For starters, software can be enumerated. So can anything else. This is, quite honestly, the stupidest argument I have ever heard.
No. The set of irrational numbers, for example, are easily proven uncountable. Even an undergrad can tell you that.
Sure you can take irrational numbers and assign each one you encounter an integer when you first encounter it, and you can do that forever without running out of integers, but its easy to prove that there will be numbers you will never enumerate, even if you enumerate forever.
Oh, really? And you can write software to discover other software programs mechanically?
Yes. Of course. We can't automatically determine which of those programs are useful for anything, or useful for a task. But just spitting out software programs? Trivial.
Its no different than writing books. Those too can be generated automatically. The fact that you can do it doesn't make it a worthwhile endeavor, as simply generating all possible books isn't nearly so useful as isolating which of them are actually worth reading. But it is a useful and important characteristic of books. (and software programs)....
This isn't technically an algorithm, it's a simple algebraic formula.
And yet I presented it as series of steps. That's an algorithm. That is the POINT. Software algorithms can be reduced to mathematical equations. Consider a proof in propositional logic, where you write statements, then apply a set of rules, to come up with a proof. Nothing could be more procedural... but propositional logic can be reduced to a set of axioms, and any 'proof' can be equivalently expressed as a simple equivalence equation of a composition of the axioms.
Which makes it obvious and thus non-patentable.
Except that we knew that particular formula BEFORE calculus itself had been discovered. High school kids can show the curve, and determine the formula with a stopwatch, a measuring tape, a weight, a spool of ribbon, and some graph paper in an afternoon.
Not sure what you mean there. If you patent one solution, you don't own the rights to all solutions, just that one. You do have to describe your patent claims in extreme detail, you know.
Take a look at Leibniz and Newton's original papers on calculus. Even mathematical scholars have written "Despite... points of resemblance, the methods [of Newton and Leibniz] are profoundly different" (Ivor Grattan-Guinness, 1997. The Norton History of the Mathematical Sciences) -- Yet the two approaches are mathematically equivalent.
There is no easy way to transform one algorithm into an equivalent one.
No.Its true there is no easy way to find a mapping from a particular algorithm to another particular one, but its trivially easy to create a mapping from a particular algorithm to an equivalent algorithm if you don't care what destination algorithm is, beyond that it be equivalent.
By your logic, every searching or sorting algorithm is trivially equivalent to every other one, because they do the same damn thing.
No. Not *necessarily* equivalent. And certainly not necessarily *trivially* equivalent. But merely *possibly* equivalent. In the case of sorting there are certainly a few genuinely different approaches to the problem. But there are *also* many algorithms being used to sort that are variations of each other, or demonstratable transformations of an other.
Is a heapsort algorithm a separate algorithm from a ternary heapsort algorithm? Is a quicksort implemented in Lisp the same algorithm as one in smalltalk? How about in C? Is there a mapping from quicksort to heapsort?
At what stage do two algorithms become "different" vs "same"?
Try showing me how you can get quicksort or heapsort by algorithmically transforming, say, bogosort.
In point of fact, bogosort isn't a comparison sort. So it actually does qualify as a separate solution. (If you want to call it that.) G
Microsoft may have licensed the code prior to putting it into there software in the US and agreed to pay fees... then exported that software where it wasn't patented. Should Microsoft pay for all the copies they sold under the agreement as the agreement was for their company to use ATT IP?
In a word "No", at least not for patents. Microsoft doesn't need an agreement with ATT in order to get 'access' to the *patents*. Patents are public and published and can be freely accessed by anyone. Microsoft needs an agreement with ATT to create products in the US covered by the patent, or to sell products in the US that are covered by the patent, but for a product made and distributed in China there is no restriction in using the patent. And as anyone can view the contents of the patent its not like you needed to deal with ATT to see what they covered.
Now if this were a copyright case, it would be different; if ATT supplied actual copy-protected source code that they expected to be paid a royalty for they'd have a solid case.
It would seem Microsoft is pulling a "we don't have to pay" move here... after negotiating a contract for say 1 million copies with ATT then telling the court half were sold where there is no patent so we shouldn't have to pay ATT.
Except that it really is how patent law works. Microsoft is not obligated to enter into a contract with ATT at all in order to create and distribute products abroad where the patent doesn't apply.
I've always likened their business practice to that kid on the playground that trades everybody for stuff they're not allowed to have then runs to teacher when they get one bad deal and wants take-backs because they weren't supposed to be doing it in the first place..."that's the rules!" then sneers behind the teacher's dress and starts all over again.
Except in the playground, the kids know better and -don't- get takin in a second time. I'm not sure why anybody enters into deal with Microsoft these days without expecting MS to use their size, weight, marketshare, and legal manipulations against them.
Overall I agree that MS might have been disingenuous in their dealings with ATT and 'deserve to lose'; and perhaps that ATT set pricing based on the expectation that they would be compensated for each copy of windows regardless of whether a patent license was actually needed where it was sold. But its ultimately ATT's fault for not spelling out the deal more clearly.
If you and I have an agreement that I can copy your book and sell it, provided I pay X for each copy, and then I start producing and selling copies in a country that doesn't have any copyright law. What is your recourse? You couldn't sue me for copyright infringment, because what I'm doing isn't violating copyright. I am however violating a reasonable interpretation of our contract, and you might be able to go after me on that.
Similarly ATT -might- have a case showing that their licensing contract should be interpreted as requiring microsoft to pay patent royalty on foreign production, but they don't have a case that MS is actually violating patent law directly.
Suppose I design a chair that infringes AT&Ts patent in the US (and the patent only applies in the US). If I make the chair in the US, I have to pay the license. If I make the chair in china and import it to the US I have to pay to license.
If I have a chair factory in the US that makes chairs for US use, and another factory in china that makes chairs for Chinese use. Then I don't have pay licensing on the Chinese chairs, because the patent doesn't apply where they are produced or sold. This isn't controversial, and is how patent laws work. You only have to license patents in the countries you make/sell the products affected by them.
Now, of course for me to set up a chair factory in china I have to send them blueprints and a prototype for the chair. This is of course, perfectly legal. Again, no controversy. At most I might pay a royalty on the single unit.
Now in this case, AT&T asserted that distributing windows elsewhere, by having sent a copy of the CD sent there constituted making the product in the US and then distributing it, entitling AT&T to patent royaltys for each copy sold abroad.
MS, asserted it was really more like sending a single blueprint and prototype to the chair factory, for them to produce copies locally, and that AT&T was not entitled to royaltees for each copy of the product made and distributed abroad.
I personally agree with SCOTUS, and side with MS on this. Its consistent with how patent law is normally applied.
Better yet if they can put enough AI into the system it might learn to create emergencies just to evacuate the building allowing it to shut all the lights and air conditioning off, and saving the company some real money!
I still don't understand what makes algorithms and software OBVIOUSLY not patentable.
For starters, software can be enumerated. I can trivially devise an iterative generating function that will generate all possible software programs. Furthermore if you provide me an existing program, I can tell you on what iteration my generating function will spit it out.
Software programs have a direct relationship to numbers. In a very real sense a useful software program is little more than a useful integer, like a very large prime number. Granted finding useful software programs (and large prime numbers) is hard but that is beside the point. They aren't so much 'inventions' as 'discoveries of a pre-existing truth'.
This characteristic of software has no 'physical world' counterpart.
Carrying on the 'discovery of a truth' aspect; is the notion that algorithms can be expressed in pure mathematics; e.g. lambda calculus. It would be dangerous to have the
Then consider that logic itself is nothing more than an algorithm, as is most of mathematics. Could you imagine science progressing in a world where the rules of logical deduction were someone's private intellectual property. Where deriving the fundamental theorem of calculus from limits is off limits. Where simply solving equations could infringe someones patent?
Suppose someone had patented the algorithm for determining distance travelled while under constant acceleration from a particular starting velocity in a given time frame.
compute initial velocity multiplied by time compute the square of time compute 1/2 the acceleration multiplied by the square computed above add that to the first value we computed result: total distance travelled
turns out that 'algorithm' is the representation of a simple mathematical equation; worse the equation itself, is a simple calculus integral.
At the end of the day that algorithm represents a mathematical truth. Any other algorithm you imagine to solve the problem is mathematically equivalent. So if you can patent one algorithm to solve a problem, you naturally control all equivalent algorithms, and since all algorithms to that result are equivalent you control *all* the algorithms for that problem. You effectively patent the ability to solve the problem itself.
In the physical world, you are free to invent a variety of solutions to a problem. In software, there is often only one possible unique solution. Any other solution, even if developed independantly, and done completely differently might be shown to be a mathematically equivalent variation of the first.
Finally, in complexity theory for example, part of proving what complexity class a problem fits into is showing that a mapping exists from your problem to another problem in the class, such that if ANY problem in the entire class is solved all of them are solved. Finding the shortest route between cities for a travelling Salesman problem is the same problem as determining if a boolean expressian can be satisfied is the same problem as finding the smallet set of nodes in a graph that touch all edges, is the same problem as determining if their is a subset of numbers in a set that add up to a specific number, etc, etc, etc.
The problems, by virtue of the presence of a mapping function, can be said to be equivalent. If I patent an algorithm/solution to a problem for which there exists a mapping to a 'different' problem perhaps I automatically get control over both solutions by virtue of the fact that my algorithm solves any problem that can be mapped to the problem I've solved, which means your different algorithm which solves a different problem is still mathematically equivalent to my algorithm, and therefor infringes my patent.
You could try and say that different algorithms that solve the same problem can be patented separately even if they are mathematically equivalent, but that would be pointless. I could trivially take any algorithm and transform it into a different algorithm that is mathematically equivalent and then dodge your patent.
Patenting algorithms is obviously a bad idea if you understand the relationship of algorithms to mathematics.
I just don't think the type of people that are willing to go to the mall are the type that want to order and get it a few days later.
I'm willing to go to the mall. Its closer than most of the whitebox dealers I usually buy from. And I usually have to place orders if I want anything specific.
Sure it might not appeal to the guys that only buy computers when a dippy salesrep tells them is a deal, with its CD holder, cup holder, and ashtray built into the case, bundled with over priced cables, and covered in stickers -- but so what? Those fools weren't going to buy a unit online either, so its not like Dell is losing a customer if they pass on the kiosk.
Around here, they have Dell kiosks in the mall to showcase their products. Sort of like the sony stores. You can go an touch and see a Dell, and then order it up and it gets delivered to your door.
Its good marketing. Even if the kiosks never actually sell a unit, just having them out there will give the 'i wanna touch it' crowd that security so they can go home and order online with confidence -- and hey I'm not mocking them, I am in that crowd. You really have to feel a laptop to determine its weight, get a sense of its build quality, feel the keyboard and trackpad, evaluate screen viewing angle, brightness etc.
Plus it strengthens the brand recognition, and can put a human face on the transaction.
That's essentially what paypal invoices are if you've got your CC setup.
You make purchase. Vendor sends you paypal invoice. You pay paypal invoice. Paypal charges your card. Paypal transfers money to merchant Merchant sends you product
Works like a charm.
Except I hate paypal.
Sure wish Visa/MC/Amex would just implement this directly:
You make purchase Vendor sends you Visa "Net" Invoice I log into Visa "Net" and authorize it. Visa transfers money to mercant and charges may card.
Oh wait... they did. Its called "Verified by VISA". The difference is that as part of the merchant checkout I'm actually directed to the Verified by Visa site to authorize the transcation directly with VISA, and then routed back to the vender site. Its all pretty slick.
The ONLY issue with the system is that its vulnerable to phishing etc. How do I really know I've really been directed the Verified by Visa site? The merchant directed me there, I didn't go there myself. But really what can be done to fix it?
If they disconnected the process so I had to manually log in to VISA and auth the transaction, it wouldn't really be any safer. Merchants are going to want to be helpful and they'll include a link to the Visa site, which might even take me directly to the transaction. But that link could be a phish site! Even if VISA banned the practice of merchant including links to VISA to force users to use their own bookmarks or whatever that would accomplish nothing:
Legit merchants would be frustrated as idiot customers wouldn't complete the transaction. Shopping carts would get stale. In cases of hot products like the Wii, what do they do while they wait for customers to finish authorizing. Hold it? Or Sell it? It could be days before the customer gets around to logging in.
(I mention Wii because I've tried to buy one 3 times online now, and twice they've sold it out from under me WHILE I'm going through the checkout. Worse, they check my cart for availability before going into the checkout [I know this because I've had it happen a couple times that I got the item into my cart, but then couldn't even get into checkout as it had sold out], and then at the final submit after entering CC info etc they've sold it right out of my cart.
I understand not holding the cart contents for 24 hours, but come on... 3 minutes from pressing checkout?! Sorry, Just venting... My last order finally got through checkout so hopefully I'll actually get one this time.)
Meanwhile Illegitmate vendors will ignore the ban on links, and provide them. Customers ignorant or uncareful enough to fall for a phish attack, will fall for this too.
I don't know what the solution is, beyond requiring the customer to be slightly paranoid, and constantly vigilant. (And that's somewhat unrealistic.)
One solution I do think would work is a dedicated hardware solution. Where the vender displays a transaction number on the screen. I insert my card into an 'interac debit machine like box' punch in the transaction number on the boxes keypad, and perhaps a password, and the box communicates directly with VISA, to authorize the transaction. I'd even pay a one-time $50-$100 bucks to buy such a box, which is *entirely* feasible as it wouldn't really be anymore complex than a cheap nat/router.
The BOX would interact with the visa web site (web service), it would check certificates (to avoid dns spoofing, phishing sites, etc), and wouldn't be nearly as easy to fool as a person. And as a dedicated box, using certs, public key encryption, SSL, and other appropriate technologies it would pretty much take a firmware hack to defeat it.
It could probably even be made to work via USB to an internet connected computer instead of requiring its own network connection, and still be secure. Even if a virus/trojan replaced the drivers, I doubt they could perform an effective man-in-the-middle attack; all they'd get to see is encrypted traffic and a destination. Splicing it, or redirecting it wouldn't accomplish anything. There's even no reason that the system couldn't be available for Linux, or even GPL/OSS, as it doesn't rely on TPM/DRM at the OS level.
A lot of government prohibitions and mandates simply reflect the predominant religious beleifs. If the majority of a population finds something offensive why should it surprise you that laws are passed to prohibit it. If the majority of a population think something should be just so why should it surprise you that laws are passed to enshrine that?
There are VERY FEW checks in the system that can prevent a law that has majority support from getting passed.
Even the US Constitution, or the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms can be amended, abridged, or even discarded if enough people agree to it. The prohibition on slavery, the right of women to vote, freedom of speech etc, can all be erased if the population is behind it. Democracy, even when functioning perfectly, is amply capable of creating blatant injustice and inequity.
The rule of Democracy is simply 'majority rule' and is by no means accountable to concepts like 'fair', or 'just'.
Going down your list of "Why can..." the answer to most of them is simply: "because that is what most Americans want". Most americans believe you should only marry single people of the opposite sex. Most americans believe you shouldn't be naked in public. Most americans believe drugs are bad. (mkay?)
And a lot of your 'why can...' questions touch on morality. Moral questions are tricky, because if one believes that say sodomy is -morally- wrong, than one is compelled to assert that no one should do it, because things that are immoral *should* be prohibited.
For example gay marriage I don't think is morally wrong, and even though I don't want to engage in it myself, I have no issue with someone else doing it.
Drugs on the other hand, I am torn by. I recognize that *I* can choose not to do them and that is enough for me, but when I examine the question morally, I find that I do think it is an immoral act to abuse substances to a point that it negatively affects one's own mind, and one's own life, particularly because due to the addictive and mind altering aspects of substance abuse the individual taking drugs can lose the ability to choose not to. I'm not sure that society allow people to do that to themselves, even if society at large isn't harmed.
(And that is itself an issue because substance abuse *does* harm society by raising crime, violence, medical costs, and so forth. So even if I accepted that it was ok for you to wilfully damage your own mind, I may not accept the burden that places on society.)
At the end of the day I know that a joint or two isn't going to ruin the world and I actually favor decriminalization. But its a slippery slope. People showing up to school and work stoned is definitely a real problem. And harder drugs are a much greater problem.
At least my desktop applications have backups. I don't have to rely on 'frantic google engineers scrambling to find a fix'. I know absolutely that my data can be recovered.
I backup my data based on how valuable it is to me.
How valuable is your data to google? I know they try, and they even do a pretty dammed good job, but at the end of the day, you aren't even really their customer -- you are their product.
Like a farmer raising chickens; they want them strong, well fed, happy, healthy, content, disease free, and they take steps to ensure they stay that way. But at the end of the day, they aren't really in it for the chicken's welfare.
First off, its historically very common in photography. And usually represents an arrangment where the the photographer agrees not to resell a photo to any other customer, but the buyer can't go and start reselling it either, except for maybe a one-time transfer where the buyer transfers the permanent/exclusive/transfer license that they have to another 3rd party.
The idea is that if you were buying a photo to resell, the photographer would probably want a royalty component. But if you are buying an image to use in marketing, and you don't want anyone else to be able to buy that image and use it a permanent/exclusive license is a middle ground between licensing a copy, and buying the copyright right. It also tends to be priced between the two.
In software its even more common.
For example, I do database design, and over the years, like anyone I've built up a library of common functions, scripts, procedures, libraries, techniques, and so forth that I tend to re-use. I don't want to assign you copyright because then I can't reuse it other projects.
In fact, I can't assign you copyright to that stuff, because its already used in other projects. If I had to sanitize your project so that it wasn't using my copyrighted stuff, and only used stuff that I could assign to you that would take considerable effort and time and undermine the value of the body of work I've built as an independant developer - ie it would cost you a lot more and waste a lot of my time. So I'd prefer to just agree to let you have permanent exclusive license to the final product, but I retain copyright.
I'm not being an 'ass' about it. In fact I tend to be very flexible. Even if you wanted to resell the final product I wouldn't object; I'd be happy to license it to you with that right. Hell, I'd probably even license it to you under the GPL or a BSD-style license if you wanted it that way.
Naturally, if I'm licensing the code for you to resell, I'd probably want royalty or a larger initial cheque, but thats beside the point. The more rights you get the more it costs.
But I'd still need to retain the copyright for two reasons:
1) The project contains code that has been used or will be used in other projects I've worked on. And I'm not assigning you any ownership of those. I can't really. Plus, if I can avoid it, I don't want to be forced to build everything from scratch every time I need something I've already built.
2) The last thing I need is your successor/boss/assistant to sue me for copyright infringment when he finds out some module in your application, to which "you have copyright" was derived from or reused in another project I worked on. I don't want to be prevented from reusing my own personally developed code base.
If you simply must have copyright on every byte of source, than I'll work under that condition too, but it'll take more time, and cost more.
trend sweeping the high-performance computing industry as companies augment general-purpose servers with special-purpose chips to accelerate particular tasks.
As I recall my 286 had a Math Coprocessor. Years later I bought a hardware MPEG decoder card so that I could watch DVD's without skipping on my old Pentium ii. And over the last several years I've installed GPU boards to accelerate some particular video rendering tasks.
Its nice to see the idea of special purpose chips for hardware acceleration is finally catching on in high performance computing.
Ok, first, right off the top you are posting on slashdot. Second, first thing you do is self identify as owning 2 next-gen consoles owner.
Do you really think you qualify as the broader casual market the Wii is designed to appeal to?
Hint: Those people haven't cranked through the available library yet. They don't care about 'integrated multiplayer' either.
The issues you have with the Wii, aren't going to impact the broader casual gamer crowd.
And as a 'gamer', sure the Wii library isn't going to fill your days and nights the way an xbox 360 will expecially with its 1 year lead time. But so what? As a gamer, buying multiple consoles is normal. If you enjoyed it a lot so far, then its simply a matter of waiting for them to release the next game before you pick it up again. Multiple console owners often cycle between them. That's sort of the point owning multiple consoles, after all.
As for your comment about fearing its just going to get lousy ports, and collect dust, get real, its Nintendo - first party exclusives are their lifeblood and you know it. Even last generation the Gamecube was worth it as a 2nd console to get access to those first party titles.
Right now there are 1000s of Wii consoles up on Ebay.
Of course there are 1000's of Wii's on ebay. They're there because they are selling.
And because they are selling they don't represent artificial demand. If anything they show there is still significant demand for it above retail price, while accepting ebay hassles and risks. In other words, we haven't even begun to see what sort of demand there will be for the wii from *impulse buyers*.
Most of the Wii's are still being snapped up by pent up demand, by people actively looking for them. They simply aren't on shelves long enough for someone to stroll up and buy one on impulse.
Moore's "law" doesn't mean squat. Its not like gravity. Its more like noticing that I've never had a car accident.
Then, one day, I will, and the "Law of Magical Excellent Driving" that I've been asserting has been an invisible hand guiding my car around has been violated. Oh noes! How could this have happened?! How did this law which had protected my safety for all those years suddenly fail to apply?...
You can say that, but for how long will this be the case? I don't think copying something is very hard right now, and the barriers seem to continue to go down.
For the foreseeable future at least. You can give me the complete specs on a Core 2 Duo chip, and I still won't be able to make my own for less than what it would cost to buy one.
Even the desk in my office, which I probably could 'copy' if I were really inclined to probably isn't worth it once you factor in the time, material cost, and tools cost.
What happens when anyone can copy anything?
Well then we live in "star trek utopia land", and everybody is happy and free; and we can all run pointless creole themed restaurants and serve food to people who got tired of asking the replicator for it themselves.;)
I'm trying to figure out the economic consequences of that when it is carried out that far. It doesn't seem as if a person can make money using their talents to improve on something. I'm skeptical that the equivalent of tip money can make it worthwhile, it would seem to turn artisans, engineers and designers into beggars like many OSS projects seem to be these days. I suppose musicians can make money with live performances, but would that actually be a money draw? Recorded media seems to have reduced the desire for live bands. Heck, if the wedding market is any indication, services like DJs are simply being replaced with the likes of playlists.
If somehow energy and matter could be had in limitless quantities such that we could just run off a copy of anything we wanted from our replicator box, we wouldn't really need money because there'd be no reason to buy anything. Musicians would create music because they wanted to, or perhaps to pursue fame and celebrity. Artisans, engineers, and designers will create buildings for the same reasons.
At least that's the star trek version of such an "economy". Or maybe the whole thing will be reduced to a mad rush to obtain supplies of dylithium crystals, or Tiberium, or Melange....because that's the only thing left with any scarcity and value.
Personally I think if you give the average person limitless energy and the power to copy whatever they want, sooner or later someone will destroy the planet.
Lossy compression algorithms, for example, are clearly valuable, or people wouldn't use them.
No, they are clearly useful. That doesn't make it valuable. Value only shows up when there is scarcity.
That is why air, for example, which is essential to life is free. There is (currently) no scarcity.
A lossy compression algorithm, once thought up, is like air. There is be no scarcity of an idea once thought up, except through deliberate and artificial suppression.
At this stage, it takes little more to make an idea or algorithm infinitely available than a decision. In the past, replicating, ideas/algorithms/software/whatever and distributing them was enough of a chore that ideas algorithms and processes were literally scarce, and had value.
But today, in the 'internet age' the price of replicating and distributing information has dropped so close to zero that its almost irrelevant. The only thing that gives them any value, is our collective decision not to make 'unauthorized copies' in order to artificially prop up scarcity, and by extension prop up their value.
If we ever collectively chose not to, its game over for IP. There is nothing intrinsically scare about it (once created).
In other words, by not wearing uniforms and mingling within the civilian population, the "terrorists", "enemy combatants," (whatever buzzword you wish) are not only violating the conventions(despite not being signatories), but are also responsible for collateral damage caused by said behavior.
I see.
Lets imagine for a second, that Iraq had invaded the US, and by some miracle toppled the government and military.
Then, whilst installing a government sympathetic to their interests and awarding our resource assets to their corporations, a minority radical faction decides its time to take control...
So the Jerry Falwell's of America start rounding up the fanatical christians for a holy cleansing and start burning libraries, universities, and killing anyone who doesn't accept young-earth creationism and Jesus-is-Lord rhetoric. With no functioning government to stop them the killing begins in earnest.
Naturally, being killed or converted isn't acceptable to another big group, so they start fighting back lest they be exterminated and/or denied any voice in the new government. Suppose YOU joined this group. I know I would.
Of course, both groups also start fighting the Iraqi invaders, who are unpopular to start with, for having invaded in the first place, and who aren't really interested in either side; as what they really want is a friendly puppet government so they can go home with all the resources they've "liberated".
Now at this point, you have some Iraqi back home sitting in his Mom's basement saying that *YOU* are an 'insurgent' or 'terrorist' or whatever the buzzword is today, and that because YOU aren't wearing a uniform YOU are responsible for any collatoral/civilian damage caused when they blow something up trying to prevent you from fighting for your survival and national identity. After all, YOU are violating the geneva conventions...
Give me a break.
Its easy to criticize the 'insurgents' or 'terrorists', but those words don't mean much in the real world.
And no matter WHAT the so-called "enemy" does we are not ever morally released from our Geneva Convention obligations. We hold should hold ourselves to higher standards, for that is what defines us. As we stoop to their level, and commit our own atrocities, we lose all credibility. What separates us from the terrorists?
Consider how the police are tightly restricted in what they may do to catch a criminal; this is the quality that separates the police from the criminals. Sure they might be more effective at finding criminals if we removed all those obstacles, and let them aprehend, interrogate, and torture anyone they felt like but then they become as feared and hated as the criminals, if not moreso.
Same principle goes for military ops. America's reputation is taking a beating internationally, not because its conflict in Iraq hasn't been successful, but because the conflict in Iraq demonstrates America's willingness to lower itself, as it gets nailed in the international community for secret prisons, torture, setting aside habeas corpus, killing civilians, lieing about WMDs, and on and on it goes.
Actually, I imagined that eventuality when I wrote the post, and agree its an obvious flaw in the idea.
In fact its effectively what happens now. Microsoft has long ago stopped doing anything for Windows 98, but if you knocked on their door with an astronomical enough pile of money, I'm sure they'd sell you a few copies, or implement the fix you need, or with enough money, even rewrite it from scratch for you. So technically, its still available, if you are willing to throw enough money at them.
At the end of the day perhaps the best solution is to simply dramatically shorten copyright for software.
That said, the right to make decisions in how society is run should be lost when retirement age comes.
Yeah. And criminals shouldn't be allowed to make decisions either, after all they aren't part of society, even 20 years after they've been released. They forfeit the right, and clearly have nothing intelligent to contribute anyways.
And for that matter, people who don't pay more than 5,000 per year in income tax shouldn't have a vote either; the people paying for government should be the ones who decide how its run. Oh oh, and only university graduates should be able to vote; dumb uneducated dimwits shouldn't have a vote. And and anyone under 30 shouldn't be allowed to vote. They lack experience. And anyone handicapped shouldn't be allowed to vote. And you've got to own real-estate. If your not a land-owner, you shouldn't have a say in how the country is run. Your just a tenant. And of course you've got to be in the military to vote, people not willing to fight for the country shouldn't have any say.
Soooo... are *you* still allowed to vote?
Me, I'd prefer it it the other way: all citizens of age get to vote. (fwiw I'm against denying anyone voting rights, even criminals. Seems to me like too great a risk to democracy to make it THAT easy to prevent someone from voting.)
Sure it means a boatload of unqualified idiots and morons get to vote, but hey, its their country too. If they want to vote for the incompetent and corrupt incumbent simply because they recognize his/her name, that's their right.
If you want to improve on how well democracy works, figure out a way of making the voters you have choose better, not a way of eliminating voters.
I also think that drivers/pilots licenses should have to be renewed each year in person once retirement age is reached and that the renewal should require passing both vision tests and tests to measure reaction times.....
Why wait until retirement age? most of the idiot drivers I see on the street who don't belong there are far far younger than retirement age. Mandatory testing on an annual basis would keep a lot of them off the roads.
If these herbs are so great, why on earth, aren't they registered as drugs.
Because they can't patent them. Prior art and all that... 7000 years of people taking herb X means that if a drug co studies X properly in a double blind multi year trial and finds out that it does indeed work, there is nothing it can do to prevent people from buying X from all the places it has been available for the last 7000 years.
But if they can find a "NEW" molecule that does X, they can patent that, and spend the next few years making back the money they spent proving it works, and then several more years after that raking in the profits.
Agreed. And when we read articles here about MS stopping the OEM distribution of XP by the end of the year to force OEM Vista adoption, how does that *not* qualify as restraint of trade?
Well, there is no way in hell it qualifies as anything illegal on the part of microsoft. No one should ever be compelled to continue to sell a product they no longer wish to.
It does maybe finally raise the cause/issue of abandonware to the forefront.
Copyright is designed to protect authors from competition so that they have the exclusive right to profit from their creation. The idea is that it benefits society to give authors the ability to exclusively profit from their creations for a "reasonable" period of time, as an incentive to create interesting new works.
I'm all for preserving the rights of authors to profit from their work, should they choose to exercise that right. But if an author decides they are no longer interested in selling that work, I don't see any reason to prevent the work falling into the public domain. After all, if the author has 'abandoned' the work, why should the public be denied access to it?
The average author can't and doesn't abuse this. If they release a book, it sells well, and they decide to release another book, great. Presumably people will find the new book interesting and buy it. And In general, except where there are annoying legal/contract conflicts, as long as there is adequate demand for a copy protected book the market will ensure it gets reprinted and sold. Rarely do authors write a book, and then refuse to reprint it regardless of demand, so historically its not really a problem.
But Microsoft and software developers in general abuse that 'feature' of copyright. They release a program, and then down the road after it has been successful they release another one, while simultaneously dropping the first one. Now, normally, this works out ok, as people generally want the new version anyway... but sometimes they don't. They still want the old version. And the software companies refuse to sell it to create artificial demand for the new version.
What rationale is there for allowing this. If microsoft doesn't want to sell/support XP, that's fine. But then copyright should pass into the public domain. If Microsoft doesn't want to exercise their right to profit from the software, that's fine, but that's no reason to keep it out of the public's hands.
We as society GIVE Microsoft the exclusive right to profit from Windows XP to incent them to write Windows XP.
We didn't give them that right just to be denied access to XP when they felt it would be even more profitable to herd us into buying Vista when what we want is XP.
We GAVE them the right to profit from Windows. If they're response is to stop selling it despite high demand. Our response SHOULD BE to put Windows (and other abandoned titles) into the public domain. Of course, Microsoft, and any company for that matter faced with the prospect of having their IP seized and put into the public domain when they could still wring a profit out of it would of course respond by continuing to sell it until they could no longer wring any profit from it. And that is as it should be.
Slashdot Mirror
For starters, software can be enumerated.
...
So can anything else. This is, quite honestly, the stupidest argument I have ever heard.
No. The set of irrational numbers, for example, are easily proven uncountable. Even an undergrad can tell you that.
Sure you can take irrational numbers and assign each one you encounter an integer when you first encounter it, and you can do that forever without running out of integers, but its easy to prove that there will be numbers you will never enumerate, even if you enumerate forever.
Oh, really? And you can write software to discover other software programs mechanically?
Yes. Of course. We can't automatically determine which of those programs are useful for anything, or useful for a task. But just spitting out software programs? Trivial.
Its no different than writing books. Those too can be generated automatically. The fact that you can do it doesn't make it a worthwhile endeavor, as simply generating all possible books isn't nearly so useful as isolating which of them are actually worth reading. But it is a useful and important characteristic of books. (and software programs).
This isn't technically an algorithm, it's a simple algebraic formula.
And yet I presented it as series of steps. That's an algorithm. That is the POINT. Software algorithms can be reduced to mathematical equations. Consider a proof in propositional logic, where you write statements, then apply a set of rules, to come up with a proof. Nothing could be more procedural... but propositional logic can be reduced to a set of axioms, and any 'proof' can be equivalently expressed as a simple equivalence equation of a composition of the axioms.
Which makes it obvious and thus non-patentable.
Except that we knew that particular formula BEFORE calculus itself had been discovered. High school kids can show the curve, and determine the formula with a stopwatch, a measuring tape, a weight, a spool of ribbon, and some graph paper in an afternoon.
Not sure what you mean there. If you patent one solution, you don't own the rights to all solutions, just that one. You do have to describe your patent claims in extreme detail, you know.
Take a look at Leibniz and Newton's original papers on calculus. Even mathematical scholars have written "Despite... points of resemblance, the methods [of Newton and Leibniz] are profoundly different" (Ivor Grattan-Guinness, 1997. The Norton History of the Mathematical Sciences) -- Yet the two approaches are mathematically equivalent.
There is no easy way to transform one algorithm into an equivalent one.
No.Its true there is no easy way to find a mapping from a particular algorithm to another particular one, but its trivially easy to create a mapping from a particular algorithm to an equivalent algorithm if you don't care what destination algorithm is, beyond that it be equivalent.
By your logic, every searching or sorting algorithm is trivially equivalent to every other one, because they do the same damn thing.
No. Not *necessarily* equivalent. And certainly not necessarily *trivially* equivalent. But merely *possibly* equivalent. In the case of sorting there are certainly a few genuinely different approaches to the problem. But there are *also* many algorithms being used to sort that are variations of each other, or demonstratable transformations of an other.
Is a heapsort algorithm a separate algorithm from a ternary heapsort algorithm?
Is a quicksort implemented in Lisp the same algorithm as one in smalltalk? How about in C?
Is there a mapping from quicksort to heapsort?
At what stage do two algorithms become "different" vs "same"?
Try showing me how you can get quicksort or heapsort by algorithmically transforming, say, bogosort.
In point of fact, bogosort isn't a comparison sort. So it actually does qualify as a separate solution. (If you want to call it that.) G
Microsoft may have licensed the code prior to putting it into there software in the US and agreed to pay fees... then exported that software where it wasn't patented. Should Microsoft pay for all the copies they sold under the agreement as the agreement was for their company to use ATT IP?
In a word "No", at least not for patents. Microsoft doesn't need an agreement with ATT in order to get 'access' to the *patents*. Patents are public and published and can be freely accessed by anyone. Microsoft needs an agreement with ATT to create products in the US covered by the patent, or to sell products in the US that are covered by the patent, but for a product made and distributed in China there is no restriction in using the patent. And as anyone can view the contents of the patent its not like you needed to deal with ATT to see what they covered.
Now if this were a copyright case, it would be different; if ATT supplied actual copy-protected source code that they expected to be paid a royalty for they'd have a solid case.
It would seem Microsoft is pulling a "we don't have to pay" move here... after negotiating a contract for say 1 million copies with ATT then telling the court half were sold where there is no patent so we shouldn't have to pay ATT.
Except that it really is how patent law works. Microsoft is not obligated to enter into a contract with ATT at all in order to create and distribute products abroad where the patent doesn't apply.
I've always likened their business practice to that kid on the playground that trades everybody for stuff they're not allowed to have then runs to teacher when they get one bad deal and wants take-backs because they weren't supposed to be doing it in the first place..."that's the rules!" then sneers behind the teacher's dress and starts all over again.
Except in the playground, the kids know better and -don't- get takin in a second time. I'm not sure why anybody enters into deal with Microsoft these days without expecting MS to use their size, weight, marketshare, and legal manipulations against them.
Overall I agree that MS might have been disingenuous in their dealings with ATT and 'deserve to lose'; and perhaps that ATT set pricing based on the expectation that they would be compensated for each copy of windows regardless of whether a patent license was actually needed where it was sold. But its ultimately ATT's fault for not spelling out the deal more clearly.
If you and I have an agreement that I can copy your book and sell it, provided I pay X for each copy, and then I start producing and selling copies in a country that doesn't have any copyright law. What is your recourse? You couldn't sue me for copyright infringment, because what I'm doing isn't violating copyright. I am however violating a reasonable interpretation of our contract, and you might be able to go after me on that.
Similarly ATT -might- have a case showing that their licensing contract should be interpreted as requiring microsoft to pay patent royalty on foreign production, but they don't have a case that MS is actually violating patent law directly.
To make a more layman analagy:
Suppose I design a chair that infringes AT&Ts patent in the US (and the patent only applies in the US). If I make the chair in the US, I have to pay the license. If I make the chair in china and import it to the US I have to pay to license.
If I have a chair factory in the US that makes chairs for US use, and another factory in china that makes chairs for Chinese use. Then I don't have pay licensing on the Chinese chairs, because the patent doesn't apply where they are produced or sold. This isn't controversial, and is how patent laws work. You only have to license patents in the countries you make/sell the products affected by them.
Now, of course for me to set up a chair factory in china I have to send them blueprints and a prototype for the chair. This is of course, perfectly legal. Again, no controversy. At most I might pay a royalty on the single unit.
Now in this case, AT&T asserted that distributing windows elsewhere, by having sent a copy of the CD sent there constituted making the product in the US and then distributing it, entitling AT&T to patent royaltys for each copy sold abroad.
MS, asserted it was really more like sending a single blueprint and prototype to the chair factory, for them to produce copies locally, and that AT&T was not entitled to royaltees for each copy of the product made and distributed abroad.
I personally agree with SCOTUS, and side with MS on this. Its consistent with how patent law is normally applied.
Better yet if they can put enough AI into the system it might learn to create emergencies just to evacuate the building allowing it to shut all the lights and air conditioning off, and saving the company some real money!
I still don't understand what makes algorithms and software OBVIOUSLY not patentable.
For starters, software can be enumerated. I can trivially devise an iterative generating function that will generate all possible software programs. Furthermore if you provide me an existing program, I can tell you on what iteration my generating function will spit it out.
Software programs have a direct relationship to numbers. In a very real sense a useful software program is little more than a useful integer, like a very large prime number. Granted finding useful software programs (and large prime numbers) is hard but that is beside the point. They aren't so much 'inventions' as 'discoveries of a pre-existing truth'.
This characteristic of software has no 'physical world' counterpart.
Carrying on the 'discovery of a truth' aspect; is the notion that algorithms can be expressed in pure mathematics; e.g. lambda calculus. It would be dangerous to have the
Then consider that logic itself is nothing more than an algorithm, as is most of mathematics. Could you imagine science progressing in a world where the rules of logical deduction were someone's private intellectual property. Where deriving the fundamental theorem of calculus from limits is off limits. Where simply solving equations could infringe someones patent?
Suppose someone had patented the algorithm for determining distance travelled while under constant acceleration from a particular starting velocity in a given time frame.
compute initial velocity multiplied by time
compute the square of time
compute 1/2 the acceleration multiplied by the square computed above
add that to the first value we computed
result:
total distance travelled
turns out that 'algorithm' is the representation of a simple mathematical equation; worse the equation itself, is a simple calculus integral.
At the end of the day that algorithm represents a mathematical truth. Any other algorithm you imagine to solve the problem is mathematically equivalent. So if you can patent one algorithm to solve a problem, you naturally control all equivalent algorithms, and since all algorithms to that result are equivalent you control *all* the algorithms for that problem. You effectively patent the ability to solve the problem itself.
In the physical world, you are free to invent a variety of solutions to a problem. In software, there is often only one possible unique solution. Any other solution, even if developed independantly, and done completely differently might be shown to be a mathematically equivalent variation of the first.
Finally, in complexity theory for example, part of proving what complexity class a problem fits into is showing that a mapping exists from your problem to another problem in the class, such that if ANY problem in the entire class is solved all of them are solved. Finding the shortest route between cities for a travelling Salesman problem is the same problem as determining if a boolean expressian can be satisfied is the same problem as finding the smallet set of nodes in a graph that touch all edges, is the same problem as determining if their is a subset of numbers in a set that add up to a specific number, etc, etc, etc.
The problems, by virtue of the presence of a mapping function, can be said to be equivalent. If I patent an algorithm/solution to a problem for which there exists a mapping to a 'different' problem perhaps I automatically get control over both solutions by virtue of the fact that my algorithm solves any problem that can be mapped to the problem I've solved, which means your different algorithm which solves a different problem is still mathematically equivalent to my algorithm, and therefor infringes my patent.
You could try and say that different algorithms that solve the same problem can be patented separately even if they are mathematically equivalent, but that would be pointless. I could trivially take any algorithm and transform it into a different algorithm that is mathematically equivalent and then dodge your patent.
Patenting algorithms is obviously a bad idea if you understand the relationship of algorithms to mathematics.
I don't imagine that "hologram" kind of cinema will ever pick up.
;)
Yeah, the ability to rotate the scene, zoom in and out, nobody would ever want that.
If only there was an application for the technology in porn...
Oh wait.
Not to mention sports.
I just don't think the type of people that are willing to go to the mall are the type that want to order and get it a few days later.
I'm willing to go to the mall. Its closer than most of the whitebox dealers I usually buy from. And I usually have to place orders if I want anything specific.
Sure it might not appeal to the guys that only buy computers when a dippy salesrep tells them is a deal, with its CD holder, cup holder, and ashtray built into the case, bundled with over priced cables, and covered in stickers -- but so what? Those fools weren't going to buy a unit online either, so its not like Dell is losing a customer if they pass on the kiosk.
Around here, they have Dell kiosks in the mall to showcase their products. Sort of like the sony stores. You can go an touch and see a Dell, and then order it up and it gets delivered to your door.
Its good marketing. Even if the kiosks never actually sell a unit, just having them out there will give the 'i wanna touch it' crowd that security so they can go home and order online with confidence -- and hey I'm not mocking them, I am in that crowd. You really have to feel a laptop to determine its weight, get a sense of its build quality, feel the keyboard and trackpad, evaluate screen viewing angle, brightness etc.
Plus it strengthens the brand recognition, and can put a human face on the transaction.
All these things benefit Dell.
That's essentially what paypal invoices are if you've got your CC setup.
:)
You make purchase.
Vendor sends you paypal invoice.
You pay paypal invoice.
Paypal charges your card.
Paypal transfers money to merchant
Merchant sends you product
Works like a charm.
Except I hate paypal.
Sure wish Visa/MC/Amex would just implement this directly:
You make purchase
Vendor sends you Visa "Net" Invoice
I log into Visa "Net" and authorize it.
Visa transfers money to mercant and charges may card.
Oh wait... they did. Its called "Verified by VISA".
The difference is that as part of the merchant checkout I'm actually directed to the Verified by Visa site to authorize the transcation directly with VISA, and then routed back to the vender site. Its all pretty slick.
The ONLY issue with the system is that its vulnerable to phishing etc. How do I really know I've really been directed the Verified by Visa site? The merchant directed me there, I didn't go there myself. But really what can be done to fix it?
If they disconnected the process so I had to manually log in to VISA and auth the transaction, it wouldn't really be any safer. Merchants are going to want to be helpful and they'll include a link to the Visa site, which might even take me directly to the transaction. But that link could be a phish site! Even if VISA banned the practice of merchant including links to VISA to force users to use their own bookmarks or whatever that would accomplish nothing:
Legit merchants would be frustrated as idiot customers wouldn't complete the transaction. Shopping carts would get stale. In cases of hot products like the Wii, what do they do while they wait for customers to finish authorizing. Hold it? Or Sell it? It could be days before the customer gets around to logging in.
(I mention Wii because I've tried to buy one 3 times online now, and twice they've sold it out from under me WHILE I'm going through the checkout. Worse, they check my cart for availability before going into the checkout [I know this because I've had it happen a couple times that I got the item into my cart, but then couldn't even get into checkout as it had sold out], and then at the final submit after entering CC info etc they've sold it right out of my cart.
I understand not holding the cart contents for 24 hours, but come on... 3 minutes from pressing checkout?! Sorry, Just venting... My last order finally got through checkout so hopefully I'll actually get one this time.)
Meanwhile Illegitmate vendors will ignore the ban on links, and provide them. Customers ignorant or uncareful enough to fall for a phish attack, will fall for this too.
I don't know what the solution is, beyond requiring the customer to be slightly paranoid, and constantly vigilant. (And that's somewhat unrealistic.)
One solution I do think would work is a dedicated hardware solution. Where the vender displays a transaction number on the screen. I insert my card into an 'interac debit machine like box' punch in the transaction number on the boxes keypad, and perhaps a password, and the box communicates directly with VISA, to authorize the transaction. I'd even pay a one-time $50-$100 bucks to buy such a box, which is *entirely* feasible as it wouldn't really be anymore complex than a cheap nat/router.
The BOX would interact with the visa web site (web service), it would check certificates (to avoid dns spoofing, phishing sites, etc), and wouldn't be nearly as easy to fool as a person. And as a dedicated box, using certs, public key encryption, SSL, and other appropriate technologies it would pretty much take a firmware hack to defeat it.
It could probably even be made to work via USB to an internet connected computer instead of requiring its own network connection, and still be secure. Even if a virus/trojan replaced the drivers, I doubt they could perform an effective man-in-the-middle attack; all they'd get to see is encrypted traffic and a destination. Splicing it, or redirecting it wouldn't accomplish anything. There's even no reason that the system couldn't be available for Linux, or even GPL/OSS, as it doesn't rely on TPM/DRM at the OS level.
Dammit. Now I want one.
A lot of government prohibitions and mandates simply reflect the predominant religious beleifs. If the majority of a population finds something offensive why should it surprise you that laws are passed to prohibit it. If the majority of a population think something should be just so why should it surprise you that laws are passed to enshrine that?
There are VERY FEW checks in the system that can prevent a law that has majority support from getting passed.
Even the US Constitution, or the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms can be amended, abridged, or even discarded if enough people agree to it. The prohibition on slavery, the right of women to vote, freedom of speech etc, can all be erased if the population is behind it. Democracy, even when functioning perfectly, is amply capable of creating blatant injustice and inequity.
The rule of Democracy is simply 'majority rule' and is by no means accountable to concepts like 'fair', or 'just'.
Going down your list of "Why can..." the answer to most of them is simply: "because that is what most Americans want".
Most americans believe you should only marry single people of the opposite sex.
Most americans believe you shouldn't be naked in public.
Most americans believe drugs are bad. (mkay?)
And a lot of your 'why can...' questions touch on morality. Moral questions are tricky, because if one believes that say sodomy is -morally- wrong, than one is compelled to assert that no one should do it, because things that are immoral *should* be prohibited.
For example gay marriage I don't think is morally wrong, and even though I don't want to engage in it myself, I have no issue with someone else doing it.
Drugs on the other hand, I am torn by. I recognize that *I* can choose not to do them and that is enough for me, but when I examine the question morally, I find that I do think it is an immoral act to abuse substances to a point that it negatively affects one's own mind, and one's own life, particularly because due to the addictive and mind altering aspects of substance abuse the individual taking drugs can lose the ability to choose not to. I'm not sure that society allow people to do that to themselves, even if society at large isn't harmed.
(And that is itself an issue because substance abuse *does* harm society by raising crime, violence, medical costs, and so forth. So even if I accepted that it was ok for you to wilfully damage your own mind, I may not accept the burden that places on society.)
At the end of the day I know that a joint or two isn't going to ruin the world and I actually favor decriminalization. But its a slippery slope. People showing up to school and work stoned is definitely a real problem. And harder drugs are a much greater problem.
At least my desktop applications have backups.
I don't have to rely on 'frantic google engineers scrambling to find a fix'. I know absolutely that my data can be recovered.
I backup my data based on how valuable it is to me.
How valuable is your data to google? I know they try, and they even do a pretty dammed good job, but at the end of the day, you aren't even really their customer -- you are their product.
Like a farmer raising chickens; they want them strong, well fed, happy, healthy, content, disease free, and they take steps to ensure they stay that way. But at the end of the day, they aren't really in it for the chicken's welfare.
Unless I'm missing something...
First off, its historically very common in photography. And usually represents an arrangment where the the photographer agrees not to resell a photo to any other customer, but the buyer can't go and start reselling it either, except for maybe a one-time transfer where the buyer transfers the permanent/exclusive/transfer license that they have to another 3rd party.
The idea is that if you were buying a photo to resell, the photographer would probably want a royalty component. But if you are buying an image to use in marketing, and you don't want anyone else to be able to buy that image and use it a permanent/exclusive license is a middle ground between licensing a copy, and buying the copyright right. It also tends to be priced between the two.
In software its even more common.
For example, I do database design, and over the years, like anyone I've built up a library of common functions, scripts, procedures, libraries, techniques, and so forth that I tend to re-use. I don't want to assign you copyright because then I can't reuse it other projects.
In fact, I can't assign you copyright to that stuff, because its already used in other projects. If I had to sanitize your project so that it wasn't using my copyrighted stuff, and only used stuff that I could assign to you that would take considerable effort and time and undermine the value of the body of work I've built as an independant developer - ie it would cost you a lot more and waste a lot of my time. So I'd prefer to just agree to let you have permanent exclusive license to the final product, but I retain copyright.
I'm not being an 'ass' about it. In fact I tend to be very flexible. Even if you wanted to resell the final product I wouldn't object; I'd be happy to license it to you with that right. Hell, I'd probably even license it to you under the GPL or a BSD-style license if you wanted it that way.
Naturally, if I'm licensing the code for you to resell, I'd probably want royalty or a larger initial cheque, but thats beside the point. The more rights you get the more it costs.
But I'd still need to retain the copyright for two reasons:
1) The project contains code that has been used or will be used in other projects I've worked on. And I'm not assigning you any ownership of those. I can't really. Plus, if I can avoid it, I don't want to be forced to build everything from scratch every time I need something I've already built.
2) The last thing I need is your successor/boss/assistant to sue me for copyright infringment when he finds out some module in your application, to which "you have copyright" was derived from or reused in another project I worked on. I don't want to be prevented from reusing my own personally developed code base.
If you simply must have copyright on every byte of source, than I'll work under that condition too, but it'll take more time, and cost more.
trend sweeping the high-performance computing industry as companies augment general-purpose servers with special-purpose chips to accelerate particular tasks.
As I recall my 286 had a Math Coprocessor.
Years later I bought a hardware MPEG decoder card so that I could watch DVD's without skipping on my old Pentium ii.
And over the last several years I've installed GPU boards to accelerate some particular video rendering tasks.
Its nice to see the idea of special purpose chips for hardware acceleration is finally catching on in high performance computing.
The bloody thing costs $400 off of EBAY, and you're trying to tell me the electricity cost will matter?
/. before:
. html)
.1686 $/kWh x 24h/day x 365days/year is: $324.93 per year.
Uh. Yeah. For people who can add at least. I posted this on
The PS3 is reported to run 220W when running folding@home.
In, for example, New York, the average residential cost of power in 2006 was 16.86 cents: (http://www.ppinys.org/reports/jtf/electricprices
So 220W or 0.22kW x
That kind of money would buy you quite a few new games over a year.
New York is on the high side for the US, but not remotely the highest. And prices in Europe tend to be considerably higher.
Ok, first, right off the top you are posting on slashdot.
Second, first thing you do is self identify as owning 2 next-gen consoles owner.
Do you really think you qualify as the broader casual market the Wii is designed to appeal to?
Hint: Those people haven't cranked through the available library yet. They don't care about 'integrated multiplayer' either.
The issues you have with the Wii, aren't going to impact the broader casual gamer crowd.
And as a 'gamer', sure the Wii library isn't going to fill your days and nights the way an xbox 360 will expecially with its 1 year lead time. But so what? As a gamer, buying multiple consoles is normal. If you enjoyed it a lot so far, then its simply a matter of waiting for them to release the next game before you pick it up again. Multiple console owners often cycle between them. That's sort of the point owning multiple consoles, after all.
As for your comment about fearing its just going to get lousy ports, and collect dust, get real, its Nintendo - first party exclusives are their lifeblood and you know it. Even last generation the Gamecube was worth it as a 2nd console to get access to those first party titles.
Right now there are 1000s of Wii consoles up on Ebay.
Of course there are 1000's of Wii's on ebay. They're there because they are selling.
And because they are selling they don't represent artificial demand. If anything they show there is still significant demand for it above retail price, while accepting ebay hassles and risks. In other words, we haven't even begun to see what sort of demand there will be for the wii from *impulse buyers*.
Most of the Wii's are still being snapped up by pent up demand, by people actively looking for them. They simply aren't on shelves long enough for someone to stroll up and buy one on impulse.
Mod parent up.
...
Seriously.
Moore's "law" doesn't mean squat. Its not like gravity. Its more like noticing that I've never had a car accident.
Then, one day, I will, and the "Law of Magical Excellent Driving" that I've been asserting has been an invisible hand guiding my car around has been violated. Oh noes! How could this have happened?! How did this law which had protected my safety for all those years suddenly fail to apply?
Yeah. Right.
You can say that, but for how long will this be the case? I don't think copying something is very hard right now, and the barriers seem to continue to go down.
;)
For the foreseeable future at least. You can give me the complete specs on a Core 2 Duo chip, and I still won't be able to make my own for less than what it would cost to buy one.
Even the desk in my office, which I probably could 'copy' if I were really inclined to probably isn't worth it once you factor in the time, material cost, and tools cost.
What happens when anyone can copy anything?
Well then we live in "star trek utopia land", and everybody is happy and free; and we can all run pointless creole themed restaurants and serve food to people who got tired of asking the replicator for it themselves.
I'm trying to figure out the economic consequences of that when it is carried out that far. It doesn't seem as if a person can make money using their talents to improve on something. I'm skeptical that the equivalent of tip money can make it worthwhile, it would seem to turn artisans, engineers and designers into beggars like many OSS projects seem to be these days. I suppose musicians can make money with live performances, but would that actually be a money draw? Recorded media seems to have reduced the desire for live bands. Heck, if the wedding market is any indication, services like DJs are simply being replaced with the likes of playlists.
If somehow energy and matter could be had in limitless quantities such that we could just run off a copy of anything we wanted from our replicator box, we wouldn't really need money because there'd be no reason to buy anything. Musicians would create music because they wanted to, or perhaps to pursue fame and celebrity. Artisans, engineers, and designers will create buildings for the same reasons.
At least that's the star trek version of such an "economy". Or maybe the whole thing will be reduced to a mad rush to obtain supplies of dylithium crystals, or Tiberium, or Melange....because that's the only thing left with any scarcity and value.
Personally I think if you give the average person limitless energy and the power to copy whatever they want, sooner or later someone will destroy the planet.
That's crap.
No it isn't.
Lossy compression algorithms, for example, are clearly valuable, or people wouldn't use them.
No, they are clearly useful. That doesn't make it valuable. Value only shows up when there is scarcity.
That is why air, for example, which is essential to life is free. There is (currently) no scarcity.
A lossy compression algorithm, once thought up, is like air. There is be no scarcity of an idea once thought up, except through deliberate and artificial suppression.
At this stage, it takes little more to make an idea or algorithm infinitely available than a decision. In the past, replicating, ideas/algorithms/software/whatever and distributing them was enough of a chore that ideas algorithms and processes were literally scarce, and had value.
But today, in the 'internet age' the price of replicating and distributing information has dropped so close to zero that its almost irrelevant. The only thing that gives them any value, is our collective decision not to make 'unauthorized copies' in order to artificially prop up scarcity, and by extension prop up their value.
If we ever collectively chose not to, its game over for IP. There is nothing intrinsically scare about it (once created).
In other words, by not wearing uniforms and mingling within the civilian population, the "terrorists", "enemy combatants," (whatever buzzword you wish) are not only violating the conventions(despite not being signatories), but are also responsible for collateral damage caused by said behavior.
I see.
Lets imagine for a second, that Iraq had invaded the US, and by some miracle toppled the government and military.
Then, whilst installing a government sympathetic to their interests and awarding our resource assets to their corporations, a minority radical faction decides its time to take control...
So the Jerry Falwell's of America start rounding up the fanatical christians for a holy cleansing and start burning libraries, universities, and killing anyone who doesn't accept young-earth creationism and Jesus-is-Lord rhetoric. With no functioning government to stop them the killing begins in earnest.
Naturally, being killed or converted isn't acceptable to another big group, so they start fighting back lest they be exterminated and/or denied any voice in the new government. Suppose YOU joined this group. I know I would.
Of course, both groups also start fighting the Iraqi invaders, who are unpopular to start with, for having invaded in the first place, and who aren't really interested in either side; as what they really want is a friendly puppet government so they can go home with all the resources they've "liberated".
Now at this point, you have some Iraqi back home sitting in his Mom's basement saying that *YOU* are an 'insurgent' or 'terrorist' or whatever the buzzword is today, and that because YOU aren't wearing a uniform YOU are responsible for any collatoral/civilian damage caused when they blow something up trying to prevent you from fighting for your survival and national identity. After all, YOU are violating the geneva conventions...
Give me a break.
Its easy to criticize the 'insurgents' or 'terrorists', but those words don't mean much in the real world.
And no matter WHAT the so-called "enemy" does we are not ever morally released from our Geneva Convention obligations. We hold should hold ourselves to higher standards, for that is what defines us. As we stoop to their level, and commit our own atrocities, we lose all credibility. What separates us from the terrorists?
Consider how the police are tightly restricted in what they may do to catch a criminal; this is the quality that separates the police from the criminals. Sure they might be more effective at finding criminals if we removed all those obstacles, and let them aprehend, interrogate, and torture anyone they felt like but then they become as feared and hated as the criminals, if not moreso.
Same principle goes for military ops. America's reputation is taking a beating internationally, not because its conflict in Iraq hasn't been successful, but because the conflict in Iraq demonstrates America's willingness to lower itself, as it gets nailed in the international community for secret prisons, torture, setting aside habeas corpus, killing civilians, lieing about WMDs, and on and on it goes.
Actually, I imagined that eventuality when I wrote the post, and agree its an obvious flaw in the idea. In fact its effectively what happens now. Microsoft has long ago stopped doing anything for Windows 98, but if you knocked on their door with an astronomical enough pile of money, I'm sure they'd sell you a few copies, or implement the fix you need, or with enough money, even rewrite it from scratch for you. So technically, its still available, if you are willing to throw enough money at them. At the end of the day perhaps the best solution is to simply dramatically shorten copyright for software.
That said, the right to make decisions in how society is run should be lost when retirement age comes.
Yeah. And criminals shouldn't be allowed to make decisions either, after all they aren't part of society, even 20 years after they've been released. They forfeit the right, and clearly have nothing intelligent to contribute anyways.
And for that matter, people who don't pay more than 5,000 per year in income tax shouldn't have a vote either; the people paying for government should be the ones who decide how its run.
Oh oh, and only university graduates should be able to vote; dumb uneducated dimwits shouldn't have a vote.
And and anyone under 30 shouldn't be allowed to vote. They lack experience.
And anyone handicapped shouldn't be allowed to vote.
And you've got to own real-estate. If your not a land-owner, you shouldn't have a say in how the country is run. Your just a tenant.
And of course you've got to be in the military to vote, people not willing to fight for the country shouldn't have any say.
Soooo... are *you* still allowed to vote?
Me, I'd prefer it it the other way: all citizens of age get to vote. (fwiw I'm against denying anyone voting rights, even criminals. Seems to me like too great a risk to democracy to make it THAT easy to prevent someone from voting.)
Sure it means a boatload of unqualified idiots and morons get to vote, but hey, its their country too. If they want to vote for the incompetent and corrupt incumbent simply because they recognize his/her name, that's their right.
If you want to improve on how well democracy works, figure out a way of making the voters you have choose better, not a way of eliminating voters.
I also think that drivers/pilots licenses should have to be renewed each year in person once retirement age is reached and that the renewal should require passing both vision tests and tests to measure reaction times.....
Why wait until retirement age? most of the idiot drivers I see on the street who don't belong there are far far younger than retirement age. Mandatory testing on an annual basis would keep a lot of them off the roads.
If these herbs are so great, why on earth, aren't they registered as drugs.
Because they can't patent them. Prior art and all that... 7000 years of people taking herb X means that if a drug co studies X properly in a double blind multi year trial and finds out that it does indeed work, there is nothing it can do to prevent people from buying X from all the places it has been available for the last 7000 years.
But if they can find a "NEW" molecule that does X, they can patent that, and spend the next few years making back the money they spent proving it works, and then several more years after that raking in the profits.
The comma isn't extra:
:)
Proper punctuation for a sentence like this is:
Someone said, "Something that they said goes here."
A comma is supposed to precede the quote. If anything, one might ask, why the headline is missing the quotes.
Agreed. And when we read articles here about MS stopping the OEM distribution of XP by the end of the year to force OEM Vista adoption, how does that *not* qualify as restraint of trade?
Well, there is no way in hell it qualifies as anything illegal on the part of microsoft. No one should ever be compelled to continue to sell a product they no longer wish to.
It does maybe finally raise the cause/issue of abandonware to the forefront.
Copyright is designed to protect authors from competition so that they have the exclusive right to profit from their creation. The idea is that it benefits society to give authors the ability to exclusively profit from their creations for a "reasonable" period of time, as an incentive to create interesting new works.
I'm all for preserving the rights of authors to profit from their work, should they choose to exercise that right. But if an author decides they are no longer interested in selling that work, I don't see any reason to prevent the work falling into the public domain. After all, if the author has 'abandoned' the work, why should the public be denied access to it?
The average author can't and doesn't abuse this. If they release a book, it sells well, and they decide to release another book, great. Presumably people will find the new book interesting and buy it. And In general, except where there are annoying legal/contract conflicts, as long as there is adequate demand for a copy protected book the market will ensure it gets reprinted and sold. Rarely do authors write a book, and then refuse to reprint it regardless of demand, so historically its not really a problem.
But Microsoft and software developers in general abuse that 'feature' of copyright. They release a program, and then down the road after it has been successful they release another one, while simultaneously dropping the first one. Now, normally, this works out ok, as people generally want the new version anyway... but sometimes they don't. They still want the old version. And the software companies refuse to sell it to create artificial demand for the new version.
What rationale is there for allowing this. If microsoft doesn't want to sell/support XP, that's fine. But then copyright should pass into the public domain. If Microsoft doesn't want to exercise their right to profit from the software, that's fine, but that's no reason to keep it out of the public's hands.
We as society GIVE Microsoft the exclusive right to profit from Windows XP to incent them to write Windows XP.
We didn't give them that right just to be denied access to XP when they felt it would be even more profitable to herd us into buying Vista when what we want is XP.
We GAVE them the right to profit from Windows. If they're response is to stop selling it despite high demand. Our response SHOULD BE to put Windows (and other abandoned titles) into the public domain. Of course, Microsoft, and any company for that matter faced with the prospect of having their IP seized and put into the public domain when they could still wring a profit out of it would of course respond by continuing to sell it until they could no longer wring any profit from it. And that is as it should be.