I just wanted to mention this, before someone uses it as a counter-argument.
Some use an argument that suffering must be allowed for free will to exist, and free will is such a good 'gift' from God that suffering pales by comparison.
This, however only deals with human inflicted evil, and doesn't explain 'natural evil' such as earthquakes, floods, tumours, AIDS, or any other form of pain and suffering not directly caused by human actions.
The Dalai Lama's stated many times that if there's anything in Buddhist beliefs that's disproved by science, then the belief's wrong and should be thrown out, no questions asked.
Buddhism has no problems with evolution whatsoever (and has no 'creation myth' per se), and has even clearly discussed elements of QM with regards to metaphysics and the mind. See here for some good discussions on the matter.
Suggesting that people should support this malpractice by working with the system, is like saying that a law which allows the police to lock up people based on merely a hint of suspicious activity is good,
That's really stretching it. It's getting close to an activation of Godwin's law...
People have to face the fact that the system exists. It is slow moving, but can be changed. It can be changed by working with it and interacting with it, but will never be changed by posting to Slashdot.
There will never be a revolution on this issue, so people need to start working (hard) on realistic ways that can actually change the situation for the better. Of course being a hardliner is far more romantic and easy position to take, especially on Slashdot.
Any software related patent will show up in the UK key as either G4* or H4*, 95% of the time in G4A. Then there's G06F and H04* in the IPC/ECLA codes.
Only the US grants software patents per se. All GB and EP patents should have some element of technicality to them, and so are only software related. This fact removes most of the US style problems. Not to say the odd one doesn't get through:(. There's a complex relationship between inventive step and technicality that means these two issues are closely related. If you can show something's fairly obvious, you can usually show it's not technical too.
A 'good' software patent for me is one that is definitely technical, has a well defined scope and has a major difference between the it and the prior art. If you really want to know some examples, I might find one later, but can't promise anything. Of course not all patents are amazing and totally revolutionary, but just baby steps from the prior art. This is true for all fields of invention.
No non-technical patent should be granted in the EP or UK. The big problem I think is the lack of patent based prior art for examiners to find. Since most of the relevant stuff is not in there, but fairly well hidden elsewhere, it's not surprising that examiners might not no of it, especially since they're not programmers.
Patents are not going to go away. They exist at the moment, and there are negative consequences for disposing of the whole idea. This means, in the conservative nature of the real world, they won't ever go, at least in our lifetime. Since you can't fairly say you can have a patent for one field of technology but not another, then patents related to software are also not going to go. But what can be done is find a good solid approach to the issue of software, and the related issue of technical effect. It all essentially reduces to tackling the issue of technical effect, which is almost an unanswerable problem. It's never been solved to everyone's satifaction. Maybe to noone's satisfaction... But it's the core of the problem of software patenting.
I do not think the UK patent sytem is broken. It works fine most of the time. My suggestions are very reasonable ways to remove even more of the problems, there are other possible approaches that could also be considered.
The EP software directive was intended to formulate a way to deal with technical effect, mainly in relation to software related fields. This would ensure that patents that were granted would be following a good strong aproach. What has happened, I fear, is that some people have decided it was a conspiracy to grant %100 software patents (which is certainly not the case) because some software related stuff would end up being allowed, such are modellinng or database related systems. This is completely and utterly unavoidable. But because these are seen as some as sneaking out software patents for some nefarious reason, the whole thing's been scuppered, and thus spoiling a chance to formulate a sensible way to exclude real software patents from being granted. Because no Europe-wide approach has been formulated, then patent offices don't have a good guide to work with, and we're back to square one, at everyone's detriment. Co-operation between the various patent offices and organisations and the software industry (especially the OSS guys) will be far, far better for everyone. We might get somewhere, even if it's not a perfect system, which face it, it unfortunately won't ever be. But I really believe, if all sides pull their weight - and the patent offices are - then we'll get out of a potential mess. If we don't, and people get the hump and stick to their bad attitudes and conspiracy theories, then the negative repercussions will happen.
I can back this up since I work with patents for a living. It's actually more common for cases to be sent S21 observations by private individuals than companies in my experience.
People check this all the time and can 'subscribe' to a case and be sent all the changes that occur.
I'm talking so much about OSS, since I really appreciate what they do, especially being a Linux geek. Their ability to organise is respectable, and so they're perfectly capable of carrying out the actions I outlined (the patents and design journal is available online, and all patents are listed with their classification, so can be checked in literally about 5 minutes). This is a way that would work to protect them and their work using already existing measures that work. Software-related patents are not all bad, and are not going to go away. It's better surely to deal constructively with the Patent Office and examiners to avoid an undesireable outcome. Complaininng about the situation and being uncooperative won't get you anywhere.
Nope. Little companies do this all the time. So do ordinary members of the public. It's simple, it just seems to be that people don't know the mechanism.
It's a pretty cheap and easy thing to do, just a bit tedious. Subscribe to the patents journal (which may have an on-line version for free, I can't remembre. It may also be in bigger city/universiy libraries). Anything that sticks out as being potentially software related & obvious, make a note of. Put the numbers into one of the various free patent databases, such as Espacenet. Read patent. If it's obvious and you can prove it, write a quick letter to the Patent Office as to why.
All it needs is a bit of effort to understand the patent system and dedication to do the work. If this can prevent the problems caused by obvious patents to the OS community, which I think it has everything to do with, then why should it not be done?
Companies do this all the time. I really wonder why the OSS guys don't subscribe to the journals and send in information when they see something they don't like. There's normally 2 years between when a patent has been published to when it's granted. That's a big window. Plus all of this appears in patent journals that can be subscribed to cheaply. If people can build operating systems etc. in their spare time by clubbing together, why not club together to do this?
In my opinion if the OSS people just looked at this information then they'd be able to prevent problems from occurring rather than complain afterwards. The mechanisms are there - they should be used. I think this deserves serious consideration, personally. It just needs a little pro-activity.
You can send in observations (under section 21 of the GB act, anyway) during the examination process. The examiner will then take your comments into account. This might be stuff like other patents, photocopies of a manual's pages, an article, or just an explanation of why you know it's obvious.
If you send him details of a pre-existing system that successfully shows that the invention he's dealing with is known/obvious, then it may prevent the patent being granted, or at least make the applicant significantly change the claims.
So if you pay attention to patents that are being published, then you can invalidate a patent for the price of a stamp.
It's perfectly possible to do this with both hirigana and katakana, which are the Japanese phoenetic 'alphabets'. With these there's no weird stuff to get wrong like spelling something 'f' when it should be 'ph' or other oddities in the english language. So you basically just write it down as it sounds. No problem what so ever!
Cyber warfare, a subset of classic information war that goes back as far as ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu, has pushed its way into U.S. military curricula as the Internet has become pervasive.
The limit applies to emectroagnetic storage - so what about optical storage? Is this exempt from the limit? If it is, that's where the future lies, presumably
My point was that a picture doesn't mean a thing without context. Another good example is the picture of FDR, Churchill and Stalin all sat together and smiling.
In this photo, he was greeting a foreign head of state.
Even if Rumsfeld hated everything about the guy, the fact the country was not at war with them means that certain nicities had to be observed, such as shaking hands and smiling.
What was he meant to do? Punch him?
It's not necessarily a problem, though and may have various solutions - some of which are mentioned in the write up and the accompanying links. Of course the Big Bang has its own fair share of paradoxes, since it's basically creation ex nihilo. Now that's a philosophical no-no if ever there was one.
I use my PC for word processing, and I don't own a printer. If I wanted something printing, I'd just email it to my workplace PC and print it out for free using a laser printer.
But I'm pretty sure Linux works with printers these days...
Slightly off-topic maybe, but I think that the benefits for communication, learning and entertainment the web and email can provide should be open to everyone, especially people who are kids or OAPs who it has a lot to offer.
So issues like this are very important, since we want to avoid a 'technological divide' between those who have computer/web access and knowledge and those who don't.
"I for one welcome our new septegenarian
overlords!"
Might not be too hard.
on
GNOME for Grandma
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Modern distros install all you'd really want for your PC as a grandma, Namely a web browser, an email program and a word processor.
The big problem's setting it up - so the focus should presumably be on a setup and install system that basically runs itself. This is where Linux can be tricky, but to be honest, when I installed SuSE 9, it was fine.
A clueless n00b will always need help, especially if they've never seen a computer being used before (which is the worst case scenario), so why not teach Grandma how to use it and set it up for her at the same time? And why not get used to using Linux rather than Windows as a first system? Importantly, Linux is harder to break, if you stay out of root, and doesn't suffer from viruses etc.
I think Linux for grandmas is perfectly feasible with modern distros.
Slashdot Mirror
I just wanted to mention this, before someone uses it as a counter-argument.
Some use an argument that suffering must be allowed for free will to exist, and free will is such a good 'gift' from God that suffering pales by comparison.
This, however only deals with human inflicted evil, and doesn't explain 'natural evil' such as earthquakes, floods, tumours, AIDS, or any other form of pain and suffering not directly caused by human actions.
The Dalai Lama's stated many times that if there's anything in Buddhist beliefs that's disproved by science, then the belief's wrong and should be thrown out, no questions asked.
Buddhism has no problems with evolution whatsoever (and has no 'creation myth' per se), and has even clearly discussed elements of QM with regards to metaphysics and the mind. See here for some good discussions on the matter.
Suggesting that people should support this malpractice by working with the system, is like saying that a law which allows the police to lock up people based on merely a hint of suspicious activity is good,
That's really stretching it. It's getting close to an activation of Godwin's law...
People have to face the fact that the system exists. It is slow moving, but can be changed. It can be changed by working with it and interacting with it, but will never be changed by posting to Slashdot.
There will never be a revolution on this issue, so people need to start working (hard) on realistic ways that can actually change the situation for the better. Of course being a hardliner is far more romantic and easy position to take, especially on Slashdot.
Any software related patent will show up in the UK key as either G4* or H4*, 95% of the time in G4A. Then there's G06F and H04* in the IPC/ECLA codes.
:(. There's a complex relationship between inventive step and technicality that means these two issues are closely related. If you can show something's fairly obvious, you can usually show it's not technical too.
Only the US grants software patents per se. All GB and EP patents should have some element of technicality to them, and so are only software related. This fact removes most of the US style problems. Not to say the odd one doesn't get through
A 'good' software patent for me is one that is definitely technical, has a well defined scope and has a major difference between the it and the prior art. If you really want to know some examples, I might find one later, but can't promise anything. Of course not all patents are amazing and totally revolutionary, but just baby steps from the prior art. This is true for all fields of invention.
No non-technical patent should be granted in the EP or UK. The big problem I think is the lack of patent based prior art for examiners to find. Since most of the relevant stuff is not in there, but fairly well hidden elsewhere, it's not surprising that examiners might not no of it, especially since they're not programmers.
Patents are not going to go away. They exist at the moment, and there are negative consequences for disposing of the whole idea. This means, in the conservative nature of the real world, they won't ever go, at least in our lifetime. Since you can't fairly say you can have a patent for one field of technology but not another, then patents related to software are also not going to go. But what can be done is find a good solid approach to the issue of software, and the related issue of technical effect. It all essentially reduces to tackling the issue of technical effect, which is almost an unanswerable problem. It's never been solved to everyone's satifaction. Maybe to noone's satisfaction... But it's the core of the problem of software patenting.
I do not think the UK patent sytem is broken. It works fine most of the time. My suggestions are very reasonable ways to remove even more of the problems, there are other possible approaches that could also be considered.
The EP software directive was intended to formulate a way to deal with technical effect, mainly in relation to software related fields. This would ensure that patents that were granted would be following a good strong aproach. What has happened, I fear, is that some people have decided it was a conspiracy to grant %100 software patents (which is certainly not the case) because some software related stuff would end up being allowed, such are modellinng or database related systems. This is completely and utterly unavoidable. But because these are seen as some as sneaking out software patents for some nefarious reason, the whole thing's been scuppered, and thus spoiling a chance to formulate a sensible way to exclude real software patents from being granted. Because no Europe-wide approach has been formulated, then patent offices don't have a good guide to work with, and we're back to square one, at everyone's detriment. Co-operation between the various patent offices and organisations and the software industry (especially the OSS guys) will be far, far better for everyone. We might get somewhere, even if it's not a perfect system, which face it, it unfortunately won't ever be. But I really believe, if all sides pull their weight - and the patent offices are - then we'll get out of a potential mess. If we don't, and people get the hump and stick to their bad attitudes and conspiracy theories, then the negative repercussions will happen.
I can back this up since I work with patents for a living. It's actually more common for cases to be sent S21 observations by private individuals than companies in my experience.
People check this all the time and can 'subscribe' to a case and be sent all the changes that occur.
I'm talking so much about OSS, since I really appreciate what they do, especially being a Linux geek. Their ability to organise is respectable, and so they're perfectly capable of carrying out the actions I outlined (the patents and design journal is available online, and all patents are listed with their classification, so can be checked in literally about 5 minutes). This is a way that would work to protect them and their work using already existing measures that work. Software-related patents are not all bad, and are not going to go away. It's better surely to deal constructively with the Patent Office and examiners to avoid an undesireable outcome. Complaininng about the situation and being uncooperative won't get you anywhere.
Nope. Little companies do this all the time. So do ordinary members of the public. It's simple, it just seems to be that people don't know the mechanism.
It's a pretty cheap and easy thing to do, just a bit tedious. Subscribe to the patents journal (which may have an on-line version for free, I can't remembre. It may also be in bigger city/universiy libraries). Anything that sticks out as being potentially software related & obvious, make a note of. Put the numbers into one of the various free patent databases, such as Espacenet. Read patent. If it's obvious and you can prove it, write a quick letter to the Patent Office as to why.
All it needs is a bit of effort to understand the patent system and dedication to do the work. If this can prevent the problems caused by obvious patents to the OS community, which I think it has everything to do with, then why should it not be done?
Companies do this all the time. I really wonder why the OSS guys don't subscribe to the journals and send in information when they see something they don't like. There's normally 2 years between when a patent has been published to when it's granted. That's a big window. Plus all of this appears in patent journals that can be subscribed to cheaply. If people can build operating systems etc. in their spare time by clubbing together, why not club together to do this?
In my opinion if the OSS people just looked at this information then they'd be able to prevent problems from occurring rather than complain afterwards. The mechanisms are there - they should be used. I think this deserves serious consideration, personally. It just needs a little pro-activity.
You can send in observations (under section 21 of the GB act, anyway) during the examination process. The examiner will then take your comments into account. This might be stuff like other patents, photocopies of a manual's pages, an article, or just an explanation of why you know it's obvious.
If you send him details of a pre-existing system that successfully shows that the invention he's dealing with is known/obvious, then it may prevent the patent being granted, or at least make the applicant significantly change the claims.
So if you pay attention to patents that are being published, then you can invalidate a patent for the price of a stamp.
Yes, in short. If you show it to be obvious or non-novel then you can show a patent is invalid.
It's perfectly possible to do this with both hirigana and katakana, which are the Japanese phoenetic 'alphabets'. With these there's no weird stuff to get wrong like spelling something 'f' when it should be 'ph' or other oddities in the english language. So you basically just write it down as it sounds. No problem what so ever!
3. Isn't is just a little bit arrogant on the part of humanity to assume that we really affect the environment that much? What about bovine methane?
I really hope that as a species we're capable of fucking up the world better than farting cows....
Cyber warfare, a subset of classic information war that goes back as far as ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu, has pushed its way into U.S. military curricula as the Internet has become pervasive.
Sun Tzu say "try asking them for their passwords, maybe offering a bar of chocolate in return."
The limit applies to emectroagnetic storage - so what about optical storage? Is this exempt from the limit? If it is, that's where the future lies, presumably
My president?
I'm not American.
My point was that a picture doesn't mean a thing without context. Another good example is the picture of FDR, Churchill and Stalin all sat together and smiling.
I hear the military also use di-hydrogen monoxide.
Are we just going to stand by and watch this go unchallenged?
Find out more here.
In this photo, he was greeting a foreign head of state. Even if Rumsfeld hated everything about the guy, the fact the country was not at war with them means that certain nicities had to be observed, such as shaking hands and smiling. What was he meant to do? Punch him?
Three more words: "Nigerian bank scam".
True. Mandelbrot posited that stars could be clustered in a fractal way, which neatly gets rid of Olber's paradox when you do the maths.
That guy seemed to have a thing about fractals...
Olber's Paradox.
Check out the entry in E2.
It's not necessarily a problem, though and may have various solutions - some of which are mentioned in the write up and the accompanying links. Of course the Big Bang has its own fair share of paradoxes, since it's basically creation ex nihilo. Now that's a philosophical no-no if ever there was one.
In the model, technically called a Picard topology, the Universe curves in a strange way.
In the begining was the words, and they were "Make it so"...
Well grandma's always smart enough to keep the receipt.
I use my PC for word processing, and I don't own a printer. If I wanted something printing, I'd just email it to my workplace PC and print it out for free using a laser printer.
But I'm pretty sure Linux works with printers these days...
Slightly off-topic maybe, but I think that the benefits for communication, learning and entertainment the web and email can provide should be open to everyone, especially people who are kids or OAPs who it has a lot to offer.
So issues like this are very important, since we want to avoid a 'technological divide' between those who have computer/web access and knowledge and those who don't.
"I for one welcome our new septegenarian overlords!"
Modern distros install all you'd really want for your PC as a grandma, Namely a web browser, an email program and a word processor.
The big problem's setting it up - so the focus should presumably be on a setup and install system that basically runs itself. This is where Linux can be tricky, but to be honest, when I installed SuSE 9, it was fine.
A clueless n00b will always need help, especially if they've never seen a computer being used before (which is the worst case scenario), so why not teach Grandma how to use it and set it up for her at the same time? And why not get used to using Linux rather than Windows as a first system? Importantly, Linux is harder to break, if you stay out of root, and doesn't suffer from viruses etc.
I think Linux for grandmas is perfectly feasible with modern distros.