What you emphatically cannot patent is a pure algorithm.
Really? I thought 'anything made by man under the sun' was patentable in the US. After all, two prime numbers represented in hex have been patented.
Note that even a few lines of software (strictly speaking a process which stops, C=A+B is sufficient) is exactly equivalent to an algorithm (Church, Turing etc.). I've read somewhere how the US courts managed to frig the semantics such that a 'pure' algorithm is not patentable but you can patent the same algorithm if you mention 'a computer' or somesuch somewhere (Diamond v. Diehl 1981).
...extradite suspects from the U.S., and they'll probably get it.
Not if they've got politicians like the UK. The Home Secretary here signed into law the Extradition Treaty 2003 which allows the US to extradite anyone from the UK for laws which attract one year or more emprisonment in the US (but which might not attract the same in the UK, such as Internet gambling). But there is no reciprocal arrangement.
Yay, let's here it for the British government protecting their citizens!!
It's been shown that, where an item relies on ishort-time incrmental improvements, patents distort and hinder innovation. Software is a classic example of short-time incrmental improvements.
Be aware! "Patents can only be applied to software that is part of hardware" means that clearing the screen using s/w can (and has been) patented. Only the h/w portion should be patentable. Write back to your MEP and ask him/her to clarify their position.
And what does that mean? The EPO took it to mean software that "does not have a technical effect". What does that mean? The EPO took it upon themselves to lower the bar below sea-level. Apparently, (an IBM EPO patent) clearing a screen is a 'technical effect'.
The trouble is that the majority of MPs and virtually all MEPs (in the UK) just don't have a clue about what is going on and those that do, want to keep it that way because they are in favour of s/w patents.
Whenever I have replied to these boilerplate replies, I get stony silences.
Over the course of the next week or so, I am going to create my own boilerplate letter setting out a list of salient facts. If it makes just one MP or MEP pause for thought, it will have been worth it.
If publishers (and companies like Adobe) actually worked on a sensible DRM, they might get something to work.
But the last time I worked on DRM, the requirements were just too complex: "Allow cut-and-paste of specific page range, not any advert JPGs [copyright], up to so many characters/words, up to so many times in a given date range. Allow more after end date. Allow print to local (not networked) printer up to 5 times until given date..." There was a ton of stuff like this. I doubted that anyone was going to write a (free) reader that implemented the technology and explained to the user what was going on.
Problems arose with writing 'number of characters left to paste' that were difficult to hack and that were not reader specific. Oh, and there was the odd trick to get over rolling back dates and the like that would defeat the bulk of users.
I've yet to see any reader that does all that the publishers required...
...patent system is good for small inventors and small software developers...
Oh, the IP man is back. Let me say this once again. There are no economic arguments proving your case. I have asked many times here, and on other bulletin boards, for such proof. None is ever forthcoming. In fact, most research on the subject shows that a patent system distorts the market and has no positive effects on innovation.
See, for example, the paper by the economist Bronwyn H. Hall at the University of California at Berkeley 'Business Method Patents, Innovation, and Policy'. Hall reviews the research into patents and comes to the conclusion: " Broad evidence that the patent system encourages innovation always and everywhere is hard to come by. When innovations are incremental [such as with software] and when many different innovations must be combined [such as with software] to make a useful product, it is less obvious that benefits of the patent system outweigh the costs."
In the Journal of Economic Growth, 2004, vol. 9, issue 1, pages 81-123, you find: "Furthermore, patents affect the allocation of R&D resources across industries, and patents can distort resources away from industries where they are most productive."
The only people to benefit from software patents are... patent lawyers and the like. Furthermore most s/w patents are taken out by megacorps for defensive purposes, they never quote innovation as the reason (except in press releases for politicians).
Yes there are. They have a regime even more lax than the US. From Thomson Scientific:
"To date, software has been protected through patents by law if its computer program is stored on physical media such as a CD-ROM or floppy disk. However, under the terms of the new law (2002), it is no longer necessary to store computer programs on such media to ensure patentability.
The new bill will allow greater protection of computer programs. Software associated with computer programs will be treated as a tangible 'thing' and can therefore be considered as a patentable item. So the law will protect computer programs not stored on media such as CD-ROM, allowing intangible computer programs stored on a network to be protected as well."
Personally, a fair amount of writing emails, faxes and snail mails. Of all those I have written, only one was sympathetic and he's leaving parliament in May.
The British MEPs are a spineless lot who simply toe the line on 'technical contributions'. None of them ever get onto/. or anything remotely technical, even those who claim a technical post.
I have been invited to the 'Technical Contribution' workshop in London on 7 May. But I'm not sure if the UKPO can ignore the EPO if this law goes through.
We need to write snail mail. I've found that large majority of UK MEPs, like MPs, simply ignore emails. Faxes gain slightly more attention (I've read the average reply rate to faxes is a whopping... 6%). So, if you can, write a nice polite letter to your MP, your MEP, our Commissioner and to Lord Sainsbury telling them (politely) that they are a bunch of anti-democratic, anti-innovation pisspots if they don't agitate for a no s/w patent regime.
Any Luxembourgeois may also want to write to their commissioner (as rotating president) and tell him that he's a spineless piece of shit for ignoring the European Parliament, for giving the finger to national parliaments, for ignoring rules and precedent with some pathetic excuse and a laugh from McCreevy, for dismissing all the SMEs in Europe and the vast majority of software professionals.
The Irish on this board might want to write in a similar vein to Charles "my buddy Sir Bill" McCreevy for getting his own almost lone voice to override everybody else.
This is simply not true. I have no way of using the spammer's bandwidth at his expense for my own use. Unless I too, become a spammer (which somewhat defeats the purpose for which I use the Net).
Language is totally irrelevant.
Again, you are being deliberately obtuse. I ask the question if you receive junk snail mail in Japanese. No? Maybe because Japanese snailmail junk companies would find that prohibitively expensive.
And who said you have to put up with accepting it? Opt out.
Again, you are saying I shouldn't be able to use the majority of the infrastructure for which I (and others like me) pay the vast bulk. If the only possible route to work (and which job is the only job you can do) consisted of an expensive toll road that was blocked constantly by trucks carrying only billboards, would you simply not go to work?
You give arguments that would justify some loudmouth with a loudhailer standing outside your house 24 hours/day, 7 days/week, week after week, month after month, screaming about fake drugs and todger enlargement being perfectly OK. After all, you can simply opt out by sticking in ear plugs.
Well, no one is making you receive mail at all. You know or should know that people can send unsolicited mail. Why are you so shocked when they do?
You clearly are deliberately misunderstanding the argument. Spammers are sending me email at my expense. There is little cost to them, great costs to the receiver. Junk snail mail is the opposite. The filter is the cost to the spammer. And how much snail junk mail contains explicit invitations for fake drugs or porn? How much snail junk mail do you get in Japanese or Spanish? Why should I meekly put up with receiving email versions of the same tripe?
As I said in another post, when the technology changes (as it will do when junk email reaches over 90%), junk emailers will (I fervently hope) find it costly or difficult to spend my money sending me stuff I don't want. Until that time, mega spammers should be punished.
Finally, are these the sorts of argument you use in court by any chance? "Cut yourself off from the world. Just because you don't like it, you shouldn't complain!" The fact that people use their emails for serious stuff like getting jobs or posting course work should not be used as an argument for unsolicited reception of unwanted crap.
Why is this/. news? It's no a great change at the Beeb, even the top guy is hardly affected (he now becomes the guy running the 'Trust' instead).
I tried recently to submit an item about a Symantec patent that was technical and might have been an argument for software patents. IMHO, it would have been an interesting discussion but it got rejected. Instead we get this about the Beeb???
Sheesh. Move along. Nothing to see (except the repeats...).
Door to door solicitors have to go on your land, and use up your time for you to listen or tell them to leave. Telemarketers tie up your phone and use up your time until you hang up on them. Junk mail fills up your mailbox, perhaps impairing efficient mail delivery depending on volume, and requires that you sort through it and dispose of it, which costs time and depending again on volume and the specifics of your trash service, money.
So there's nothing unusual about spam.
Taking up 70% of your internet resources and infrastructure and a significant proportion of corporate IT effort is 'not unusual'?
Costs vary between different media, but only more or less the same for both parties.
Hooo... things must be a lot cheaper in the US than I thought. Here in way overpriced Europe, the cost of junk mail is of the order of a few pence or eurocents per mail. It costs me practically nothing to chuck it in the bin. No wonder the great majority of spammers operate in the US...
Filtering on the receiving end is not good enough. I am paying for that bandwidth and, given that 70% of internet traffic is now junk mail, I am subsidising your spammers. (Do you represent any of these guys?). Until technology catches up with these blood suckers, we can only hope that publicity about, and sentences for, these leeches acts as some sort of deterrent.
It was like an extract from a classic piece of tripe: "Holy Blood, Holy Grail". Statements are made and sudden conclusions drawn whilst missing that little bit in between: "And then a miracle happens..."
You wouldn't even begin building a house or making a car...
And this is where s/w specifically differs from other engineering processes. You are not making exactly the same thing over and over again. Or 'finishing' and walking away after a few months. The trouble with waterfall style development is that the description is never complete.
How many s/w projects out there ever finish? Linux? Windows? OpenOffice? Firefox? Have any of these finished? What complete spec. for all of those existed before the developers started on the project? (I bet next year's salary the answer is: None). And were all of these offerings utter failures? Even Sir Billy Gates KBE could modestly claim some degree of success... Now show me a completely specified project that is/was as successful as any of these.
Wrong. AP does not say 'no documentation' or 'create bugs'. Whoever implemented your system allowed this to happen. I have implemented AP (Scrum) in three companies and the quality and productivity shot up in all of them.
Slashdot Mirror
There are also companies which specialise in defensive publication. Publication in journals is also used for this purpose.
Tell me these companies are doing this out of the goodness of their hearts to ensure the patent is not monopolistically exploited...
Probably not, eh? So defensive patents are anti-innovation, they are a cost on the community.
What you emphatically cannot patent is a pure algorithm.
Really? I thought 'anything made by man under the sun' was patentable in the US. After all, two prime numbers represented in hex have been patented.
Note that even a few lines of software (strictly speaking a process which stops, C=A+B is sufficient) is exactly equivalent to an algorithm (Church, Turing etc.). I've read somewhere how the US courts managed to frig the semantics such that a 'pure' algorithm is not patentable but you can patent the same algorithm if you mention 'a computer' or somesuch somewhere (Diamond v. Diehl 1981).
"I'm Convinced! How can I get MY copy of ProfitInstaller?"
Scroll down fifteen feet or so to see this. Why do all these shyster sites have the same format? Is it a 'secret method' for getting idiots to buy?
...extradite suspects from the U.S., and they'll probably get it.
Not if they've got politicians like the UK. The Home Secretary here signed into law the Extradition Treaty 2003 which allows the US to extradite anyone from the UK for laws which attract one year or more emprisonment in the US (but which might not attract the same in the UK, such as Internet gambling). But there is no reciprocal arrangement.
Yay, let's here it for the British government protecting their citizens!!
Re your sig. I find the most annoying word in advertising history is "Introducing...". After the ad has been running for years.
It's been shown that, where an item relies on ishort-time incrmental improvements, patents distort and hinder innovation. Software is a classic example of short-time incrmental improvements.
It's because McCreevy (the Irish commissioner) address is as follows: "Mr C. McCreevy, Sir Billy Gates Left Pocket, M$, Ireland."
Be aware! "Patents can only be applied to software that is part of hardware" means that clearing the screen using s/w can (and has been) patented. Only the h/w portion should be patentable. Write back to your MEP and ask him/her to clarify their position.
Software products as such...
And what does that mean? The EPO took it to mean software that "does not have a technical effect". What does that mean? The EPO took it upon themselves to lower the bar below sea-level. Apparently, (an IBM EPO patent) clearing a screen is a 'technical effect'.
The trouble is that the majority of MPs and virtually all MEPs (in the UK) just don't have a clue about what is going on and those that do, want to keep it that way because they are in favour of s/w patents.
Whenever I have replied to these boilerplate replies, I get stony silences.
Over the course of the next week or so, I am going to create my own boilerplate letter setting out a list of salient facts. If it makes just one MP or MEP pause for thought, it will have been worth it.
If publishers (and companies like Adobe) actually worked on a sensible DRM, they might get something to work.
But the last time I worked on DRM, the requirements were just too complex: "Allow cut-and-paste of specific page range, not any advert JPGs [copyright], up to so many characters/words, up to so many times in a given date range. Allow more after end date. Allow print to local (not networked) printer up to 5 times until given date..." There was a ton of stuff like this. I doubted that anyone was going to write a (free) reader that implemented the technology and explained to the user what was going on.
Problems arose with writing 'number of characters left to paste' that were difficult to hack and that were not reader specific. Oh, and there was the odd trick to get over rolling back dates and the like that would defeat the bulk of users.
I've yet to see any reader that does all that the publishers required...
...patent system is good for small inventors and small software developers...
... patent lawyers and the like. Furthermore most s/w patents are taken out by megacorps for defensive purposes, they never quote innovation as the reason (except in press releases for politicians).
Oh, the IP man is back. Let me say this once again. There are no economic arguments proving your case. I have asked many times here, and on other bulletin boards, for such proof. None is ever forthcoming. In fact, most research on the subject shows that a patent system distorts the market and has no positive effects on innovation.
See, for example, the paper by the economist Bronwyn H. Hall at the University of California at Berkeley 'Business Method Patents, Innovation, and Policy'. Hall reviews the research into patents and comes to the conclusion: " Broad evidence that the patent system encourages innovation always and everywhere is hard to come by. When innovations are incremental [such as with software] and when many different innovations must be combined [such as with software] to make a useful product, it is less obvious that benefits of the patent system outweigh the costs."
In the Journal of Economic Growth, 2004, vol. 9, issue 1, pages 81-123, you find: "Furthermore, patents affect the allocation of R&D resources across industries, and patents can distort resources away from industries where they are most productive."
The only people to benefit from software patents are
Yes there are. They have a regime even more lax than the US. From Thomson Scientific:
"To date, software has been protected through patents by law if its computer program is stored on physical media such as a CD-ROM or floppy disk. However, under the terms of the new law (2002), it is no longer necessary to store computer programs on such media to ensure patentability.
The new bill will allow greater protection of computer programs. Software associated with computer programs will be treated as a tangible 'thing' and can therefore be considered as a patentable item. So the law will protect computer programs not stored on media such as CD-ROM, allowing intangible computer programs stored on a network to be protected as well."
No, they just fund whole governments like Ireland. Why else is Charles McCreevy so intent upon this directive?
Personally, a fair amount of writing emails, faxes and snail mails. Of all those I have written, only one was sympathetic and he's leaving parliament in May.
/. or anything remotely technical, even those who claim a technical post.
The British MEPs are a spineless lot who simply toe the line on 'technical contributions'. None of them ever get onto
I have been invited to the 'Technical Contribution' workshop in London on 7 May. But I'm not sure if the UKPO can ignore the EPO if this law goes through.
We need to write snail mail. I've found that large majority of UK MEPs, like MPs, simply ignore emails. Faxes gain slightly more attention (I've read the average reply rate to faxes is a whopping ... 6%). So, if you can, write a nice polite letter to your MP, your MEP, our Commissioner and to Lord Sainsbury telling them (politely) that they are a bunch of anti-democratic, anti-innovation pisspots if they don't agitate for a no s/w patent regime.
Any Luxembourgeois may also want to write to their commissioner (as rotating president) and tell him that he's a spineless piece of shit for ignoring the European Parliament, for giving the finger to national parliaments, for ignoring rules and precedent with some pathetic excuse and a laugh from McCreevy, for dismissing all the SMEs in Europe and the vast majority of software professionals.
The Irish on this board might want to write in a similar vein to Charles "my buddy Sir Bill" McCreevy for getting his own almost lone voice to override everybody else.
I posted this same story 2 days ago and it got rejected. How come it's ok now?
...all else being equal.
This is simply not true. I have no way of using the spammer's bandwidth at his expense for my own use. Unless I too, become a spammer (which somewhat defeats the purpose for which I use the Net).
Language is totally irrelevant.
Again, you are being deliberately obtuse. I ask the question if you receive junk snail mail in Japanese. No? Maybe because Japanese snailmail junk companies would find that prohibitively expensive.
And who said you have to put up with accepting it? Opt out.
Again, you are saying I shouldn't be able to use the majority of the infrastructure for which I (and others like me) pay the vast bulk. If the only possible route to work (and which job is the only job you can do) consisted of an expensive toll road that was blocked constantly by trucks carrying only billboards, would you simply not go to work?
You give arguments that would justify some loudmouth with a loudhailer standing outside your house 24 hours/day, 7 days/week, week after week, month after month, screaming about fake drugs and todger enlargement being perfectly OK. After all, you can simply opt out by sticking in ear plugs.
Well, no one is making you receive mail at all. You know or should know that people can send unsolicited mail. Why are you so shocked when they do?
You clearly are deliberately misunderstanding the argument. Spammers are sending me email at my expense. There is little cost to them, great costs to the receiver. Junk snail mail is the opposite. The filter is the cost to the spammer. And how much snail junk mail contains explicit invitations for fake drugs or porn? How much snail junk mail do you get in Japanese or Spanish? Why should I meekly put up with receiving email versions of the same tripe?
As I said in another post, when the technology changes (as it will do when junk email reaches over 90%), junk emailers will (I fervently hope) find it costly or difficult to spend my money sending me stuff I don't want. Until that time, mega spammers should be punished.
Finally, are these the sorts of argument you use in court by any chance? "Cut yourself off from the world. Just because you don't like it, you shouldn't complain!" The fact that people use their emails for serious stuff like getting jobs or posting course work should not be used as an argument for unsolicited reception of unwanted crap.
Why is this /. news? It's no a great change at the Beeb, even the top guy is hardly affected (he now becomes the guy running the 'Trust' instead).
I tried recently to submit an item about a Symantec patent that was technical and might have been an argument for software patents. IMHO, it would have been an interesting discussion but it got rejected. Instead we get this about the Beeb???
Sheesh. Move along. Nothing to see (except the repeats...).
Door to door solicitors have to go on your land, and use up your time for you to listen or tell them to leave. Telemarketers tie up your phone and use up your time until you hang up on them. Junk mail fills up your mailbox, perhaps impairing efficient mail delivery depending on volume, and requires that you sort through it and dispose of it, which costs time and depending again on volume and the specifics of your trash service, money. So there's nothing unusual about spam.
Taking up 70% of your internet resources and infrastructure and a significant proportion of corporate IT effort is 'not unusual'?
Costs vary between different media, but only more or less the same for both parties.
Hooo... things must be a lot cheaper in the US than I thought. Here in way overpriced Europe, the cost of junk mail is of the order of a few pence or eurocents per mail. It costs me practically nothing to chuck it in the bin. No wonder the great majority of spammers operate in the US...
Filtering on the receiving end is not good enough. I am paying for that bandwidth and, given that 70% of internet traffic is now junk mail, I am subsidising your spammers. (Do you represent any of these guys?). Until technology catches up with these blood suckers, we can only hope that publicity about, and sentences for, these leeches acts as some sort of deterrent.
It was like an extract from a classic piece of tripe: "Holy Blood, Holy Grail". Statements are made and sudden conclusions drawn whilst missing that little bit in between: "And then a miracle happens..."
You wouldn't even begin building a house or making a car...
And this is where s/w specifically differs from other engineering processes. You are not making exactly the same thing over and over again. Or 'finishing' and walking away after a few months. The trouble with waterfall style development is that the description is never complete.
How many s/w projects out there ever finish? Linux? Windows? OpenOffice? Firefox? Have any of these finished? What complete spec. for all of those existed before the developers started on the project? (I bet next year's salary the answer is: None). And were all of these offerings utter failures? Even Sir Billy Gates KBE could modestly claim some degree of success... Now show me a completely specified project that is/was as successful as any of these.
Wrong. AP does not say 'no documentation' or 'create bugs'. Whoever implemented your system allowed this to happen. I have implemented AP (Scrum) in three companies and the quality and productivity shot up in all of them.
One of the very first companies for which I worked had this 'desk checking' process.... They're not around any more.