Here's a good review that appeared Science. Has a fair discussion of the quality of the work, and the Wolfram problem of trying to take too much credit or overrepresent the impact of the work. See the summary at the end for quicker read.
The USPTO regularly approves bogus software patents that litigator-companies use to extort money from other companies. The sued companies face costs resulting from paying fees for litigation, maybe use of the patents, and maybe lost business due to the threat.
I was wondering if it is possible in our legal system to sue the USPTO for causing these financial damages through their incompetent approval of bogus patents?
I agree - sounds like the obvious dressed up in trendy jargon.
From the article it looks like they're trying to understand how a plant knows how many total pores to have open for breathing, given that each pore only has local information - there's no global sensor telling the pores what to do. They're also interested in why open pores are found in clusters.
A simple answer might involve the following:
(1) the pores are simple oscillators locally linked causing local synchrony. Groups of pores tend to be in sync, and the neighbors of the open group are induced to open because they're near the group. Therefore the pores tend to open near the open group, and close in the middle of the group. The result is travelling waves like a rock thrown in a pond. This type of idea was investigated I think first by Turing (of all people) in 1952 (for example) (2) either the intrinsic period of each pore's oscillation or it's duty cycle (how long open compared to how long off) is modulated by the pore's detection of how much the plant needs to breathe locally. The result is oscillations all over the plant of openning and closing pores whose open times are modulated to solve the plant's total breathing needs.
Anyway, I don't see what's interesting about calling this computation. Air transmits sounds by local interactions of gas particles and the speed of transmission is modulated by density. But I don't see what is gained by claiming that the air is solving a computation to transmit sound at the right speed!
Sounds like they've given in to lobbying from the Business Software Alliance (BSA) who believes:
The continued vitality of all software development models depends on the merits of their respective products, and not the method of development chosen.[pdf]
Which sounds great, but this is an organization that also supports evils such as the DMCA and DRM.
As for choice, I never understood why IT managers haven't been fired en masse when they've commited a business or university to Microsoft products. MS has a proven history of closed standards based on embracing and extending open standards for the sole purpose of creating an artificial dependence on their products. Based on this fact alone, products build on open standards are superior...
Question: If I as a Linux end-user notified SCO directly of how many copies of Linux I am running, would they HAVE to sue me? Because if they don't - they aren't enforcing protection of their IP, and therefore... relinquish it or something. Kind of like it's the responsibility of a Trademark holder to enforce their ownership of the trademark, or it becomes public domain, or something. (obviously I don't really understand the issues I'm asking about)
Anyways, I'm imagining many 1000s of Linux end-users informing SCO that they're using Linux, and SCO trying to sue everybody because they have to.
I'm wondering if the article that I couldn't read because it is password protected mentioned this guy: Brent Christensen?
He it Canopy's lead legal guy, and Canopy is a group that helps companies develop underperforming assets, and provides in-house legal counsel to their properties. Is this SCO strategy largely his idea?
I wondered if anyone knew more about him. I'm just curious out of a desire to at least identify who are the evil selfish greedy bastards of the world. But maybe he's not. Googling for him with keyword Utah returns a couple of addresses and phone numbers, but not much else...
it's a very Good Thing that Microsoft is making it possible to get developer insigt into Longhorn at this point
I remember the excitement as a developer anticipating Win95 improvements over 3.1. Finally preemptive multitasking, processes running in separate address spaces, if one app crashes the rest are uneffected!, the proliferation of.INI files (clear and concise configuration text files) to be replaced by a central repository of configuration information, the intriguing Registry (soon proving to be a brittle and overcomplicated mess). What a crock it turned out to be...
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a good review that appeared Science. Has a fair discussion of the quality of the work, and the Wolfram problem of trying to take too much credit or overrepresent the impact of the work. See the summary at the end for quicker read.
I was wondering if it is possible in our legal system to sue the USPTO for causing these financial damages through their incompetent approval of bogus patents?
From the article it looks like they're trying to understand how a plant knows how many total pores to have open for breathing, given that each pore only has local information - there's no global sensor telling the pores what to do. They're also interested in why open pores are found in clusters.
A simple answer might involve the following:
(1) the pores are simple oscillators locally linked causing local synchrony. Groups of pores tend to be in sync, and the neighbors of the open group are induced to open because they're near the group. Therefore the pores tend to open near the open group, and close in the middle of the group. The result is travelling waves like a rock thrown in a pond. This type of idea was investigated I think first by Turing (of all people) in 1952 (for example)
(2) either the intrinsic period of each pore's oscillation or it's duty cycle (how long open compared to how long off) is modulated by the pore's detection of how much the plant needs to breathe locally. The result is oscillations all over the plant of openning and closing pores whose open times are modulated to solve the plant's total breathing needs.
Anyway, I don't see what's interesting about calling this computation. Air transmits sounds by local interactions of gas particles and the speed of transmission is modulated by density. But I don't see what is gained by claiming that the air is solving a computation to transmit sound at the right speed!
The continued vitality of all software development models depends on the merits of their respective products, and not the method of development chosen. [pdf]
Which sounds great, but this is an organization that also supports evils such as the DMCA and DRM.
As for choice, I never understood why IT managers haven't been fired en masse when they've commited a business or university to Microsoft products. MS has a proven history of closed standards based on embracing and extending open standards for the sole purpose of creating an artificial dependence on their products. Based on this fact alone, products build on open standards are superior...
Anyways, I'm imagining many 1000s of Linux end-users informing SCO that they're using Linux, and SCO trying to sue everybody because they have to.
Also interesting for learning how to think about the projection of a 4D cube into 3D space (and actually onto the 2D space of the screen as well).
He it Canopy's lead legal guy, and Canopy is a group that helps companies develop underperforming assets, and provides in-house legal counsel to their properties. Is this SCO strategy largely his idea?
I wondered if anyone knew more about him. I'm just curious out of a desire to at least identify who are the evil selfish greedy bastards of the world. But maybe he's not. Googling for him with keyword Utah returns a couple of addresses and phone numbers, but not much else...
I remember the excitement as a developer anticipating Win95 improvements over 3.1. Finally preemptive multitasking, processes running in separate address spaces, if one app crashes the rest are uneffected!, the proliferation of .INI files (clear and concise configuration text files) to be replaced by a central repository of configuration information, the intriguing Registry (soon proving to be a brittle and overcomplicated mess). What a crock it turned out to be...
How much of that gift is earmarked to buy Microsoft products? If the money is used to buy computers, will other OSes be allowed to be installed?
I gift with these restrictions isn't a gift at all, it's a type of marketing...