They will make no money from Chrome; it is just a means to an end. What they are trying to do is just make sure that the rapid pace of browser development over the past few years continues unabated, so Microsoft doesn't pull another IE6 on us.
I agree that it's a means to an end, but I disagree that their goal is just to foster browser innovation. I think arstechnica got it right: web apps are currently second-class citizens on a user's desktop, where all actions are confined to a window with far too many superfluous controls, and the app has too little control over what it shows to the user. Chrome is the first step making web apps first-class citizens on the desktop. Microsoft's worst fears are coming true.
climatologists will need to be right more than 50% of the time if they want me to believe them.
There's an argument to be made, that longer term predictions can be more accurate than short-term predictions. After all, we can accurately predict classical physical problems with near absolute certainty even though we can't accurately predict individual particle positions with anywhere near that level of certainty.
Trade secrets were a problem in the past given strong employee loyalty. It's not a problem any more in today's highly mobile market. You simply don't give trade secrets any protections either, and no matter how closely guarded they may be, secrets will be out within a few years at least. Reverse-engineering is a science at which many people now excel.
Also interesting to note how employee loyalty decreased as companies' IP and other legal protections increased...
I've heard that argument for the past 10 years and it's not getting any more convincing.
It should be considering the two major operating system competitors to Windows are technically open source. In the absence of copyright and patents, general purpose software wouldn't have a competitive leg to stand on. Perhaps you're forgetting that we're considering here a hypothetical world without IP.
Mathematics is not science.
I disagree, but perhaps that's best left for another debate.
Or do you honestly contend that it was a complete coincidence that they started working on calculus at roughly the same time?
The coincidence is exactly the point. Knowledge common to all practitioners informs their work, and even if they work completely independently they can arrive at similar, and sometimes even identical discoveries.
I quote, "First of all I'm sure your cousin built upon decades of patentable work when figuring out her cure." It's presumptuous that, a) any discoveries she built her work on were patentable, and b) that she didn't just start with public medical knowledge. Patents and corporations are not the bastions of human knowledge!
Corrupt? I'd take the word of a government scientist over a pharmaceutical company PR flack any day.
Sure, but it's not the scientist in either hierarchical organization you have to worry about. Would you trust the government's PR flack over pharma's PR flack? No strawman please. Every hierarchical structure is subject to the same abuses and the same weaknesses as any other, hence the division of power.
And the argument that "I don't know how, but somehow they'll do it" doesn't fill one with confidence.
If it weren't for the fact that advancement happened before IP ever existed, I might agree with you.
Not where you have something that you can get out the door the same day the creator releases it. Look at commercial software overseas; Microsoft loses out to sellers of pirated copies because it's so easy to copy, and the pirate sellers have almost no expenses.
Sure, and I can spend all sorts of money trying to make pigs fly. If something simply isn't well suited to a medium, then we should create government enforced monopolies for them? What kind of reasoning is that?
General purpose proprietary software will ultimately be a dead end for this reason. Customized software is the only tenable business model. Open source is actually proving my point right now. Open Office, Firefox, and perhaps even Linux will continue to supercede proprietary offerings and the only customized software will be needed. Fortunately, there's still a large, and growing, demand for it.
Don't be ridiculous. That's how biomedical research is done. The fact that another company had already patented her discovery as a "variation" of an already existing medication simply supports my point.
I suppose Newton and Leibniz both invented calculus because they had some common inspiration? Parallel, independent innovation happens all the time.
Most of the research done in biomedical research requires vast amounts of money to be done correctly.
No, it requires vast amounts of money to pass government approval. Synthesis requires a lab on the order of a few tens of thousands of dollars. Human trials can be moderately expensive, but for potentially life-saving drugs, you will find no end of volunteers.
No, personally I'd prefer the government handled the funding itself
Personally, I'd prefer it government kept its heavy handed, corrupt influence from as much as possible.
if you removed ALL IP protection the industry would collapse
Doubtful. Generics would still be around, so at best, you'd see brands collapse, or morph into generics themselves. After a short period of little to no innovation, some enterprising individuals will establish a way to push drugs forward, I guarantee you. For instance, time-shared R&D labs, like how computers were time-shared before they became so cheap and plentiful. Or there would be more innovation in equipment to bring down lab costs. Or more advanced understanding of drug interactions with genetics will improve predictions of side-effects and so reduce cost of trials. The loss of IP is not doomsday.
Nobody's going to spend 500 million dollars developing a drug that someone else will be able to create and sell for almost nothing.
As this article argues, it only costs $500 million due to regulations, marketing, sales overheads. Do you honestly think lab equipment and trials cost $500 million? It's a fraction of that.
There are MANY companies that conduct research only that have no interest whatsoever in being in the business of making any thing.
That can be addressed by ensuring you sell the process before filing the patent, or by a grace period that you must begin selling the patent within a certain time period (which should allow them to sell it once approved).
I would say that the right to I.P. comes from the right to all property. Historically mankind has tended to spear people who tried to steal the fruits of his labor.
Problem is, IP is not property because there is no scarcity. Mankind speared those who stole their food because food was and is a scarce resource (I take yours, you have one less).
Ideas and knowledge are not scarce. If I hear you humming a tune you made up, and I start humming it too, did I divest you of your ability to hum, or the tune itself?
I generally agree with your arguments, and I'm glad someone out there is actively pursuing copyright-free content, but one form of music which is not amenable to touring is electronic music. It's sometimes possible to perform some of the music in principle, but it's far more difficult than with a band.
I'd be interested to hear of any thoughts you have on this industry.
The photographer's customers aren't going to be too too happy once their FACE (your pictures that you, not only gave away, but couldn't restrict in any ways, shape and form) is on a box of cereals or used on TV to advertise condoms.
This has nothing to do with copyright. Privacy laws prevent these sorts of unauthorized uses.
But where there's no credible service alternative--for example, writing fiction--then giving it away doesn't help you.
But there is. First to market is often sufficient to recoup costs and then some.
First of all I'm sure your cousin built upon decades of patentable work when figuring out her cure.
Says who? That's an awful presumption.
Further, mathematicians and programmers build on decades of work too, yet algorithms are not patentable, nor should they be. The idea that patents are required for the advancement of a field should not be accepted a priori, but only when rigourously supported by evidence. The evidence is thin my friends.
I personally know how much money pharma spends selling and marketing drugs, and not all in ethical ways, that could be better spent increasing production and cutting costs. In a more competitive market, the measures they are currently taking just wouldn't pay off. The luxury of monopoly results in unethical kickback schemes to push expensive brands over equally good generics.
Even properly encrypted smart cards are vulnerable to all sorts of physical attacks, like timing and voltage regulation. The general rule in security is, if the adversary has physical access to a device, all bets are off.
Any hierarchical structure is subject to abuse by those at the top, including unions, the military and government, regardless of their charter. Everyone would do well to remember that.
Which is still better than not working at all and starving to death, or clearly better than working back in whatever village they came from, otherwise they'd go back. We should feel bad for people because life has tough choices? Guess what, our ancestors had it hard too, and they pulled themselves up from their boot straps just fine.
Fact is, outsourcing generally improves the quality of life in third-world countries over time because industrialized nations invest money in these countries and improve infrastructure and provide opportunities for their workers' children to have better schooling and opportunities than they did.
I've read that the power guzzling northbridge+southbridge on the Nano's reference motherboard is the cause of the majority of the power consumption. I think they need a better reference board to truly showcase the Nano's abilities.
Posted too soon. And if Open Tech is serious about fighting Apple on this, I hope they take the issue to court and resolve once and for all the validity of EULAs for shrink wrapped software. Let's hope they get struck down.
I think Apple's most promising attack is to go after Open Tech for violating their EULA. Clearly, Open Tech is selling computers capable of running Mac OS X, then the company employees have been installing Mac OS X on non Apple-labeled computers in violation of the EULA.
And what if you won't agree with the EULA? Are you entitled to a refund? If not, the company just took your money, before you could see and agree to the EULA mind you, and is not obligated to provide anything in return.
I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. The reasoning in Softman's case could very well be extended to all EULA's, and you'll see much speculation surrounding that very line of reasoning.
First sale applies when you purchase something from a retail location and pay a one-time fee.
Slashdot Mirror
They will make no money from Chrome; it is just a means to an end. What they are trying to do is just make sure that the rapid pace of browser development over the past few years continues unabated, so Microsoft doesn't pull another IE6 on us.
I agree that it's a means to an end, but I disagree that their goal is just to foster browser innovation. I think arstechnica got it right: web apps are currently second-class citizens on a user's desktop, where all actions are confined to a window with far too many superfluous controls, and the app has too little control over what it shows to the user. Chrome is the first step making web apps first-class citizens on the desktop. Microsoft's worst fears are coming true.
Cookies are stored on disk in the browser's folder. Of course they are accessible between tabs.
climatologists will need to be right more than 50% of the time if they want me to believe them.
There's an argument to be made, that longer term predictions can be more accurate than short-term predictions. After all, we can accurately predict classical physical problems with near absolute certainty even though we can't accurately predict individual particle positions with anywhere near that level of certainty.
Trade secrets were a problem in the past given strong employee loyalty. It's not a problem any more in today's highly mobile market. You simply don't give trade secrets any protections either, and no matter how closely guarded they may be, secrets will be out within a few years at least. Reverse-engineering is a science at which many people now excel.
Also interesting to note how employee loyalty decreased as companies' IP and other legal protections increased...
I've heard that argument for the past 10 years and it's not getting any more convincing.
It should be considering the two major operating system competitors to Windows are technically open source. In the absence of copyright and patents, general purpose software wouldn't have a competitive leg to stand on. Perhaps you're forgetting that we're considering here a hypothetical world without IP.
Mathematics is not science.
I disagree, but perhaps that's best left for another debate.
Or do you honestly contend that it was a complete coincidence that they started working on calculus at roughly the same time?
The coincidence is exactly the point. Knowledge common to all practitioners informs their work, and even if they work completely independently they can arrive at similar, and sometimes even identical discoveries.
I quote, "First of all I'm sure your cousin built upon decades of patentable work when figuring out her cure." It's presumptuous that, a) any discoveries she built her work on were patentable, and b) that she didn't just start with public medical knowledge. Patents and corporations are not the bastions of human knowledge!
Corrupt? I'd take the word of a government scientist over a pharmaceutical company PR flack any day.
Sure, but it's not the scientist in either hierarchical organization you have to worry about. Would you trust the government's PR flack over pharma's PR flack? No strawman please. Every hierarchical structure is subject to the same abuses and the same weaknesses as any other, hence the division of power.
And the argument that "I don't know how, but somehow they'll do it" doesn't fill one with confidence.
If it weren't for the fact that advancement happened before IP ever existed, I might agree with you.
Not where you have something that you can get out the door the same day the creator releases it. Look at commercial software overseas; Microsoft loses out to sellers of pirated copies because it's so easy to copy, and the pirate sellers have almost no expenses.
Sure, and I can spend all sorts of money trying to make pigs fly. If something simply isn't well suited to a medium, then we should create government enforced monopolies for them? What kind of reasoning is that?
General purpose proprietary software will ultimately be a dead end for this reason. Customized software is the only tenable business model. Open source is actually proving my point right now. Open Office, Firefox, and perhaps even Linux will continue to supercede proprietary offerings and the only customized software will be needed. Fortunately, there's still a large, and growing, demand for it.
Don't be ridiculous. That's how biomedical research is done. The fact that another company had already patented her discovery as a "variation" of an already existing medication simply supports my point.
I suppose Newton and Leibniz both invented calculus because they had some common inspiration? Parallel, independent innovation happens all the time.
Most of the research done in biomedical research requires vast amounts of money to be done correctly.
No, it requires vast amounts of money to pass government approval. Synthesis requires a lab on the order of a few tens of thousands of dollars. Human trials can be moderately expensive, but for potentially life-saving drugs, you will find no end of volunteers.
No, personally I'd prefer the government handled the funding itself
Personally, I'd prefer it government kept its heavy handed, corrupt influence from as much as possible.
if you removed ALL IP protection the industry would collapse
Doubtful. Generics would still be around, so at best, you'd see brands collapse, or morph into generics themselves. After a short period of little to no innovation, some enterprising individuals will establish a way to push drugs forward, I guarantee you. For instance, time-shared R&D labs, like how computers were time-shared before they became so cheap and plentiful. Or there would be more innovation in equipment to bring down lab costs. Or more advanced understanding of drug interactions with genetics will improve predictions of side-effects and so reduce cost of trials. The loss of IP is not doomsday.
Nobody's going to spend 500 million dollars developing a drug that someone else will be able to create and sell for almost nothing.
As this article argues, it only costs $500 million due to regulations, marketing, sales overheads. Do you honestly think lab equipment and trials cost $500 million? It's a fraction of that.
There are MANY companies that conduct research only that have no interest whatsoever in being in the business of making any thing.
That can be addressed by ensuring you sell the process before filing the patent, or by a grace period that you must begin selling the patent within a certain time period (which should allow them to sell it once approved).
I would say that the right to I.P. comes from the right to all property. Historically mankind has tended to spear people who tried to steal the fruits of his labor.
Problem is, IP is not property because there is no scarcity. Mankind speared those who stole their food because food was and is a scarce resource (I take yours, you have one less).
Ideas and knowledge are not scarce. If I hear you humming a tune you made up, and I start humming it too, did I divest you of your ability to hum, or the tune itself?
I generally agree with your arguments, and I'm glad someone out there is actively pursuing copyright-free content, but one form of music which is not amenable to touring is electronic music. It's sometimes possible to perform some of the music in principle, but it's far more difficult than with a band.
I'd be interested to hear of any thoughts you have on this industry.
The photographer's customers aren't going to be too too happy once their FACE (your pictures that you, not only gave away, but couldn't restrict in any ways, shape and form) is on a box of cereals or used on TV to advertise condoms.
This has nothing to do with copyright. Privacy laws prevent these sorts of unauthorized uses.
But where there's no credible service alternative--for example, writing fiction--then giving it away doesn't help you.
But there is. First to market is often sufficient to recoup costs and then some.
First of all I'm sure your cousin built upon decades of patentable work when figuring out her cure.
Says who? That's an awful presumption.
Further, mathematicians and programmers build on decades of work too, yet algorithms are not patentable, nor should they be. The idea that patents are required for the advancement of a field should not be accepted a priori, but only when rigourously supported by evidence. The evidence is thin my friends.
I personally know how much money pharma spends selling and marketing drugs, and not all in ethical ways, that could be better spent increasing production and cutting costs. In a more competitive market, the measures they are currently taking just wouldn't pay off. The luxury of monopoly results in unethical kickback schemes to push expensive brands over equally good generics.
Even properly encrypted smart cards are vulnerable to all sorts of physical attacks, like timing and voltage regulation. The general rule in security is, if the adversary has physical access to a device, all bets are off.
an employee who leaves one company may not then divulge that company's confidential information
Which is subject to privacy laws, and so would be illegal.
and trade secrets to the ex-employee's new employer
Which is subject to copyright and patent restrictions. So no, companies have enough protection that they don't need non-compete agreements.
Any hierarchical structure is subject to abuse by those at the top, including unions, the military and government, regardless of their charter. Everyone would do well to remember that.
We'll be back to people doing it out of a sense of duty to their country than a sense of greed?
I can think of few crimes worse than tampering with our system of government.
Technically, it can constitute treason.
Which is still better than not working at all and starving to death, or clearly better than working back in whatever village they came from, otherwise they'd go back. We should feel bad for people because life has tough choices? Guess what, our ancestors had it hard too, and they pulled themselves up from their boot straps just fine.
Fact is, outsourcing generally improves the quality of life in third-world countries over time because industrialized nations invest money in these countries and improve infrastructure and provide opportunities for their workers' children to have better schooling and opportunities than they did.
Didn't you see the latest? He's too busy crying like a little bitch. ;-)
Don't you think it is way too arrogant to "know" what is good for them?
Isn't it rather silly to believe that people would be working at a job they detest against their will?
Widespread cell network outages, telecommunication failures like 911 outages, power outages, stock exchange attacks. Need I go on?
I've read that the power guzzling northbridge+southbridge on the Nano's reference motherboard is the cause of the majority of the power consumption. I think they need a better reference board to truly showcase the Nano's abilities.
Posted too soon. And if Open Tech is serious about fighting Apple on this, I hope they take the issue to court and resolve once and for all the validity of EULAs for shrink wrapped software. Let's hope they get struck down.
I think Apple's most promising attack is to go after Open Tech for violating their EULA. Clearly, Open Tech is selling computers capable of running Mac OS X, then the company employees have been installing Mac OS X on non Apple-labeled computers in violation of the EULA.
And what if you won't agree with the EULA? Are you entitled to a refund? If not, the company just took your money, before you could see and agree to the EULA mind you, and is not obligated to provide anything in return.
I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. The reasoning in Softman's case could very well be extended to all EULA's, and you'll see much speculation surrounding that very line of reasoning.
First sale applies when you purchase something from a retail location and pay a one-time fee.
Sorry, alien virus upload capability was discontinued when they killed of the Apple Powerbooks and Mac OS 8.x and 9.x OS. Apple MacBooks don't come with this feature, but they do come with the ability to be easily recognized as Unix and used by 13 year olds.