The entire concept of copyright, patent, etc. is completely arbitrary. It's not the natural product of the rules of physics. It is something human beings made up for their own purposes.
Of course this is a bit of a fallacy of equivocation on the word "arbitrary." In general, and in the way I used it, "arbitrary" means "with no reasonable consideration, given the context." You are redefining it to mean "not adhering to immutable laws of physics." There is quite a difference there. Then you are using that "straw man" to argue against.
I am sure we can all agree that the definition of "Arbitrary" itself can, in a way, be arbitrary. If it is applied in a reasonable way within the given context then "arbitrary" would not be arbitrary.
That said, I agree with the rest of what you said. In an ideal world we could do as I suggest: Bury our dead baby and make a new one. Just as we would not simply rip out a mainframe, we could not simply scrap all of current IP law. However, simplistic solutions will definitely NOT solve the problem and I grow weary of hearing them.
While I do agree with you on a technical level, the person to whom I was replying had said that "all software is math." I was simply showing the logical extension of that statement and way of thinking. My point, in the end, is that regardless of whether software is math or not, a more considered line needs to be drawn as to whether something should be patentable or not. Although I agree that most software patents are total BS, I do not believe that NO software should be patentable. There are some software approaches that are truly unique and not obvious which someone worked very hard to figure out and perfect. I believe those should be protected (if the inventor wants to protect them). Unfortunately, the USPTO has been giving out patents for the idea of having a certain feature rather than a particular implimentation of that feature.
But what is the point of making that arbitrary distinction? Simply imposing arbitrary rules with no purpose other than to make the system appear simpler, is meaningless. Most everyone here is a technical person in some way: networks, software, hardware... The same principles apply here as in any complicated system. Usually you have to have a complicated system in order for it to appear simple to the user. Many here seem to want to believe problem with IP law is merely that it is too complicated, and thus offer simplistic solutions to, well, simplify the system. The real problem is that IP law is like a legacy mainframe system that has had decades of hacks piled on top of it and then had a web based interface slapped onto it as well. It needs to be ripped out and something else designed from scratch to replace it. Not in that order, of course.
The final solution may not be so very simple as many here often propose. But it should be coherent, and that is the key.
As eloquently illustrated here: http://xkcd.com/435/, everything is math. So, the question, as always is where does one draw the line. There is no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Or we could build a Prior Art Combinator: A tool to preemptively invalidate troll patents.
Granted, it wouldn't be effective against all the vague and generic patents that were filed 10 years ago. But it might cut down on the new filings of troll patents.
In statistics class we just said, "failed to disprove." It is only a few more characters and my fingers don't hurt at all from typing them.
Given that the world is full of uneducated deniers of almost every scientific principle that has so far been shown to be "statistically impossible to disprove" - and are therefore considered to be "statistically improbable to disprove" by those knowledgeable in the field - perhaps it is now time for scientists to learn to be as exacting in their everyday language as in the language they use in published papers.
If the word salad becomes too onerous then perhaps we could start using acronyms. I vote for SID because it is short, pronounceable, and stands for both "Statistically Impossible to Disprove" (as in: the statistical possibility of the current data being wrong is very low) and "Statistically Improbable to be Disproved" (as in: a meta-analysis of all trustworthy research shows that a statistically high enough proportion of all research in the field leans statistically far enough in a particular direction - even when the research was honestly attempting to disprove the theory - that a statistically high number of trusted and vetted researchers in the field agree that it is highly unlikely that the theory will ever be disproved).
You are picking nits with the wording and then calling that wording dishonest. To me that is the height of dishonesty. NONE of the ORIGINAL data has been DELETED. 5% of the data that was originally being considered is now no longer being considered in the specific research done by this specific group of researchers. Just because someone in some e-mail used the word "deleted" when they really meant "removed from our list of data under consideration for our specific research project" and then some propagandists at FAUX "News" jumped on that term and misconstrued it then repeated that misconstrual a thousand times does not make the misconstrual true.
Just because you call someone dishonest does not, in some magical way, make you right despite the facts of the case. It just shows how desperate and disingenuous you are.
Not that I am on the carrier's side... But can you possibly explain the logic in this position other than that you want it?
I pay extra for a faster connection and a higher total download capacity per month. That seems entirely fair. The problem comes when carriers try to limit what kind of data you download within that limit. They are effectively trying to make it impossible for you to actually get what you specifically paid for. That is what net neutrality is about. Not just letting you download as much porn as you want while still only paying the basic fee.
So, are you saying that the "GP" was saying that if you forget one thing in your patent application that all your hard work is down the drain? There is actually quite a lengthy process of back and forth (I forget what that is called) where the USPTO asks you to clarify things and allows you to modify the application. However, still I don't think that simply leaving something out, however immaterial, should disqualify a patent.
Simply trying to make it more difficult to get a patent (or easier to invalidate a patent on a simple technicality) will not solve the problem. We need to make the rules for patents more reasonable and fair to all. Not just throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Next, the professional climate deniers will be accusing climate researchers of pedophilia. It is the conservative smear tactic of last resort. And since their smear campaigns are always completely bull, they are inevitably forced into using their last resort.
OK, so I've read the replies to this that say the cargo vessels couldn't dock in ports if they were armed.
Once again a fine example of Slashdoters discussing ad infinitum rather than solving the problem.
The solution is for the ships to be armed while in the open seas but not armed while in safe waters near the ports they want to dock at? "How can they do that?", you ask. Simple. Some enterprising company could set up a floating dock offshore near safe ports. The cargo vessels could then "check their guns at the door" just like in an old cowboy movie. They would offload their guns before they come into port and pick them up again as they leave. I'm sure it would take a competent engineer less than a week to come up with a way to easily mount and dismount these weapons. While in "storage" the weapons could be used to protect the "gun check" from those who would see it as a tempting source of free weaponry. And since that "gun check" would be within the territorial waters of the country with the port, if some pirates did try to steal the weapons they would suffer the full force of that country's navy because the pirates would be invading that country's territorial waters.
I agree to a point. I think there are a small few algorithms that are unique and non-obvious enough to be patentable. Everything else is relatively obvious to anyone skilled in the art. This is a major test of patentability that the USPTO seems to be ignoring. It seems they will patent anything they don't understand. However, I think that copyrights should still be used to protect a particular implementation of any algorithm in code. Not one or the other, black and white, but one or the other depending on the situation. The big problem is that the USPTO can't seem to recognize when the situation does not call for a patent. Perhaps they are blinded by all those patent fees.
Agreed. The OP should get a lawyer and come up with a non-disclosure, non-compete agreement that says that signers can use the code as a target to design against but that they are specifically disallowed from distributing it or any derivative work. I know, it is the opposite of FOSS and Richard Stallman would kick my ass for saying it. However, as long as you give free access to responsible people who want to see it if they sign the agreement, I don't think there is any ethical problem. Heck, he could even make a little money off of it by selling the information as a white-paper just like any other professional consulting firm.
Why in the world would wanting Google to redesign their Android Market web site equate to wanting them to take more control over what apps can be sold?
Oh, the insanity of people who will imagine anything they can just so they can pretend to be better than others.
It is because the only way to find apps is to browse them on the darned phone. Don't get me wrong, I love my Droid. But a 3.5" diagonal screen is not the place I want to be sorting through thousands of almost identical task list apps and trying to find the best one. I hesitate to buy any apps because I never know if I have actually looked through the entire list. We need a real web site with better access to reviews and an easier way to down-rank all those apps that essentially spam. I have run into at least 20 apps with identical descriptions but different names and icons.
When Google cleans up that mess, then maybe I will be willing to spend some money in there.
More universities should include a course in IP law and open source licensing in their computer science programs. I know none of the programs I have looked at teach it. Perhaps at some of the better schools...
I searched Usenet for my name and only got 112 entries. I know for a fact that I wrote thousands of messages in Usenet over the years. So it may be possible that I posted this idea and it is not turning up in the search. If anyone else wants to give it a go to defeat this patent be my guest.
And yes, you will find some interesting posts that would be embarrassing if I gave a damn. So don't bother with the cracks, I won't care.
I just found the text of my notes that I wrote up when I thought of this. I am posting them here, not because I think this establishes prior art, but because it may help in finding any usenet posts I may have made about it.
Text document serial number encoding scheme
Sunday, January 25, 2004
4:46 PM
In several places within the document, identify multiple different possible wordings.
Each location equals a digit
Each different possible variation is another character for that digit.
Since there may be more than 2 variations for some locations and each location may have a different number of variations, the serial number is like a byte of data where each bit can be in a different base number system. This vastly increases the total possible different combinations. A 3 bit, base 2 number (binary) gives 8 different combinations. If you change just one of those bits to base 3 then the total possible combinations jumps to 12. for each additional variation in one particular digit it increases the total combinations by the total combinations of all the other digits. This is basic base number system math but not everyone thinks of the possibility of using a different base for each digit.
Honestly, I did think of this sometime around 2004. I may have posted something about it on Usenet. I will take a look. Others could search too. I have no idea what newsgroup I would have written it in, perhaps a Microsoft one. I have always used the name "Grant S. Robertson" for my Usenet posts. That should narrow things down a bit. Also, I thought of it in connection with publishing and distributing e-books, primarily in.PDF form if that helps.
This is one of the reasons I have started my www.ideationizing.com blog. Simply to post my ideas which I don't expect to be able to work on, and thus provide prior art to stymie patents such as these. I urge everyone to blog and post as many ideas as they can think of. This seems to be the only way we are going to prevent the big corporations from patenting everything under the sun.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course this is a bit of a fallacy of equivocation on the word "arbitrary." In general, and in the way I used it, "arbitrary" means "with no reasonable consideration, given the context." You are redefining it to mean "not adhering to immutable laws of physics." There is quite a difference there. Then you are using that "straw man" to argue against.
I am sure we can all agree that the definition of "Arbitrary" itself can, in a way, be arbitrary. If it is applied in a reasonable way within the given context then "arbitrary" would not be arbitrary.
That said, I agree with the rest of what you said. In an ideal world we could do as I suggest: Bury our dead baby and make a new one. Just as we would not simply rip out a mainframe, we could not simply scrap all of current IP law. However, simplistic solutions will definitely NOT solve the problem and I grow weary of hearing them.
While I do agree with you on a technical level, the person to whom I was replying had said that "all software is math." I was simply showing the logical extension of that statement and way of thinking. My point, in the end, is that regardless of whether software is math or not, a more considered line needs to be drawn as to whether something should be patentable or not. Although I agree that most software patents are total BS, I do not believe that NO software should be patentable. There are some software approaches that are truly unique and not obvious which someone worked very hard to figure out and perfect. I believe those should be protected (if the inventor wants to protect them). Unfortunately, the USPTO has been giving out patents for the idea of having a certain feature rather than a particular implimentation of that feature.
Perhaps true. But we still need to give it an official burial and make a new baby.
But what is the point of making that arbitrary distinction? Simply imposing arbitrary rules with no purpose other than to make the system appear simpler, is meaningless. Most everyone here is a technical person in some way: networks, software, hardware... The same principles apply here as in any complicated system. Usually you have to have a complicated system in order for it to appear simple to the user. Many here seem to want to believe problem with IP law is merely that it is too complicated, and thus offer simplistic solutions to, well, simplify the system. The real problem is that IP law is like a legacy mainframe system that has had decades of hacks piled on top of it and then had a web based interface slapped onto it as well. It needs to be ripped out and something else designed from scratch to replace it. Not in that order, of course.
The final solution may not be so very simple as many here often propose. But it should be coherent, and that is the key.
As eloquently illustrated here: http://xkcd.com/435/, everything is math. So, the question, as always is where does one draw the line. There is no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Exactly! How in the world can the platform be at fault just because open source developers have not jumped onto it yet.
This posting is just trying to create a controversy out of thin air. Must be a slow news day.
Or we could build a Prior Art Combinator: A tool to preemptively invalidate troll patents. Granted, it wouldn't be effective against all the vague and generic patents that were filed 10 years ago. But it might cut down on the new filings of troll patents.
In statistics class we just said, "failed to disprove." It is only a few more characters and my fingers don't hurt at all from typing them.
Given that the world is full of uneducated deniers of almost every scientific principle that has so far been shown to be "statistically impossible to disprove" - and are therefore considered to be "statistically improbable to disprove" by those knowledgeable in the field - perhaps it is now time for scientists to learn to be as exacting in their everyday language as in the language they use in published papers.
If the word salad becomes too onerous then perhaps we could start using acronyms. I vote for SID because it is short, pronounceable, and stands for both "Statistically Impossible to Disprove" (as in: the statistical possibility of the current data being wrong is very low) and "Statistically Improbable to be Disproved" (as in: a meta-analysis of all trustworthy research shows that a statistically high enough proportion of all research in the field leans statistically far enough in a particular direction - even when the research was honestly attempting to disprove the theory - that a statistically high number of trusted and vetted researchers in the field agree that it is highly unlikely that the theory will ever be disproved).
You are picking nits with the wording and then calling that wording dishonest. To me that is the height of dishonesty. NONE of the ORIGINAL data has been DELETED. 5% of the data that was originally being considered is now no longer being considered in the specific research done by this specific group of researchers. Just because someone in some e-mail used the word "deleted" when they really meant "removed from our list of data under consideration for our specific research project" and then some propagandists at FAUX "News" jumped on that term and misconstrued it then repeated that misconstrual a thousand times does not make the misconstrual true.
Just because you call someone dishonest does not, in some magical way, make you right despite the facts of the case. It just shows how desperate and disingenuous you are.
Not that I am on the carrier's side... But can you possibly explain the logic in this position other than that you want it?
I pay extra for a faster connection and a higher total download capacity per month. That seems entirely fair. The problem comes when carriers try to limit what kind of data you download within that limit. They are effectively trying to make it impossible for you to actually get what you specifically paid for. That is what net neutrality is about. Not just letting you download as much porn as you want while still only paying the basic fee.
So, are you saying that the "GP" was saying that if you forget one thing in your patent application that all your hard work is down the drain? There is actually quite a lengthy process of back and forth (I forget what that is called) where the USPTO asks you to clarify things and allows you to modify the application. However, still I don't think that simply leaving something out, however immaterial, should disqualify a patent.
Simply trying to make it more difficult to get a patent (or easier to invalidate a patent on a simple technicality) will not solve the problem. We need to make the rules for patents more reasonable and fair to all. Not just throw the baby out with the bathwater.
You are already required to list prior art. Anything in the literature (previous to filing) is prior art and thus is already required to be included.
Next, the professional climate deniers will be accusing climate researchers of pedophilia. It is the conservative smear tactic of last resort. And since their smear campaigns are always completely bull, they are inevitably forced into using their last resort.
OK, so I've read the replies to this that say the cargo vessels couldn't dock in ports if they were armed.
Once again a fine example of Slashdoters discussing ad infinitum rather than solving the problem.
The solution is for the ships to be armed while in the open seas but not armed while in safe waters near the ports they want to dock at? "How can they do that?", you ask. Simple. Some enterprising company could set up a floating dock offshore near safe ports. The cargo vessels could then "check their guns at the door" just like in an old cowboy movie. They would offload their guns before they come into port and pick them up again as they leave. I'm sure it would take a competent engineer less than a week to come up with a way to easily mount and dismount these weapons. While in "storage" the weapons could be used to protect the "gun check" from those who would see it as a tempting source of free weaponry. And since that "gun check" would be within the territorial waters of the country with the port, if some pirates did try to steal the weapons they would suffer the full force of that country's navy because the pirates would be invading that country's territorial waters.
I agree to a point. I think there are a small few algorithms that are unique and non-obvious enough to be patentable. Everything else is relatively obvious to anyone skilled in the art. This is a major test of patentability that the USPTO seems to be ignoring. It seems they will patent anything they don't understand. However, I think that copyrights should still be used to protect a particular implementation of any algorithm in code. Not one or the other, black and white, but one or the other depending on the situation. The big problem is that the USPTO can't seem to recognize when the situation does not call for a patent. Perhaps they are blinded by all those patent fees.
Agreed. The OP should get a lawyer and come up with a non-disclosure, non-compete agreement that says that signers can use the code as a target to design against but that they are specifically disallowed from distributing it or any derivative work. I know, it is the opposite of FOSS and Richard Stallman would kick my ass for saying it. However, as long as you give free access to responsible people who want to see it if they sign the agreement, I don't think there is any ethical problem. Heck, he could even make a little money off of it by selling the information as a white-paper just like any other professional consulting firm.
Freedom for people (as in The People) totally trumps freedom for businesses to make money. Conflating the two inevitably leads to reversing them.
To those who gave helpful replies:
Thank you very much. I will take a look at those web sites.
Why in the world would wanting Google to redesign their Android Market web site equate to wanting them to take more control over what apps can be sold?
Oh, the insanity of people who will imagine anything they can just so they can pretend to be better than others.
It is because the only way to find apps is to browse them on the darned phone. Don't get me wrong, I love my Droid. But a 3.5" diagonal screen is not the place I want to be sorting through thousands of almost identical task list apps and trying to find the best one. I hesitate to buy any apps because I never know if I have actually looked through the entire list. We need a real web site with better access to reviews and an easier way to down-rank all those apps that essentially spam. I have run into at least 20 apps with identical descriptions but different names and icons. When Google cleans up that mess, then maybe I will be willing to spend some money in there.
More universities should include a course in IP law and open source licensing in their computer science programs. I know none of the programs I have looked at teach it. Perhaps at some of the better schools...
I searched Usenet for my name and only got 112 entries. I know for a fact that I wrote thousands of messages in Usenet over the years. So it may be possible that I posted this idea and it is not turning up in the search. If anyone else wants to give it a go to defeat this patent be my guest.
And yes, you will find some interesting posts that would be embarrassing if I gave a damn. So don't bother with the cracks, I won't care.
I just found the text of my notes that I wrote up when I thought of this. I am posting them here, not because I think this establishes prior art, but because it may help in finding any usenet posts I may have made about it.
Text document serial number encoding scheme
Sunday, January 25, 2004
4:46 PM
Honestly, I did think of this sometime around 2004. I may have posted something about it on Usenet. I will take a look. Others could search too. I have no idea what newsgroup I would have written it in, perhaps a Microsoft one. I have always used the name "Grant S. Robertson" for my Usenet posts. That should narrow things down a bit. Also, I thought of it in connection with publishing and distributing e-books, primarily in .PDF form if that helps.
This is one of the reasons I have started my www.ideationizing.com blog. Simply to post my ideas which I don't expect to be able to work on, and thus provide prior art to stymie patents such as these. I urge everyone to blog and post as many ideas as they can think of. This seems to be the only way we are going to prevent the big corporations from patenting everything under the sun.
I hung up and immediately called the FBI. I'm glad they are actually doing something about it.