That's where park & ride comes into play. You drive while in the outskirts (where public transit is not very present, and traffic is still bearable). As soon as you reach the beltway, and traffic gets denser, you park your car and continue by metro. Best of both worlds.
Or at least, that's the theory...
Unfortunately, stupid WMATA has the metro run at half the frequency at the
Greenbelt station (which has a huge parking lot, and is almost directly on an offramp from the beltway). Full schedule only starts at College park, the next station. Incidentally, it only has a tiny parking lot, and is quite inside Washington already. (At least, that's how it was when I visited a couple of years ago)
I never understood what the thinking behind that was. Why not do full service from/to the station where (presumably) most people would get on/off.
Try getting their newest SuSE update (XFree86-server-4.3.0.1-46.i586.rpm). Then try to work with it a couple of hours (or, as observed in one case: just let the server sit there for a couple of hours...). ===> Eventually the server freezes!
Oddly enough, previous releases of their X server showed just the opposite behaviour: they froze if you didn't use the NVidia driver!
I own an iBook, so the windows driver won't work at all for me.
Different processor. That sucks. Indeed, even "stable" APIs and kernel structures wouldn't help in that case.
Maybe we need "bytecode" drivers? (drivers written in some pseudo-assembly language that is interpreted/jitted by the kernel, rather than run directly on the processor). Might have some performance issues though, but could be made workable by makeing some processor intensive operations (such as bulk memcpy'ing) available as opcodes.
Actually, many "binary" drivers use a "mixed" approach: some "glue code", available in source form, responsible to be the interface with the rest of the kernel, and the binary driver itself, containing those superseekrit proprietary algorithms that the company doesn't want to reveal. The binary part only interacts with the glue code, never directly with the rest of the kernel.
Well, that's the theory. Unfortunately, despite their best intentions, many drivers get it wrong. They either "forget" to put a certain number of APIs into their glue code, and call those directly from the binary part. Or, all functions are covered, but they access structures directly. Or any other kind of SNAFU. Smacks more of lack of testing or proper development procedures than lack of foresight.
NVidia gets it right (even to the point that their driver works flawlessly with 2.6 kernels. But not with SuSE's X servers, but I'm more inclined to blame SuSE for that...).
VMware gets it mostly right (no problems with any 2.4 kernel, but you need a
third-party patch for 2.6 kernels).
Realtek (and, unfortunately many others...) get it wrong, and don't seem to work on anything more recent than 2.4.18.
Maybe those of use stuck with a Realtek 8180 card? The model number is close enough to 8181 that there is some chance that the 8181 AP driver would work with the 8180 PCMCIA card, with only minor modifications.
Yes, I know that there already is a binary driver for the 8180, but it is very flaky, and rather picky about the kernels and distributions it agrees to work with... (as binary drivers usually are, alas!)
Re:How do they decide which companies can do it?
on
EU Passes Nasty IP Law
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Ironically enough, Germany is one country where the people may successfully fight this new law (and European lawmaking in general) on constitutional grounds.
Article 146 of the "Grundgesetz" stipulates that the Grundgesetz may only be changed via a decision by the people (referendum), which did not happen when the Grundgesetz was subordinated under the European laws (specifically the passus that European right overrides national right). This is a non-trivial change in constitution which was not approved by the people (because the people was not asked!). Thus, it can be argued that any directive that must be transcribed in national law is unconstitutional, because the people never relinquished this kind of authority to the European Institutions. (Not to mention that this particular directive flies flatly in the face of free expression, due process, freedom from unreasonable search & seizure, etc.)
Moreover article 20.4 of the Grundgesetz grants the right of "resistence" for the case where institutions become corrupt, and no longer act in the spirit of the constitution:
(1) Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland ist ein demokratischer und
sozialer Bundesstaat.
(2) Alle Staatsgewalt geht vom Volke aus. Sie wird vom Volke in
Wahlen und Abstimmungen und durch besondere Organe der Gesetzgebung,
der vollziehenden Gewalt und der Rechtsprechung ausgeubt.
(3) Die Gesetzgebung ist an die verfassungsmaBige Ordnung, die
vollziehende Gewalt und die Rechtsprechung sind an Gesetz und Recht
gebunden.
(4) Gegen jeden, der es unternimmt, diese Ordnung zu beseitigen,
haben alle Deutschen das Recht zum Widerstand, wenn andere Abhilfe
nicht moglich ist.
In summary:
The Federal Republic Germany is a democratic and social Federal State
All power of States is rooted in the People. This power is exerced by the people in Elections and Votes, and by special institutions of the legislative, executive and judicial branch.
The legislative is bound by the constitutional rules, the executive and the judicial are bound by law and justice.
All Germans are entitled to exerce resistance against anybody who sets out to remove this order, if no other resort is possible
It can be said that this article is roughly equivalent with the US second amendment, except that unlike the second amendment it doesn't unfortunately provide the tools to exerce this right to resistance.
here in Finland people seem to vote for the most annoying politicians to become MEP:s, so they get rid of them for 4 years
Here in Luxembourg, the European election is on the same day as the national election. Of course, the same candidats are on both ballots. Result: those with the most votes take a national seat (considered to be more important...), leaving the european seats to the losers!
For example, lasers - when lasers were invented nobody had a good idea of what they would be used for.
I hate to disagree, but laser is one example of a technology that had applications before the technology itself was available!
For example, holography was invented before the laser itself.
In the early days of holography (1947), they used mercury arc lamps as a source of "coherent" light, but couldn't get very far with it, as it was not nearly coherent enough for the purpose. Development of holography basically stalled until the invention of the laser in 1960
If I start cutting granite using diamond-blades, and cools them by flushing with water from the nearby river, I'll probably "consume" enormous amounts of water, but if I let the water go into a pool where most of the dust will settle, and then back in the river, the negative ecological impact will be truly minimal.
Not to mention, that the pool would not only help the dust to settle, but also help cool the water. Once it's cool enough, what's to prevent you from reusing the same water to produce your next batch of PCs? Heck, that's how most water-using industries (steel mills, nuke plants,....) work: the only water that they actually need to draw from the river is what evaporated out of their pool or cooling tower. Apart from that it's closed-circuit.
Here in Luxembourg, we have non-profit organization to handle recycling (pick-up of recyclable items, such as glass, cardboard, certains kinds of plastic bottles and milk cartons). Their name is Valorlux. A couple of weeks ago, I needed to look up the date of their next pick-up, and was stumped by their flash-only website.
I sent them a mail about it, and got the following reply:
Subject: L'internet n'est pas...
Cher Monsieur Xxxxx,
La page 'macromedia' qui apparait est en fait une passerelle qui vous permet
de telecharger un logiciel
du nom de 'Flash 6' ce dernier etant absolument necessaire pour naviguer
dans le site VALORLUX sans probleme.
VALORLUX a choisi d'offrit ce logiciel et son telechargement entierement
gratuitement afin de permettre a toutes les personnes n'ayant pas ce systeme
de pouvoir visiter notre site.
Ce ne sont absolument pas des publicites pour des societes americaines - ni
autres - simplement des outils
facilitant l'acces au site.
Si vous n'avez pas reussi a le telecharger c'est probablement que votre
ordinateur n'est soit pas assez
puissant, soit un peu trop 'age' pour utiliser ces produits, nous en sommes
absolument desoles.
Nous vous prions de croire en nos salutations les meilleures.
VALORLUX Asbl
Muriel Fedele
Responsable de la Communication
BP 26
L-3205 LEUDELANGE
The last sentence, in English:
If you have not succeeded in downloading it [the Flash plugin], it is likely that your computer is either not powerful enough, or a little bit too "old" for using these products, and we are absolutely sorry about this.
Yes, and in order to resolve this issue, I'm supposed to buy a new one, throw the old one into the trash, and waste precious 1.8 tons of raw materials. Way to go, Valorlux!
If I want to store money in some bank under whatever name I want, why shouldn't I be able to do it?
If this is a checking account, you have the possibility to overdraw it. Eurocheques have a maximum guaranteed amount, so the bank cannot really bounce them... The bank must protect itself against customers who open a checking account, deliberately overdraw it, and run.
-- we've been working on challenge/response logins in JavaScript so passwords don't go in the clear. it's like Digest auth but in JS instead. We had this working when we talked to her, and since then it's gone into final user testing on our public test site. it'll probably go live this weekend. (I remember when I talked to her I compared it to HTTP Digest Auth and I had to explain what Digest auth was to her..... this is a _security_ reporter?)
I just have to comment on this. Many people have Javascript switched off due to security (cross site scripting, annoying popups/popunders,...). They might not be worried about these issues on your site, but on other sites, and might be tired of switching JS on and off everytime they visit a different kind of site. So they just leave it off permanently. Indeed, not every browser supports per-site JS settings like Konqueror does. Ironically, with your "secure" JS-based login procedure you would be shutting those security-conscious users.
Other users may not have access to JS due to disability. Blind users often use lynx with a braille line or a text-to-speech synthesizer. And last I checked, lynx does not support JS (and it would probably not make much sense anyways in a text-only browser). Be careful not to run afoul of the ADA.
SSL would be a much preferable solution. It's much more standard, more secure and supported by all modern browsers, including lynx and other text-only browsers.
I guess I don't see the big deal here. Mapquest is a US based company is it not? You can't drive from Paris, KY to Paris, France so why should a US based map provider provide those directions?
True enough, but in that case, why keep at all the menu that let's you chose a country? Do away with it, and make it clear that that site is only to be used for US locations. Having a "chose your country" menu, and ignore its selection is somehwat silly, IMHO.
Perhaps an additional dropdown taht specifies the country
There is such a dropdown, but the problem is that whatever country you pick, you still get only locations from the US (as long as you entered at www.mapquest.com). You chose France, you enter Paris, and you get to Texas.
Mapquest not only has driving directions, but also just maps. And getting a map of Paris, France might be useful, even if you are an American (well, assuming for a moment that your distaste of everything French would not stop you from considering the trip...): you get there by plane, but might want to find the way from the airport to your hotel...
Also, you're assuming that everybody who visits www.mapquest.com must be an American. Not necessarily so: he may be an European who is just using an old bookmark that he made at a time when the European sites did not yet exist, and when www.mapquest.com was still working fine for non-US locations (yes, yes, a couple of years ago, it did work...)
I've caught them in exactly two errors in four or five years of regular use.
No offense, but I think you are American;-)
Indeed, try searching for non-US locations on www.mapquest.com. For instance, Paris, France.
It will give you the choice between Paris Texas, Paris Illinois, Paris Kentucky,... but not the French capital!
I've already contacted them several times about the issue, but so far they haven't moved... You'd almost think this was intentional!
There is a workaround, however: if you go to one of their European sites (www.mapquest.de , www.mapquest.fr, and yes, even www.mapquest.co.uk) it works all right.
The thing that gives me pause is that something like this could actually work, if you tweak the undercarriage to solve the "pushing dust in front" problem.
Isn't there another problem: it would not clean the middle of the room. The turning is triggered when it hits obstacles. Thus, it'd turn only as long as it hasn't re-oriented itself enough that it can pass the obstacle: result: you set it into the middle of the room, it heads straight to a wall, and from then on follows the walls in a circular motion around the room, leaving the middle of the room uncleaned... Or did I miss something here?
My father had a toy wind-up car like this. You'd wind it up, set it on a table, and it wouldn't zoom around, never falling off.
The way it worked was that between the two front wheels, it had a sideways wheel that was mounted slightly higher, so that it wouldn't touch the table. As soon as it got to the edge of the table, the normal wheels would slip off, and the sideways wheel would make contact, cause the car to make a turn, bringing it back on the table.
Thank you for your correspondence concerning the draft directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions.
The European Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee has voted on my report on the directive and there will be continuing debate and further democratic scrutiny before the directive becomes law.
At this early stage of legislative process, it is nonetheless important to establish the facts about what the draft EU directive and what I, as the Parliament's rapporteur, are aiming to achieve in the amendments tabled to the Commission proposal.
It has been suggested that the Parliament's report will for the first time allow the patentability of computer-implemented inventions. This is simply not true. The patenting of computer-implemented inventions is not a new phenomenon. Patents involving the use of software have been applied for and granted since the earliest days of the European Patent Office (EPO). Out of over 110,000 applications received at the EPO in 2001, 16,000 will have dealt with inventions in computer-implemented technologies. Indeed, even without an EU directive, these patents will continue to be filed, not only to the EPO but also to national patent offices.
As you will be aware, in the US and increasingly in Japan, patents have been granted for what is essentially pure software. Some EPO and national court rulings indicate that Europe may be drifting towards extending the scope of patentability to inventions which would traditionally have not been patentable, as well as pure business methods. It is clear that Europe needs a uniform legal approach which draws a line between what can and cannot be patented, and prevents the drift towards the patentability of software per se.
My intention is clear in the amendments tabled and in a new Article 4 in the text, to preclude; the patentability of software as such; the patentability of business methods; algorithms; and mathematical methods. Article 4 clearly states that in order to be patentable, a computer-implemented invention must be susceptible to industrial applications, be new, and involve an inventive step. Moreover I have added a requirement for a technical contribution in order to ensure that the mere use of a computer does not lead to a patent being granted.
Furthermore, the amended directive contains new provisions on decompilation that will assist software developers. While it is not possible to comment on whether any patent application would be excluded from the directive, the directive, as amended, would not permit the patentability of Amazon's 'one-click' method. As far as software itself is concerned, it will not be possible to patent a software product. Software itself will continue to be able to be protected by copyright.
With an EU directive, legislators will have scrutiny over the EPO and national court's decisions. With, in addition, the possibility of having a definitive ruling from the European Court in Luxembourg, thus ensuring a restrictive interpretation of the EU directive and a greater degree of legal certainty in the field of patentability of computer-implemented inventions.
Some concerns have been raised that the directive may have an adverse effect on the development of open source software and small software developers. I support the development of open source software and welcome the fact that the major open-source companies are recording a 50% growth in world-wide shipment of its products.
In the amended proposal, I have imposed a requirement on the Commission to monitor the impact of the directive, in particular its effect on small and medium sized enterprises, and to look at any potential difficulties in respect of the relationship between patent protection of computer-implemented inventions and copyright protection.
Many small companies have given their support to this directive, which will give them more legal certainty as it offers the possibility of protection for their R&D investment, and so assists in
Bon, en huet nët d'PDF Extension. De Konqueror op der Schaff verdaut daat gudd, awer nët deen heiheem... Am Zweifelsfall, einfach mat wget roflueden, renamen, an dann vun Hand opmaachen.
Sie wëllen domatten soen datt sie éng Bank sin, déi nët wéi déi aaner as, déi géint d' "idées reçues" kämpft. An deem Sënn as et fier sie eigentléch gudd datt de Che näischt mat énger Bank ze din huet;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Should a site really have slash in its name if it can't stand a little bit of dotting?
Or at least, that's the theory...
Unfortunately, stupid WMATA has the metro run at half the frequency at the Greenbelt station (which has a huge parking lot, and is almost directly on an offramp from the beltway). Full schedule only starts at College park, the next station. Incidentally, it only has a tiny parking lot, and is quite inside Washington already. (At least, that's how it was when I visited a couple of years ago)
I never understood what the thinking behind that was. Why not do full service from/to the station where (presumably) most people would get on/off.
Oddly enough, previous releases of their X server showed just the opposite behaviour: they froze if you didn't use the NVidia driver!
Different processor. That sucks. Indeed, even "stable" APIs and kernel structures wouldn't help in that case.
Maybe we need "bytecode" drivers? (drivers written in some pseudo-assembly language that is interpreted/jitted by the kernel, rather than run directly on the processor). Might have some performance issues though, but could be made workable by makeing some processor intensive operations (such as bulk memcpy'ing) available as opcodes.
Well, that's the theory. Unfortunately, despite their best intentions, many drivers get it wrong. They either "forget" to put a certain number of APIs into their glue code, and call those directly from the binary part. Or, all functions are covered, but they access structures directly. Or any other kind of SNAFU. Smacks more of lack of testing or proper development procedures than lack of foresight.
NVidia gets it right (even to the point that their driver works flawlessly with 2.6 kernels. But not with SuSE's X servers, but I'm more inclined to blame SuSE for that...).
VMware gets it mostly right (no problems with any 2.4 kernel, but you need a third-party patch for 2.6 kernels).
Realtek (and, unfortunately many others...) get it wrong, and don't seem to work on anything more recent than 2.4.18.
Maybe those of use stuck with a Realtek 8180 card? The model number is close enough to 8181 that there is some chance that the 8181 AP driver would work with the 8180 PCMCIA card, with only minor modifications.
Yes, I know that there already is a binary driver for the 8180, but it is very flaky, and rather picky about the kernels and distributions it agrees to work with... (as binary drivers usually are, alas!)
Article 146 of the "Grundgesetz" stipulates that the Grundgesetz may only be changed via a decision by the people (referendum), which did not happen when the Grundgesetz was subordinated under the European laws (specifically the passus that European right overrides national right). This is a non-trivial change in constitution which was not approved by the people (because the people was not asked!). Thus, it can be argued that any directive that must be transcribed in national law is unconstitutional, because the people never relinquished this kind of authority to the European Institutions. (Not to mention that this particular directive flies flatly in the face of free expression, due process, freedom from unreasonable search & seizure, etc.)
Moreover article 20.4 of the Grundgesetz grants the right of "resistence" for the case where institutions become corrupt, and no longer act in the spirit of the constitution:
In summary:- The Federal Republic Germany is a democratic and social Federal State
- All power of States is rooted in the People. This power is exerced by the people in Elections and Votes, and by special institutions of the legislative, executive and judicial branch.
- The legislative is bound by the constitutional rules, the executive and the judicial are bound by law and justice.
- All Germans are entitled to exerce resistance against anybody who sets out to remove this order, if no other resort is possible
It can be said that this article is roughly equivalent with the US second amendment, except that unlike the second amendment it doesn't unfortunately provide the tools to exerce this right to resistance.Consequently, some of the more vocal participants in the heise.de boards have called for more drastic ways to show their disapprovment.
For those of you who read German, here is a more detailed analysis: GG Art. 20 - der deutsche Bundestag untergrabt seine eigene Legitimation!.
Here in Luxembourg, the European election is on the same day as the national election. Of course, the same candidats are on both ballots. Result: those with the most votes take a national seat (considered to be more important...), leaving the european seats to the losers!
I hate to disagree, but laser is one example of a technology that had applications before the technology itself was available!
For example, holography was invented before the laser itself.
In the early days of holography (1947), they used mercury arc lamps as a source of "coherent" light, but couldn't get very far with it, as it was not nearly coherent enough for the purpose. Development of holography basically stalled until the invention of the laser in 1960
Not to mention, that the pool would not only help the dust to settle, but also help cool the water. Once it's cool enough, what's to prevent you from reusing the same water to produce your next batch of PCs? Heck, that's how most water-using industries (steel mills, nuke plants, ....) work: the only water that they actually need to draw from the river is what evaporated out of their pool or cooling tower. Apart from that it's closed-circuit.
Here in Luxembourg, we have non-profit organization to handle recycling (pick-up of recyclable items, such as glass, cardboard, certains kinds of plastic bottles and milk cartons). Their name is Valorlux. A couple of weeks ago, I needed to look up the date of their next pick-up, and was stumped by their flash-only website.
I sent them a mail about it, and got the following reply:
Subject: L'internet n'est pas...
Cher Monsieur Xxxxx,
La page 'macromedia' qui apparait est en fait une passerelle qui vous permet
de telecharger un logiciel
du nom de 'Flash 6' ce dernier etant absolument necessaire pour naviguer
dans le site VALORLUX sans probleme.
VALORLUX a choisi d'offrit ce logiciel et son telechargement entierement
gratuitement afin de permettre a toutes les personnes n'ayant pas ce systeme
de pouvoir visiter notre site.
Ce ne sont absolument pas des publicites pour des societes americaines - ni
autres - simplement des outils
facilitant l'acces au site.
Si vous n'avez pas reussi a le telecharger c'est probablement que votre
ordinateur n'est soit pas assez
puissant, soit un peu trop 'age' pour utiliser ces produits, nous en sommes
absolument desoles.
Nous vous prions de croire en nos salutations les meilleures.
VALORLUX Asbl
Muriel Fedele
Responsable de la Communication
BP 26
L-3205 LEUDELANGE
The last sentence, in English: If you have not succeeded in downloading it [the Flash plugin], it is likely that your computer is either not powerful enough, or a little bit too "old" for using these products, and we are absolutely sorry about this.
Yes, and in order to resolve this issue, I'm supposed to buy a new one, throw the old one into the trash, and waste precious 1.8 tons of raw materials. Way to go, Valorlux!
Hmm, so this device must be very effective then! It's both a street light and a camera!
If this is a checking account, you have the possibility to overdraw it. Eurocheques have a maximum guaranteed amount, so the bank cannot really bounce them... The bank must protect itself against customers who open a checking account, deliberately overdraw it, and run.
I just have to comment on this. Many people have Javascript switched off due to security (cross site scripting, annoying popups/popunders, ...). They might not be worried about these issues on your site, but on other sites, and might be tired of switching JS on and off everytime they visit a different kind of site. So they just leave it off permanently. Indeed, not every browser supports per-site JS settings like Konqueror does. Ironically, with your "secure" JS-based login procedure you would be shutting those security-conscious users.
Other users may not have access to JS due to disability. Blind users often use lynx with a braille line or a text-to-speech synthesizer. And last I checked, lynx does not support JS (and it would probably not make much sense anyways in a text-only browser). Be careful not to run afoul of the ADA.
SSL would be a much preferable solution. It's much more standard, more secure and supported by all modern browsers, including lynx and other text-only browsers.
True enough, but in that case, why keep at all the menu that let's you chose a country? Do away with it, and make it clear that that site is only to be used for US locations. Having a "chose your country" menu, and ignore its selection is somehwat silly, IMHO.
Perhaps an additional dropdown taht specifies the country
There is such a dropdown, but the problem is that whatever country you pick, you still get only locations from the US (as long as you entered at www.mapquest.com). You chose France, you enter Paris, and you get to Texas.
Also, you're assuming that everybody who visits www.mapquest.com must be an American. Not necessarily so: he may be an European who is just using an old bookmark that he made at a time when the European sites did not yet exist, and when www.mapquest.com was still working fine for non-US locations (yes, yes, a couple of years ago, it did work...)
No offense, but I think you are American ;-)
Indeed, try searching for non-US locations on www.mapquest.com. For instance, Paris, France.
It will give you the choice between Paris Texas, Paris Illinois, Paris Kentucky, ... but not the French capital!
I've already contacted them several times about the issue, but so far they haven't moved... You'd almost think this was intentional!
There is a workaround, however: if you go to one of their European sites (www.mapquest.de , www.mapquest.fr, and yes, even www.mapquest.co.uk) it works all right.
A floor washing option. Vacuuming it fine for living room, bedroom and office, but what about the kitchen floor which gets sticky, rather than dusty?
Isn't there another problem: it would not clean the middle of the room. The turning is triggered when it hits obstacles. Thus, it'd turn only as long as it hasn't re-oriented itself enough that it can pass the obstacle: result: you set it into the middle of the room, it heads straight to a wall, and from then on follows the walls in a circular motion around the room, leaving the middle of the room uncleaned... Or did I miss something here?
The way it worked was that between the two front wheels, it had a sideways wheel that was mounted slightly higher, so that it wouldn't touch the table. As soon as it got to the edge of the table, the normal wheels would slip off, and the sideways wheel would make contact, cause the car to make a turn, bringing it back on the table.
Dear Blue Underwear,
Thank you for your correspondence concerning the draft directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions.
The European Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee has voted on my report on the directive and there will be continuing debate and further democratic scrutiny before the directive becomes law.
At this early stage of legislative process, it is nonetheless important to establish the facts about what the draft EU directive and what I, as the Parliament's rapporteur, are aiming to achieve in the amendments tabled to the Commission proposal.
It has been suggested that the Parliament's report will for the first time allow the patentability of computer-implemented inventions. This is simply not true. The patenting of computer-implemented inventions is not a new phenomenon. Patents involving the use of software have been applied for and granted since the earliest days of the European Patent Office (EPO). Out of over 110,000 applications received at the EPO in 2001, 16,000 will have dealt with inventions in computer-implemented technologies. Indeed, even without an EU directive, these patents will continue to be filed, not only to the EPO but also to national patent offices.
As you will be aware, in the US and increasingly in Japan, patents have been granted for what is essentially pure software. Some EPO and national court rulings indicate that Europe may be drifting towards extending the scope of patentability to inventions which would traditionally have not been patentable, as well as pure business methods. It is clear that Europe needs a uniform legal approach which draws a line between what can and cannot be patented, and prevents the drift towards the patentability of software per se.
My intention is clear in the amendments tabled and in a new Article 4 in the text, to preclude; the patentability of software as such; the patentability of business methods; algorithms; and mathematical methods. Article 4 clearly states that in order to be patentable, a computer-implemented invention must be susceptible to industrial applications, be new, and involve an inventive step. Moreover I have added a requirement for a technical contribution in order to ensure that the mere use of a computer does not lead to a patent being granted.
Furthermore, the amended directive contains new provisions on decompilation that will assist software developers. While it is not possible to comment on whether any patent application would be excluded from the directive, the directive, as amended, would not permit the patentability of Amazon's 'one-click' method. As far as software itself is concerned, it will not be possible to patent a software product. Software itself will continue to be able to be protected by copyright.
With an EU directive, legislators will have scrutiny over the EPO and national court's decisions. With, in addition, the possibility of having a definitive ruling from the European Court in Luxembourg, thus ensuring a restrictive interpretation of the EU directive and a greater degree of legal certainty in the field of patentability of computer-implemented inventions.
Some concerns have been raised that the directive may have an adverse effect on the development of open source software and small software developers. I support the development of open source software and welcome the fact that the major open-source companies are recording a 50% growth in world-wide shipment of its products.
In the amended proposal, I have imposed a requirement on the Commission to monitor the impact of the directive, in particular its effect on small and medium sized enterprises, and to look at any potential difficulties in respect of the relationship between patent protection of computer-implemented inventions and copyright protection.
Many small companies have given their support to this directive, which will give them more legal certainty as it offers the possibility of protection for their R&D investment, and so assists in
Bon, en huet nët d'PDF Extension. De Konqueror op der Schaff verdaut daat gudd, awer nët deen heiheem... Am Zweifelsfall, einfach mat wget roflueden, renamen, an dann vun Hand opmaachen.
As alles an hierem PDF erklärt...
Not just at markets. His image is even being used by banks.
Indeed. Configure your firewall to do transparent squid, and then put the following into your squid.conf: