e.g., no icon on desktop or entry in menu, but you know files are installed somewhere)
troubleshooting program problems (e.g., missing files, corrupt files)
That's just off the top of my head. In my ideal OS, all files related to a specific program would be in a single location (folder, etc.). Deleting that folder would completely remove any remnants of that program, including icons, "registry" entries, etc. Any common libraries, interfaces, utilities, etc., obviously would not be stored in the same folder as they aren't now in Windows or Linux. But these aren't part of the program itself and usually aren't installed with a program. (They may be updated by the program if you have an older version.)
It would also be nice to have a "citation" index of what all files are for. If I find a stray file on my computer, it'd be nice to know when it was put there, by what, and what accesses it, if at all.
True, in an ideal OS this shouldn't be necessary; a user shouldn't have to know any of this background stuff. But I've been annoyed so much in the past by partially removed programs, stray files that I don't know if it's safe to delete, and sometimes finding programs that I installed. When things go wrong (and they do with all OSes including Linux) it'd be nice to have a little help like this to troubleshoot problems.
What brought down Napster is a little more subtle than that. Though the central server aspect was part of it (which Grokster does not have and so has been successful in avoiding the same downfall), the main part was that Napster had -- in the opinion of the court -- the ability to police the downloads through their indexing system. The point was that they could police their system better than they currently were, i.e., they had an obligation to police their "facilities" as far as their boundary. (There was precedence on this.)
Does something like affect search engines like Google or sites with BitTorrent links? I don't know, maybe. I guess we'll see. Personally, I would consider it analagous on a book describing how to break the law. Telling people where to go to get copyrighted material illegally doesn't seem to be copyright infringement in itself to me, but then there are strange aspects to laws and theories of violation that crop up from time to time (contributory and vicarious liability) and some explicit inclusions for some acts that are not directly the violation (accessory to..., attempt to commit...).
I think this speaks volumes about the level of technical understanding that current SCO executives have.
The problem is that the quoted text was not from SCO, it was from a judge in a spam case, which set precedent that just because something is viewable on a website doesn't mean you automatically have authority to view it, and simply viewing it can violate the CFAA.
While this may have been useful for nailing the spammer, the implication of this previous ruling is far more reaching as we are seeing now. SCO seems to have taken it and run. Though their explanation of events is different from IBM's, there is a slim chance that SCO found a legal technicality, however insane, that might get some of IBM's evidence rejected. (Note this is only for IBM's counterclaim that SCO infringed IBM's copyright, for which they're looking for partial summary judgement.)
I hope the judge sees this for what it is and laughs it out of court.
Here's what the judge said in the last ruling - levy or not:
Yes, and that ruling suggests it is perfectly legal to "upload" files, which the Copyright Board of Canada previously believed was illegal(see p. 20), but downloading files via P2P has been legal since at least the 1998 update to the Copyright Act. Even the Copyright Board of Canada agreed that to be true.
I have to have a product in hand before I can patent it.
Actually, that's not true in most places anymore. U.S. Congress removed the legal requirement for a working model (miniature or not) in 1870. The USPTO kept the requirement until 1880. The patented invention is, of course, supposed to work in reality but that isn't always clear. There have even been perpetualmotionmachines inadvertently patented even through the USPTO has a rule against that.
Both patents and copyrights are really about ideas. (IANAPL, but I've been following IP law for many years, so this is my take on it.) Patents are on the idea of how something works (device, business model, algorithm, etc.). Actual implementations of a patented idea might look completely different, but they violate the patent if they operate in the same manner. (This doesn't mean that the input-output is the same, it's the conversion from input to output that matters.)
A copyright is on an organization (pattern) of idea that is a work of imagination. For example, building a working model of a patented device is an expression of the idea but it is not patentable because the idea is not a work of imagination, it is a work of physics. Some would argue that the copyright is on the expression of the idea, but I don't think this is quite descriptive enough. This would imply that the recording of a song, which is an expression of the song, would have a different copyright from the writing of the notes of the song, which is a different expression of the same song. A copyright covers all expressions that represent the same work of imagination.
I say it is the organization of the idea that is copyrighted because (a) (as described above) copyrighting the expression itself is insufficient to cover all potential expressions, and (b) a general concept is not patentable. For example, I cannot copyright "A story about a detective who solves murders". Then all such books, stories, TV shows, and movies that fit that description would violate my copyright. The words to a particular story are copyrighted, whether written, spoken, or played out in a TV show or movie. But a paraphrasing of the story is not a violation of the copyright. Changing it slightly and calling it a different story is a violation though. In short, there is a grey area between paraphrasing and slightly modifying a copyrighted work. Somewhere in the middle is the boundary of the copyright. It's the organization of the idea that is important regardless of how it is expressed.
I see no reason, absolutely none at all, why this will improve anyone's computing experience in any way.
While I find this is typically true, I don't think it is inherently true. A monitor is a 2D device and the whole OS GUI is generally based off a desktop metaphor (and often called a desktop). So I can see that 2D is the most applicable in such cases.
However, there can be added value from 3D. Even desktop GUIs have improved from the early flat 2D look to a pseudo-3D look (window shadowing, beveled edges, etc.). While some may say this is just "window dressing", I find it takes advantage of natural human perception for ordering things. A real physical desktop may be 2D-ish, but things on top of other things do make use of 3D such as shadowing.
This is where I think 3D on a desktop can add value. If it uses natural perception abilities to improve one's ability to organize things it may be of use. For example, taking non-active windows and shrinking them into the background as if they are further away tends to draw our attention towards the active windows while keeping the background data easily accessible. (The taskbar is nice but is a "middle-man" in this respect and may not be the most efficient approach.) For example, I find some of the features of Project Looking Glass potentially very useful if done well.
What I find ironic is that this discussion reminds me a lot of the old "command line" versus GUI arguments from 10-15 years ago. I can still remember a few individuals who refused to accept that there was any benefit of a GUI over the DOS prompt. Certainly command lines have their benefits as well, as I'm sure many/.-ers would argue. But I doubt many would advocate universal rejection of the whole GUI approach. Perhaps in 10-15 years we may look back and have similar memories of when people couldn't see that there might be some use for 3D on the desktop. It's really in its infancy now, but I figure there's enough research into human perception and human/machine interfaces that something useful will eventually come out of it. But for now, I'd agree. Nothing has jumped out at me as highly useful, just the "coolness" look to it.
I would disagree with this. I think theory is #2. I've known too many people who know theory very well (including myself) but don't know how to apply it to a real problem. How do you calculate or code something that has triple integrals in it? (It's a rhetorical question, as an example.) I think being able to apply techniques correctly to real problems is #1 important because this allows you to actually do something. Understanding the theory is #2 because, while it is very important, it is only useful for academic snobbery if you can't actually apply it to a real problem. (This is from experience on both sides; I can apply some techniques and yet I know I don't fully understand the theory, but I'm more frustrated when I understand a theory completely but can figure out how to use it to solve the problem.)
Slashdot Mirror
I'd find it odd that a "secure" facility would not confiscate cell phones in addition to cameras. I've been to a few secure military places and they required cell phones to be left at security.
After all, if a picture is worth a thousand words you could always transmit the same info as the camera in a few minutes (or a few seconds if you are from Newfoundland).
To those with existing business models on selling contents, yes. Read the manifesto. There's also a more coherent summary. It's only a problem if you believe the current (or rather recent past) model is the right way to distribute content and sharing is wrong.
There are excellent points in this manifesto. As far as the sharing is concerned, the point is that the days of media companies making money from selling content are just about over. There's a new market in town and if they don't invest in new business models they will die. This doesn't mean content will die, but the monopolies and their business models will die because they thrive only through scarcity, which is gone now. And there are people in line to take their place. Already there are commercial companies jumping into the new markets opened up by P2P.
I think the manifesto is an excellent companion to Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture and the free culture movement it's inspired. The manifesto probably needs to be edited and updated by someone with more eloquent writing skills, but I think that's the point of article and releasing it under a CC license.
This would be a very bizarre cross-breed indeed. Most "reality" shows aren't reality, they're game shows (Survivor, Big Brother, Bachelorette, etc.). Perhaps the "follow people around" shows count as reality (The Osbornes, Nic & Jessica, etc.). The Sims TV show would fall in the latter category so would be more of a reality show than the game shows, but is virtual so is less reality. It's quite the irony.
But of course it would fail. People watch the Osbornes, Nic & Jessica, Ashlee, Carmen & Dave, Anna Nicole, etc., because they're celebrities (though I don't understand why that would be enticing). I doubt the Sims qualify.
In context, it was right. If you read the sentence right before it, and the paragraph, I'm talking about the concept of patents and trade secrets. Your objection is not an argument that trade secrets inherently provide anything better than patents. Your objection is that under the currently implemented system for patents, relying on secrets rather than patents can potentially provide some other benefits. This is consistent with my points about the current system being insane and needing reform. But since it was an unimportant side comment I don't care to quibble about it anymore. I think we both understand the points and both our points are correct in their own context. Your statements are right about the current system and my statements are right about the concepts of secrets vs patents.
My point all along, and I hope you'd agree, is that a properly implemented patents system (including software) is more beneficial than not having one. We all clearly agree that the current patent system is not beneficial (particularly for software). I just want to make the point clear that this is an argument for reforming the patent system, not turfing it (which would make things worse).
Funny, nobody complains if a book on relativity or quantum mechanics just explains those models (which is what "theory" means here, not in the sense that Cobb county used it), without pointing out the major weakness that they aren't compatable. (Note that this does not make the models wrong or "guesses", as the evolution stickers would suggest, but just incomplete.) How many books on Newtonian dynamics point out it is an incomplete model because it doesn't take into account relativity effects. Newtonian dynamics is almost universally used in engineering and science except for the few fields where relativity is required.
It is only when the presented model differs from a religious doctrine that some people seem to find the presentation should require listing of weaknesses or suggest that the whole thing is a "guess". People who think "theory" and "facts" are different and are metrics for how to present a model are the ones who need an education on just what knowledge is and how it is formed.
Coolio. I was waiting for the next full release to see what it had, but now I may just have to go grab the beta. Muchos gratious.
It's funny that I made this long post about the reasoning behind patents and the benefits, and made a small side comment about "No benefits of trade secrets except the inventors pocketbook", which was not meant in any way to be part of the argument of the rest of post. And yet you've kept harping on it as some fundamental point. It was a short little side comment. For the record (again): Yes, in the context of the current patent system avoiding a patent can have economic benefits for the consumers because they are expensive. This is not an argument against patents as a concept, it is an argument against patenting in the currently implemented system.
Now that that topic is (hopefully) over with, and the real issue of the merit of the concept of patents can be looked at, you've provided no counter-argument. All you've said is:
"No matter -- I still disagree with the reasoning. What you call a "reason", I call blatent self-entitlement to the property of others. The kind of thing thieves do -- it's just that these particular thieves were in power when they did it, so it's supposed to be a 'good thing.' "
This is not an argument, it just says that you disagree (for some reason) with the reasoning that incentive (in the form of a limited time monopoly) for public dissemination of inventions is not conducive to promoting progress. Why you would disagree with that I'm not sure. Again, this is not my reasoning you are disagreeing with, it is the reasoning (and experience, as discussed below) of those who came up with the patenting system. Why you think secrets are better at promoting progress than publication is something I can't understand, and you haven't provided any argument. But that's your prerogative.
As far the comment about "thieves in power", I hope you have read the works of Thomas Jefferson. He long toiled over patents. He hated them, and realized the unnaturalness of a monopoly over an idea. But he also realized they were a necessary evil because of "the power they had to encourage invention". This was a man widely known for his views on democracy and equality, and was a true humanitarian. I really hope you do not think he was a thief with power bent on "blatent self-entitlement to the property of others".
People have long toiled over this problem and have seen what patents can do when implemented correctly. These are people interested in the most benefit to society, and not to themselves. You probably also think I'm self-interested and greedy in my support for the concept of patents, but I have no patents nor any plans to obtain any. But I do understand the reason behind them and the rampant ignorance in society about why they exist and why they are the lesser of two evils. We are better off with patents, properly implemented, than without. I'm very much for patent reform; the current situation is insane. But it is a result of poor implementation, not the concept of patents as a whole.
Your talking about the user gets to use it (if they pay for it). That's not a benefit in the context of progress of knowledge. The same thing applies with a patent. The only benefit you give that doesn't apply to patents is the cost savings (you don't have to pay for a patent and can pass the savings to the consumer). This is true, but is an implementation of patent problem. That they are expensive to get is not an argument that they are unnecessary or don't promote progress. It is an argument that they should be cheaper, which I'd agree to (along with a whole host of other reforms).
But the point is still true: trade secrets keep the knowledge of how something works from the public and therefore they can't benefit from the knowledge.
"... find someone else who will invent the same thing or something similar, or already has done so." ..."
..."
... "Other developers are also free to innovate without paying extra costs
"... some free software person could look at our products, say to themselves "I like that, think I'll put it in the GIMP" and the only thing they have to do is figure out how."
... "Trade secrets leave academics free to research and publish along any line they care to go merrily thinking."
"... depends either on the idea that only I can invent these things (highly unlikely, but at least it is flattering) or that the idea isn't worth someone else's time
Your whole discussion seems based on the notion that your "innovations" can easily be done by someone else. Those things shouldn't be patentable. Patents are supposed to be non-obvious to people in the field. Yes, there might be someone who, after a long time of reverse-engineering, figures out how you did it. But that's not the same thing as you are discussing. And yes, someone else might eventually come up with the same thing, but if the innovation is non-obvious, it is highly unlikely that they'd do it anywhere near the time you did it, which is why patents usually have a "first to invent" (or in some cases "first to apply") rule.
Think about it this way, if anyone could see what you have done and come up with a functional equivalent fairly easily (academia, open source, competitors, etc.), the trade secret is useless and offers no protection whatsoever. In other words, there is no protection, so you were wrong when you said in your first post "Trade secret is plenty of protection". You can't have it both ways. Either it is a secret so nobody can reproduce it (or benefit from the knowledge), or it is easy to figure out and therefore isn't a secret.
"Your thesis that trade-secret based innovations will be lost ..."
It isn't my thesis, it is the reason patents exist in the first place. A good quote I found is "The purpose of patents is to make public recent scientific discoveries that promote the development of new technology and new products." Most people overlook the "... to make public ..." part. Even on the USPTO website:"Through the preservation, classification, and dissemination of patent information, the Office promotes the industrial and technological progress of the nation and strengthens the economy." Note the "preservations" and "dissemination" to promote progress. Also note that the "protection" offered by patents is not the driving factor for progress, it is the "dissemination".
I don't think trade secrets applies here. Trade secrets are things like the recipe for Coke or ingredients that go into Michelin tire rubber. These are things that, if they got out, could be used by competition to make the same (or similar) product. A secret about new product that a company may be releasing, which was to be announced publically anyway, isn't a trade secret. Perhaps the design plans could be considered trade secrets, but the existence of the product wouldn't be.
That's fine (for you, as you say), but you are also exposing the other side of the coin for patents. They do provide incentive for some people and companies to come up with new developments, but the incentives can only be realized if these people share their development through the patent publication.
While patents may have the distasteful tradeoff that to use them you have to pay for them (for a limited time), keeping them a secret is worse. People still have to pay to use them but now the time is not limited (as long as how it works stays a secret) and the public never gets to learn how it works. It's the Magician Syndrome.
That's why patents are a good idea in general, though poorly implemented and handled right now. Patents are supposed to give incentive to share the knowledge and contribute to the progress for everybody. Trade secrets don't help anyone but the pockets of the inventor. Without patents (including software), that's all the protection a company has to protect their investment in developments so we all end up losing the knowledge of how stuff works.
This side of the coin is often overlooked.
(FYI, I enjoy solving problems and being innovative too, and we often rely on keeping our solutions secret as well. I find that a shame in the loss to cooperative progress, especially since many of our innovations often start from where others have already gone and published their work, either patents or papers. Since we don't publish or patent our work, nobody can learn from what we've done and improve upon it. Perhaps a better patent system would change that.)
Yes, and the "device" industry was doing just fine without patents for about 2 million years before patents.
It is a (common) logical falsehood that software would be where it is now without software patents. It might, but the same could be said for any patents on anything. Unfortunately we can't repeat history twice and try it out both ways and see which is better.
The question is whether the protection of patents drive some people and/or companies to put effort (and money) into developing new things, whether they be medical devices or object recognition algorithms. Obviously it does drive some developments. The real question, which seems impossible to answer, is whether more developments + patents is better than just having the fewer developments. More developments + patents mean you have to pay to use the developments or not use them at all. But in the end you get more developments than without patents.
Which is better? I don't know, and I'm sure you don't either. But it's an interesting topic.
Yup, and I still prefer Opera over Firefox, which I've found to be much harder to use and less elegant. The cost issue, and the lack of support at some sites (particularly Gmail) are the only downsides I see.
Here's where your reasoning falls apart. Yes, the (U.S.) law is being broken and quite often, and existing laws make it difficult to prosecute. There are several responses to this:
(a) Make it easier to enforce the law, which generally requires a reduction in freedoms or protections for the public.
(b) Modify the laws that are being broken so that the activity isn't illegal anymore, which generally requires a reduction in protection or control for the businesses.
(c) Modify the products or services such that people are more likely to obtain them through legal channels.
You say that the laws are reasonable, implying (b) is an inappropriate response. Many would disagree. IP laws don't exist as inherent rights, they exist as a balance and they have tilted too far one way and are being used in ways never intended.
Lobbying for changing laws is certainly a valid method and there are certainly a number of groups trying to do that in favour of more sane IP laws. But it isn't the only valid method. There is no faster way to instigate change than to force the issue by large scale violation of a law. It may be risky in that it (a) leaves people open to prosecution, and (b) may drive those with a "there's no excuse for violating the law" attitude towards the other side, particularly those who make the laws. But it forces the issues into the open and if the lawmakers are reasonable, they will look at both sides and find a compromise. It also provides a clear example of what can happen if the people aren't happy with the law they end up producing -- people will just violate it anyway. Either the law will have to become reasonable or it will have to become more of a police state to enforce them.
So, I fail to see how these things (even the 100 mW lasers) could pose a potential threat to pilots in airplanes. Where are they pointing from anyway? You can't hit a pilot in the eye from below.
I realized after I posted this that the equation was slightly wrong (going from memory in a hurry), I was thinking of spot diameter and not divergence angle (and still left out pi). The divergence is approximately theta(rad) = lambda/(pi*w0). The spot radius at a given distance Z is approximately w = lambda*Z/(pi*w0).
With really good optics you might be able to keep it to about 50 cm spot diameter at 2 km. (Assuming it leaves the collimator at 3 mm diameter (w0 = 1.5 mm) and a green laser at 532 nm wavelength, sub into above equation to get dia = 2*w = 2*(532e-9 m * 2e3 m)/(pi * 1.5 e-3 m) = 0.45 m = 45 cm). Of course this is with good optics, which I'll assume the 100 mW laser comes with. (Laser pointers tend not to have good optics, so they'd probably not be diffraction limited and produce much bigger spots.) Since the divergence scales linearly with wavelength, a red laser (say ~665 nm) would be about 25% wider spot.
Even at that it looks like the relative steady position of the beam is the bigger problem. How do you get the beam to stay in the pilot's eyes for long enough to do damage? The plane is moving pretty fast so the pointer would have to be on pan-tilt that tracks the plane very precisely and also can get in the plane window somehow.
Near IR lasers tend to be absorbed by the front of the eye and not make it to the retina. (That doesn't mean they can't do harm to the eye, but not in the same way.) But this isn't so important here since we're talking about red and green lasers which can certainly burn the retina.
For focus disance or collimation, lasers are usually either collimated or focused near the lens (a few cm up to a few meters, though some long range lidar lasers might be focused much further). In either case, the beam divergence is usually quite huge (several milliradians at least. The only way to keep the beam divergence low is to start with a very wide beam. (The divergence equation is theta = lambda*f/w0 where f is the focus distance and w0 is the beam width out of the lens.)
Laser pointers are low quality optics (as you say) and are only mean to operate at a few meters, with a spot size that is ~5 mm at a few meters. At several km where planes fly, the laser spot size would be huge. (A 1 mrad divergence at 1 km would be about a 2 m wide spot.) The power density of even 100 mW beam at that width would be pretty small and certainly could not cut through plastic or harm eyes.
Then there's how stationary the beam is. The 100 mW beam requires a few seconds of stationary positioning to cut into the plastic. In the example video from your reference article the beam is mounted on a stationary holder. If even the person held it in their hands just the hand motion would probably keep it from burning through. At 1 km (or more), only a slight hand motion would move the beam around several meters, not to mention the plane itself is moving.
I'm confused about all of this. Lasers would have to be pretty powerful and focused at ultra long range to be of much risk. Hell, we regularly use 100-300 mW lasers and the safe standoff distance is several meters because of beam divergence. It's the power density that is of most concern, and all lasers diverge by diffraction. Laser pointers are usually Is there something I'm missing here?
It complicates:
the ability to understand what is on you computer
the ability to control what is on your computer
the ability to remove what is on your computer
the ability to free up space on your computer
the ability to recognize things that shouldn't be on your computer (spyware, viruses, etc.)
locating programs (e.g., no icon on desktop or entry in menu, but you know files are installed somewhere)
troubleshooting program problems (e.g., missing files, corrupt files)
That's just off the top of my head. In my ideal OS, all files related to a specific program would be in a single location (folder, etc.). Deleting that folder would completely remove any remnants of that program, including icons, "registry" entries, etc. Any common libraries, interfaces, utilities, etc., obviously would not be stored in the same folder as they aren't now in Windows or Linux. But these aren't part of the program itself and usually aren't installed with a program. (They may be updated by the program if you have an older version.)
It would also be nice to have a "citation" index of what all files are for. If I find a stray file on my computer, it'd be nice to know when it was put there, by what, and what accesses it, if at all.
True, in an ideal OS this shouldn't be necessary; a user shouldn't have to know any of this background stuff. But I've been annoyed so much in the past by partially removed programs, stray files that I don't know if it's safe to delete, and sometimes finding programs that I installed. When things go wrong (and they do with all OSes including Linux) it'd be nice to have a little help like this to troubleshoot problems.
Does something like affect search engines like Google or sites with BitTorrent links? I don't know, maybe. I guess we'll see. Personally, I would consider it analagous on a book describing how to break the law. Telling people where to go to get copyrighted material illegally doesn't seem to be copyright infringement in itself to me, but then there are strange aspects to laws and theories of violation that crop up from time to time (contributory and vicarious liability) and some explicit inclusions for some acts that are not directly the violation (accessory to ..., attempt to commit ...).
The problem is that the quoted text was not from SCO, it was from a judge in a spam case, which set precedent that just because something is viewable on a website doesn't mean you automatically have authority to view it, and simply viewing it can violate the CFAA.
While this may have been useful for nailing the spammer, the implication of this previous ruling is far more reaching as we are seeing now. SCO seems to have taken it and run. Though their explanation of events is different from IBM's, there is a slim chance that SCO found a legal technicality, however insane, that might get some of IBM's evidence rejected. (Note this is only for IBM's counterclaim that SCO infringed IBM's copyright, for which they're looking for partial summary judgement.)
I hope the judge sees this for what it is and laughs it out of court.
Yes, and that ruling suggests it is perfectly legal to "upload" files, which the Copyright Board of Canada previously believed was illegal(see p. 20), but downloading files via P2P has been legal since at least the 1998 update to the Copyright Act. Even the Copyright Board of Canada agreed that to be true.
That's right. Cheney is a dick, and Micheal Moore is a pussy. And the climate is an asshole. Sometimes dicks need to ... oh hell, wrong movie again.
Actually, that's not true in most places anymore. U.S. Congress removed the legal requirement for a working model (miniature or not) in 1870. The USPTO kept the requirement until 1880. The patented invention is, of course, supposed to work in reality but that isn't always clear. There have even been perpetual motion machines inadvertently patented even through the USPTO has a rule against that.
Both patents and copyrights are really about ideas. (IANAPL, but I've been following IP law for many years, so this is my take on it.) Patents are on the idea of how something works (device, business model, algorithm, etc.). Actual implementations of a patented idea might look completely different, but they violate the patent if they operate in the same manner. (This doesn't mean that the input-output is the same, it's the conversion from input to output that matters.)
A copyright is on an organization (pattern) of idea that is a work of imagination. For example, building a working model of a patented device is an expression of the idea but it is not patentable because the idea is not a work of imagination, it is a work of physics. Some would argue that the copyright is on the expression of the idea, but I don't think this is quite descriptive enough. This would imply that the recording of a song, which is an expression of the song, would have a different copyright from the writing of the notes of the song, which is a different expression of the same song. A copyright covers all expressions that represent the same work of imagination.
I say it is the organization of the idea that is copyrighted because (a) (as described above) copyrighting the expression itself is insufficient to cover all potential expressions, and (b) a general concept is not patentable. For example, I cannot copyright "A story about a detective who solves murders". Then all such books, stories, TV shows, and movies that fit that description would violate my copyright. The words to a particular story are copyrighted, whether written, spoken, or played out in a TV show or movie. But a paraphrasing of the story is not a violation of the copyright. Changing it slightly and calling it a different story is a violation though. In short, there is a grey area between paraphrasing and slightly modifying a copyrighted work. Somewhere in the middle is the boundary of the copyright. It's the organization of the idea that is important regardless of how it is expressed.
While I find this is typically true, I don't think it is inherently true. A monitor is a 2D device and the whole OS GUI is generally based off a desktop metaphor (and often called a desktop). So I can see that 2D is the most applicable in such cases.
However, there can be added value from 3D. Even desktop GUIs have improved from the early flat 2D look to a pseudo-3D look (window shadowing, beveled edges, etc.). While some may say this is just "window dressing", I find it takes advantage of natural human perception for ordering things. A real physical desktop may be 2D-ish, but things on top of other things do make use of 3D such as shadowing.
This is where I think 3D on a desktop can add value. If it uses natural perception abilities to improve one's ability to organize things it may be of use. For example, taking non-active windows and shrinking them into the background as if they are further away tends to draw our attention towards the active windows while keeping the background data easily accessible. (The taskbar is nice but is a "middle-man" in this respect and may not be the most efficient approach.) For example, I find some of the features of Project Looking Glass potentially very useful if done well.
What I find ironic is that this discussion reminds me a lot of the old "command line" versus GUI arguments from 10-15 years ago. I can still remember a few individuals who refused to accept that there was any benefit of a GUI over the DOS prompt. Certainly command lines have their benefits as well, as I'm sure many /.-ers would argue. But I doubt many would advocate universal rejection of the whole GUI approach. Perhaps in 10-15 years we may look back and have similar memories of when people couldn't see that there might be some use for 3D on the desktop. It's really in its infancy now, but I figure there's enough research into human perception and human/machine interfaces that something useful will eventually come out of it. But for now, I'd agree. Nothing has jumped out at me as highly useful, just the "coolness" look to it.
I would disagree with this. I think theory is #2. I've known too many people who know theory very well (including myself) but don't know how to apply it to a real problem. How do you calculate or code something that has triple integrals in it? (It's a rhetorical question, as an example.) I think being able to apply techniques correctly to real problems is #1 important because this allows you to actually do something. Understanding the theory is #2 because, while it is very important, it is only useful for academic snobbery if you can't actually apply it to a real problem. (This is from experience on both sides; I can apply some techniques and yet I know I don't fully understand the theory, but I'm more frustrated when I understand a theory completely but can figure out how to use it to solve the problem.)