Software patents shouldn't apply in the first place, but as they are here now...
If they must exist, they should be as specific as the physical design patents of old. Nothing so general as "A linked list with multiple indicies within itself for alternative list ordering" should ever be patented. My firm belief is that all software patents (if the system continues to have them at all) MUST include the functional source code of their implementation, the commercial or competitive use thereof causing the user the requirement of law to gain license. This source code is referenced in the text of the patent the same way as blueprints or other diagrams are referenced in physical patents. Individuals are legally allowed to recreate any patented work for personal use, to determine for themselves the usefulness of such a device, as long as the device is not distributed. Many new technologies have been built by people creating a new novel device to produce the SAME RESULT of a patented device without using the PATENTED METHOD. Thus, it should be possible to build a different method that does not infringe the patent but produces the same result. This is healthy for technological advancement.
Last time I checked, the patent system was created to give a limited time monopoly to the creator of a novel new device, while preserving such knowledge for the general public to be able to recreate the technology at any point in the future. In recreation, the patent MUST contain enough information to allow someone knowledgable in the field to reproduce the device. In being novel, prior art must not be known. Unfortunately patent researchers typically limit themselves in their search to searching PATENTS for prior art, but if the art was not patented, their search fails to show prior art. Then it becomes a matter of the court, where highly paid lawyers working for wealthy large corporations make a mockery of the original purpose of patent law and squish out of existance many innovative small businesses.
Patents were originally a form of open source for technology, with protection for the originator so that they could profit while still releasing the information for free. I wish that everyone would look at patents that way again.
Standard disclaimers, IANAL, correct me if I'm wrong. Got my opinion researching the patent process for something I invented.
I have to agree here, I mean the chances of a noob cracker accidentally creating a virus from his code changes are slim (if he didn't start with a virus code, that is), but with our level of understanding of DNA, we don't know the chances, and our changes are done WITH viruses in the first place. Very scary if you ask me.
If I had the pull and we had the tech in place, there really should be only one place for genetic experimentation: orbit. It CAN'T end up in the ecosystem from there if something goes wrong. At least, not without a lot of other things going wrong, but at least those other things we have statistics on.
I keep thinking 28 Days Later when they start talking about gene splicing and genetic research. Sure, they are careful, methodical, and try to cover every variable... but one missed variable, one screw loose, one never understood bug in the genetic program... yikes.
Mandatorilly labelled porn, leads to sensored porn, leads to more porn being illegal, leads to both more outsourcing AND more organized crime. Remember prohibition? People wouldn't stop drinking, the Mob was born out of the illegal profits. People will never stop looking at porn on the Internet, what will be born of this 'prohibition'? I don't want to find out.
It might also be a way to increase sales, correct me if im wrong but dont easily piratable machines seems to enjoy a larger machine market share which is just what MS want?
Absolutely not. Console vendors don't make money on the consoles, they make their money on software licenses. The original Xbox began it's sales at over $100 loss per unit, and that loss grew as the console aged. That's why MS was so pissed about people running Linux on it and turning it into a cheap PC... they wouldn't be buying games, so they wouldn't make any money. It's also their big gripe about pirating... no game sales, no offset for the loss they built into the original box.
I've been programming in many languages across a couple decades myself. Whenever someone asks me "How do I get started in programming?" I tell them "JavaScript". Why? Because all you need are the myriad of online tutorials, notepad, and IE, which all of these people already had. No downloads, installations, or configurations necessary. No purchases needed, and if they find that they just don't think the way you need to think to program, they've lost only "hobby time".
I'm not saying that JavaScript is the best first language, but a master of JavaScript will easily pick up other C-like languages (Java, C++, C#, PHP), and someone scared off by JavaScript will have lost very little.
I never said it was a great design, and I'm not going to defend it, because I have no relation to it.
I present it only for the information, mainly that an unamplified 802.11b link can be solidly established for point-to-point connections over very useful distances with little additional equipment cost, and no licensing concerns due to its' unamplified status.
With the cooperation of someone in-town who has broadband (or can get it), you could rig something like this. I had been considering something like this before I decided to move. A bunch of work, and a bit of equipment, but I'm sure with your broadcast engineering skills it wouldn't be a problem. There were teenagers that won this contest a couple years ago at 55 miles, with satalite dishes that they obtaind for free from neighborhood homes that didn't use them anymore. Fun stuff.
There are methods in ECMA scripting (formerly "Javascript", a big part of DHTML) that allow you to asynchronusly load web data (which is any data that can be loaded by a browser from a web addressable source) into document objects. I did this several years ago, but I wasn't motivated enough to make something any more useful than a regular poll of a CGI script to see if I had new mail. Yes, it would need a timer (IMO, I could be wrong, haven't kept up with DHTML since my polling thing), but it isn't a refresh-of-the-whole-page timer, and because of that it can be quite short and very close to what most would consider real-time chatting.
I agree. My house doesn't buy CDs often (yet, my daughter hasn't hit teen yet)... but at least three of the last four CDs purchased were a direct result of P2P downloads. One CD specifically would never have been purchased (artist's "popular" works weren't so popular in my house) had we not sampled the (non-radio) music from P2P. Basically P2P amounts to a "try before you buy" system for us.
I forgot to mention that everywhere that I have lived, there is between $5 and $14 tax on every phone line.
Tax Items from my current phone bill:
"Government Fees and Taxes"
"Federal Excise Tax"
"State and Local Taxes"
"Gross Receipts Tax"
"Federal Universal Service Fund"
"Federal Telecom Relay and Admin Fee"
Granted, these vary with location, but still, if everyone gets cable modem or satellite broadband and VOIP, the government loses this particular fat check every month.
Personally, I think it is more about the government having control over and ability to listen in on the older telephone tech. They can't listen in on a 128bit end-to-end encrypted conversation going on over a VIOP system, but they can listen nearly any time they want over the old POTS.
I do wonder, however, how they plan on blocking it. Block the common ports for it? Just change ports. Legislate the major VOIP players out of the picture? Peer-to-peer VOIP will come up from the cracks, your IP is your phone number. Legislate ISPs so nobody is allowed to have static IPs? Dyndns to the rescue, your dynamic domain name is your phone number. Legislate away dynamic dns services? I highly doubt it would get that far.
Voice is data. Person-to-person distance communication is not something that should be completely available for ANYONE to listen in on. IANAL, and I haven't dug through countless criminal cases, but I do not believe that a large enough portion of real crimes have ever been solved by wire taps to continue the privacy invading practice.
What, did they think their half-hearted apology about the music cd DRM rootkit would break the boycott of the rest of their junk? I for one will not continue support for any portion of Sony if their morals regarding how it treats it's customers are so slanted that the best line they can think of is, "We are re-evaluating our position".
After the announcement of the rootkit, the only kind of response that would have gotten me to reconsider a boycott would be something along the lines of, "We are appalled at the underhanded means that some of our representatives have deemed appropriate to protect our content, and those responsible for this outrage have been removed from the company." But, of course, instead, they are playing the big corporate game of "lets just see how little we can do to make them believe we are changing, so they will continue to buy our junk".
They want to keep the rights to the junk they sell in an overpriced iron fist, fine, they can keep all of it, I won't have any of it.
or maybe they died from the extreme cold, lack of oxygen and mass radiation exposure..
It would have most likely been the extreme HEAT, at 107 C to 123 C daytime lunar surface temperatures, that combined with the lack of air pressure, all body fluids would boil quite quickly.
...hard to see how this company can live up to it's claims.
They don't need to, because Joe Consumer doesn't research. Joe Consumer knows for a fact that microwaves cook food faster than the stove or oven, be they electric or gas, so microwaves must heat water faster, too. Joe Consumer also knows that microwaves are safe and cheap (small $30 microwave ovens at Walmart). Also, Joe Consumer pays attention to phrases like "on demand", and likes concepts like "endless supply". The company isn't marketing to the relatively small cross-section of the population known as Slashdot Readers, they are marketing to Joe Consumer.
According to an inside source, the postponement came as a result of several of their servers becoming overwhelmed causing shutdown, when the news was posted on a very popular "Geek" website known as Slashdot.
Yeah, explosives are one way, but depending on density and composition, a robotic 'gang' of wire-saw style cutters could also be implemented. Could even be a one-two effort, blast it into chunks that aren't small enough to burn, but are small enough for the 'bots to dice up. There is also the laser possibility, a multi-megawatt lunar-based laser, given the time, could dice something quite nicely. Several would be even better. As a combination, the lasers could be used to send supplimental "solar" power for the 'bots in distant orbits, as well as 'laze' the target for the initial explosive. Of course, there are focus issues, but what plan doesn't have engineering details to work out?
Hmmm... with the lasers on the moon (solar powered, of course), sending a vehicle to the object with a good net (and some mass collection ability), the vehicle could use the power from the laser to focus and burn mass from the object to provide thrust to alter it's orbit. Also, said vehicle may be capable of re-arranging the mass into a more manageable structure with the abundant power sent to it, melting and smelting as necessary.
Dang it why did I join the Marines instead of going to college? *kicks himself for the um-teenth time*
Funny, I'd think we would be planning to thwart the extinction size ones first, instead of the just globally inconvienient ones. The technology would likely be cross-applicable, thus capable of thwarting both types.
Slashdot Mirror
Software patents shouldn't apply in the first place, but as they are here now...
If they must exist, they should be as specific as the physical design patents of old. Nothing so general as "A linked list with multiple indicies within itself for alternative list ordering" should ever be patented. My firm belief is that all software patents (if the system continues to have them at all) MUST include the functional source code of their implementation, the commercial or competitive use thereof causing the user the requirement of law to gain license. This source code is referenced in the text of the patent the same way as blueprints or other diagrams are referenced in physical patents. Individuals are legally allowed to recreate any patented work for personal use, to determine for themselves the usefulness of such a device, as long as the device is not distributed. Many new technologies have been built by people creating a new novel device to produce the SAME RESULT of a patented device without using the PATENTED METHOD. Thus, it should be possible to build a different method that does not infringe the patent but produces the same result. This is healthy for technological advancement.
Last time I checked, the patent system was created to give a limited time monopoly to the creator of a novel new device, while preserving such knowledge for the general public to be able to recreate the technology at any point in the future. In recreation, the patent MUST contain enough information to allow someone knowledgable in the field to reproduce the device. In being novel, prior art must not be known. Unfortunately patent researchers typically limit themselves in their search to searching PATENTS for prior art, but if the art was not patented, their search fails to show prior art. Then it becomes a matter of the court, where highly paid lawyers working for wealthy large corporations make a mockery of the original purpose of patent law and squish out of existance many innovative small businesses.
Patents were originally a form of open source for technology, with protection for the originator so that they could profit while still releasing the information for free. I wish that everyone would look at patents that way again.
Standard disclaimers, IANAL, correct me if I'm wrong. Got my opinion researching the patent process for something I invented.
I have to agree here, I mean the chances of a noob cracker accidentally creating a virus from his code changes are slim (if he didn't start with a virus code, that is), but with our level of understanding of DNA, we don't know the chances, and our changes are done WITH viruses in the first place. Very scary if you ask me.
If I had the pull and we had the tech in place, there really should be only one place for genetic experimentation: orbit. It CAN'T end up in the ecosystem from there if something goes wrong. At least, not without a lot of other things going wrong, but at least those other things we have statistics on.
I keep thinking 28 Days Later when they start talking about gene splicing and genetic research. Sure, they are careful, methodical, and try to cover every variable... but one missed variable, one screw loose, one never understood bug in the genetic program... yikes.
Mandatorilly labelled porn, leads to sensored porn, leads to more porn being illegal, leads to both more outsourcing AND more organized crime. Remember prohibition? People wouldn't stop drinking, the Mob was born out of the illegal profits. People will never stop looking at porn on the Internet, what will be born of this 'prohibition'? I don't want to find out.
So, what's the name of the disorder for people who compulsively seek out and coin terms for new disorders?
That would at least guarantee higher ratings for women's swimming, though then the censors in the USA would ban the Olympics. :-)
It figures, these people are always talking about 'traditional' values, and then ignore the older traditions that don't agree with them.
It might also be a way to increase sales, correct me if im wrong but dont easily piratable machines seems to enjoy a larger machine market share which is just what MS want?
Absolutely not. Console vendors don't make money on the consoles, they make their money on software licenses. The original Xbox began it's sales at over $100 loss per unit, and that loss grew as the console aged. That's why MS was so pissed about people running Linux on it and turning it into a cheap PC... they wouldn't be buying games, so they wouldn't make any money. It's also their big gripe about pirating... no game sales, no offset for the loss they built into the original box.
I've been programming in many languages across a couple decades myself. Whenever someone asks me "How do I get started in programming?" I tell them "JavaScript". Why? Because all you need are the myriad of online tutorials, notepad, and IE, which all of these people already had. No downloads, installations, or configurations necessary. No purchases needed, and if they find that they just don't think the way you need to think to program, they've lost only "hobby time".
I'm not saying that JavaScript is the best first language, but a master of JavaScript will easily pick up other C-like languages (Java, C++, C#, PHP), and someone scared off by JavaScript will have lost very little.
or does anyone else see the irony that this question is brought up while dropping the 'RP' from MMORPG?
I never said it was a great design, and I'm not going to defend it, because I have no relation to it.
I present it only for the information, mainly that an unamplified 802.11b link can be solidly established for point-to-point connections over very useful distances with little additional equipment cost, and no licensing concerns due to its' unamplified status.
With the cooperation of someone in-town who has broadband (or can get it), you could rig something like this. I had been considering something like this before I decided to move. A bunch of work, and a bit of equipment, but I'm sure with your broadcast engineering skills it wouldn't be a problem. There were teenagers that won this contest a couple years ago at 55 miles, with satalite dishes that they obtaind for free from neighborhood homes that didn't use them anymore. Fun stuff.
There are methods in ECMA scripting (formerly "Javascript", a big part of DHTML) that allow you to asynchronusly load web data (which is any data that can be loaded by a browser from a web addressable source) into document objects. I did this several years ago, but I wasn't motivated enough to make something any more useful than a regular poll of a CGI script to see if I had new mail. Yes, it would need a timer (IMO, I could be wrong, haven't kept up with DHTML since my polling thing), but it isn't a refresh-of-the-whole-page timer, and because of that it can be quite short and very close to what most would consider real-time chatting.
I agree. My house doesn't buy CDs often (yet, my daughter hasn't hit teen yet)... but at least three of the last four CDs purchased were a direct result of P2P downloads. One CD specifically would never have been purchased (artist's "popular" works weren't so popular in my house) had we not sampled the (non-radio) music from P2P. Basically P2P amounts to a "try before you buy" system for us.
Great plan...
Until they change the GPS coordinate system.
Actually, all you need is a CompactFlash device and one of these:A /id.243/.f
http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/category.14/it.
Pricewatch lists 4Gb Compact Flash cards already, and that top end is likely to rise quickly.
I forgot to mention that everywhere that I have lived, there is between $5 and $14 tax on every phone line.
Tax Items from my current phone bill:
"Government Fees and Taxes"
"Federal Excise Tax"
"State and Local Taxes"
"Gross Receipts Tax"
"Federal Universal Service Fund"
"Federal Telecom Relay and Admin Fee"
Granted, these vary with location, but still, if everyone gets cable modem or satellite broadband and VOIP, the government loses this particular fat check every month.
Personally, I think it is more about the government having control over and ability to listen in on the older telephone tech. They can't listen in on a 128bit end-to-end encrypted conversation going on over a VIOP system, but they can listen nearly any time they want over the old POTS.
I do wonder, however, how they plan on blocking it. Block the common ports for it? Just change ports. Legislate the major VOIP players out of the picture? Peer-to-peer VOIP will come up from the cracks, your IP is your phone number. Legislate ISPs so nobody is allowed to have static IPs? Dyndns to the rescue, your dynamic domain name is your phone number. Legislate away dynamic dns services? I highly doubt it would get that far.
Voice is data. Person-to-person distance communication is not something that should be completely available for ANYONE to listen in on. IANAL, and I haven't dug through countless criminal cases, but I do not believe that a large enough portion of real crimes have ever been solved by wire taps to continue the privacy invading practice.
Well, that's my $0.04
LOL That's just too rich!
...if only I had mod points.
Mod parent up +1 informative!
It says, "Sony", I'm not buying it.
What, did they think their half-hearted apology about the music cd DRM rootkit would break the boycott of the rest of their junk? I for one will not continue support for any portion of Sony if their morals regarding how it treats it's customers are so slanted that the best line they can think of is, "We are re-evaluating our position".
After the announcement of the rootkit, the only kind of response that would have gotten me to reconsider a boycott would be something along the lines of, "We are appalled at the underhanded means that some of our representatives have deemed appropriate to protect our content, and those responsible for this outrage have been removed from the company." But, of course, instead, they are playing the big corporate game of "lets just see how little we can do to make them believe we are changing, so they will continue to buy our junk".
They want to keep the rights to the junk they sell in an overpriced iron fist, fine, they can keep all of it, I won't have any of it.
or maybe they died from the extreme cold, lack of oxygen and mass radiation exposure..
It would have most likely been the extreme HEAT, at 107 C to 123 C daytime lunar surface temperatures, that combined with the lack of air pressure, all body fluids would boil quite quickly.
...hard to see how this company can live up to it's claims.
They don't need to, because Joe Consumer doesn't research. Joe Consumer knows for a fact that microwaves cook food faster than the stove or oven, be they electric or gas, so microwaves must heat water faster, too. Joe Consumer also knows that microwaves are safe and cheap (small $30 microwave ovens at Walmart). Also, Joe Consumer pays attention to phrases like "on demand", and likes concepts like "endless supply". The company isn't marketing to the relatively small cross-section of the population known as Slashdot Readers, they are marketing to Joe Consumer.
Just Google the names, the truth is out there, and it scares me.
According to an inside source, the postponement came as a result of several of their servers becoming overwhelmed causing shutdown, when the news was posted on a very popular "Geek" website known as Slashdot.
Yeah, explosives are one way, but depending on density and composition, a robotic 'gang' of wire-saw style cutters could also be implemented. Could even be a one-two effort, blast it into chunks that aren't small enough to burn, but are small enough for the 'bots to dice up. There is also the laser possibility, a multi-megawatt lunar-based laser, given the time, could dice something quite nicely. Several would be even better. As a combination, the lasers could be used to send supplimental "solar" power for the 'bots in distant orbits, as well as 'laze' the target for the initial explosive. Of course, there are focus issues, but what plan doesn't have engineering details to work out?
Hmmm... with the lasers on the moon (solar powered, of course), sending a vehicle to the object with a good net (and some mass collection ability), the vehicle could use the power from the laser to focus and burn mass from the object to provide thrust to alter it's orbit. Also, said vehicle may be capable of re-arranging the mass into a more manageable structure with the abundant power sent to it, melting and smelting as necessary.
Dang it why did I join the Marines instead of going to college? *kicks himself for the um-teenth time*
Funny, I'd think we would be planning to thwart the extinction size ones first, instead of the just globally inconvienient ones. The technology would likely be cross-applicable, thus capable of thwarting both types.
On top of that, comets *NEVER* come within Earth's orbit, right?
Point is, the question was never *IF* it will happen, the question has always been *WHEN*.