Re:Functional != unprotected
on
Duct Tape
·
· Score: 2
You know, you can study a printout of the DeCSS code all you want, but no matter how hard you try, the code will not compile and assemble itself in front of you. You need to acquire a computer, type it into the computer, obtain an operating system, obtain compiler software, and run the compiler on the computer before you can use a system combining the software, an operating system, a computer, and a DVD drive.
Yet the printout of the DeCSS source code is considered a "device" under current judicial rulings.
Linus is either ignorant about the way Mac apps work or unrealistic about Apple's ability to dictate to its developers.
Not at all; you're misreading the article. Linus is of the opinion that the way Mac Classic apps work was a problem for the people developing OS X, which is why he didn't want to work on OS X. Steven E. Ehrbar
Anybody who actually pays attention knows that, in general, it's liberals who want to censor violence plus anything that contradicts their ideologies, while it's conservatives who want to censor sex and anything that contradicts their ideologies.
Thus, Bob Dole attacked Hollywood for sex in 1996, but endorsed Independence Day, which blew up entire cities. And the Children's Defense Fund counts acts of violence committed in Bugs Bunny cartoons, but doesn't object to explicit sex education for first graders.
CBS brings you the story on the coverup of how Mir debris entering the atmosphere caused breast cancer in these women! "Mir almost killed me, and I want them to pay for it." Steven E. Ehrbar
2. The bit about "disputing the bible's claim that pi = 3" really ruins the plausibility. No one except atheists trying to disprove the bible has ever claimed that the bible says pi = 3.
Actually, there's a bit in the OT about Solomon's Temple where pillars are supposed to be one cubit across, three cubits around, and circular. Jewish scholars debated this in the Middle Ages; generally they agreed that the measures recorded were merely approximate, but one school argued that the presence of God actually changed the geometry of parts of the Temple to a non-Euclidian form where pi really did equal three.
Okay, I don't agree that video games should be censored, but he's right about violence being a problem of culture, not gun control.
For our first example, let's look at Japan, which has strict gun controls and a low murder rate. A case for gun control? Not if you note that the murder rate by all methods in Japan is lower than the murder rate in the U.S. by non-gun methods. If every gun were to dissapear from the U.S. today, and everyone who would have killed with a gun abstains from using an alternate method, the U.S. would still have a higher murder rate than Japan.
Next, let's look at Switzerland, which has an automatic assault rifle in virtually every home. Yet it too has far fewer murders, inculding school shootings, per capita than the United States.
Now, perhaps we should note that neither low-murder-rate Japan nor Switzerland has a subculture that produces gangsta rap, justifies riots as expressions of outrage, etc. Cultural attitudes about violence are different than in the U.S. Perhaps, maybe, then, the U.S.'s problem isn't guns, but the cultural embrace of violence?
Every famine on Earth since 1935, and every famine on Earth in an industrialized state since 1875, has occured in a country either at war or with government-run food production, or both. Every single one. No exceptions.
Because balanced diets require more land, more water, and more fertilizer to produce, with a net result of fewer calories per acre and per dollar. If carrot-growing was locally practical, they'd already be eating carrots. Steven E. Ehrbar
Anyway, you are describing entire physical systems, software isn't an entire physical system, so no, none of your options are software.
So, if I implement my program on a hard disk, I can patent it by specifying a hard disk itself as part of the patent?
So I file fifty patents, one with my pattern of light and dark spots on a plastic disk (CD), one with my pattern of charged areas on electromagnetic platters (HD), one with it on a electromagentically charged film (FD), one with it as a pattern of holes on IBM punch cards, etc. How is that objectively different (except in my personal expense) than patenting the software itself?
Ultimately, any algorithm must be implemented as a pattern modifying a physical device to be useful outside of a person's head, and patents are all on physical devices made to specific patterns. So the only answer is that either all my examples are unpatentable, or that software can be patented.
Anyone who doesn't like software being patented, tell me where the line is between a patentable gizmo and software is in the following list:
Multipart mechanical device that causes a sewing machine arm to move so that it creates a specific pattern of stitches.
Single-part mechanical device that causes a sewing machine arm to move so that it creates a specific pattern of stitches.
Metal sheet with holes that physically causes a sewing machine arm to move so that it creates a specific pattern of stitches.
Cardboard sheet with holes that physically causes a sewing machine arm to move so that it creates a specific pattern of stitches.
Cardboard sheet with holes that causes electrical contacts to meet in a certain pattern that causes a sewing machine arm to move so that it creates a specific pattern of stitches.
Metal plate that causes electrical contacts to meet in a certain pattern that causes a sewing machine arm to move so that it creates a specific pattern of stitches.
Magnetically charged metal plate that causes quantum forces to allow electrical connections to form a certain pattern that causes a sewing machine arm to move so that it creates a specific pattern of stitches.
In short, when does the transition move from a patentable design for a control mechanism to unpatentable software?
If I wanted to play a first-person shooter, well, that's what the local laser-tag arena is for. Higher framerates, better color depths, lightspeed-rendered immersive 3D environment, no lag, and multimedia including sound and tactile feedback.
It isn't good, it isn't bad. I wasn't here for the real early phase, but it hasn't changed much since I got my UID.
Sure, we gained the ability to exclude Katz from our custom homepages, moderation was extended from the tiny cadre to the masses, metamoderation was invented, and karma caps were born. And/. went from a self-supporting org to a commercial entity.
But the essence, the types of stories and the types of comments, has not changed. And if it didn't change much during the factor of 40 increase from 7681 to 307240, why should it change much from 307240 to 12,289,600?
If Liberman had claimed to be a Catholic, would it have been intolerant for the RCC to excommunicate him on the grounds that his religious beliefs were not consistent with those of the Church, which believes Jesus to have been the Messiah?
There's a difference between the leaders of a religion trying to mantain the integrity of the religion's beliefs and trying to impose them upon others.
Thank you from saving me from having to make that point.
Imagine Salon said movie studio insiders had declared that FooBar: The Movie was going to be a bomb, and that the studio replied that
"When a publication makes such a completely wrong, unfounded, anonymous slander, I think it deserves a very strong answer. It's simply not true, because we, ourselves, don't have that information. Our test marketing committee started working on the test screenings Wednesday morning, and it's simply impossible to say whether this is true or this is false."
Now, sure, the insiders might be wrong; after all, the cracks/movie haven't been fully evaluated. But it's the way to guess.
So you use one of the free online POP servers instead of your ISP's POP server, or free Web-based email, or you spend a couple bucks to get a paid alternative POP server, etc., etc.
According to the Radio Act of 1934, which created the FCC, frequency allocations are not property and neither the FCC or licensees own them. Therefore, these auctions are illegal.
Except that the Congress passed some laws in the '90s explicitly authorizing auctions of spectrum by the FCC. So unless the Radio Act became a part of the Constitution while nobody was looking, they are absolutely legal.
If you do see someone you don't know, you did see them and your mind did store it, but you where aware of it.
Interesting assertion. The amount of research necessary to move your assertion past the mere hypothesis stage would itself be a rather daunting task. Know of any peer-reviewed journal papers that back it up?
Not only have I read during dreams, I have read in such detail that I once noted the magazine's date and article title so I could re-read it, and remembered the reading experience when I was awake without realizing I had dreamed it. I only realized it was a dream upon actually attempting to re-read it, and finding no trace of the article in the magazine.
Lao Tzu may have noted the conundrum centuries before I did, but I did experience it years before I heard of the Butterfly Dream.
Okay, skinnability was not an add-on feature. It's a side effect of using the browser engine to render the widget set, itself a side effect of deciding to make the front end platform-independent.
I mean, they could have added code and spent time to make it non-skinnable, but what would have been the point?
Slashdot Mirror
You know, you can study a printout of the DeCSS code all you want, but no matter how hard you try, the code will not compile and assemble itself in front of you. You need to acquire a computer, type it into the computer, obtain an operating system, obtain compiler software, and run the compiler on the computer before you can use a system combining the software, an operating system, a computer, and a DVD drive.
Yet the printout of the DeCSS source code is considered a "device" under current judicial rulings.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Linus is either ignorant about the way Mac apps work or unrealistic about Apple's ability to dictate to its developers.
Not at all; you're misreading the article. Linus is of the opinion that the way Mac Classic apps work was a problem for the people developing OS X, which is why he didn't want to work on OS X.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Soap operas have higher writing standards.
Steven E. Ehrbar
George W. Bush is a murderer, having ordered air strikes that killed innocent people in Iraq. He lives at 1600 Pennslyvania Avenue, Washington DC.
Okay, now if anybody kills Bush, I'm partly responsible, because I said that he's a murderer and where he lives, right?
Steven E. Ehrbar
Absolutely.
Anybody who actually pays attention knows that, in general, it's liberals who want to censor violence plus anything that contradicts their ideologies, while it's conservatives who want to censor sex and anything that contradicts their ideologies.
Thus, Bob Dole attacked Hollywood for sex in 1996, but endorsed Independence Day, which blew up entire cities. And the Children's Defense Fund counts acts of violence committed in Bugs Bunny cartoons, but doesn't object to explicit sex education for first graders.
Steven E. Ehrbar
CBS brings you the story on the coverup of how Mir debris entering the atmosphere caused breast cancer in these women! "Mir almost killed me, and I want them to pay for it."
Steven E. Ehrbar
2. The bit about "disputing the bible's claim that pi = 3" really ruins the plausibility. No one except atheists trying to disprove the bible has ever claimed that the bible says pi = 3.
Actually, there's a bit in the OT about Solomon's Temple where pillars are supposed to be one cubit across, three cubits around, and circular. Jewish scholars debated this in the Middle Ages; generally they agreed that the measures recorded were merely approximate, but one school argued that the presence of God actually changed the geometry of parts of the Temple to a non-Euclidian form where pi really did equal three.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Okay, I don't agree that video games should be censored, but he's right about violence being a problem of culture, not gun control.
For our first example, let's look at Japan, which has strict gun controls and a low murder rate. A case for gun control? Not if you note that the murder rate by all methods in Japan is lower than the murder rate in the U.S. by non-gun methods. If every gun were to dissapear from the U.S. today, and everyone who would have killed with a gun abstains from using an alternate method, the U.S. would still have a higher murder rate than Japan.
Next, let's look at Switzerland, which has an automatic assault rifle in virtually every home. Yet it too has far fewer murders, inculding school shootings, per capita than the United States.
Now, perhaps we should note that neither low-murder-rate Japan nor Switzerland has a subculture that produces gangsta rap, justifies riots as expressions of outrage, etc. Cultural attitudes about violence are different than in the U.S. Perhaps, maybe, then, the U.S.'s problem isn't guns, but the cultural embrace of violence?
Steven E. Ehrbar
Neither the Moon nor the ISS is part of Cuba, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, or Yugoslavia, so it doesn't matter.
You are aware that the crypto rules were relaxed almost a year ago, right?
Steven E. Ehrbar
Newbie.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Every famine on Earth since 1935, and every famine on Earth in an industrialized state since 1875, has occured in a country either at war or with government-run food production, or both. Every single one. No exceptions.
Care to reconsider your position?
Steven E. Ehrbar
Because balanced diets require more land, more water, and more fertilizer to produce, with a net result of fewer calories per acre and per dollar. If carrot-growing was locally practical, they'd already be eating carrots.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Anyway, you are describing entire physical systems, software isn't an entire physical system, so no, none of your options are software.
So, if I implement my program on a hard disk, I can patent it by specifying a hard disk itself as part of the patent?
So I file fifty patents, one with my pattern of light and dark spots on a plastic disk (CD), one with my pattern of charged areas on electromagnetic platters (HD), one with it on a electromagentically charged film (FD), one with it as a pattern of holes on IBM punch cards, etc. How is that objectively different (except in my personal expense) than patenting the software itself?
Ultimately, any algorithm must be implemented as a pattern modifying a physical device to be useful outside of a person's head, and patents are all on physical devices made to specific patterns. So the only answer is that either all my examples are unpatentable, or that software can be patented.
Steven E. Ehrbar
In short, when does the transition move from a patentable design for a control mechanism to unpatentable software?
Steven E. Ehrbar
If I wanted to play a first-person shooter, well, that's what the local laser-tag arena is for. Higher framerates, better color depths, lightspeed-rendered immersive 3D environment, no lag, and multimedia including sound and tactile feedback.
Steven E. Ehrbar
It isn't good, it isn't bad. I wasn't here for the real early phase, but it hasn't changed much since I got my UID.
/. went from a self-supporting org to a commercial entity.
Sure, we gained the ability to exclude Katz from our custom homepages, moderation was extended from the tiny cadre to the masses, metamoderation was invented, and karma caps were born. And
But the essence, the types of stories and the types of comments, has not changed. And if it didn't change much during the factor of 40 increase from 7681 to 307240, why should it change much from 307240 to 12,289,600?
Steven E. Ehrbar
Religious intolerance?
If Liberman had claimed to be a Catholic, would it have been intolerant for the RCC to excommunicate him on the grounds that his religious beliefs were not consistent with those of the Church, which believes Jesus to have been the Messiah?
There's a difference between the leaders of a religion trying to mantain the integrity of the religion's beliefs and trying to impose them upon others.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Thank you from saving me from having to make that point.
Imagine Salon said movie studio insiders had declared that FooBar: The Movie was going to be a bomb, and that the studio replied that
"When a publication makes such a completely wrong, unfounded, anonymous slander, I think it deserves a very strong answer. It's simply not true, because we, ourselves, don't have that information. Our test marketing committee started working on the test screenings Wednesday morning, and it's simply impossible to say whether this is true or this is false."
Now, sure, the insiders might be wrong; after all, the cracks/movie haven't been fully evaluated. But it's the way to guess.
Steven E. Ehrbar
So you use one of the free online POP servers instead of your ISP's POP server, or free Web-based email, or you spend a couple bucks to get a paid alternative POP server, etc., etc.
Steven E. Ehrbar
According to the Radio Act of 1934, which created the FCC, frequency allocations are not property and neither the FCC or licensees own them. Therefore, these auctions are illegal.
Except that the Congress passed some laws in the '90s explicitly authorizing auctions of spectrum by the FCC. So unless the Radio Act became a part of the Constitution while nobody was looking, they are absolutely legal.
Steven E. Ehrbar
If you do see someone you don't know, you did see them and your mind did store it, but you where aware of it.
Interesting assertion. The amount of research necessary to move your assertion past the mere hypothesis stage would itself be a rather daunting task. Know of any peer-reviewed journal papers that back it up?
Steven E. Ehrbar
Not only have I read during dreams, I have read in such detail that I once noted the magazine's date and article title so I could re-read it, and remembered the reading experience when I was awake without realizing I had dreamed it. I only realized it was a dream upon actually attempting to re-read it, and finding no trace of the article in the magazine.
Lao Tzu may have noted the conundrum centuries before I did, but I did experience it years before I heard of the Butterfly Dream.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Browser/Mail/IM/Skinnable/Everything
Okay, skinnability was not an add-on feature. It's a side effect of using the browser engine to render the widget set, itself a side effect of deciding to make the front end platform-independent.
I mean, they could have added code and spent time to make it non-skinnable, but what would have been the point?
Steven E. Ehrbar
So use the "classic" skin.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Suspicious of RIAA.
Steven E. Ehrbar