If they could copy a cars at zero cost, offer them to customers and make a living servicing them, then I'm pretty sure there would still be plenty of folks doing that.
Unfortunately the fundamental economics of cars and software are about as different as you can get.
There are infinite numbers of ways to ensure innovators are rewarded without patents. It's only a complete failure of imagination coupled with a few hunded years of "we've always done it that way" that makes people assume that patents are the only way.
My favourite idea is a system where inventions get government-funded awards *if and only if* they are successful in the marketplace. The inventor gets the award even if someone else commercialises the idea, hence there is no reson to fear being "ripped off" because it actually increases your chances of earning a big cash award.
It's worth spending public money on because it is strongly in the public interest not to have patent-funded monopolies. Products will be cheaper, innovations will be propagated faster and markets will be more competitive.
A "two horse race" has more than two horses. It's just that they aren't relevant - that's the whole point.
Existence does not imply relevance. Lynx certainly exists, and certainly has it's uses in certain niches, but it is in no way likely to become a leading player in the market in question, which Gartner probably sees as something like "general purpose web browser for business and home non-technical users".
You may not like their emphasis on that particular definition of the browser market, but it's probably the definition that most Gartner customers care about.
As an aside, this is why 100% market share, while being the literally correct definition for a monolpoly, is not a partcularly useful definition for the purposes of creating legislation or understanding markets.
Economists realised long ago that the thing that mattered was not market share but "monopoly power", which roughly translates to the extent of your ability to raise prices without your customers deserting to the competition.
It's actually possible to have significant monopoly power with very low (e.g. 10%) market shares (when customers have very high switching costs, for example).
It's also possible in theory to have 100% market share but no monopoly power. This can happen in perfectly contestable markets - you can't raise prices because a competitor would immediately enter and steal all your customers.
Free markets may be great, but having patents is the absolute opposite of the free market philosophy.
What we need is a way of rewarding innovators that doesn't create patent/copyright/trademark monopolies.
I personally favour a system of "awards", rather like nobel prizes for innovation, but given out to the top 100 or so proven innovations every year. The boost to the economy gained from eliminating the highly inefficient patent system would more than pay for the cost of running this.
By far, the vast majority of programs written are business applications developed for internal use within organisations. This is true whether you count number of applications, lines of code, money spent or number of people employed.
Of course, a lot of this effort is duplcated. This is another reason why open source software is a Good Thing - reducing the waste in corporate IT development work would significantly improve overall efficiency in the economy.
If someone physically assaults you and puts you in hospital, you might have lost a couple of weeks of your life, plus some emotional distress.
This guys was sending 10 million emails a day. Assume each email wastes just 1second of someones time. In one year of operation, he will have wasted over 100 man-years of people's lives. In my view, that's morally equivalent to killing two people.
I think 9 years is remarkably light. I'd bring back crucifixion.
AMD may even be gving Cray an extra discount/kickback for the publicity value - not uncommon for this kind of cutting edge stuff.
My old company managed to get some seriously expensive enterprise software for just 10% of the retail price because we were able to convince them that having us as a client would be a publicity coup for them....
This is an idea I've been a fan of for quite a while - I think it would make a good replacement for the current patent system.
Interestingly, you don't actually need to set specific goals - you can grant a prize for any idea that is "successful" for some definition of successful, e.g. product sales by companies implementing the idea of >$100m within ten years.
1. Announce move into Linux business 2. Pay SCO to sue you over some random trivia 3. Become beloved by all IT geeks 4. Sell lots of hardware and software! 5. PROFIT!!!
If you decide to just oppose "actions inconsistent with freedom and fairness" rather than specific companies, then your paradox is easily resolved....
I like sun for creating Java and promoting cross-platform development, dislike them for not open sourcing the same, dislike them for their shady deals, like them for their focus on solid engineering etc.
Thanks to their license purchase from SCO, they've recently slipped into a negative net position in my view. But I'll happily support thir cause with respect to this atrocious Kodak case!
In the modern business world, just doing something first and doing it well can earn you a substantial market lead.
And if a company is so fat and inefficient that it can't exploit news idea quickly and efficiently enough to earn a good profit, then it doesn't deserve a patent-enforced monopoly either.
How do you know that they wouldn't be making even more if there weren't any patents?
Suppose that patents have reduced overall economic growth by 2% per year since 1950. That's not a totally unrealistic estimate, given that innovation could have been encouraged through far better means than patents (market competition on implementation of ideas, for example!). Without patents, we would all be earning on average nearly three times as much right now.
My additional contribution is that they should be connected to rowing machines in gyms. That way you can get a good workout while saving the environment and providing a UPS for businesses in the building.
The whole idea of "the money going back into the economy" is an oft-repeated fallacy.
It's a good idea to avoid confusing "money" with economic wealth. They are actually only very loosely linked, and the fact that money continues to circulate is largely irrelevant to whether the economy does better or worse.
As an example, let's say a falling tree crushed your car and you buy a new one for £20,000 (no insurance - damn). You are worse off by £20,000. Other people (car dealer, company, suppliers etc.) are on aggregate better off by £20,000 minus the full cost of making and selling one car.
Money supply hasn't changed for the economy as a whole - the £20,000 just changed hands. But the economy as a whole is worse off by the cost of making and selling one additional car.
In the same way, money spent on medical expenses casued by stress absolutely does represent a real loss to the economy as a whole. The size of the loss here is the cost of providing those medical services.
Whether this loss is worth it or not due to other benefits of a stressful work environment is, of course, a separate question.
Hmmm.... don't think IBM's doing it to damage Borland per se. Borland is just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
IBM is trying to build an ecosystem around Java development and Linux. This needs there to be a low barrier to entry for developers, which requires readily available, high quality, free tools. Hence IBM is kickstarting the open-source process in these fields by donating Eclipse and the lick.
Sorry - didn't mean to imply you didn't know that, just adding to the discussion!
I've personally always been interested in proper collision detection because it enables you to do decent object physics (where it's not just important to know *whether* something collides but also where, how deep and at what velocity...)
Always thought that physics has been sorely neglected in games so far.
Though to do good collision detection in 2D, you need to do a lot more than just squares - ideally you want to be able to work out the collisions between arbitrary 2D shapes.
Remember 2D pinball games? They certainly depended on non-square collision detection and object physics.
In practice, both 2D and 3D collision detection frequently boils down to simplifying objects into a group of convex shapes, which can then easily be tested for collisions using standard algorithms.
Squares and circles/ovals are just among the simplest possible approximations of collision boundaries.... that's why you see these in so many games.
Slashdot Mirror
If they could copy a cars at zero cost, offer them to customers and make a living servicing them, then I'm pretty sure there would still be plenty of folks doing that.
Unfortunately the fundamental economics of cars and software are about as different as you can get.
The ko rule means that you can't just solve for all possible board positions, you also have to consider previous states of the game.
This makes things quite a lot more complicated....
In which case, software sold without patches and ongoing support should come with a big red sticker on the front saying "not guaranteed to work".
Otherwise the software company would be misleading customers about a very important aspect of their product.
There are infinite numbers of ways to ensure innovators are rewarded without patents. It's only a complete failure of imagination coupled with a few hunded years of "we've always done it that way" that makes people assume that patents are the only way.
My favourite idea is a system where inventions get government-funded awards *if and only if* they are successful in the marketplace. The inventor gets the award even if someone else commercialises the idea, hence there is no reson to fear being "ripped off" because it actually increases your chances of earning a big cash award.
It's worth spending public money on because it is strongly in the public interest not to have patent-funded monopolies. Products will be cheaper, innovations will be propagated faster and markets will be more competitive.
A "two horse race" has more than two horses. It's just that they aren't relevant - that's the whole point.
Existence does not imply relevance. Lynx certainly exists, and certainly has it's uses in certain niches, but it is in no way likely to become a leading player in the market in question, which Gartner probably sees as something like "general purpose web browser for business and home non-technical users".
You may not like their emphasis on that particular definition of the browser market, but it's probably the definition that most Gartner customers care about.
As an aside, this is why 100% market share, while being the literally correct definition for a monolpoly, is not a partcularly useful definition for the purposes of creating legislation or understanding markets.
Economists realised long ago that the thing that mattered was not market share but "monopoly power", which roughly translates to the extent of your ability to raise prices without your customers deserting to the competition.
It's actually possible to have significant monopoly power with very low (e.g. 10%) market shares (when customers have very high switching costs, for example).
It's also possible in theory to have 100% market share but no monopoly power. This can happen in perfectly contestable markets - you can't raise prices because a competitor would immediately enter and steal all your customers.
"The funny thing is how much more reliable profit-seeking news outlets are than say state-run news outlets."
Have you ever watched the BBC? Not bad for a state-run outfit.....
To make a shameless plug - anyone wanting to play or help develop a great open source (GPL licensed) roguelike should check out my little game:
Tyrant
I't a graphical roguelike with a rapidly growing world and a dedicated development team. Some notable features are:
Highly extensible and flexible game engine
Comprehensive skill-based character advancement system
Randomly generated world with outdoor regions
Over 1200 items and 150 monsters to discover
God mode for playtesting and fun!
Free markets may be great, but having patents is the absolute opposite of the free market philosophy.
What we need is a way of rewarding innovators that doesn't create patent/copyright/trademark monopolies.
I personally favour a system of "awards", rather like nobel prizes for innovation, but given out to the top 100 or so proven innovations every year. The boost to the economy gained from eliminating the highly inefficient patent system would more than pay for the cost of running this.
Actually, management was one of the first things ever to be outsourced.
What do you think shareholders in publicly listed companies do? Certainly not much managing......
That is unabashed bullshit.
By far, the vast majority of programs written are business applications developed for internal use within organisations. This is true whether you count number of applications, lines of code, money spent or number of people employed.
Of course, a lot of this effort is duplcated. This is another reason why open source software is a Good Thing - reducing the waste in corporate IT development work would significantly improve overall efficiency in the economy.
If someone physically assaults you and puts you in hospital, you might have lost a couple of weeks of your life, plus some emotional distress.
This guys was sending 10 million emails a day. Assume each email wastes just 1second of someones time. In one year of operation, he will have wasted over 100 man-years of people's lives. In my view, that's morally equivalent to killing two people.
I think 9 years is remarkably light. I'd bring back crucifixion.
AMD may even be gving Cray an extra discount/kickback for the publicity value - not uncommon for this kind of cutting edge stuff.
My old company managed to get some seriously expensive enterprise software for just 10% of the retail price because we were able to convince them that having us as a client would be a publicity coup for them....
This is an idea I've been a fan of for quite a while - I think it would make a good replacement for the current patent system.
Interestingly, you don't actually need to set specific goals - you can grant a prize for any idea that is "successful" for some definition of successful, e.g. product sales by companies implementing the idea of >$100m within ten years.
IBM Business Plan
(Conspiracy Theorist Version)
1. Announce move into Linux business
2. Pay SCO to sue you over some random trivia
3. Become beloved by all IT geeks
4. Sell lots of hardware and software!
5. PROFIT!!!
If you decide to just oppose "actions inconsistent with freedom and fairness" rather than specific companies, then your paradox is easily resolved....
I like sun for creating Java and promoting cross-platform development, dislike them for not open sourcing the same, dislike them for their shady deals, like them for their focus on solid engineering etc.
Thanks to their license purchase from SCO, they've recently slipped into a negative net position in my view. But I'll happily support thir cause with respect to this atrocious Kodak case!
I don't think you even need 2-3 years.
In the modern business world, just doing something first and doing it well can earn you a substantial market lead.
And if a company is so fat and inefficient that it can't exploit news idea quickly and efficiently enough to earn a good profit, then it doesn't deserve a patent-enforced monopoly either.
How do you know that they wouldn't be making even more if there weren't any patents?
Suppose that patents have reduced overall economic growth by 2% per year since 1950. That's not a totally unrealistic estimate, given that innovation could have been encouraged through far better means than patents (market competition on implementation of ideas, for example!). Without patents, we would all be earning on average nearly three times as much right now.
Flywheel are certainly cool.
My additional contribution is that they should be connected to rowing machines in gyms. That way you can get a good workout while saving the environment and providing a UPS for businesses in the building.
The whole idea of "the money going back into the economy" is an oft-repeated fallacy.
It's a good idea to avoid confusing "money" with economic wealth. They are actually only very loosely linked, and the fact that money continues to circulate is largely irrelevant to whether the economy does better or worse.
As an example, let's say a falling tree crushed your car and you buy a new one for £20,000 (no insurance - damn). You are worse off by £20,000. Other people (car dealer, company, suppliers etc.) are on aggregate better off by £20,000 minus the full cost of making and selling one car.
Money supply hasn't changed for the economy as a whole - the £20,000 just changed hands. But the economy as a whole is worse off by the cost of making and selling one additional car.
In the same way, money spent on medical expenses casued by stress absolutely does represent a real loss to the economy as a whole. The size of the loss here is the cost of providing those medical services.
Whether this loss is worth it or not due to other benefits of a stressful work environment is, of course, a separate question.
I second that..... been using Eclipse for my open source Java game and it's superb.
First time I've ever felt that I had a decent free software IDE as a developer.
The lick, of course, being a very high quality tool at IBM labs which has yet to be announced..... er.....
Hmmm.... don't think IBM's doing it to damage Borland per se. Borland is just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
IBM is trying to build an ecosystem around Java development and Linux. This needs there to be a low barrier to entry for developers, which requires readily available, high quality, free tools. Hence IBM is kickstarting the open-source process in these fields by donating Eclipse and the lick.
Sorry - didn't mean to imply you didn't know that, just adding to the discussion!
I've personally always been interested in proper collision detection because it enables you to do decent object physics (where it's not just important to know *whether* something collides but also where, how deep and at what velocity...)
Always thought that physics has been sorely neglected in games so far.
Though to do good collision detection in 2D, you need to do a lot more than just squares - ideally you want to be able to work out the collisions between arbitrary 2D shapes.
Remember 2D pinball games? They certainly depended on non-square collision detection and object physics.
In practice, both 2D and 3D collision detection frequently boils down to simplifying objects into a group of convex shapes, which can then easily be tested for collisions using standard algorithms.
Squares and circles/ovals are just among the simplest possible approximations of collision boundaries.... that's why you see these in so many games.