It was the only thing I could find on their web site that attempted to define what was to be disallowed. Do you have an "official definition" of a software patent by the ESP? Without that, I don't know if ESP can be taken too seriously.
Here's what the web site suggests for changing patent law.
Patents should be allowed for:
* 1) devices with mechanical components
* 2) physical compounds that can be weighed on a scale.
Patents should never be awarded to:
* 1) Ideas
* 2) processes, recipes, software programs
This prohibits far more than software patents - some types of medical treatments, manufacturing processes, and so on. That might be a good or bad thing, depending on how you look at it.
This confirms what I already suspected - it is brutally difficult to define a software patent. It's one of those problems that seems easy at the onset, but gets more and more complicated the more you think it through.
What? How then will the SCO board of directors award a big, fat departure bonus to McBride for all he's done for the company, its stockholders, its clients (especially those that he sued), and of course the IT industry in general?
Only people affiliated with a university should be trying to make use of scholarly materials to tell others how they believe the world works. Educating people is not your concern if you are outside the community of educators itself.
That point is so patently dumb I can only assume that you are being sarcastic.
I share your frustration, and often wonder why work coming out of publically paid institutions (e.g., state colleges) is not freely available to the public, giving that taxpayers are paying for these researchers' salaries and expenses.
I suspect that the authors themselves feel frustrated as well, since they usually want their work to be as widely available as possible, but at the same time want to publish in leading journals.
I never understood why SCO didn't sell their Unix business very early on during the legal proceedings with IBM. What sane IT manager would buy their product? My suggestion for the world's toughest job is a saleman for SCO - you need a real snappy comeback when your prospective customers ask if SCO is going to sue them like SCO sued their other clients.
You may as well try to run a catering business under the "Septic Services" brand.
I can only imagine that there were legal reasons for holding on to the Unix business.
Most fathering of children probably occurs in the teens and 20's in primitive societies. Once that's done, evolution doesn't much care what happens to men except insofar as they can help the survival of their children.
Thus baldness might not be a big issue, evolutionarily speeking.
Generally a patent cannot just be a bunch of parts thrown together. There has to be coherence to it, an unexpected synergy that makes the whole more than the sum of the parts.
I'm trying to find the synergy here. Pure convenience, perhaps?
Of course, when the shit hits the fan, a manager like you is the first one to say "Why wasn't I kept in the loop on this?", and then look for someone to blame it on, so you don't look incompetent because you were too busy fapping in your office.
You write crap like this, and when people tell you to stuff it you say "see,
my assessment was correct. You have a hostile personality."
Damn rights I'm hostile. You had better reign in your personal attacks.
Getting 50 or 60 emails per day, not counting obvious spam, is a serious problem. I've missed really important email because it was buried under an avalanche of other email, much of it of minor
or nonexistent importance.
So yes, I am willing to waste other people's time in the interests
of clear communication. But in return I try to keep my email clear and minimal, and I think
carefully about who gets CC'ed.
My problem is e-mail conversations, with 20 e-mails going back and forth. Cause I'm a manager, people think they have to include me in on the conversation so I can "stay in the loop".
People, have your conversation, come to some conclusions, and e-mail me a brief summary.
In our programmer interviews, we always ask "the question":
Suppose you were given the following project (describe a fairly simple project). How would you carry it out?
Then every time they stop talking, you say "And then what would you do?"
Candidates generally sweat bullets over this question, since it can drag on for
5 or 10 minutes, and you give no indication whether you agree or don't agree with what they have to say.
There is no right answer, but it is still enormously revealing. For instance...
Was there any point where the objectives or usefulness of the project itself was questioned?
How early on were the end-users discussed in the answer. Were they mentioned at all?
Were there reviews of some sort?
At what point was documentation discussed?
What kind of testing was mentioned? Was it left to the very last?
I chose the masculine cause it's awkward writing he/she, him/her, etc. I suppose I could have used "it", which would lend an appropriate scientific air of detachment.
Having said that, the most notable panicers I've met have been men. That, however, could just be luck of the draw.
A subspecies of the finger pointer is the flustered user. As soon as a problem comes up, his blood pressure soars, his heartbeat accelerates, he sweats glands go into overdrive, and his brain shuts down. Generally the cause of his problems are pretty obvious - all it takes is a little clear thinking.
I find dealing with them pretty easy. First you must treat the user. Get him to relax, have a cup of coffee, and explain the problem. He'll usually figure out the solution on his own
as he does this. Otherwise get him out of your office so you can spend 5 minutes in peace solving the problem.
Long term, encourage him to have a work associate look at his problems before calling support. He probably won't do it, but it's worth a shot.
I've been running a rather cruel experiment myself for many years.
I built a news site for software developers and other geeks, which every 12 seconds
flashes a message saying "Blow-up dolls are fun!" The goal is to see
if I can substantially increase the sales of blow-up dolls world wide through
subliminal advertising.
So far it's been quite a success.
The cruel part is that dependency on blow-up dolls seems to dramatically
decrease the subject's aptitude when dealing with the (living) opposite sex, but hey,
all science exacts a price.
There's something missing from the article "Where does Linux go from here?"
The users. There's virtually no mention of them. There's talk about companies
who are connected with Linux, about the technology, about the freedom
of open software. But of the actual users there's only one passing reference.
If you want to advance Linux, start thinking about the users - their needs, their
desires, their problems, and so on. To begin anywhere else
is to neglect the most important part of the equation, and Linux will remain a
"system for nerds" forever.
And so far as "Where does Linux go from here", send it to rewrite.
Who needs economic sanctions against Cuba when you can steer every hurricane that comes down the pipe into downtown Havana?
As if the conspiracy theorists don't have enough to do...
Slashdot Mirror
Wales had a brief relationship with Rachel Marsden, aka "the scariest women alive".
This does not speak well to his judgement. Guilty as sin, I say.
Goddamn things out to be outlawed as food porn.
Waterloo is not "MIT North".
MIT is "Waterloo South".
It was the only thing I could find on their web site that attempted to define what was to be disallowed. Do you have an "official definition" of a software patent by the ESP? Without that, I don't know if ESP can be taken too seriously.
Never said it was a good or bad thing. But if the goal is to only disallow "software patents" then this proposal seriously overshoots the mark.
This confirms what I already suspected - it is brutally difficult to define a software patent. It's one of those problems that seems easy at the onset, but gets more and more complicated the more you think it through.
What? How then will the SCO board of directors award a big, fat departure bonus to McBride for all he's done for the company, its stockholders, its clients (especially those that he sued), and of course the IT industry in general?
Perhaps we can take up a collection.
I share your frustration, and often wonder why work coming out of publically paid institutions (e.g., state colleges) is not freely available to the public, giving that taxpayers are paying for these researchers' salaries and expenses.
I suspect that the authors themselves feel frustrated as well, since they usually want their work to be as widely available as possible, but at the same time want to publish in leading journals.
Wasn't there some U.S. legislation on this?
Researchers like to publish in leading journals, many of which insist on exclusivity of publication.
Will this prevent Harvard researchers from publishing in these journals? Seems to me it must.
I never understood why SCO didn't sell their Unix business very early on during the legal proceedings with IBM. What sane IT manager would buy their product? My suggestion for the world's toughest job is a saleman for SCO - you need a real snappy comeback when your prospective customers ask if SCO is going to sue them like SCO sued their other clients.
You may as well try to run a catering business under the "Septic Services" brand.
I can only imagine that there were legal reasons for holding on to the Unix business.
Most fathering of children probably occurs in the teens and 20's in primitive societies. Once that's done, evolution doesn't much care what happens to men except insofar as they can help the survival of their children.
Thus baldness might not be a big issue, evolutionarily speeking.
Generally a patent cannot just be a bunch of parts thrown together. There has to be coherence to it, an unexpected synergy that makes the whole more than the sum of the parts.
I'm trying to find the synergy here. Pure convenience, perhaps?
Damn rights I'm hostile. You had better reign in your personal attacks.
Good point. Long conversations probably start off intended to be short conversations.
Getting 50 or 60 emails per day, not counting obvious spam, is a serious problem. I've missed really important email because it was buried under an avalanche of other email, much of it of minor or nonexistent importance.
So yes, I am willing to waste other people's time in the interests of clear communication. But in return I try to keep my email clear and minimal, and I think carefully about who gets CC'ed.
How the fuck do you know what a "manager like me" is like? Pretty arogant to assume you know anything about me.
In other words, piss off with your personal attacks.
My problem is e-mail conversations, with 20 e-mails going back and forth. Cause I'm a manager, people think they have to include me in on the conversation so I can "stay in the loop".
People, have your conversation, come to some conclusions, and e-mail me a brief summary.
I chose the masculine cause it's awkward writing he/she, him/her, etc. I suppose I could have used "it", which would lend an appropriate scientific air of detachment.
Having said that, the most notable panicers I've met have been men. That, however, could just be luck of the draw.
A subspecies of the finger pointer is the flustered user. As soon as a problem comes up, his blood pressure soars, his heartbeat accelerates, he sweats glands go into overdrive, and his brain shuts down. Generally the cause of his problems are pretty obvious - all it takes is a little clear thinking.
I find dealing with them pretty easy. First you must treat the user. Get him to relax, have a cup of coffee, and explain the problem. He'll usually figure out the solution on his own as he does this. Otherwise get him out of your office so you can spend 5 minutes in peace solving the problem.
Long term, encourage him to have a work associate look at his problems before calling support. He probably won't do it, but it's worth a shot.
I built a news site for software developers and other geeks, which every 12 seconds flashes a message saying "Blow-up dolls are fun!" The goal is to see if I can substantially increase the sales of blow-up dolls world wide through subliminal advertising.
So far it's been quite a success. The cruel part is that dependency on blow-up dolls seems to dramatically decrease the subject's aptitude when dealing with the (living) opposite sex, but hey, all science exacts a price.
Ignore that.
There's something missing from the article "Where does Linux go from here?"
The users. There's virtually no mention of them. There's talk about companies who are connected with Linux, about the technology, about the freedom of open software. But of the actual users there's only one passing reference.
If you want to advance Linux, start thinking about the users - their needs, their desires, their problems, and so on. To begin anywhere else is to neglect the most important part of the equation, and Linux will remain a "system for nerds" forever.
And so far as "Where does Linux go from here", send it to rewrite.
Who needs economic sanctions against Cuba when you can steer every hurricane that comes down the pipe into downtown Havana? As if the conspiracy theorists don't have enough to do...