"That's how free markets are supposed to work to be economically optimal."
Except then there is no motivation for creation. The concept of patents extends property rights to ideas.
The free market is based upon property rights. Without them, it could not function.
"Patents are supposed to be over implementations of ideas, not the ideas themselves. "
The implementations of ideas are the physical products themselves. They are protected by physical property laws. The actual ideas themselves (the inventions) are protected by patents.
" Patents and particularly patent cross-licensing schemes exist to _shield_ incumbents in the market from new entrants."
Also known as the origional inventors. Thus patents help the origional inventors who are scientists and engineers, thus the origional post that I was replying to (and you seem to keep on forgetting about) that contended that patents hurt the employment of scientists and engineers was wrong.
"If you saw me picking some apples from my trees, should I have any right to require you to pick apples from your trees with your feet because I own the right to pick apples with my hands?"
Sure if you can convince a judge that picking apples off of trees with your hands is novel and nonobvious. Good luck.
"But that's the level patents have sunk to in the US today."
Show me an example of a judge enforcing a patent for picking apples off of trees with one's hands.
"That might be vaguely true if the scientist or engineer held the patent (I personally doubt it, actually, as scientists and engineers themselves typically want to build on eachother's work like Open Source developers can do rather than hoard ideas)."
Unless they sold the patent or gave it to their employer as part of their job (in either case they still benefit from it), they hold it.
I don't know where you are getting your gross over generalization concerning how scientists and engineers act, but it is completely untrue. Scientists and engineers vary in their motivations and opinions and do not subscribe to the group-think attitude you attribute them with. Some support your idealistic goals, many others do not.
I hate it when my software tries to make decisions for me. The times it saves time get eclipsed by the times it screws up.
Perhaps a rating system for links could be a good idea. For instance if I am browsing a site and at the bottom I see a list of links for further information, it could be useful to have it tell me which are more likely to have good information and which are crap, maybe based on user ratings or scanning the website to see how much information it has (one page with a few paragraphs of text would be less useful than a page containing diagrams, graphics, and a lot more text).
"How is a technology 'protected' by patenting it?"
The technology itself isn't protected, the guy inventing it (a.k.a. the scientists and engineers you are so worried about) is.
"My suggestion to you then is to not develop it until you have an assurance that you will get paid."
Then you are even more under the control of the investors.
"You might want to go around and try reading the arguments against these forms of government monopoly grant before you blanketly decide that your view is correct."
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. You might want to do the same.
See what you fail to realize is that barring protections like patents, the only way left to profit from innovation (and like it or not, profit is what puts food on the table for you and your family) is too keep it secret. Instead of applying for patents, companies would instead keep their innovative products as trade secrets and wouldn't let a soul know about them. That would create an even more restrictive world.
"I DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO BE AN EMPLOYEE OF SOME PHB."
You don't have to be. Aside from academia there are many freelance inventors out there, but most only succeed because of protections such as patents. Often they will invent something, patent it, and then sell the rights to the patent to some company with the resources to manufacture and market the end product (if they are rich enough to manufacture and market it themselves or if they can raise enough capital, they can also do it themselves, though I don't believe that is as common).
"IF patents didn't exist, I would be free to combine machinery bought on the free market into new machinery, and resell it for profit."
And you are free to do so in the current system. You just can't rip off someone's idea if they have already patented it. But keep in mind neither can anyone else. In a patent-less sytem, if you invented something there would be nothing keeping Microsoft or IBM or General Electric or name your favorite big company from taking your invention and, using their superior resources, making a better and cheaper product and take away your potential customers.
"Patents are anticapitalist socialist claptrap"
No they are a system which gives limited monopolies over ideas such that they can be treated as property, thus they are 100% in line with capitalism like any other property law. Either you do not have a complete understanding of the patent system or you do not have a complete understanding of the differences between capitalism and socialism.
I am aware that there are arguements against the current patent system along with arguements for it; like almost any controversial issue there are multiple sides. But the argument that patents hurt employment of scientists/engineers is just plain dumb. You do nothing to help your cause by holding on to such a dumb and clearly wrong argument and merely will turn others away from it.
No offense, but thats one of the stupidest things I've heard today. Which get paid more, research scientists in the private industry whose work is generally protected by patents or research scientists in academia whose work is generally not?
If patent law causes private businesses to hire more scientists (which itself is a dubious claim, in reality they would still hire researchers but would keep their work completely closed as trade secrets), that helps employment of scientists. Yes, some businessmen get rich too, but thats a stupid thing to cry about.
Well I don't think the MPAA deserves thanks, Cyberlink does if anyone. The MPAA does not control every company within their industry. They shouldn't be blamed for nor should they recieve credit for Cyberlink's business practices.
And I'm not complaining that its not open source, I'm complaining that I apparently can't purchase their product. I need to install a completely new OS to get it. I wouldn't mind buying PowerDVD for a reasonable price (or having it come with the DVD drive I'm probably going to be purchasing soon) like Windows users do.
Yes, this is news. It is an example of a commericial company making a legal DVD player for Linux (or at least one distro of Linux). MPlayer, along with Xine, Ogle, and the rest, do not fit in that category.
"Open Source/Free Software can be also commercial. Think about Redhat. "
Commercial Red Hat is more than just open source software. It also includes support from the guys in Raleigh. Thats what you end up paying for.
Can I just get the DVD software from CyberLink? I can't find a thing on their site on Linux PowerDVD. I don't really want a new OS, though I wouldn't mind having the legal DVD player.
A better question would be "Why would they?" Its not MS's responsibility to teach their customers how to best use their computer, its their responsibility to sell more software.
Apple doesn't deserve a comparision because Safari isn't nearly as popular as IE. And if you don't know already the differences in the motivations between those who design Linux and those who design Windows I don't why I'm talking to you.
" Your contention is that users are mostly tech idiots"
Well I wouldn't call them idiots any more than I would call myself an idiot for not knowing how to change my car's oil. But, most users are not power users like most/.ers.
"and MS hires software writers whose work sucks."
A bit of a strawman here.
"Any academic institution will also be able to inform you that MS tends to hire their best and brightest."
There are many measures of who is the "best and brightest". My impression of MS, based on meeting the recruiters, was that they hired students who are technically skilled. Their recruiter claimed they didn't even look at GPAs (if they don't respect anything I have done for the past 4 years, well I don't respect anything they have done for the past 4 years) and their interviews are primarily based on coding examples (as opposed to open ended questions asked by companies like IBM) and they didn't seem to put much weight into experience. While writing high school level code quickly and efficiently can be considered by some to be a measure of the "best and brightest", I think there are better indicators.
"Secondly, MS does seem to accept the fact that their prospective users are not technically savvy but doesn't treat them as idiots."
You do realize that the context to what you are replying to is a MS bigwig saying that users choose IE instead of alternate browsers because it is better and not that MS makes interfaces for technically experienced people, right?
"If something came along that was truly much better, MS would sink like anything else."
You are over simplifying. Remember, we are talking about their browser, not their operating system. Well their OS may be the best choice for many computer users and those users usually end up choosing Windows over Mac or Linux. But they generally do not choose a web browser. Most users just use what is there by default, which is almost always IE.
My mom is the exact same way, though I did show her how to use Firefox the other day. Although she was confused when it popped up mozilla.org's homepage and not the normal msn homepage where she can get to her hotmail account. I don't think this is MS's fault any more than it is Honda's fault for me using the car parts they supplied me with (despite the fact that a car expert could have bought new parts after he got the car), but they do need to wake up the fact that not all users have as much of a choice as power users do. When there is a security flaw in their product, many users are put at risk not because of a choice they made but because of MS's error.
Now for a joke. doesn't have much to do with sex, but it is still funny. Female/.ers, especially blonde female/.ers, don't read past this line.
This blonde girls comes home from school and calls to her mom:
"Mommy, mommy, guess what? At school today I could count to 12 when the rest of the class could only count to 10. Is that because I am a blonde?"
The mom replies "Yes dear, its because you are blonde".
The next day she comes home yelling:
"Mommy, mommy, guess what? At school today I knew my ABCs through the letter 'J' while no one else in the class could make it past 'G'. Is that because I'm a blond?"
"Yes dear, thats because you are a blonde."
The next day...
"Mommy, mommy, guess what? At school today I had these huge double D breasts while the rest of the girls were all flat. Is that because I'm a blonde?"
"No dear, thats because you are 22 years old."
The extended versions of the first two were crap. To dispense with all the knee-jerk responses I will be getting: no, I'm not just saying that because I just watched the two movies for the sword fights, and no I can stand movies that are longer than 3 hours (assuming they don't suck), and no I don't hate everything other than the commercialized theatrical versions of movies.
I actually have nothing against director's cuts, often they make a film much better (think "BladeRunner" or "Apocalypse Now"), but these don't appear to be cut at all. Basically they just stuck in all the extra scenes they could find, regardless of whether or not they made the film better. Often this ended up in redundant sequences (the first movie effectively has two opening sequences which is one too many), bad timing (in the original, after Theoden asks "Where is my son", there is a cut to a flower growing on his grave, which I consider very moving. But in the extended edition, they stick a funeral sequence in between the two scenes which, while not a bad scene in itself, screws up the original cut), more deviations from the books (the flashback to Faramir and Boromir just serve to make Faramir look more pathetic), and tedious drawn out scenes (look again at the Faramir/Boromir flashback). Keep in mind, what works great in a book doesn't always work in the theater.
If the cut scenes served the movie well, they would have most likely been kept in the theatrical version. If for some reason the studio forced Jackson to pull a scene or two, he could have included it in a directors cut. But all these extended versions have is everything that did (and probably should have) ended on the cutting room's floor. They are just an excuse for Jackson to sell DVDs at twice the normal cost.
Watch, some mod who foolishly spent extra money on the extended versions will -1 Troll me.
" I have neve had any reason to remember what exact size "A4" or "letter" or whatever paper is."
Good for you. Other people have had reason to know that (or some other measurement).
"These two facts are the problem with imperial units. Nothing else."
But here is the problem. You not only have to show that completely switching to the metric system would bring benefits, but you also have to show that those benefits outweigh the problems that would occur.
If they tried to enforce it, it would be quickly thrown out on the basis that there exists documented prior art. Their patent is really just for show, so it doesn't matter what they do with it. Lempel-Ziv is thus, for all practical matters, in the public domain. Who cares what IBM does with it?
First of all, I don't think anyone is arguing that piracy is the only factor that affects ticket sales.
I think what the MPAA is worried most about piracy is sales of DVDs, not box office sales. Most movie theaters do not show pirated copies of movies and generally speaking people go to the movie theater for different reasons they watch movies at home.
Some may argue that the movie industry should not worry about downloads and instead concentrate on making their buck at the theater, the problem with that is they will be forced to concentrate on movies that have huge opening days but which may not last long in the public's interest.
You do that. If of course you don't mind both memorizing twice as many digits as us and using paper that is 10 times the size of US standard letter paper.
1cm = 10mm genius.
Why don't you learn the metric system before you tell the rest of us to change.
You mean standard A4 size paper. How often is that used in the US? In the US and Canada, standard letter sized paper is 8.5 x 11. True, I could have specified that was what I was talking about, but as this conversation was based on the US changing systems, I thought it would be obvious. Sorry for making that mistake.
Yes, North America could change standard paper sizes as well as measurement standards. But that could screw up many formated documents, paper holders, etc. All so you didn't have to learn that there are 12 inches in a foot. And if you think that is bad, expand that problem beyond paper. Construction supplies (say goodbye to those 2x4s), speed limits (not only would they have to be adjusted, but most cars have speedometers that display as the primary measure), mile markers (there are probably thousands of those littering the land), hell anything that has to do with some sort of measurement would have to be changed. Not just those tables in school books.
Yes, but what you don't seem to understand is that there will be a period of time during the conversion in which there will be serious conversion-related errors, such as the Mars Orbiter mishap. You can't just completely switch systems overnight nowadays any more than we can completely switch from a decimal counting system to a hexadecimal counting system.
Which is easier to remember? 12 inches in a foot, or that a piece of paper is 21.59 cm by 27.94 cm instead of 8.5x11 inches?
Maybe not, but if you ask someone for a good entry-level distro they will most likely respond with something along the lines of Mandrake or Red Had/Fedora. Maybe we should find a new desktop to recommend.
"a) sorry to disapoint you but NASA uses metric too, infact in all sciences metric is used is is only the general population of the US that uses the other system."
Lockheed Martin didn't, which caused some problems with the Mars orbiter a couple of years ago.
"And speaking as a US citizen when well we learn and drop our current system for the metric, a much better system."
I want to know when we will drop that whole stupid decimal system for a better binary or at least hexadecimal system. What, people are used to the base 10 system and changing now would cause mass confusion and major conversion problems? Oh I'm sorry I think I just shot down your idea as well as mine. Oh well, better luck next time.
Slashdot Mirror
Except then there is no motivation for creation. The concept of patents extends property rights to ideas.
The free market is based upon property rights. Without them, it could not function.
"Patents are supposed to be over implementations of ideas, not the ideas themselves. "
The implementations of ideas are the physical products themselves. They are protected by physical property laws. The actual ideas themselves (the inventions) are protected by patents.
" Patents and particularly patent cross-licensing schemes exist to _shield_ incumbents in the market from new entrants."
Also known as the origional inventors. Thus patents help the origional inventors who are scientists and engineers, thus the origional post that I was replying to (and you seem to keep on forgetting about) that contended that patents hurt the employment of scientists and engineers was wrong.
"If you saw me picking some apples from my trees, should I have any right to require you to pick apples from your trees with your feet because I own the right to pick apples with my hands?"
Sure if you can convince a judge that picking apples off of trees with your hands is novel and nonobvious. Good luck.
"But that's the level patents have sunk to in the US today."
Show me an example of a judge enforcing a patent for picking apples off of trees with one's hands.
Unless they sold the patent or gave it to their employer as part of their job (in either case they still benefit from it), they hold it.
I don't know where you are getting your gross over generalization concerning how scientists and engineers act, but it is completely untrue. Scientists and engineers vary in their motivations and opinions and do not subscribe to the group-think attitude you attribute them with. Some support your idealistic goals, many others do not.
Perhaps a rating system for links could be a good idea. For instance if I am browsing a site and at the bottom I see a list of links for further information, it could be useful to have it tell me which are more likely to have good information and which are crap, maybe based on user ratings or scanning the website to see how much information it has (one page with a few paragraphs of text would be less useful than a page containing diagrams, graphics, and a lot more text).
The technology itself isn't protected, the guy inventing it (a.k.a. the scientists and engineers you are so worried about) is.
"My suggestion to you then is to not develop it until you have an assurance that you will get paid."
Then you are even more under the control of the investors.
"You might want to go around and try reading the arguments against these forms of government monopoly grant before you blanketly decide that your view is correct."
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. You might want to do the same.
See what you fail to realize is that barring protections like patents, the only way left to profit from innovation (and like it or not, profit is what puts food on the table for you and your family) is too keep it secret. Instead of applying for patents, companies would instead keep their innovative products as trade secrets and wouldn't let a soul know about them. That would create an even more restrictive world.
You don't have to be. Aside from academia there are many freelance inventors out there, but most only succeed because of protections such as patents. Often they will invent something, patent it, and then sell the rights to the patent to some company with the resources to manufacture and market the end product (if they are rich enough to manufacture and market it themselves or if they can raise enough capital, they can also do it themselves, though I don't believe that is as common).
"IF patents didn't exist, I would be free to combine machinery bought on the free market into new machinery, and resell it for profit."
And you are free to do so in the current system. You just can't rip off someone's idea if they have already patented it. But keep in mind neither can anyone else. In a patent-less sytem, if you invented something there would be nothing keeping Microsoft or IBM or General Electric or name your favorite big company from taking your invention and, using their superior resources, making a better and cheaper product and take away your potential customers.
"Patents are anticapitalist socialist claptrap"
No they are a system which gives limited monopolies over ideas such that they can be treated as property, thus they are 100% in line with capitalism like any other property law. Either you do not have a complete understanding of the patent system or you do not have a complete understanding of the differences between capitalism and socialism.
I am aware that there are arguements against the current patent system along with arguements for it; like almost any controversial issue there are multiple sides. But the argument that patents hurt employment of scientists/engineers is just plain dumb. You do nothing to help your cause by holding on to such a dumb and clearly wrong argument and merely will turn others away from it.
And exactly what does this non-nonsensical rant have to do with employment of scientists?
If patent law causes private businesses to hire more scientists (which itself is a dubious claim, in reality they would still hire researchers but would keep their work completely closed as trade secrets), that helps employment of scientists. Yes, some businessmen get rich too, but thats a stupid thing to cry about.
And I'm not complaining that its not open source, I'm complaining that I apparently can't purchase their product. I need to install a completely new OS to get it. I wouldn't mind buying PowerDVD for a reasonable price (or having it come with the DVD drive I'm probably going to be purchasing soon) like Windows users do.
"Open Source/Free Software can be also commercial. Think about Redhat. "
Commercial Red Hat is more than just open source software. It also includes support from the guys in Raleigh. Thats what you end up paying for.
Can I just get the DVD software from CyberLink? I can't find a thing on their site on Linux PowerDVD. I don't really want a new OS, though I wouldn't mind having the legal DVD player.
A better question would be "Why would they?" Its not MS's responsibility to teach their customers how to best use their computer, its their responsibility to sell more software.
Apple doesn't deserve a comparision because Safari isn't nearly as popular as IE. And if you don't know already the differences in the motivations between those who design Linux and those who design Windows I don't why I'm talking to you.
Well I wouldn't call them idiots any more than I would call myself an idiot for not knowing how to change my car's oil. But, most users are not power users like most /.ers.
"and MS hires software writers whose work sucks."
A bit of a strawman here.
"Any academic institution will also be able to inform you that MS tends to hire their best and brightest."
There are many measures of who is the "best and brightest". My impression of MS, based on meeting the recruiters, was that they hired students who are technically skilled. Their recruiter claimed they didn't even look at GPAs (if they don't respect anything I have done for the past 4 years, well I don't respect anything they have done for the past 4 years) and their interviews are primarily based on coding examples (as opposed to open ended questions asked by companies like IBM) and they didn't seem to put much weight into experience. While writing high school level code quickly and efficiently can be considered by some to be a measure of the "best and brightest", I think there are better indicators.
"Secondly, MS does seem to accept the fact that their prospective users are not technically savvy but doesn't treat them as idiots."
You do realize that the context to what you are replying to is a MS bigwig saying that users choose IE instead of alternate browsers because it is better and not that MS makes interfaces for technically experienced people, right?
"If something came along that was truly much better, MS would sink like anything else."
You are over simplifying. Remember, we are talking about their browser, not their operating system. Well their OS may be the best choice for many computer users and those users usually end up choosing Windows over Mac or Linux. But they generally do not choose a web browser. Most users just use what is there by default, which is almost always IE.
Now for a joke. doesn't have much to do with sex, but it is still funny. Female /.ers, especially blonde female /.ers, don't read past this line.
This blonde girls comes home from school and calls to her mom:
"Mommy, mommy, guess what? At school today I could count to 12 when the rest of the class could only count to 10. Is that because I am a blonde?"
The mom replies "Yes dear, its because you are blonde".
The next day she comes home yelling:
"Mommy, mommy, guess what? At school today I knew my ABCs through the letter 'J' while no one else in the class could make it past 'G'. Is that because I'm a blond?"
"Yes dear, thats because you are a blonde."
The next day...
"Mommy, mommy, guess what? At school today I had these huge double D breasts while the rest of the girls were all flat. Is that because I'm a blonde?"
"No dear, thats because you are 22 years old."
Well what would you have MS do instead? Make mozilla.org the default homepage?
I actually have nothing against director's cuts, often they make a film much better (think "BladeRunner" or "Apocalypse Now"), but these don't appear to be cut at all. Basically they just stuck in all the extra scenes they could find, regardless of whether or not they made the film better. Often this ended up in redundant sequences (the first movie effectively has two opening sequences which is one too many), bad timing (in the original, after Theoden asks "Where is my son", there is a cut to a flower growing on his grave, which I consider very moving. But in the extended edition, they stick a funeral sequence in between the two scenes which, while not a bad scene in itself, screws up the original cut), more deviations from the books (the flashback to Faramir and Boromir just serve to make Faramir look more pathetic), and tedious drawn out scenes (look again at the Faramir/Boromir flashback). Keep in mind, what works great in a book doesn't always work in the theater.
If the cut scenes served the movie well, they would have most likely been kept in the theatrical version. If for some reason the studio forced Jackson to pull a scene or two, he could have included it in a directors cut. But all these extended versions have is everything that did (and probably should have) ended on the cutting room's floor. They are just an excuse for Jackson to sell DVDs at twice the normal cost.
Watch, some mod who foolishly spent extra money on the extended versions will -1 Troll me.
Good for you. Other people have had reason to know that (or some other measurement).
"These two facts are the problem with imperial units. Nothing else."
But here is the problem. You not only have to show that completely switching to the metric system would bring benefits, but you also have to show that those benefits outweigh the problems that would occur.
If they tried to enforce it, it would be quickly thrown out on the basis that there exists documented prior art. Their patent is really just for show, so it doesn't matter what they do with it. Lempel-Ziv is thus, for all practical matters, in the public domain. Who cares what IBM does with it?
I think what the MPAA is worried most about piracy is sales of DVDs, not box office sales. Most movie theaters do not show pirated copies of movies and generally speaking people go to the movie theater for different reasons they watch movies at home.
Some may argue that the movie industry should not worry about downloads and instead concentrate on making their buck at the theater, the problem with that is they will be forced to concentrate on movies that have huge opening days but which may not last long in the public's interest.
1cm = 10mm genius.
Why don't you learn the metric system before you tell the rest of us to change.
Yes, North America could change standard paper sizes as well as measurement standards. But that could screw up many formated documents, paper holders, etc. All so you didn't have to learn that there are 12 inches in a foot. And if you think that is bad, expand that problem beyond paper. Construction supplies (say goodbye to those 2x4s), speed limits (not only would they have to be adjusted, but most cars have speedometers that display as the primary measure), mile markers (there are probably thousands of those littering the land), hell anything that has to do with some sort of measurement would have to be changed. Not just those tables in school books.
Which is easier to remember? 12 inches in a foot, or that a piece of paper is 21.59 cm by 27.94 cm instead of 8.5x11 inches?
Maybe not, but if you ask someone for a good entry-level distro they will most likely respond with something along the lines of Mandrake or Red Had/Fedora. Maybe we should find a new desktop to recommend.
"a) sorry to disapoint you but NASA uses metric too, infact in all sciences metric is used is is only the general population of the US that uses the other system."
Lockheed Martin didn't, which caused some problems with the Mars orbiter a couple of years ago.
"And speaking as a US citizen when well we learn and drop our current system for the metric, a much better system."
I want to know when we will drop that whole stupid decimal system for a better binary or at least hexadecimal system. What, people are used to the base 10 system and changing now would cause mass confusion and major conversion problems? Oh I'm sorry I think I just shot down your idea as well as mine. Oh well, better luck next time.
It does seem like that would be the expectation for a distro billed to be easy for newbies.
Airplane
See, I can type single words too.
You still haven't answered my question.