If the telcos push this too hard I can't wait for GoogleNet. Pay for unlimited service, or enjoy the Internet, free of charge, witha google ad on the top of every page or some such.
Generally, Google can be said to do great things because they find information that isn't currently being used and then utilize that information at a huge scale. That produces some amazing results. Everyone wins (except for maybe their competitors).
This is a question of policy, not a technical advancement. Some users are being subsidized by other users. Yes, that's you with the P2P client. Probably many Slashdotters are being subsidized by other users today, which is probably why the idea isn't popular here.
However, in terms of efficiency for the industry, it's a good thing. You want to not force people to pay for what they aren't themselves using. My parents barely use the Internet at all -- why should they be forced to pay for the dozens of gigs a month the kid down the block is pulling down? You want to encourage people not to waste bandwidth -- this will help promote network-friendly software and behavior.
Plus, if the tiers get fine-grained enough, they'd be great for techies. Right now, there is a very, very rough-grained tiering currently happening at most ISPs. You have "business class" and "home class". Unfortunately, most techies wind up uncomfortably best fit by "business class" service. They'd like to have multiple static IP addresses, they don't want any ports to be blocked in or out, they don't really give a damn about the ISP's webmail, and so forth. They don't need technical support, and don't really want to subsidize the cost of having some minimum-wage worker repeat -- for the thousandth time -- his troubleshooting flowchart to Joe Sixpack.
The problem is, "business class" service is expensive. Bob Techie isn't actually much more expensive to service than a typical residential user, but he currently gets lumped in with businesses in terms of what he values.
Second, I'm hoping against hope that maybe some ISPs will start offering QoS as part of their tiered packages. That would be *fantastic*. It's in everyone's interest to provide a little extra information that lets routers handle their data more efficiently. If I get, say, 100MB of high-priority data (ToS bit set in the IP header for minimize latency, a la ssh, ftp control, and so forth) a month with my tier, I can get really good performance on the things that I care about -- like, say, playing network games with extremely low latency or sshing into another machine. I don't really care, in comparison, how long it takes my mailserver to shove some mail out. I'm perfectly happy to mark that as "low priority" (or rather, just use software that already does so). P2P software doesn't need high priority, and is there to soak up any available excess bandwidth, and should definitely be low priority.
Screw that. It sounds like a patent abusers' wet dream.
No. It was just written *solely* from the standpoint of large patent-producing companies who want to produce a stream of patents to maintain ogliopolies (such as is the case in the GPU, CPU, and hard drive industries).
The concerns that it addresses are those of Microsoft or IBM -- worries that patent-holding companies will simply obtain a bunch of patents and then try to play the lottery with large companies.
It does absolutely nothing for the open source developer (and in many ways, makes his life more difficult). It increases the number of patents instead of decreasing them, making it even less possible for even an expert in the field to know what is patented -- good for an incumbent in a field who cross-licenses with everyone else, awful for a challenger in the field.
It does not reduce the length that a tech patent can last.
The issue of "presumption of validity" is a nonissue from a standpoint of someone who must go to court at all.
This is simply not even remotely a fix for the patent problems. This is patent reform as fits the needs of Microsoft and IBM, not individual engineers who just wish that the mass of patent-filers would simply leave them alone and let them build software without worrying about whether or not their latest system is legal or not.
Here's some proposals *I* have (that, I am sure, IBM and Microsoft have little interest in lobbying for):
*) Prevent patent-holders from obtaining injunctions against the sale of an infringing product, and limit damages to actual direct monetary profit from an infringing product. Result? Open source authors who are simply giving away their effort don't have to worry about what's going on in the corporate world. It would never happen, of course -- Microsoft would quash anything like this long before it hit Congress. It also doesn't protect people like Mandrake, who charge a fee to get a pressed CD.
*) Make someone filing a losing patent infringement lawsuit liable for treble legal fees. That'd put a kink in the willingness of companies to sue (and people to worry about getting sued), if people who were getting falsely sued could *profit* from it. You want to sue based on a patent, make damn sure that you're right before doing so.
*) Allow future patents (it's unreasonable to retroactively apply this, since patent holders would never accept it) to be revoked during a challenge based on a criteria of whether, given the problem that the patent solves, the patent is a logical and immediate solution for someone versed in the field.
*) Allow examples of prior art to be attached to patent applications (not gonna happen -- there are too many) and patents (good idea, and IBM likes it, but not a complete solution) at the USPTO.
What I'd really like to see is software patents just going away. I've yet to see a compelling defense of software patents -- just vague insinuations that they are "necessary for innovation". If you have the ability to produce a real, valuable, significant advancement in software, if this isn't just an attempt to corner a chunk of the market because you filed some papers, you can also almost certainly produce a piece of software and make money on this software.
As far as software is concerned, and perhaps some other idiotic types of IP (like copyright on the "appearance" of a building in a public location), is to ELIMINATE it.
Yes.
This proposal is not a good idea.
Let's look at what is wrong with it, from the point of view of an engineer:
(a) It adds more complexity to the system. We already have the issue that Lawyers are necessary to do anything, that many people do not understand how the existing system works, and that it is goddamn expensive to handle arguments over who owns what. This makes the problem only worse, by adding *another* class of patents to the mix (which are irritatingly presented as being a stepping stool to obtaining a "regular" patent). The only winner in a situation like this is a patent lawyer, who will obtain more billable hours from companies producing software.
(b) It makes software patents even *easier* to get. The problem is that patents cover too many things, not that it's hard to get a patent. There are *huge* swaths of possible inventions that are covered with patent lawsuits for anyone who comes through. Again, only winners here are patent lawyers.
(c) Who gives a damn about "assumption of validity", which is what the author seems to be trying to address? You can already file a counterclaim (though I agree that the economics of this rather suck). Somehow, though, someone versed in the field and the legalities involved needs to enter the picture here and decide whether the patent is valid or not. That sounds a lot like either trying to get the USPTO to fund lawyers or having to shell out even more to lawyers. That's hardly fix for inefficiency in the tech world. The problem is not limited to patents with prior art being granted (though that is *part* of the problem, yes). What about patents that are granted, have never been done before, but simply should not exist in a sane system? The problem is that right now, as long as a patent is not a trivial modification of an existing patent, it's patentable. There is no question of whether or not any expert in the field would produce the same solution in five minutes, given the same problem. *That* is the problem.
(d) It does not eliminate a *single* potential for abuse. The author is very friendly to filers -- he merely offers them more choices (and, actually, filers now have the ability to obtain *both* types of patents to cover "inventions"). We are left with his assumption that filers are benign, and that given a more community-friendly option, they will use it. That is just plain ridiculous. People filing BS patents today are doing so because they can get away with abusing the system. The existing loopholes need to be *closed*. No more patents for something that gets produced during day-to-day work from a techie. It does not reduce the maximum length of a tech patent. It does not make it harder to get tech patents. The only thing it does is provide another "patent pending" like document, which simply makes life easier for companies to lock down more IP. The fact that this is being presented as a solution to patent abuse is absurd.
(e) I disagree with the author that "scrapping software patents altogether is not the solution". I am very, very unconvinced that patents do anything to actually drive true advancement in the software industry. The people coming up with clever new software systems are out putting together said systems, not filling out forms and trying to squeeze settlements out of people actually building new systems. It is cheap to build a software system (compared to, say, constructing factories to build a new type of plow), so the need for a goverment-granted monopoly beyond first mover benefit is dubious. The life of a copy of a software package is short, so it is dubious that 20 years is remotely acceptable for the length of a monopoly in this industry. Software is far more difficult to reverse engineer than anything else in the world. Anyone who sees a new plow design can simply clone it.
It's the claims, not the general description, that are the enforceable part of the patent.
Yes, which is why I quoted the first of the claims, and no text from the abstract. The fact that the patent was accepted means that a monopoly claim on what I *just* wrote was accepted.
Yes, that's why I had the "effectively" in there. Homebrew applications are just not going to be a major factor in determining how influential the PSP is.
Contrast this to the Apple II or with Linux distros, which shipped with a development environment and easy mechanisms to produce, debug, distribute, and use software.
1. A system for transmitting information from one of a plurality of originating processors contained in an electronic mail system to at least one of a plurality of destination processors contained in an electronic mail system with the information including originated information originating from one of the plurality of originating processors and being transmitted by an RF information transmission network to at least one of the plurality of destination processors and other originated information originating from one of the originating processors is transmitted with the electronic mail system without using the RF information transmission network to at least one of the destination processors comprising:
at least one interface, one of the at least one interface connecting the electronic mail system containing the plurality of originating processors to the RF information transmission network; and wherein
the originated information is transmitted in association with an address of the one interface from the one of the plurality of originating processors to the one interface with the electronic mail system responding to the address of the one interface to direct the originated information from the one of the plurality of originating processors to the one interface; and
the originated information is transmitted from the one of the at least one interface to the RF information transmission network with an address of the at least one of the plurality of destination processors to receive the originated information being added at the originating processor originating the originated information, or by either the electronic mail system that contains the plurality of originating processors or the one interface.
So, basically, written as confusingly as possible, these turkeys have filed for a patent that covers any email system in which some information is sent via RF and some is not and the devices involved have addresses. The last is pretty much a given, and the first is pretty straightforward.
I'm serious. Advances in device development simply do not require patents. This is stupid. Why should anyone be granted a monopoly over this? Why does the production of RF devices require a patent at all? Say I'm an engineer. I want to send email from a mobile computer (hardly a stretch to envision). So I select a data transmission medium. Well, there's RF, IR, etc. These all have different properties. I choose the one that is most appropriate -- RF.
Yes, this patent got thrown out, but what I'm saying is that this is not a field in which patents -- guaranteed, time-limited government monopolies -- are necessary to produce advancements. The lifecycle of a new device is mayb
The intention is to reduce the number of licensors to a manageable level, to lock out 'hobbyists' and other entities that Microsoft doesn't want to have to trouble itself with."
If it turns out that hobbyists are a bad thing, then the market will demonstrate that. There's no need to act as if your rights are being suppressed.
Sometimes hobbyists are phenomenal for a platform (the Apple II platform, Linux). Sometimes they don't seem to provide enough benefit to be essential. Game consoles are effectively closed to hobbyists and despite the degree of amateur work, Flash was never really a free platform to seriously develop for.
The only area in which I can think of that this isn't true is when monopolies exist (such as the cell phone market, where cell providers can force the platform closed by requiring that anyone that uses their services provide only a closed platform).
Anyone can sit down and provide something an an encoded audio and video format. There are a lot more MPEG-based players out there than anything else, and it's not as if hobbyists can't produce content for these. Microsoft's chosen their market (at least in the short term). Let them play with the idea and see whether it pans out.
no game can live up to expectations of a 10 year wait.
Forget that -- I want to know why anyone expects DNF to live up to the standards of a *regular* game. Why would DNF be an exceptional game? Because it has the same name and possibly a few characters as an ancient game?
Sequels make sense when they're truly related to the earlier work. Bungie's Marathon series was good right through the series. That was because the game design was still fairly new and interesting for the time, and the same team was working on the games. It was legitimate both to expect "more of same" from the same people, and that "more of same" would be a good thing.
But, while I'm not familiar with DNF development, I doubt that the same team is working on the second game -- and that's what makes the game good, the artists and musicians and programmers and writers. Even if it was the same collection of people, I'm not sure that a team that could produce "more of same" would be a good thing.
I've only played a little Duke Nukem 3D, but I remember that the game was mostly notable for its simple, crude humor and its ability to allow you to have simple interactions with objects. (And according to WP, the mundane environments, instead of Quake's fantastic ones.) None of this is exceptional any more. The only "edge" that I would expect DNF to have over any other modern game is that some of its marketing work will have been done for it -- people with fond memories of Duke Nukem 3D might remember the name and want to buy it. Possibly that means that a smaller percentage of the funding need be blown on marketing for DNF.
Other than that, there's no reason to expect that DNF would be better than any other new game coming out.
Furthermore, DNF has constraints on it that a new game does not. This is most commmonly visible (in an extreme form) in "video games of movies". Most people who follow the video game industry know that video games based on movies tend to review rather badly. Some of this is undoubtedly due to time pressure, but I would suggest that some of it is because the game developers are constrained to follow the movie and figure out ways to incorporate the movie into the game, instead of having no restrictions on their ability to do what is necessary to develop a good game. This restriction, to a lesser degree, is present in game sequels like DNF. (Plus, these video games based on movies have the same marketing edge that DNF can be expected to have, yet they are frequently pretty bad.)
So I just can't see why anyone would expect DNF to be a particularly good game any more than I would expect a modern remake of a classic movie to be any better than any other modern movie.
Sometimes it's nice to just let pleasant memories lie and go on to producing new, different ones...
This all makes sense. It is the job of Congress to represent US interests. That is not the job of Google and Microsoft (nor do I think that it's reasonable to expect Google and MS to expend their resources fighting these wars, which have no benefit for either of them).
The people in China lack certain rights and expectations that we have in the United States. If they get ticked off enough about it, they'll do something about it.
For those not familiar with the history of cell communications in China, back when, China had something like four companies bid on the ability to set up cell service in China. China wanted the ability to monitor all calls. Three of them said that they'd do call management work through their own existing infrastructure (in the US), and one (the winning one) offered to allow China to run everything through Bejing.
Now, those three companies suffered a big loss because they didn't want to play ball with China.
Google is not doing anything that is not expected of a typical company in China. If the people there want change, it's hardly up to the United States or the influence of US-based companies to impose that social change. The reason we have these expectations is because someone here fought for them.
Sorry, China, but if you don't like the policies of your leadership, you need to either convince that leadership that those policies are a bad idea or overthrow said leadership.
If the Soviet Union controlled all the television companies at one point, and they insisted on shoving communist propaganda over TVs in the US if people in the US wanted TV content from them, it's a good guess that the US government wouldn't buy into it. Companies don't produce social change -- they simply reflect it. People in China have to decide that they want something firmly enough to demand it of their leadership.
Frankly, I consider the expectation here that Google use its influence to produce change in China (despite the wishes of its leadership) to be on par with the expectation that we produce change in Iraq. Deciding that someone is misguided and just needs a little forcible "help" from the outside is a dangerous conclusion to make.
The US has lots of ideological differences from other countries. It's sexually repressive, allows media endorsement of violence, theologically-influenced, and less socialized. While I dislike some of these themes, I also don't want, say, France to be the one to try to change them (nor do I think that that would work well). People's ideas need to evolve on their own.
Software, like any form of technology, is just a tool. It will undoubtedly be used for purposes that turn out to be disapproved of and stopped by society, and others that turn out to be a net benefit. Sooner or later, people will fix any problems that arise.
You aren't going to *stop* someone from using software to do anything, so why try to use peer pressure to prevent them from doing so? Me saying nasty things about some Linux guy that works at a defense contractor isn't going to do anything to actually, y'know, reduce the use of Linux in weaponry.
Nor will war or killing people be stopped by attempting to withhold the very latest, most efficient technology from those who want to use it to impose force upon others. A human can kill another with their bare hands, if necessary.
Thus, the question becomes "Would I prefer to have lots of my tax dollars being flushed down the toilet at a defense contractor so that some developers there can reimplement an OS, or would I prefer to have that paid-for-effort used in something like Linux, where everyone can benefit from improvements?"
That question is pretty easy to answer, in my opinion.
Except for the occasional unique content like interviews, doesnt this describe Slashdot? Along with Fark, Digg and countless blogs whose entire sites who report what others are reporting, except they use people instead of Google's crawlers.
How much money do you think CT and friends make off of Slashdot? I don't follow it, but I'd assume that Slashdot is profitable, but probably not something that is going to make the Slashdot editorial staff all multimillionaires.
Google, on the other hand, this the darling of the tech industry after the dot-com blowout. Every business rag has run a story on Google.
Now, if you're a publisher, wouldn't you throw some money into a pool to get some lawyers working on even a 10% chance at a piece of that pie?
Are they going to win? I doubt it. Do they want Google to stop linking to them? Hell no. It's just a grab at a small chance at a lot of money.
The even worse thing is that Slashdot trolls are a whole hell of a lot better at writing content that starts off plausible-sounding than our national leaders. The CongressTrolls, on the other hand, made tons of blatant edits that managed to get them banned.
It's not just that the people running the country are trolls. It's that they're incompetent trolls. Surely, if you work in politics, you'd be expected to know how to manipulate public opinion, write and speak convincingly, and know how to convey an image. I would think that if you possess these fairly basic skills, that you'd be a good troll.
Okay, I *like* WINE. It's a great piece of software, and very useful. But it doesn't make Linux a drop-in Windows replacement. If you decide "Gee, I think I should use Linux as a desktop" (I do), then it's icing on the cake if WINE runs something. It's not reasonable to simply expect a given piece of software to run flawlessly under WINE, though.
That's not unusual -- choosing the incumbent as a baseline is hardly an unreasonable choice if you are trying to do performance comparisons against a challenger.
Take Ann Coulter for instance. Her grasp of reality (or at least the difference between truth and fiction) is minimal at best.
I doubt that. I put Ann Coulter in the same bin as professional wrestlers. I have no doubt that Ms. Coulter is indeed a neoconservative (social conservative, fiscal liberal), but when she gets on TV and makes outrageous claims to tick some people off and gratify others, she is being an actor and an entertainer. The majority of what she says is extreme hyperbole. She can make a career off of exaggeration, and is doing exactly that.
Michael Moore does the same thing (though he tends to stick more to specifically attacking Bush and friends than Coulter, who has a habit of attacking this vast and twisted monster that she's built called "the liberal"). He's making a good living doing what he's doing.
Let's work out the morals in the general case before moving on to boundary conditions.
Why? The rules apply to the 17-year-old case as well, and if we identify a problem with them there, one can imagine that they should indeed be modified.
Look, I don't like this either, but I can't figure out why, whenever anyone does *anything* wrong, people call for that person to be fired. Being fired sucks, especially if you have kids and a house and can't move easily.
WP has successfully brought the profile of this up to Slashdot front-page level, and the mainstream news organizations are picking up on it. I'm sure that Vogel regrets the PR. It's unlikely that he's going to do the same thing again, and it's a good bet that the other House staffers have heard about this. So what's the deal with firing him?
Actually, I've been stunned by the quality and neutrality of some of the work of WP people who are very young. (Or at least claim to be -- I guess there could be a lot of people just claiming to be young teens.) They are literate, have good grammar and spelling, and patiently maintain pages.
While there are young open source software authors, usually it isn't until the late teens that you see significant and impressive work.
The other day, I noticed someone correcting and maintaining the Windows Vista WP page. He claims to be 15 -- not bad work, given the degree of vandalism that I'd expect this page to attract.
Oh, and there is lots of evidence showing links between the Saddam's government and Al Qaeda. You may choose not to believe them (it's called "confirmation bias") but it certainly is not a silly or incorrect thing for people who *do* believe them to put them in! But let's not start a thread about whether my assertion of that is true or not, because few who care enough to post are open minded enough to change their opinion based on whatever anyone says on Slashdot.
You're right. I don't believe that the moon is made of green cheese, either.
Furthermore, in 2005, Senator Coburn was voted the most annoying Senator by his peers in Congress. This was due to Senator Coburn being a huge douche-bag. In the August edition of Roll Call, the senator was voted "most likely to get his arse kicked by hill a hill staffer over recess". He gladly accepted this honor saying "I completely expect to get my arse kicked because I suck at life".
This reads like an "article" by a Senator in The Onion or something.
That's actually one thing that surprises me about WP that differs from the software development world. WP is surprisingly (to me, at least) under-automated. You don't have a particularly nice environment to edit articles in, you have to revert things manually, "Talk" is kind of ad-hoc (not exactly Slashcode), etc. It's weird to see problems being solved by policy instead of technical fixes.
Obviously, it's an effective tool that is usable by many people, but it feels like I'm missing tools when I use WP.
Slashdot Mirror
If the telcos push this too hard I can't wait for GoogleNet. Pay for unlimited service, or enjoy the Internet, free of charge, witha google ad on the top of every page or some such.
Generally, Google can be said to do great things because they find information that isn't currently being used and then utilize that information at a huge scale. That produces some amazing results. Everyone wins (except for maybe their competitors).
This is a question of policy, not a technical advancement. Some users are being subsidized by other users. Yes, that's you with the P2P client. Probably many Slashdotters are being subsidized by other users today, which is probably why the idea isn't popular here.
However, in terms of efficiency for the industry, it's a good thing. You want to not force people to pay for what they aren't themselves using. My parents barely use the Internet at all -- why should they be forced to pay for the dozens of gigs a month the kid down the block is pulling down? You want to encourage people not to waste bandwidth -- this will help promote network-friendly software and behavior.
Plus, if the tiers get fine-grained enough, they'd be great for techies. Right now, there is a very, very rough-grained tiering currently happening at most ISPs. You have "business class" and "home class". Unfortunately, most techies wind up uncomfortably best fit by "business class" service. They'd like to have multiple static IP addresses, they don't want any ports to be blocked in or out, they don't really give a damn about the ISP's webmail, and so forth. They don't need technical support, and don't really want to subsidize the cost of having some minimum-wage worker repeat -- for the thousandth time -- his troubleshooting flowchart to Joe Sixpack.
The problem is, "business class" service is expensive. Bob Techie isn't actually much more expensive to service than a typical residential user, but he currently gets lumped in with businesses in terms of what he values.
Second, I'm hoping against hope that maybe some ISPs will start offering QoS as part of their tiered packages. That would be *fantastic*. It's in everyone's interest to provide a little extra information that lets routers handle their data more efficiently. If I get, say, 100MB of high-priority data (ToS bit set in the IP header for minimize latency, a la ssh, ftp control, and so forth) a month with my tier, I can get really good performance on the things that I care about -- like, say, playing network games with extremely low latency or sshing into another machine. I don't really care, in comparison, how long it takes my mailserver to shove some mail out. I'm perfectly happy to mark that as "low priority" (or rather, just use software that already does so). P2P software doesn't need high priority, and is there to soak up any available excess bandwidth, and should definitely be low priority.
Screw that. It sounds like a patent abusers' wet dream.
No. It was just written *solely* from the standpoint of large patent-producing companies who want to produce a stream of patents to maintain ogliopolies (such as is the case in the GPU, CPU, and hard drive industries).
The concerns that it addresses are those of Microsoft or IBM -- worries that patent-holding companies will simply obtain a bunch of patents and then try to play the lottery with large companies.
It does absolutely nothing for the open source developer (and in many ways, makes his life more difficult). It increases the number of patents instead of decreasing them, making it even less possible for even an expert in the field to know what is patented -- good for an incumbent in a field who cross-licenses with everyone else, awful for a challenger in the field.
It does not reduce the length that a tech patent can last.
The issue of "presumption of validity" is a nonissue from a standpoint of someone who must go to court at all.
This is simply not even remotely a fix for the patent problems. This is patent reform as fits the needs of Microsoft and IBM, not individual engineers who just wish that the mass of patent-filers would simply leave them alone and let them build software without worrying about whether or not their latest system is legal or not.
Here's some proposals *I* have (that, I am sure, IBM and Microsoft have little interest in lobbying for):
*) Prevent patent-holders from obtaining injunctions against the sale of an infringing product, and limit damages to actual direct monetary profit from an infringing product. Result? Open source authors who are simply giving away their effort don't have to worry about what's going on in the corporate world. It would never happen, of course -- Microsoft would quash anything like this long before it hit Congress. It also doesn't protect people like Mandrake, who charge a fee to get a pressed CD.
*) Make someone filing a losing patent infringement lawsuit liable for treble legal fees. That'd put a kink in the willingness of companies to sue (and people to worry about getting sued), if people who were getting falsely sued could *profit* from it. You want to sue based on a patent, make damn sure that you're right before doing so.
*) Allow future patents (it's unreasonable to retroactively apply this, since patent holders would never accept it) to be revoked during a challenge based on a criteria of whether, given the problem that the patent solves, the patent is a logical and immediate solution for someone versed in the field.
*) Allow examples of prior art to be attached to patent applications (not gonna happen -- there are too many) and patents (good idea, and IBM likes it, but not a complete solution) at the USPTO.
What I'd really like to see is software patents just going away. I've yet to see a compelling defense of software patents -- just vague insinuations that they are "necessary for innovation". If you have the ability to produce a real, valuable, significant advancement in software, if this isn't just an attempt to corner a chunk of the market because you filed some papers, you can also almost certainly produce a piece of software and make money on this software.
As far as software is concerned, and perhaps some other idiotic types of IP (like copyright on the "appearance" of a building in a public location), is to ELIMINATE it.
Yes.
This proposal is not a good idea.
Let's look at what is wrong with it, from the point of view of an engineer:
(a) It adds more complexity to the system. We already have the issue that Lawyers are necessary to do anything, that many people do not understand how the existing system works, and that it is goddamn expensive to handle arguments over who owns what. This makes the problem only worse, by adding *another* class of patents to the mix (which are irritatingly presented as being a stepping stool to obtaining a "regular" patent). The only winner in a situation like this is a patent lawyer, who will obtain more billable hours from companies producing software.
(b) It makes software patents even *easier* to get. The problem is that patents cover too many things, not that it's hard to get a patent. There are *huge* swaths of possible inventions that are covered with patent lawsuits for anyone who comes through. Again, only winners here are patent lawyers.
(c) Who gives a damn about "assumption of validity", which is what the author seems to be trying to address? You can already file a counterclaim (though I agree that the economics of this rather suck). Somehow, though, someone versed in the field and the legalities involved needs to enter the picture here and decide whether the patent is valid or not. That sounds a lot like either trying to get the USPTO to fund lawyers or having to shell out even more to lawyers. That's hardly fix for inefficiency in the tech world. The problem is not limited to patents with prior art being granted (though that is *part* of the problem, yes). What about patents that are granted, have never been done before, but simply should not exist in a sane system? The problem is that right now, as long as a patent is not a trivial modification of an existing patent, it's patentable. There is no question of whether or not any expert in the field would produce the same solution in five minutes, given the same problem. *That* is the problem.
(d) It does not eliminate a *single* potential for abuse. The author is very friendly to filers -- he merely offers them more choices (and, actually, filers now have the ability to obtain *both* types of patents to cover "inventions"). We are left with his assumption that filers are benign, and that given a more community-friendly option, they will use it. That is just plain ridiculous. People filing BS patents today are doing so because they can get away with abusing the system. The existing loopholes need to be *closed*. No more patents for something that gets produced during day-to-day work from a techie. It does not reduce the maximum length of a tech patent. It does not make it harder to get tech patents. The only thing it does is provide another "patent pending" like document, which simply makes life easier for companies to lock down more IP. The fact that this is being presented as a solution to patent abuse is absurd.
(e) I disagree with the author that "scrapping software patents altogether is not the solution". I am very, very unconvinced that patents do anything to actually drive true advancement in the software industry. The people coming up with clever new software systems are out putting together said systems, not filling out forms and trying to squeeze settlements out of people actually building new systems. It is cheap to build a software system (compared to, say, constructing factories to build a new type of plow), so the need for a goverment-granted monopoly beyond first mover benefit is dubious. The life of a copy of a software package is short, so it is dubious that 20 years is remotely acceptable for the length of a monopoly in this industry. Software is far more difficult to reverse engineer than anything else in the world. Anyone who sees a new plow design can simply clone it.
It's the claims, not the general description, that are the enforceable part of the patent.
Yes, which is why I quoted the first of the claims, and no text from the abstract. The fact that the patent was accepted means that a monopoly claim on what I *just* wrote was accepted.
No, no. Not the "awesome" meaning of fantastic, the "fantasy-esque" meaning.
Shoulda used a better choice of words.
Yes, that's why I had the "effectively" in there. Homebrew applications are just not going to be a major factor in determining how influential the PSP is.
Contrast this to the Apple II or with Linux distros, which shipped with a development environment and easy mechanisms to produce, debug, distribute, and use software.
Wouldn't it have been easier to just disallow patenting this in the *first* place?
The five patents are 5,625,670, 5,631,946, 5,819,172,
6,067,451,
and 6,317,592.
Let's take a look at the first of these patents:
1. A system for transmitting information from one of a plurality of originating processors contained in an electronic mail system to at least one of a plurality of destination processors contained in an electronic mail system with the information including originated information originating from one of the plurality of originating processors and being transmitted by an RF information transmission network to at least one of the plurality of destination processors and other originated information originating from one of the originating processors is transmitted with the electronic mail system without using the RF information transmission network to at least one of the destination processors comprising:
at least one interface, one of the at least one interface connecting the electronic mail system containing the plurality of originating processors to the RF information transmission network; and wherein
the originated information is transmitted in association with an address of the one interface from the one of the plurality of originating processors to the one interface with the electronic mail system responding to the address of the one interface to direct the originated information from the one of the plurality of originating processors to the one interface; and
the originated information is transmitted from the one of the at least one interface to the RF information transmission network with an address of the at least one of the plurality of destination processors to receive the originated information being added at the originating processor originating the originated information, or by either the electronic mail system that contains the plurality of originating processors or the one interface.
So, basically, written as confusingly as possible, these turkeys have filed for a patent that covers any email system in which some information is sent via RF and some is not and the devices involved have addresses. The last is pretty much a given, and the first is pretty straightforward.
I'm serious. Advances in device development simply do not require patents. This is stupid. Why should anyone be granted a monopoly over this? Why does the production of RF devices require a patent at all? Say I'm an engineer. I want to send email from a mobile computer (hardly a stretch to envision). So I select a data transmission medium. Well, there's RF, IR, etc. These all have different properties. I choose the one that is most appropriate -- RF.
Yes, this patent got thrown out, but what I'm saying is that this is not a field in which patents -- guaranteed, time-limited government monopolies -- are necessary to produce advancements. The lifecycle of a new device is mayb
The intention is to reduce the number of licensors to a manageable level, to lock out 'hobbyists' and other entities that Microsoft doesn't want to have to trouble itself with."
If it turns out that hobbyists are a bad thing, then the market will demonstrate that. There's no need to act as if your rights are being suppressed.
Sometimes hobbyists are phenomenal for a platform (the Apple II platform, Linux). Sometimes they don't seem to provide enough benefit to be essential. Game consoles are effectively closed to hobbyists and despite the degree of amateur work, Flash was never really a free platform to seriously develop for.
The only area in which I can think of that this isn't true is when monopolies exist (such as the cell phone market, where cell providers can force the platform closed by requiring that anyone that uses their services provide only a closed platform).
Anyone can sit down and provide something an an encoded audio and video format. There are a lot more MPEG-based players out there than anything else, and it's not as if hobbyists can't produce content for these. Microsoft's chosen their market (at least in the short term). Let them play with the idea and see whether it pans out.
no game can live up to expectations of a 10 year wait.
Forget that -- I want to know why anyone expects DNF to live up to the standards of a *regular* game. Why would DNF be an exceptional game? Because it has the same name and possibly a few characters as an ancient game?
Sequels make sense when they're truly related to the earlier work. Bungie's Marathon series was good right through the series. That was because the game design was still fairly new and interesting for the time, and the same team was working on the games. It was legitimate both to expect "more of same" from the same people, and that "more of same" would be a good thing.
But, while I'm not familiar with DNF development, I doubt that the same team is working on the second game -- and that's what makes the game good, the artists and musicians and programmers and writers. Even if it was the same collection of people, I'm not sure that a team that could produce "more of same" would be a good thing.
I've only played a little Duke Nukem 3D, but I remember that the game was mostly notable for its simple, crude humor and its ability to allow you to have simple interactions with objects. (And according to WP, the mundane environments, instead of Quake's fantastic ones.) None of this is exceptional any more. The only "edge" that I would expect DNF to have over any other modern game is that some of its marketing work will have been done for it -- people with fond memories of Duke Nukem 3D might remember the name and want to buy it. Possibly that means that a smaller percentage of the funding need be blown on marketing for DNF.
Other than that, there's no reason to expect that DNF would be better than any other new game coming out.
Furthermore, DNF has constraints on it that a new game does not. This is most commmonly visible (in an extreme form) in "video games of movies". Most people who follow the video game industry know that video games based on movies tend to review rather badly. Some of this is undoubtedly due to time pressure, but I would suggest that some of it is because the game developers are constrained to follow the movie and figure out ways to incorporate the movie into the game, instead of having no restrictions on their ability to do what is necessary to develop a good game. This restriction, to a lesser degree, is present in game sequels like DNF. (Plus, these video games based on movies have the same marketing edge that DNF can be expected to have, yet they are frequently pretty bad.)
So I just can't see why anyone would expect DNF to be a particularly good game any more than I would expect a modern remake of a classic movie to be any better than any other modern movie.
Sometimes it's nice to just let pleasant memories lie and go on to producing new, different ones...
This all makes sense. It is the job of Congress to represent US interests. That is not the job of Google and Microsoft (nor do I think that it's reasonable to expect Google and MS to expend their resources fighting these wars, which have no benefit for either of them).
The people in China lack certain rights and expectations that we have in the United States. If they get ticked off enough about it, they'll do something about it.
For those not familiar with the history of cell communications in China, back when, China had something like four companies bid on the ability to set up cell service in China. China wanted the ability to monitor all calls. Three of them said that they'd do call management work through their own existing infrastructure (in the US), and one (the winning one) offered to allow China to run everything through Bejing.
Now, those three companies suffered a big loss because they didn't want to play ball with China.
Google is not doing anything that is not expected of a typical company in China. If the people there want change, it's hardly up to the United States or the influence of US-based companies to impose that social change. The reason we have these expectations is because someone here fought for them.
Sorry, China, but if you don't like the policies of your leadership, you need to either convince that leadership that those policies are a bad idea or overthrow said leadership.
If the Soviet Union controlled all the television companies at one point, and they insisted on shoving communist propaganda over TVs in the US if people in the US wanted TV content from them, it's a good guess that the US government wouldn't buy into it. Companies don't produce social change -- they simply reflect it. People in China have to decide that they want something firmly enough to demand it of their leadership.
Frankly, I consider the expectation here that Google use its influence to produce change in China (despite the wishes of its leadership) to be on par with the expectation that we produce change in Iraq. Deciding that someone is misguided and just needs a little forcible "help" from the outside is a dangerous conclusion to make.
The US has lots of ideological differences from other countries. It's sexually repressive, allows media endorsement of violence, theologically-influenced, and less socialized. While I dislike some of these themes, I also don't want, say, France to be the one to try to change them (nor do I think that that would work well). People's ideas need to evolve on their own.
Software, like any form of technology, is just a tool. It will undoubtedly be used for purposes that turn out to be disapproved of and stopped by society, and others that turn out to be a net benefit. Sooner or later, people will fix any problems that arise.
You aren't going to *stop* someone from using software to do anything, so why try to use peer pressure to prevent them from doing so? Me saying nasty things about some Linux guy that works at a defense contractor isn't going to do anything to actually, y'know, reduce the use of Linux in weaponry.
Nor will war or killing people be stopped by attempting to withhold the very latest, most efficient technology from those who want to use it to impose force upon others. A human can kill another with their bare hands, if necessary.
Thus, the question becomes "Would I prefer to have lots of my tax dollars being flushed down the toilet at a defense contractor so that some developers there can reimplement an OS, or would I prefer to have that paid-for-effort used in something like Linux, where everyone can benefit from improvements?"
That question is pretty easy to answer, in my opinion.
Hitler won the war against the communist terrorists too.
Except for the occasional unique content like interviews, doesnt this describe Slashdot? Along with Fark, Digg and countless blogs whose entire sites who report what others are reporting, except they use people instead of Google's crawlers.
How much money do you think CT and friends make off of Slashdot? I don't follow it, but I'd assume that Slashdot is profitable, but probably not something that is going to make the Slashdot editorial staff all multimillionaires.
Google, on the other hand, this the darling of the tech industry after the dot-com blowout. Every business rag has run a story on Google.
Now, if you're a publisher, wouldn't you throw some money into a pool to get some lawyers working on even a 10% chance at a piece of that pie?
Are they going to win? I doubt it. Do they want Google to stop linking to them? Hell no. It's just a grab at a small chance at a lot of money.
The even worse thing is that Slashdot trolls are a whole hell of a lot better at writing content that starts off plausible-sounding than our national leaders. The CongressTrolls, on the other hand, made tons of blatant edits that managed to get them banned.
It's not just that the people running the country are trolls. It's that they're incompetent trolls. Surely, if you work in politics, you'd be expected to know how to manipulate public opinion, write and speak convincingly, and know how to convey an image. I would think that if you possess these fairly basic skills, that you'd be a good troll.
Or product pages. What company wants a page on their product that is probably visited more than their own website to say negative things?
Okay, I *like* WINE. It's a great piece of software, and very useful. But it doesn't make Linux a drop-in Windows replacement. If you decide "Gee, I think I should use Linux as a desktop" (I do), then it's icing on the cake if WINE runs something. It's not reasonable to simply expect a given piece of software to run flawlessly under WINE, though.
That's not unusual -- choosing the incumbent as a baseline is hardly an unreasonable choice if you are trying to do performance comparisons against a challenger.
Take Ann Coulter for instance. Her grasp of reality (or at least the difference between truth and fiction) is minimal at best.
I doubt that. I put Ann Coulter in the same bin as professional wrestlers. I have no doubt that Ms. Coulter is indeed a neoconservative (social conservative, fiscal liberal), but when she gets on TV and makes outrageous claims to tick some people off and gratify others, she is being an actor and an entertainer. The majority of what she says is extreme hyperbole. She can make a career off of exaggeration, and is doing exactly that.
Michael Moore does the same thing (though he tends to stick more to specifically attacking Bush and friends than Coulter, who has a habit of attacking this vast and twisted monster that she's built called "the liberal"). He's making a good living doing what he's doing.
I remember once seeing a $300 *paperback* (that just adds insult to injury) book for a grad class in CS.
Let's work out the morals in the general case before moving on to boundary conditions.
Why? The rules apply to the 17-year-old case as well, and if we identify a problem with them there, one can imagine that they should indeed be modified.
The simple thing to do: fire Matt Vogel.
Look, I don't like this either, but I can't figure out why, whenever anyone does *anything* wrong, people call for that person to be fired. Being fired sucks, especially if you have kids and a house and can't move easily.
WP has successfully brought the profile of this up to Slashdot front-page level, and the mainstream news organizations are picking up on it. I'm sure that Vogel regrets the PR. It's unlikely that he's going to do the same thing again, and it's a good bet that the other House staffers have heard about this. So what's the deal with firing him?
Actually, I've been stunned by the quality and neutrality of some of the work of WP people who are very young. (Or at least claim to be -- I guess there could be a lot of people just claiming to be young teens.) They are literate, have good grammar and spelling, and patiently maintain pages.
While there are young open source software authors, usually it isn't until the late teens that you see significant and impressive work.
The other day, I noticed someone correcting and maintaining the Windows Vista WP page. He claims to be 15 -- not bad work, given the degree of vandalism that I'd expect this page to attract.
Oh, and there is lots of evidence showing links between the Saddam's government and Al Qaeda. You may choose not to believe them (it's called "confirmation bias") but it certainly is not a silly or incorrect thing for people who *do* believe them to put them in! But let's not start a thread about whether my assertion of that is true or not, because few who care enough to post are open minded enough to change their opinion based on whatever anyone says on Slashdot.
You're right. I don't believe that the moon is made of green cheese, either.
Text of the second change:
Furthermore, in 2005, Senator Coburn was voted the most annoying Senator by his peers in Congress. This was due to Senator Coburn being a huge douche-bag. In the August edition of Roll Call, the senator was voted "most likely to get his arse kicked by hill a hill staffer over recess". He gladly accepted this honor saying "I completely expect to get my arse kicked because I suck at life".
This reads like an "article" by a Senator in The Onion or something.
That's actually one thing that surprises me about WP that differs from the software development world. WP is surprisingly (to me, at least) under-automated. You don't have a particularly nice environment to edit articles in, you have to revert things manually, "Talk" is kind of ad-hoc (not exactly Slashcode), etc. It's weird to see problems being solved by policy instead of technical fixes.
Obviously, it's an effective tool that is usable by many people, but it feels like I'm missing tools when I use WP.