Logic failure - how did evolution come into being? Who or what created it? It obviously did not evolve from evolution -- circular logic. So someone or something must have created it.
Understand what wrong? You imagine people will keep working on software out of altruistic desire forever? Many people I know are in this profession solely for the high salaries. Once OSS peanut-salary is the norm, they will dump this profession like a cheap rental suit.
Free software, free music, free movies, free everything! This is turning into a planet full of self-righteous leeches.
God forbid someone should try to make a living out of selling overpriced software.
Very little software is overpriced. It's usually the highly technical and/or low-volume software that costs hundreds or thousands of $. But I bet you won't hear from the hordes of poor shareware writers OSS has wiped out from existence. Don't software authors have a right to get paid... just like any other profession?
Does the govt "own" the soldiers. This is an egregious violation of privacy, but funnily, no complaints from the slashdot crowd. Is there no line separating government from citizens/soldiers or are we sheep that govt can do anything?
Except he wants to work for Google or AMAT, how stupid! He deserves more than the 25,000 peanuts. That tech is worth tens or hundreds of billions. I hope he patented it before giving out the technology to greedy fat-cats.
If you had an idea you knew would make billions, would you just give it away? Would you? Most businesses thrive or die based on their founding "ideas"...
Fuck NVIDIA and their stupid proprietary hardware!
By releasing specs, NVidia would be handing out their trade secrets to competitors, Intel and ATI. Surely you are not that dense to expect them to give out free lunches.
Yet another "employee" acting the victim role in order garner sympathy for his cause to rid the world of patents. If you slashdot idiots think it's easy to invent anything in software, why don't you try building robot AI and vision processing code, or some other new field in software.
Are patents bad because they hinder copying (read stealing) features from closed source products to create open source clones? Valid patents are the only defense against unethical, immoral cheaters stealing others' hard work and genius and profiting themselves while ensuring the creator gets nothing. Without patents and copyright, USA and Europe would be as economically successful as communist USSR.
So, go right ahead and abolish patents and copyright... just don't whine like cry-babies if your lifestyle is subsequently reduced to that of some third world country.
And who pays for the profit? The cost only allows developers to survive the duration of the game development. How are they going to feed themselves after the game is released?
I'm amazed at the gall of many slashdotters suggesting that pirating is morally right and that capitalism is some sort of sin. Well, why don't they try "creating" a game for a change? It will take anywhere from 2 to 5 years and cost anywhere from $1 to $20 million. The duplication cost may be $0, but the cost of production is huge.
And you are wrong. Copyrights only prevent direct rip off by people who nothing about the subject. There are dozens of ways to implement an invention once you understand it. As a hypothetical example, if quick sort were to be copyrighted, instead of patented, someone might come up with a different implementation of it quite easily if he/she knew how the algorithm worked.
Software is a not totally abstract like math; and has a physical form as bits on your hard disk. Software is an easy-to-reproduce machine that controls a more general purpose machine: the computer.
Wow, you're totally clueless. Copyrights ensure that the author of a work gets paid by preventing others from creating copies of his work and making a buck off that. Similarly, patents ensure the inventor of an invention gets paid without big business copying his ideas to build products and making millions off someone else's brains for free.
A few patent trolls does not mean all patents are trivial and obvious.
Without patents, how can any startup even get off the ground? Their unethical competitors, with thick wallets, will simply copy months or years of hard work in a short period of time, effectively stealing the genius ideas.
If what the patent attorney has said is true, Bush has done way too much damage to this planet within a short span of 8 years.
A high level language (the sort you generally actually write code in), is directly translatable into machine language and is thus, wait for it, shorthand for math!
It looks like math (sort of), but it's not math. Math is abstract concepts related to numbers, not a machine. Writing ax**2 + bx + c = 0 on paper does not do anything. Software does *do* something.
I feel like Bill Clinton trying to explain the meaning of is, but a handheld HP calculator is not math, although it deals exclusively with math. Instead, the calculator is a tool/machine that uses math. Similarly, computer hardware is not math, it's a general purpose machine using math and physics. A software program is a special-purpose machine that uses the general purpose machine to perform a task.
In summary, Math cannot be used as a machine, while software can. Therefore software should be patentable.
Copyrights are only useful against blatant copying and distribution (aka pirates), not copycat competitors. For example, in a world before chairs, if someone were to invent a brown chair, copyright it, but did not patent it. His competitor can easily clone the same chair, paint it white, change the shape of the seat, legs and back and legally sell it. Copyright will not protect the chair inventor from losing everything.
Software is a product because it is composed of 1s and 0s that have to be stored somewhere physically. Therefore software patents are valid because they create a physical product, just as a car CAD diagram results in a real, metal, fabric and rubber car, or Verilog source code is used to manufacture CPUs.
You misspelled insanity. If this goes through, only copycats will profit. Anyone would be able to build a google search clone in a fraction of time and money it took Google to build their search engine.
You stupid communists/socialists are begging for unfair/corrupt world where the doers get squat and the lazy bums make all the money.
As long as we wish to reward inventors for their innovations. Without patents, nobody will invest time and money in creating unique, innovative products. Without patents, copycats will make the most money and innovators will go penniless. How is this fair?!
I know open sourcers prefer communist-like co-operation, but the real world of business runs off competition, not co-operation. The winner of the competition makes the most money.
Beware, gullible sheep, Big Brother wants to track all your web activities using a single "Open" ID, starting with personal data-mining sites like MySpace and Facebook. Isn't there enough tracking from ISPs, search engines, and large websites already?
This tracking is great for big brother, but sucks for the little man, who would prefer the anonymity of dynamic IP address, and multiple, fake online personas. This OpenID idea is stupid in concept, unless there is a malicious intent to spy on everyone.
So Linux is better because it is $0 vs $$ for Windows, and I thought it was better because Linux was open source and all the goodness to the soul associated with sharing and other hippie/communist/marxist crap.
Thanks to Windows and Linux, there will never be another viable operating system on commodity PCs. They have combined to wipe out all competition -- one by forcing OEMs to install it and another by dumping $0 products in the market.
No, its not a hypothesis, because it isn't testable.
Hypothesis are guesses and theories that may or may not be testable, so Intelligent Design is a valid hypothesis. BTW, Big Bang theory and evolution are not testable either, unless you are willing to wait 10 million years or so to test evolution.
I need to see some proof that humans and all earth life can be "manufactured" from raw materials and chemicals before I believe the crackpot theories of these so-called scientists.
This is like the worst argument EVER against FOSS's NATURAL way of promoting competition.
Competition for what? Kudos and pats on the back? OSS pays squat. In the real world, competition is about making the most $$$ while ensuring your competitor makes the least.
Instead of this crappen, just take a 1980s honda civic's chassis, and replace the engine and transmission with the 2007 civic 1.6L engine. The 2007 civic gets 40 mpg on a 2500 lb car, so it should roughly 70 mpg on the 1500 lb 1984 civic.
Slashdot Mirror
Logic failure - how did evolution come into being? Who or what created it? It obviously did not evolve from evolution -- circular logic. So someone or something must have created it.
Free software, free music, free movies, free everything! This is turning into a planet full of self-righteous leeches.
Very little software is overpriced. It's usually the highly technical and/or low-volume software that costs hundreds or thousands of $. But I bet you won't hear from the hordes of poor shareware writers OSS has wiped out from existence. Don't software authors have a right to get paid... just like any other profession?
Does the govt "own" the soldiers. This is an egregious violation of privacy, but funnily, no complaints from the slashdot crowd. Is there no line separating government from citizens/soldiers or are we sheep that govt can do anything?
Except he wants to work for Google or AMAT, how stupid! He deserves more than the 25,000 peanuts. That tech is worth tens or hundreds of billions. I hope he patented it before giving out the technology to greedy fat-cats.
If you had an idea you knew would make billions, would you just give it away? Would you? Most businesses thrive or die based on their founding "ideas" ...
By releasing specs, NVidia would be handing out their trade secrets to competitors, Intel and ATI. Surely you are not that dense to expect them to give out free lunches.
Yet another "employee" acting the victim role in order garner sympathy for his cause to rid the world of patents. If you slashdot idiots think it's easy to invent anything in software, why don't you try building robot AI and vision processing code, or some other new field in software.
Are patents bad because they hinder copying (read stealing) features from closed source products to create open source clones? Valid patents are the only defense against unethical, immoral cheaters stealing others' hard work and genius and profiting themselves while ensuring the creator gets nothing. Without patents and copyright, USA and Europe would be as economically successful as communist USSR.
So, go right ahead and abolish patents and copyright... just don't whine like cry-babies if your lifestyle is subsequently reduced to that of some third world country.
And who pays for the profit? The cost only allows developers to survive the duration of the game development. How are they going to feed themselves after the game is released?
I'm amazed at the gall of many slashdotters suggesting that pirating is morally right and that capitalism is some sort of sin. Well, why don't they try "creating" a game for a change? It will take anywhere from 2 to 5 years and cost anywhere from $1 to $20 million. The duplication cost may be $0, but the cost of production is huge.
payed[sic]?
Software is a not totally abstract like math; and has a physical form as bits on your hard disk. Software is an easy-to-reproduce machine that controls a more general purpose machine: the computer.
Wow, you're totally clueless. Copyrights ensure that the author of a work gets paid by preventing others from creating copies of his work and making a buck off that. Similarly, patents ensure the inventor of an invention gets paid without big business copying his ideas to build products and making millions off someone else's brains for free.
A few patent trolls does not mean all patents are trivial and obvious.
Without patents, how can any startup even get off the ground? Their unethical competitors, with thick wallets, will simply copy months or years of hard work in a short period of time, effectively stealing the genius ideas.
If what the patent attorney has said is true, Bush has done way too much damage to this planet within a short span of 8 years.
Fraunhofer's MP3
It looks like math (sort of), but it's not math. Math is abstract concepts related to numbers, not a machine. Writing ax**2 + bx + c = 0 on paper does not do anything. Software does *do* something.
I feel like Bill Clinton trying to explain the meaning of is , but a handheld HP calculator is not math, although it deals exclusively with math. Instead, the calculator is a tool/machine that uses math. Similarly, computer hardware is not math, it's a general purpose machine using math and physics. A software program is a special-purpose machine that uses the general purpose machine to perform a task.
In summary, Math cannot be used as a machine, while software can. Therefore software should be patentable.
They were patented when they were invented.
Software is a product because it is composed of 1s and 0s that have to be stored somewhere physically. Therefore software patents are valid because they create a physical product, just as a car CAD diagram results in a real, metal, fabric and rubber car, or Verilog source code is used to manufacture CPUs.
You stupid communists/socialists are begging for unfair/corrupt world where the doers get squat and the lazy bums make all the money.
As long as we wish to reward inventors for their innovations. Without patents, nobody will invest time and money in creating unique, innovative products. Without patents, copycats will make the most money and innovators will go penniless. How is this fair?!
I know open sourcers prefer communist-like co-operation, but the real world of business runs off competition, not co-operation. The winner of the competition makes the most money.
Beware, gullible sheep, Big Brother wants to track all your web activities using a single "Open" ID, starting with personal data-mining sites like MySpace and Facebook. Isn't there enough tracking from ISPs, search engines, and large websites already?
This tracking is great for big brother, but sucks for the little man, who would prefer the anonymity of dynamic IP address, and multiple, fake online personas. This OpenID idea is stupid in concept, unless there is a malicious intent to spy on everyone.
So Linux is better because it is $0 vs $$ for Windows, and I thought it was better because Linux was open source and all the goodness to the soul associated with sharing and other hippie/communist/marxist crap.
Thanks to Windows and Linux, there will never be another viable operating system on commodity PCs. They have combined to wipe out all competition -- one by forcing OEMs to install it and another by dumping $0 products in the market.
Hypothesis are guesses and theories that may or may not be testable, so Intelligent Design is a valid hypothesis. BTW, Big Bang theory and evolution are not testable either, unless you are willing to wait 10 million years or so to test evolution.
I need to see some proof that humans and all earth life can be "manufactured" from raw materials and chemicals before I believe the crackpot theories of these so-called scientists.
Competition for what? Kudos and pats on the back? OSS pays squat. In the real world, competition is about making the most $$$ while ensuring your competitor makes the least.
Instead of this crappen, just take a 1980s honda civic's chassis, and replace the engine and transmission with the 2007 civic 1.6L engine. The 2007 civic gets 40 mpg on a 2500 lb car, so it should roughly 70 mpg on the 1500 lb 1984 civic.
Total cost: $18,000.
So 1 human > all earth? LOLZ