Your situation is pretty indicative of the entire patent system today. The system is currently stifling innovation, working against small inventors like yourself, stopping you from benefiting from your innovation and helping everyone as a result. If everyone simply followed the old system your idea will essentially go to waste, unused.
You don't have the money to set up a business to take advantage of your idea. You can't use the patent system to try and licence your idea to companies. You cannot benefit from your innovation at all, so why should you bother telling anyone. You gain nothing by revealing what you know, so right now your almost better holding onto your idea without telling anyone. Essentially your ideas are currently going to waste, not doing anything.
This is where free/open source software comes in. If your put your ideas into practice, creating a new app, protocol or integrating your ideas into an existing FOSS application, your ideas are given life, put to use. Because the app is open source, a company cannot take your idea and lock it away for themselves.(I mean GPL here more so than BSD style licences.) Your idea will benefit from community support and feedback, and eventually, if it became popular enough, you as the system expert could set up a company to promote and support your idea. the beauty of this is that while you do not have the initial capital to promote or develop your idea, nonetheless you can get people using it, reducing the risk for when you eventually may decide to take the leap and start on the road of self-employment.
It's good to hear that your not sitting on your idea and will be sharing it at Black Hat. Hopefully we'll see your 0.1 version on Sourceforge soon after! I'd say developing your idea in an open source enviornment will be more rewarding than if you simply got that patent and licenced your idea. You'll have less hassle, will get more out of it, your idea will blossom bigger and faster, and you might make just as much if not more money than if you licenced. You'll certainly make more friends, which I think, (forgive me for being sappy) is more important than hard cash overall!
It's only going to be illegal to give something away for free if both: a) it was a copyright infringement, and b) it was being created Only for the purpose of selling
In that case it's never illegal to give something away for free. One cannot argue that copyrightable works are created solely and completely for the purposes of commercial distrobution. To argue this point dismisses the very worth of copyrighting such ideas of the benefit of all of society. If they arre only made for sale, then society gains no benefit from granting them copyright. All copyrightable works must have some form of technical, artistic or other form of merit of some kind in order to be eligible for copyright.
Also,a ripped mp3 or divx file cannot be argued to have been a product prepared for commercial distrobution. It is a copy unintended for commercial sale, so this law shouldn't really apply.
I love how they've patented a method that is as of yet unimplementable. Regardless of who actually goes to the trouble of researching and spending the time prototyping an idea, patent holders usually get to skim off the cream, because, well.. we thought of it first.
Would some slashdotters please hurry up and patent AI, warp drive and/or superhuman genetic mutation please. Wait! better yet, patent methods for processing the new social security system on a computer! Then deny anyone the right to use it. That ought to make all the old trips on Capitol Hill wake up and notice!!
Why is it that people feel the need for something to be "Hollywoodised" in order to somehow proclaim it's greatness to the world. "They should make a movie of this!" Why? Why is it nessesary to transfer something to the big screen? What is it about a movie that will somehow make something better?
Hollywood rewrites tend to be trite compacted affairs, dumbed down for the censors. They almost invariable bastardise and demean the material they base themselves off. Go ahead mention the Lord of the Rings. I have only one thing to say. The Doom movie will not be set on Mars and there will be no hell demons.
This movie will suck. This is not conjecture. This is solid fact. Trying to compress the entire series(es) of transformers into 109 minutes intended to appeal to the lowest common denominator, WILL result in a dissapointment for fans. the very same fans who keep saying "They should make a movie of this!". Let me tell you something. They shouldn't.
How has this left Linux out in the cold? Because he now has to pay to use BitKeeper? What's wrong with that?
I'd have to agree with this. Essentially those using the free version of Bitkeeper wanted their cake and eat it too. They wanted a commercial product for free but never expected there to be any catches.
In short just as FOSS software can come with a monetary price tag, so too can gratis proprietary software come with it's own, less obvious, method of payment.
Would you believe I went through three years of C++ and java programming and assertions never once came up!? I'm still confused as to exactly what the benefit of assertions are. I mean what exatly does assert() actually do? In other words what's the benefit of using assert(ptr) rather than if(ptr==NULL) or whatever.
I feel so crippled. And just on the matter of exiting gracefully. Exiting is never graceful. Any and all errors are abhorent to the user. Having an app bug out without the slightest hint of what went wrong is even worse.
Jesus! Enough Already!! We've played it. We finished it. It's over! What the hell is with all the attendtion this game has been getting? Did I miss something here? 'Cause I finished it, and it does not deserve anywhere near the hype its gotten. The power of marketing? Well if it is, I'm impressed. One wonders what the same level of marketing will do for Longhorn?
Oh and just to add to the discussion. Here in console gaming land, the bastards call them expansions, but they price them like a full game. In short we can expect to pay 60 euros($80) for the privilage of the disc gracing ours Xboxen. In other words, hell yes it had better be a full game.
Yum WAS very easy to use. Then they changed it to yum 2. Now it sucks. Http errors abound, the app downloads the repos entire primary.xml.gz file EVERY single time it starts, no matter what you are doing, and they still haven't supported download resuming. I'm still waiting for a better updater app for RPM distros. I guess I'll just have to wait a little longer then.
It seems the NZ patent office is taking the USPTO line of granting any patent going, in spite of trivial factors like prior art, gross obviousness and indeed patentability itself.
Your right. Your right. We SHOULD all change our habits to fit the GNOME paradigm, rather than the other way around.
I guess I should stop bitching about how, horrible, nonsensicle, slow, clunky, awkward, unintuative, difficult and inferior spatial browsing is and just brainwash myself into liking, no, adoring the 50+ open windows peppered across all my desktops.
Somewhere down the line, government stopped being about the people, and became about capital.
Somewhere down the line? Governement has ALWAYS been about capital. Governments have always been of the few by the few and for the few. Any benefits the small guys may have expierienced at any time were likely unintended side effects. Most modern free market theories hold that the purpose of government is to facilitate commerce and NOTHING else. They hold that taxation is theft, social programs are criminal, and governments supporting trade unions amounts to treason.
To quote Gekko: Greed works, greed is right. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
It doesn't matter what we do. The commission has been bough and paid for. We're getting patents and no amount of democratic action short of a revolution is going to change it.
Forget staying physically healthy. Like most in our new found 12 hour society, your sanity should now become your primary concern. Alcohol, Nicotine, Valium, Marijuana, Prozac, Cocaine, TV, Glue, Meth, Music and Sex. These are just a few of the distractions you really will have to partake of before you go completely insane. And don't think about cutting back at work! Your in competition with the world for your job now. And the boss is lovin' it!
Maybe if Bungie ported Halo 2 to Linux, then most slashdotters could see that it was just a game like any other and we wouldn't see so many Halo 2 intro/retro/plectro spectives in the games section.
It's a good jack-of-all-trades platform, but I can't see running bloated code, particularly using the CLR.
Cue legions of.Net and Java posters going on and on about how runtime optimisation can actually make c# and java faster than c++. Or whatever. I'm forseeing posts about how in the future all supercomputers will support runtime profiling across the network or some other such rubbish. Dispite the fact that noone has ever shown even a single example of a real world java or c# app using runtime magic pixie dust to run faster and cleaner than its precompiled alternative.
Before you start, parent is correct. CLR will not produce faster code than precompiled language code. It will NOT!
The same country that is leading the way in the privatisation of critical services like water and electricity.
Essentially, private companies are abusing the system through bribery, not only to hold onto existing markets, but to create, from nowhere, markets and demand that otherwise would never have existed.
Slashdot Mirror
Halo 3.
If it has this, it will float. Otherwise it will sink.
QED.
Your situation is pretty indicative of the entire patent system today. The system is currently stifling innovation, working against small inventors like yourself, stopping you from benefiting from your innovation and helping everyone as a result.
If everyone simply followed the old system your idea will essentially go to waste, unused.
You don't have the money to set up a business to take advantage of your idea. You can't use the patent system to try and licence your idea to companies. You cannot benefit from your innovation at all, so why should you bother telling anyone. You gain nothing by revealing what you know, so right now your almost better holding onto your idea without telling anyone. Essentially your ideas are currently going to waste, not doing anything.
This is where free/open source software comes in. If your put your ideas into practice, creating a new app, protocol or integrating your ideas into an existing FOSS application, your ideas are given life, put to use. Because the app is open source, a company cannot take your idea and lock it away for themselves.(I mean GPL here more so than BSD style licences.) Your idea will benefit from community support and feedback, and eventually, if it became popular enough, you as the system expert could set up a company to promote and support your idea. the beauty of this is that while you do not have the initial capital to promote or develop your idea, nonetheless you can get people using it, reducing the risk for when you eventually may decide to take the leap and start on the road of self-employment.
It's good to hear that your not sitting on your idea and will be sharing it at Black Hat. Hopefully we'll see your 0.1 version on Sourceforge soon after! I'd say developing your idea in an open source enviornment will be more rewarding than if you simply got that patent and licenced your idea. You'll have less hassle, will get more out of it, your idea will blossom bigger and faster, and you might make just as much if not more money than if you licenced. You'll certainly make more friends, which I think, (forgive me for being sappy) is more important than hard cash overall!
I'll go you one better and suggest the moment when Cloud removes the visor in the coma flashback.
Oh.....My.......God.......
It's only going to be illegal to give something away for free if both:
a) it was a copyright infringement, and
b) it was being created Only for the purpose of selling
In that case it's never illegal to give something away for free. One cannot argue that copyrightable works are created solely and completely for the purposes of commercial distrobution. To argue this point dismisses the very worth of copyrighting such ideas of the benefit of all of society. If they arre only made for sale, then society gains no benefit from granting them copyright. All copyrightable works must have some form of technical, artistic or other form of merit of some kind in order to be eligible for copyright.
Also,a ripped mp3 or divx file cannot be argued to have been a product prepared for commercial distrobution. It is a copy unintended for commercial sale, so this law shouldn't really apply.
Like gaurding against terrorists, the anti-patent crowd must stay lucky all the time. The patent lobbiests need only get lucky once.
They will just keep trying and trying, and once they have obtained software patents in a country, it becomes well nigh impossible to dislodge them.
The price of patentless software is eternal donation supported lobbying against all-consuming mega corperations.
I love how they've patented a method that is as of yet unimplementable. Regardless of who actually goes to the trouble of researching and spending the time prototyping an idea, patent holders usually get to skim off the cream, because, well.. we thought of it first.
Would some slashdotters please hurry up and patent AI, warp drive and/or superhuman genetic mutation please. Wait! better yet, patent methods for processing the new social security system on a computer! Then deny anyone the right to use it. That ought to make all the old trips on Capitol Hill wake up and notice!!
Why is it that people feel the need for something to be "Hollywoodised" in order to somehow proclaim it's greatness to the world. "They should make a movie of this!" Why? Why is it nessesary to transfer something to the big screen? What is it about a movie that will somehow make something better?
Hollywood rewrites tend to be trite compacted affairs, dumbed down for the censors. They almost invariable bastardise and demean the material they base themselves off. Go ahead mention the Lord of the Rings. I have only one thing to say. The Doom movie will not be set on Mars and there will be no hell demons.
This movie will suck. This is not conjecture. This is solid fact. Trying to compress the entire series(es) of transformers into 109 minutes intended to appeal to the lowest common denominator, WILL result in a dissapointment for fans. the very same fans who keep saying "They should make a movie of this!". Let me tell you something. They shouldn't.
Be careful what you wish for.
How has this left Linux out in the cold? Because he now has to pay to use BitKeeper? What's wrong with that?
I'd have to agree with this. Essentially those using the free version of Bitkeeper wanted their cake and eat it too. They wanted a commercial product for free but never expected there to be any catches.
In short just as FOSS software can come with a monetary price tag, so too can gratis proprietary software come with it's own, less obvious, method of payment.
Would you believe I went through three years of C++ and java programming and assertions never once came up!?
I'm still confused as to exactly what the benefit of assertions are. I mean what exatly does assert() actually do? In other words what's the benefit of using assert(ptr) rather than if(ptr==NULL) or whatever.
I feel so crippled.
And just on the matter of exiting gracefully. Exiting is never graceful. Any and all errors are abhorent to the user. Having an app bug out without the slightest hint of what went wrong is even worse.
You are bullshitting.
g++ is second ONLY to the intel c++ compiler and the margin is VERY small. g++ 4 has closed it considerably.
In short, we can all look forward to a future where freedom isn't a right.
It's a service that's offered, for a price.
Yet Another Slashdot Halo 2 Article.
Jesus! Enough Already!! We've played it. We finished it. It's over! What the hell is with all the attendtion this game has been getting? Did I miss something here? 'Cause I finished it, and it does not deserve anywhere near the hype its gotten. The power of marketing? Well if it is, I'm impressed. One wonders what the same level of marketing will do for Longhorn?
Oh and just to add to the discussion. Here in console gaming land, the bastards call them expansions, but they price them like a full game. In short we can expect to pay 60 euros($80) for the privilage of the disc gracing ours Xboxen. In other words, hell yes it had better be a full game.
Yum WAS very easy to use. Then they changed it to yum 2. Now it sucks. Http errors abound, the app downloads the repos entire primary.xml.gz file EVERY single time it starts, no matter what you are doing, and they still haven't supported download resuming.
I'm still waiting for a better updater app for RPM distros. I guess I'll just have to wait a little longer then.
It seems the NZ patent office is taking the USPTO line of granting any patent going,
in spite of trivial factors like prior art, gross obviousness and indeed patentability itself.
Your right. Your right.
We SHOULD all change our habits to fit the GNOME paradigm, rather than the other way around.
I guess I should stop bitching about how, horrible, nonsensicle, slow, clunky, awkward, unintuative, difficult and inferior spatial browsing is and just brainwash myself into liking, no, adoring the 50+ open windows peppered across all my desktops.
Women _are_ smarter than men.
Somewhere down the line, government stopped being about the people, and became about capital.
Somewhere down the line? Governement has ALWAYS been about capital. Governments have always been of the few by the few and for the few. Any benefits the small guys may have expierienced at any time were likely unintended side effects.
Most modern free market theories hold that the purpose of government is to facilitate commerce and NOTHING else. They hold that taxation is theft, social programs are criminal, and governments supporting trade unions amounts to treason.
To quote Gekko:
Greed works, greed is right. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
It doesn't matter what we do.
The commission has been bough and paid for. We're getting patents and no amount of democratic action short of a revolution is going to change it.
This is beginning to sound a lot like..... *tape*
Dear god help us!
Forget staying physically healthy.
Like most in our new found 12 hour society, your sanity should now become your primary concern. Alcohol, Nicotine, Valium, Marijuana, Prozac, Cocaine, TV, Glue, Meth, Music and Sex. These are just a few of the distractions you really will have to partake of before you go completely insane.
And don't think about cutting back at work! Your in competition with the world for your job now. And the boss is lovin' it!
probably just a bullet in the head and a shallow grave somewhere in the Afghanistan plains
What makes you think this shouldn't happen to incompetant corperate execs?
Maybe if Bungie ported Halo 2 to Linux, then most slashdotters could see that it was just a game like any other and we wouldn't see so many Halo 2 intro/retro/plectro spectives in the games section.
it shows potential employers that you code for the sake of coding and not for the monetary profit gained by coding
In other words, employers will think:
"Hey! What the hell am I paying all these other chumps for? This Guys givin it away FOR FREE!!!"
It's a good jack-of-all-trades platform, but I can't see running bloated code, particularly using the CLR.
.Net and Java posters going on and on about how runtime optimisation can actually make c# and java faster than c++. Or whatever. I'm forseeing posts about how in the future all supercomputers will support runtime profiling across the network or some other such rubbish. Dispite the fact that noone has ever shown even a single example of a real world java or c# app using runtime magic pixie dust to run faster and cleaner than its precompiled alternative.
Cue legions of
Before you start, parent is correct. CLR will not produce faster code than precompiled language code. It will NOT!
The same country that is leading the way in the privatisation of critical services like water and electricity.
Essentially, private companies are abusing the system through bribery, not only to hold onto existing markets, but to create, from nowhere, markets and demand that otherwise would never have existed.