(From the "full disclosure" link at the bottom of TFA):
Ed Bott is a freelance technical journalist and book author. All work that Ed does is on a contractual basis.Since 1994, Ed has written more than 25 books about Microsoft Windows and Office. Along with various co-authors, Ed is completely responsible for the content of the books he writes. As a key part of his contractual relationship with publishers, he gives them permission to print and distribute the content he writes and to pay him a royalty based on the actual sales of those books. Ed's books have been distributed under several imprints: Que Publishing (a division of Pearson Education); Microsoft Press (with production and distribution by O'Reilly), and Fair Trade Digital Exchange, where he was briefly a partner. On occasion, Ed accepts consulting assignments. In recent years, he has worked as an expert witness in cases where his experience and knowledge of Microsoft and Microsoft Windows have been useful. In each such case, his compensation is on an hourly basis, and he is hired as a witness, not an advocate. Ed sometimes receive fees and/or travel expenses for live speeches and webinars from companies and organizations. Acceptance of these fees does not constitute an endorsement of the company's products. Ed does not own stock or have any other financial interest in Microsoft or any other software company. He owns 500 shares of stock in EMC Corporation, which was purchased before the company's acquisition of VMware. In addition, he owns 350 shares of stock in Intel Corporation, purchased more than seven years ago. All stocks are held in retirement accounts for long-term growth. Ed does not accept gifts from companies he covers. All hardware products he writes about are purchased with his own funds or are review units covered under formal loan agreements and are returned after the review is complete.
I got some (brief) use out of my cuecat as a barcode reader. Once I realized I didn't need to scan barcodes at the PC for any reason ever, it lost its appeal.
I suspect you could have found a party, booze, and/or a nearby liquor store or bar if you had really wanted to, is all I'm saying (still). I agreed with you at the outset of my comment that I think dry counties are a stupid idea.
Not to diminish the fact that the idea of a dry county is stupid in this post-alcohol-prohibition era we live in (I lived in Irving, I know what it's like), but if you were too stupid to figure out where the nearest county line was so you could buy booze, then I have zero sympathy for your rant. I lived in numerous Texas localities for a decade or so without finding myself in a place where I couldn't drive for 5 minutes to get an alcoholic beverage and return to my residence to drink it. You're definitely still just pissed about New Years.
Well, we're talking about a difference in speed of horse-based travel compared to human walking. There's a difference, but not orders of magnitude. Color me unsurprised about the speed with which the plague spread.
I think the not-so-amazing revelation is that people in the 14th century were generally travelling very small distances on a daily basis. The world wasn't isolated in terms of accessibility, but in terms of time-to-destination. That's my understanding of the summary, at least.
I'm pretty sure that they're talking about single player stories... And when they mean war crimes they mean things like torture, genocide, killing unarmed civilians, ethnic cleansing and so forth...
They are, I'm sure. I was responding to someone other than the article poster about CoD generally, and the most-common gameplay scenario, specifically. (Apart from my point about not being able to do friendly-fire under typical circumstances, this is all about videogame play, so belief in a particular deity, murder, relief aid, and human rights violations would be only tenuously related to anything that happens during gameplay...no more closely related than when kids play war with toy guns.)
On XBox Live (the biggest installed base) and in public matches (the ones that count for experience points and weapon and player prestige), those are the defaults. League play doesn't have friendly fire or any of the other hardcore game settings enabled. The only way (in that player community) to play a game with FF on and not get kicked would be to play a custom game, which wouldn't be a normal public match, since that combination of settings aren't available in a public match.
Well, in CoD games, if you're playing multiplayer (as most players are), then there isn't a way to kill frendlies unless you play "hardcore" mode. In hardcore mode, you get kicked from a match if you kill teammates 3 times.
Yeah, just like the other corollary where people often purchase music they first obtain illicitly and rapists often marry the victim. It's very similar in many ways.~
Because Manning should have (at a minimum) gone through the AG and/or chain of command with concerns of abuses before doing anything so reckless as compromising the operational security of so many other soldiers. (S)he should have done what (s)he agreed to when being given the security clearance and rank that (s)he held.
I know there are a lot of non-military folks who think that doing so would be pointless, but I spent enough time in uniform (a few months shy of a decade) to know that there would have been plenty of interest in prosecuting the types of abuse Manning's leaked documents made so very public.
I think that while that's good, in terms of fixing some problems with SSL, it doesn't fix the problem of not being able to trust what happens outside of the SSL connection. If there's 4096-bit SSL encrypting my connection and I have multiple organizations expressing trust in all levels of the cert chain, but there's an [NSA/Chinese hacker/someother type of] connection sucking unencrypted data off of the server at the other end of the connection then who cares?
Even if you're certain who's on the other end, you can't be certain that they're not sharing your data after it's decrypted...knowingly or unknowingly.
...Sure, but just so that you're not moving the goalposts, realize that we're talking about a patent on the process of vulcanization, not the physical rubber. And that process is simply a mathematical algorithm, right?...
Well, no, no it's not. y=mx+b is an algorithm. Algorithms help you find out the answer to a question, like "should the output of this transistor be changed from off to on based on some input values". That's what software does on a general-purpose computer.
Vulcanization is not a calculation that you can perform on numbers, it's not something that can happen entirely in your mind to get the desired result. A computer program directing a vulcanization machine would be an algorithm, yes. That is distinct from the process itself.
...You can also patent the method of transferring power via those gears (if it's a new and nonobvious process, of course). It's not just the machine that's patentable, but also the process... even though the process is merely a mathematical algorithm...
No, the process is not merely an algorithm unless it is created to manipulate mathematical symbols. "x = 1+1" or "if x then y" as mathematical constructs have no impact on the physical world. They could (and do) do almost anything depending on what hardware is connected to the computer executing them.
...So why didn't we have GTA V thirty years ago? Was it because people hadn't figured out to make those calculations yet? And it's not mere hardware limitations, or there'd have been no advances in game technology from the very first PS3 games to the newest ones, for example...
The main reason we didn't have GTA V 30 years ago was that commercial software programming was a very different endeavor. I had BattleZone on my Commodore 64 in 1984. We *did* have leisure suit larry and Doom only a few years after that. We also had a huge number of arcade games. If you want to say that hardware wasn't a limitation then, and that game designers didn't do as much as they possibly could with the computing power available, then fine, but I disagree with both of your points.
Hardware limitations *were* a huge limiting factor then, and they continue to be. There haven't been huge advances in game technology recently. There have been improvements in graphics, detail, and interactivity that have gone along with hardware improvements. You can run a lot of current software on much older computers (anything that doesn't require some specific hardware acceleration), just *really* slowly.
...Well, yes, it should be unpatentable. Just because my nifty new bit of math can be implemented quickly on a general-purpose computer, that doesn't make it an invention.
Well, by definition, it is an invention. You're just saying it shouldn't be protectable...
I think this is the primary point where we disagree. You don't invent math, you discover it. It already exists...it's an idea, not a physical thing that you construct or a new type of material that you create via some process.
...But if we're talking policy and what the law should be, I think software should be patentable, with the carve-out that it shouldn't create thoughtcrimes by performing the same calculations mentally or on paper. This is what they were really trying to get to in Bilski, but they haven't figured it out completely yet: if you can infringe a claim mentally, and the patent owner can get an injunction to stop you from infringing, how do we force someone to stop thinking of something? It's not possible, nor should it be even up for debate. Diagnostic claims are similar - determine patient X has symptom Y, realize they have disease Z. That could be infringed merely by reading the patent, if it describes an example of patient X, since you'll realize that hypothetical patient X with symptom Y has disease Z. So we can't have
The process of vulcanization of rubber is approximately "raw rubber plus sulfur plus heat equals material with new properties". You have created something new by this process. The new physical material has different properties.
Gear ratios are properties of physical objects that have a mathematical relationship. You don't patent a ratio, you patent a mechanism that may use those ratios to some effect. If the mechanism you have invented is a universal gearing system, then should someone who picks a particular gearing ratio because it is useful for some purpose that nobody noticed before deserve a patent on that ratio? I don't think that they should.
...Good thing no one writes a patent claim that says "A method, comprising controlling computer hardware, period, the end" then, eh?...
It's extremely frustrating to me that people *do* write those claims and don't have anyone pointing out that general purpose computers are designed to be able to carry out *any* calculation. The processors, memory controllers, caches, etc that make up the computer are all patentable. They do stuff. Software is just math that controls how they turn a given input into an output. I write software every day. It's not magic, and absent a computer, you could still generate the output of a program, just not nearly as fast (which is why the general purpose computer is such a great invention).
...Here's a simple question - imagine the most novel, non-obvious bit of software ever. Like, some brand new algorithm that can losslessly compress even random data by 99%. Go nuts with imagining the details - point is, it's a revolutionary bit of code that no one has ever thought of, and it wins billions of awards and the keys to the city. Should it still be unpatentable, merely because it's software?...
Well, yes, it should be unpatentable. Just because my nifty new bit of math can be implemented quickly on a general-purpose computer, that doesn't make it an invention. That's the thing about math...we *discover* mathematical ideas all the time. In software, we make use of them to some effect. That doesn't mean that because they're more complicated than a certain gearing ratio that they suddenly create a new machine when used.
...The law is quite clear - if you come up with a new and nonobvious use for a known machine, such as a computer, then you have invented a patent eligible process.
Right. Except that computers have a single purpose...they do math.
This is not a new use of a known process. This is saying "you're not allowed to write a computer program that does something in a certain instance". The courts are (again) failing to grasp the way that computers function. Vulcanization (of rubber) is a process. A computer program is an algorithm...math. The fact that you can control computer hardware (like a network connection) with software is about as far from non-obvious and new as you can get.
Trying not to have an aneurysm...*why* in the world do courts continue to view software as patentable subject matter. The communications nodes are general-purpose computers with networking hardware attached. They have an operating system that allows for the switching of communications lines. Now there's a rash of lawsuits because the courts are too dimwitted to understand that software plus computer != invention/new machine.
Fair enough. I find your reply to my comment to be incorrect and full of opinion couched as critical observation. We have not yet arrived at an outcome, despite the sound of the article headline.
Slashdot Mirror
I got some (brief) use out of my cuecat as a barcode reader. Once I realized I didn't need to scan barcodes at the PC for any reason ever, it lost its appeal.
I suspect you could have found a party, booze, and/or a nearby liquor store or bar if you had really wanted to, is all I'm saying (still). I agreed with you at the outset of my comment that I think dry counties are a stupid idea.
Not to diminish the fact that the idea of a dry county is stupid in this post-alcohol-prohibition era we live in (I lived in Irving, I know what it's like), but if you were too stupid to figure out where the nearest county line was so you could buy booze, then I have zero sympathy for your rant. I lived in numerous Texas localities for a decade or so without finding myself in a place where I couldn't drive for 5 minutes to get an alcoholic beverage and return to my residence to drink it. You're definitely still just pissed about New Years.
Same argument as the one I was making...boats, horses, and walking are all slow. Cars, trains, and airplanes are fast. We are in agreement.
Well, we're talking about a difference in speed of horse-based travel compared to human walking. There's a difference, but not orders of magnitude. Color me unsurprised about the speed with which the plague spread.
I think the not-so-amazing revelation is that people in the 14th century were generally travelling very small distances on a daily basis. The world wasn't isolated in terms of accessibility, but in terms of time-to-destination. That's my understanding of the summary, at least.
They are, I'm sure. I was responding to someone other than the article poster about CoD generally, and the most-common gameplay scenario, specifically. (Apart from my point about not being able to do friendly-fire under typical circumstances, this is all about videogame play, so belief in a particular deity, murder, relief aid, and human rights violations would be only tenuously related to anything that happens during gameplay...no more closely related than when kids play war with toy guns.)
On XBox Live (the biggest installed base) and in public matches (the ones that count for experience points and weapon and player prestige), those are the defaults. League play doesn't have friendly fire or any of the other hardcore game settings enabled. The only way (in that player community) to play a game with FF on and not get kicked would be to play a custom game, which wouldn't be a normal public match, since that combination of settings aren't available in a public match.
Well, in CoD games, if you're playing multiplayer (as most players are), then there isn't a way to kill frendlies unless you play "hardcore" mode. In hardcore mode, you get kicked from a match if you kill teammates 3 times.
<grammarnazi>"Then" relates to time, "than" is a word that implies a comparison between two things. IHBT.</grammarnazi>
[takes a bow]
Yeah, just like the other corollary where people often purchase music they first obtain illicitly and rapists often marry the victim. It's very similar in many ways.~
Because Manning should have (at a minimum) gone through the AG and/or chain of command with concerns of abuses before doing anything so reckless as compromising the operational security of so many other soldiers. (S)he should have done what (s)he agreed to when being given the security clearance and rank that (s)he held.
I know there are a lot of non-military folks who think that doing so would be pointless, but I spent enough time in uniform (a few months shy of a decade) to know that there would have been plenty of interest in prosecuting the types of abuse Manning's leaked documents made so very public.
Snowden is a completely different story
Snowden, yes. Manning, no. (For me personally, of course)
He did. So did you and I (assuming we're all residing in the US).
http://www.slashdot.org/metamod.pl ...whether you're eligible is another question...
I think that while that's good, in terms of fixing some problems with SSL, it doesn't fix the problem of not being able to trust what happens outside of the SSL connection. If there's 4096-bit SSL encrypting my connection and I have multiple organizations expressing trust in all levels of the cert chain, but there's an [NSA/Chinese hacker/someother type of] connection sucking unencrypted data off of the server at the other end of the connection then who cares?
Even if you're certain who's on the other end, you can't be certain that they're not sharing your data after it's decrypted...knowingly or unknowingly.
Probably not, but you could build one pretty easily...
Well, no, no it's not. y=mx+b is an algorithm. Algorithms help you find out the answer to a question, like "should the output of this transistor be changed from off to on based on some input values". That's what software does on a general-purpose computer.
Vulcanization is not a calculation that you can perform on numbers, it's not something that can happen entirely in your mind to get the desired result. A computer program directing a vulcanization machine would be an algorithm, yes. That is distinct from the process itself.
No, the process is not merely an algorithm unless it is created to manipulate mathematical symbols. "x = 1+1" or "if x then y" as mathematical constructs have no impact on the physical world. They could (and do) do almost anything depending on what hardware is connected to the computer executing them.
The main reason we didn't have GTA V 30 years ago was that commercial software programming was a very different endeavor. I had BattleZone on my Commodore 64 in 1984. We *did* have leisure suit larry and Doom only a few years after that. We also had a huge number of arcade games. If you want to say that hardware wasn't a limitation then, and that game designers didn't do as much as they possibly could with the computing power available, then fine, but I disagree with both of your points.
Hardware limitations *were* a huge limiting factor then, and they continue to be. There haven't been huge advances in game technology recently. There have been improvements in graphics, detail, and interactivity that have gone along with hardware improvements. You can run a lot of current software on much older computers (anything that doesn't require some specific hardware acceleration), just *really* slowly.
I think this is the primary point where we disagree. You don't invent math, you discover it. It already exists...it's an idea, not a physical thing that you construct or a new type of material that you create via some process.
The process of vulcanization of rubber is approximately "raw rubber plus sulfur plus heat equals material with new properties". You have created something new by this process. The new physical material has different properties.
Gear ratios are properties of physical objects that have a mathematical relationship. You don't patent a ratio, you patent a mechanism that may use those ratios to some effect. If the mechanism you have invented is a universal gearing system, then should someone who picks a particular gearing ratio because it is useful for some purpose that nobody noticed before deserve a patent on that ratio? I don't think that they should.
It's extremely frustrating to me that people *do* write those claims and don't have anyone pointing out that general purpose computers are designed to be able to carry out *any* calculation. The processors, memory controllers, caches, etc that make up the computer are all patentable. They do stuff. Software is just math that controls how they turn a given input into an output. I write software every day. It's not magic, and absent a computer, you could still generate the output of a program, just not nearly as fast (which is why the general purpose computer is such a great invention).
Well, yes, it should be unpatentable. Just because my nifty new bit of math can be implemented quickly on a general-purpose computer, that doesn't make it an invention. That's the thing about math...we *discover* mathematical ideas all the time. In software, we make use of them to some effect. That doesn't mean that because they're more complicated than a certain gearing ratio that they suddenly create a new machine when used.
Right. Except that computers have a single purpose...they do math.
This is not a new use of a known process. This is saying "you're not allowed to write a computer program that does something in a certain instance". The courts are (again) failing to grasp the way that computers function. Vulcanization (of rubber) is a process. A computer program is an algorithm...math. The fact that you can control computer hardware (like a network connection) with software is about as far from non-obvious and new as you can get.
Trying not to have an aneurysm...*why* in the world do courts continue to view software as patentable subject matter. The communications nodes are general-purpose computers with networking hardware attached. They have an operating system that allows for the switching of communications lines. Now there's a rash of lawsuits because the courts are too dimwitted to understand that software plus computer != invention/new machine.
...or maybe not...
Fair enough. I find your reply to my comment to be incorrect and full of opinion couched as critical observation. We have not yet arrived at an outcome, despite the sound of the article headline.