What do I mean by "make law"? As I see it, the point of the Court is to void law and inhibit activities that aren't in compliance with the laws of the US. An acceptable outcome in Roe v. Wade would merely be to declare the appropriate Texas law to be unconstitutional and, hence, make the law undone, possibly with some sort of restitution for the Roe party. That's it. To go beyond that and decide what sort of abortions are protected during what stages of pregnancy, that's making law.
Don't mistake my objection, I see what you're trying to say, but I don't see how they're making law here in the sense that you mean. They're basically saying, "this law is unconstitutional for reason X, and furthermore, any laws that do not comply with Y and Z will also be unconstitutional; the particulars beyond that are left to Congress".
That's not making law, that's providing guidelines similar to how Court opinions provide guidelines for determining patent validity, eg. First Circuit's machine-or-transformation test. That seems completely within their purview.
At worst, it's a preemptive voiding of future laws that do not meet comply with X, Y and Z. It certainly saves a lot of expense and head aches, and doesn't exercise any powers that you haven't already enumerated for them, it simply alters the timeline on when they're exercised.
The biology is much more complex and this issue ties in with philosophy of mind and identity and is not anywhere at all clear-cut. The third trimester is an arbitrary decision of the court.
It really isn't that complicated. It's a simple limit of our current understanding and technology. If we someday develop the technology to transplant and grow a fetus prior to 20-24 weeks, then that boundary can be pushed back. It's not arbitrary at all, but informed by the best available science.
And whether it can survive on its own or not is not a very good argument for whether it being killed is murder when you take away that support
What support? I'm afraid this sentence doesn't make sense to me.
In any case, I never said it was murder if the fetus was viable, I said the case for it being murder is much stronger.
For one, the court's ruling was also based on a right to privacy, not necessarily abortion, to get around the question whether abortion, as killing a fetus, is murder (which a case really can be made for).
Which is why they suggested the trimester system. If a fetus is viable, then the case for murder is much stronger since it has a chance of surviving on its own. Until then, the fetus is considered part of the woman's body and the 14th Amendment applies.
The Court could have merely struck down the Texas law without claiming a right to abortion based on a trimester system. In my view, they went beyond their legal power in doing so.
I'm not sure I see the problem.. There were open questions as to the Constitutional legality of abortion laws, and the Court clarified those ambiguities. How is that beyond their purview?
One problem is that the SCOTUS has already rejected the idea that repeated retroactive term increases don't contradict the notion of "limited".
Had to read that a few times to remove all the negatives. Simplified: SCOTUS concluded that repeated retroactive increases violate the "limited" clause.
Because mobile processing ala smart phones hardly existed until 2000, and when you suck as hard as those gadgets from a decade ago, it's hard not to significantly improve.
It's annoying that there is no way to search for folders/albums that have unsaved changes. At best, you can sort them by most recently changed, and then go through them one by one.
Can't agree enough. I haven't seen a floppy in almost 10 years. That updating the BIOS sometimes still requires convoluted techniques like this is ridiculous.
This is the introduction of a CPU, not a final product. The iPhone 4 will likely make it to market ahead of any phones based on this new chip, so you're right not to feel sorry for Jobs, he's laughing all the way to the bank.
This means that if it is PURE software that can be generally used for any purpose, then it can be considered like a mathematical formula, and is not patentable.
Please explain how the patent mentioned in this Slashdot post falls under patentable subject matter. Please explain how Amazon's one-click patent falls under patentable subject matter. Please explain how the RSA encryption algorithm, which is a pure mathematical transformation tool, falls under patentable subject matter.
All of these patents are pure software, pure mathematics, and as such are overly broad due to their high level of abstraction. I think everyone needs to stop pretending that math isn't being patented.
The idea that the patent system can ever restrict patents based on whether they are software/no-software math/not-math is a straw man that the Free Software community invented.
No, it's not. It is specifically laid out in precedent set by the courts that abstract ideas and algorithms cannot be patented. Software written to run on general purpose computers falls under that category. I acknowledge that software designed to achieve a very narrow and specific purposes is marginally more palatable, but any algorithm running on a general purpose computer that is not tied specific hardware for a specific purpose is by definition too abstract to patent. This is a fundamental, logical contradiction. Pro-software patent people like to pretend otherwise.
They explain the process as a sequence of steps.
Since you allegedly have been writing C for 15 years, you should be aware that this is the very definition of an abstract algorithm, which is unpatentable.
Assuming you want to allow patenting your analogy, then as I said, the debate shifts to classifying what types of mathematics are patentable. There is a clear contradiction in the stated principles of patent law, and I'm afraid there will be no resolution without clarifying precisely the terminology and limits.
As for my personal opinion, you got pretty close in your last paragraph, in that patents are supposed to be for a clear and narrow domain. A general software patent absent a specific application has an unacceptably broad scope, because software is math and necessarily highly abstract.
If it would settle this pointless debate, I would personally allow general software patents if they lasted 2-3 years thus properly reflecting the order of magnitude difference in cost of R&D for abstract ideas as compared to physical goods. But that's just me.
Talk about missing the point. Firstly, if patents are supposed to encourage innovation, why introduce them into the software market where innovation is happening at a breakneck pace? Do you really think the legal process you just described will hasten the pace of software development?
Secondly, the economics of software and physical innovations are multiple orders of magnitude different. Suffice it to say that when you can design, construct and ship near infinite units of a physical good that cost you a total of $10,000 in equipment and time, then I'll acknowledge that physical goods and software are even remotely comparable and require the same protections to recoup R&D investments.
Thirdly, software is mathematics which is not patentable anywhere. Your attempted circumventions by tying an algorithm to a general purpose machine is ludicrous, because I can just as easily write my mathematical proof in a theorem prover instead of on paper. The proof can then be checked and executed on a machine, which by your reasoning makes it patentable, thus contradicting the idea that math is not patentable.
I'm sorry, but IMO pro-software patent people are deeply ignorant of the nature of software and mathematics. They want to prevent patenting math but allow patenting software, and they don't even realize these two goals are mutually contradictory. As I said above, if you want to patent software then you have to open a debate about patenting certain types of math. Don't pussyfoot around the issue, because that's dishonest.
It merely says that inventions that are PURELY composed of "schemes, rules..." are not patentable.
Software is purely composed of schemes and rules. I'm sorry, but every comment you've made in this thread implies that you don't understand the mathematical underpinnings of software. Software is mathematics. Period. Full stop. U.S. patents on math and "abstract concepts" are specifically forbidden. A programming language is formal symbolic language in which mathematical theorems are written, which just happen to have a translation to a physical machine which can perform these operations for us. And yes, this description applies to C and C++ too.
If you want to patent a physical invention of which software forms a part, fine, as long as the physical component is sufficiently novel. You cannot patent the software algorithms themselves, and sticking "A hardware appliance comprising of a CPU and volatile or non-volatile storage, and..." does not circumvent that, because that CPU is a general purpose device that can run any specific type of software.
The fact that you have written software such that the CPU does what you want does not suddenly make that configuration patentable, because that hardware is just following a recipe, and abstract formula for achieving results from a set of inputs. In other words, that machine is just doing math for you.
Now you can talk about revising the patent criteria to include certain types of math, and that's a whole separate debate, but at least acknowledge it for what it is. Stop being coy and evasive. I'm speaking to all pro-software patent people here, not you specifically AbbeyRoad.
There simply isn't an easy solution to this. If you abolish software patents, it makes it very difficult for companies to realistically spend millions on development of new concepts and ideas when someone can then just take the ground breaking UI or process etc. If you don't abolish patents, you still end up with the farcical joke that we have now.
Without patents on physical goods, innovators stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars, at least. This already accounts for at least 2 orders of magnitude difference between software and physical goods, and that's assuming your figures for software. Now consider the cost of reproduction for software vs physical goods, the former being near zero, and the latter being nowhere near zero given the requirement for raw materials.
I'm sorry, but software and physical goods are not even close to comparable, and thus should not be granted the same protections. First to market and copyright protection are the only advantages you need in the software marketplace.
Indeed, but if there is suspicion of an unaccounted variable, that's definitely worth studying to refine the test further. The defense lawyers could also prove this by asking the defendant other control questions to demonstrate the faultiness of the test in this case.
Absolutely no lie detector will ever be able to tell the difference between "this is true" and "at this moment, the suspect believes that this is true"
Lie detection is all about belief, not about the difference between truth and belief. The question is whether we can detect whether the subject is saying something they believe to be true, or they believe to be false.
With some mental training (or, you know, schizophrenia) it's entirely possible to temporarily convince yourself that the sky is purple, and there's basically no way any machine will be able to pick up on it in the foreseeable future.
I think it highly unlikely that there are no physiological indicators that can distinguish between statements contrary to and confirming a subject's belief. Not that fMRI necessarily is that technology, but it's promising. All that's needed is improved precision, perhaps via improved fMRI resolution and larger scale studies to better correlate how the brain responds to stating true and false beliefs.
I also disagree with the comment Supreme Court above which stated that a mechanism needs to be 99.9% accurate before it can be allowed. An fMRI test would simply be another piece of evidence to consider, like a witness. Witnesses are highly unlikely to be more than 90% accurate, yet their testimony is admitted as evidence.
What right does Apple have to prevent users of the iPhone/iPad from running apps written in Flash/MonoTouch/whatever framework?
What right does Apple have in preventing me from writing a program in language X and translating that language into language/framework Y, where Y is an accepted language for the iPhone/iPad, ie. C/C++/Objective-C?
I personally don't think Apple is in the right here on either point, but the first one is somewhat defensible. The second point isn't defensible in any way.
The amount of profit they make from being part of the licensing pool would amount to a rounding error.
Not if they manage to standardize a video format used by every single browser and streamed by every server in the entire world. There is a time-limited royalty-free license to use these codecs, and then everyone has to pay.
Besides, you've got it wrong, Apple and Microsoft pay for those licenses, they don't profit from them.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't mistake my objection, I see what you're trying to say, but I don't see how they're making law here in the sense that you mean. They're basically saying, "this law is unconstitutional for reason X, and furthermore, any laws that do not comply with Y and Z will also be unconstitutional; the particulars beyond that are left to Congress".
That's not making law, that's providing guidelines similar to how Court opinions provide guidelines for determining patent validity, eg. First Circuit's machine-or-transformation test. That seems completely within their purview.
At worst, it's a preemptive voiding of future laws that do not meet comply with X, Y and Z. It certainly saves a lot of expense and head aches, and doesn't exercise any powers that you haven't already enumerated for them, it simply alters the timeline on when they're exercised.
It really isn't that complicated. It's a simple limit of our current understanding and technology. If we someday develop the technology to transplant and grow a fetus prior to 20-24 weeks, then that boundary can be pushed back. It's not arbitrary at all, but informed by the best available science.
What support? I'm afraid this sentence doesn't make sense to me.
In any case, I never said it was murder if the fetus was viable, I said the case for it being murder is much stronger.
Which is why they suggested the trimester system. If a fetus is viable, then the case for murder is much stronger since it has a chance of surviving on its own. Until then, the fetus is considered part of the woman's body and the 14th Amendment applies.
I don't see how this is arbitrary at all.
I'm not sure I see the problem.. There were open questions as to the Constitutional legality of abortion laws, and the Court clarified those ambiguities. How is that beyond their purview?
Had to read that a few times to remove all the negatives. Simplified: SCOTUS concluded that repeated retroactive increases violate the "limited" clause.
A new generation of exploits coming to a phone near you!
Because mobile processing ala smart phones hardly existed until 2000, and when you suck as hard as those gadgets from a decade ago, it's hard not to significantly improve.
It's annoying that there is no way to search for folders/albums that have unsaved changes. At best, you can sort them by most recently changed, and then go through them one by one.
Can't agree enough. I haven't seen a floppy in almost 10 years. That updating the BIOS sometimes still requires convoluted techniques like this is ridiculous.
This is the introduction of a CPU, not a final product. The iPhone 4 will likely make it to market ahead of any phones based on this new chip, so you're right not to feel sorry for Jobs, he's laughing all the way to the bank.
Sure they can. The key is to couple the wind power to an mechanism providing thrust, like the wheels in this scenario, or a propeller for a boat.
Please explain how the patent mentioned in this Slashdot post falls under patentable subject matter. Please explain how Amazon's one-click patent falls under patentable subject matter. Please explain how the RSA encryption algorithm, which is a pure mathematical transformation tool, falls under patentable subject matter.
All of these patents are pure software, pure mathematics, and as such are overly broad due to their high level of abstraction. I think everyone needs to stop pretending that math isn't being patented.
No, it's not. It is specifically laid out in precedent set by the courts that abstract ideas and algorithms cannot be patented. Software written to run on general purpose computers falls under that category. I acknowledge that software designed to achieve a very narrow and specific purposes is marginally more palatable, but any algorithm running on a general purpose computer that is not tied specific hardware for a specific purpose is by definition too abstract to patent. This is a fundamental, logical contradiction. Pro-software patent people like to pretend otherwise.
Since you allegedly have been writing C for 15 years, you should be aware that this is the very definition of an abstract algorithm, which is unpatentable.
Assuming you want to allow patenting your analogy, then as I said, the debate shifts to classifying what types of mathematics are patentable. There is a clear contradiction in the stated principles of patent law, and I'm afraid there will be no resolution without clarifying precisely the terminology and limits.
As for my personal opinion, you got pretty close in your last paragraph, in that patents are supposed to be for a clear and narrow domain. A general software patent absent a specific application has an unacceptably broad scope, because software is math and necessarily highly abstract.
If it would settle this pointless debate, I would personally allow general software patents if they lasted 2-3 years thus properly reflecting the order of magnitude difference in cost of R&D for abstract ideas as compared to physical goods. But that's just me.
Talk about missing the point. Firstly, if patents are supposed to encourage innovation, why introduce them into the software market where innovation is happening at a breakneck pace? Do you really think the legal process you just described will hasten the pace of software development?
Secondly, the economics of software and physical innovations are multiple orders of magnitude different. Suffice it to say that when you can design, construct and ship near infinite units of a physical good that cost you a total of $10,000 in equipment and time, then I'll acknowledge that physical goods and software are even remotely comparable and require the same protections to recoup R&D investments.
Thirdly, software is mathematics which is not patentable anywhere. Your attempted circumventions by tying an algorithm to a general purpose machine is ludicrous, because I can just as easily write my mathematical proof in a theorem prover instead of on paper. The proof can then be checked and executed on a machine, which by your reasoning makes it patentable, thus contradicting the idea that math is not patentable.
I'm sorry, but IMO pro-software patent people are deeply ignorant of the nature of software and mathematics. They want to prevent patenting math but allow patenting software, and they don't even realize these two goals are mutually contradictory. As I said above, if you want to patent software then you have to open a debate about patenting certain types of math. Don't pussyfoot around the issue, because that's dishonest.
Software is purely composed of schemes and rules. I'm sorry, but every comment you've made in this thread implies that you don't understand the mathematical underpinnings of software. Software is mathematics. Period. Full stop. U.S. patents on math and "abstract concepts" are specifically forbidden. A programming language is formal symbolic language in which mathematical theorems are written, which just happen to have a translation to a physical machine which can perform these operations for us. And yes, this description applies to C and C++ too.
If you want to patent a physical invention of which software forms a part, fine, as long as the physical component is sufficiently novel. You cannot patent the software algorithms themselves, and sticking "A hardware appliance comprising of a CPU and volatile or non-volatile storage, and..." does not circumvent that, because that CPU is a general purpose device that can run any specific type of software.
The fact that you have written software such that the CPU does what you want does not suddenly make that configuration patentable, because that hardware is just following a recipe, and abstract formula for achieving results from a set of inputs. In other words, that machine is just doing math for you.
Now you can talk about revising the patent criteria to include certain types of math, and that's a whole separate debate, but at least acknowledge it for what it is. Stop being coy and evasive. I'm speaking to all pro-software patent people here, not you specifically AbbeyRoad.
Without patents on physical goods, innovators stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars, at least. This already accounts for at least 2 orders of magnitude difference between software and physical goods, and that's assuming your figures for software. Now consider the cost of reproduction for software vs physical goods, the former being near zero, and the latter being nowhere near zero given the requirement for raw materials.
I'm sorry, but software and physical goods are not even close to comparable, and thus should not be granted the same protections. First to market and copyright protection are the only advantages you need in the software marketplace.
Someone clearly missed the yo mama joke...
As for the rest, I think you're seriously lacking in imagination if you don't find them funny.
Now that HP has open sourced it's Polaris virus-safe computing project.
Indeed, but if there is suspicion of an unaccounted variable, that's definitely worth studying to refine the test further. The defense lawyers could also prove this by asking the defendant other control questions to demonstrate the faultiness of the test in this case.
You can also defeat the statistical problem by repeating the test a statistically significant number of times.
What if it's a practiced lie?
Lie detection is all about belief, not about the difference between truth and belief. The question is whether we can detect whether the subject is saying something they believe to be true, or they believe to be false.
I think it highly unlikely that there are no physiological indicators that can distinguish between statements contrary to and confirming a subject's belief. Not that fMRI necessarily is that technology, but it's promising. All that's needed is improved precision, perhaps via improved fMRI resolution and larger scale studies to better correlate how the brain responds to stating true and false beliefs.
I also disagree with the comment Supreme Court above which stated that a mechanism needs to be 99.9% accurate before it can be allowed. An fMRI test would simply be another piece of evidence to consider, like a witness. Witnesses are highly unlikely to be more than 90% accurate, yet their testimony is admitted as evidence.
There are two questions here:
I personally don't think Apple is in the right here on either point, but the first one is somewhat defensible. The second point isn't defensible in any way.
The amount of profit they make from being part of the licensing pool would amount to a rounding error.
Not if they manage to standardize a video format used by every single browser and streamed by every server in the entire world. There is a time-limited royalty-free license to use these codecs, and then everyone has to pay.
Besides, you've got it wrong, Apple and Microsoft pay for those licenses, they don't profit from them.
Apple and Microsoft both own patents in the MPEG-LA portfolio, so yes, they do profit from them.