Bush et. al. didn't kill 4000 Americans, they sent their all-volunteer military into harm's way. The opposition killed 4000 American soldiers. Compared to most other armed conflicts, American casualties have been very light.
If you're a leader of a nation, you don't feel like you should be held responsible for the commands you issue? What is being a leader then, why even have one?
Any amount of lives lost is a lot if the reasons for a conflict aren't valid. The only conflict was between the US and the group that attacked it, and attacking entire nations for no reason without the UN's agreement and concent isn't the way to gain favor in the eyes of those who wish you gone.
Not only does this show how ludicrous software patents are, not only does this show how ludicrous our patent system is, not only do patent workers clearly need to be fired, but the definition of obvious clearly escapes the USPTO. The next logical step and feature to add to prevent having to reboot the kernel to apply updates is making it so you don't have to.
I wish Obama would eliminate the USPTO after he's president.
Companies losing billions of dollars in the market for breathing air.
"If only the government would pass stricter laws making air more proprietary and mandating more control over it, we wouldn't be losing so much money. Every time you take a breath without paying, a company worker's child goes starving." said Air Corp spokesperson Scrooge McMoneypants.
I hope I don't get modded funny, because laughing at a sad truth takes the force out of it. Citizens have no idea how much money they could be saving, aka are losing, aka are paying extra due to pro-corp laws, or the lack of anti-monopoly laws, but it's a staggering amount.
Linux can and should be modular enough that it can be anything it needs to be, it's one of it's huge strengths. Leave the compilation environment, command line tools, and configuration files there for the power users who want to tinker with things beyond what the current GUIs can or may provide, and leave the GUI there for those who want to stick to it (by leave it there I mean at the very least make it easily available for installation).
Linux should be powerful, robust, modular, easy to use, friendly, and intelligent in the way it was laid out, adapting to new ideas and programs while keeping standardized and flexible ABIs/APIs so that installing drivers and any programs, whether "third-party" or not, can be a snap. The key word is "can". That's called a feature, while still allowing you to do what you want. That's what features are supposed to be. If you don't understand this concept, my guess is you probably need more sunlight.
As for the parent's game comment, THANK YOU. Linux will never get lots of games for it if it stays a complicated hacking tool and nothing else, which thankfully isn't true anymore. One has to wonder just how long it'll be before stores crack under the pressure and start telling MS to shove it, and start selling Linux alongside the TRUE price of Windows, since they won't be getting the "special" discount anymore. That is, IF they are even permitted to keep selling it, if the law isn't retarded about that too. Of course if they do that, MS will then have to backpedal and lower it's prices of retail boxes if it wants to keep generating any kind of small revenues after that point.
Then you disagree that a problem exists, and/or that it would be an improvement/feature. I feel you're very much mistaken, and don't understand why you think the current state of distro lock-in is OK, or wouldn't care about having more freedom.
The program you need is not always going to be in the repository. How do I know? Because the programs I want are often not in them. Far, far from it. You shouldn't have to depend on the repository maintainer to put it in for you, nor should you have to do it yourself. Free all Linux programs by making them installable from outside the repository regardless of which distro you happen to be fortunate, or because of this problem todate unfortunate enough to install. Give developers the freedom to have all users and developers across any distro install your program and not worry about compiling it for each one.
1. Find an easy way of installing dependencies that aren't in your repository. (like apturl, except cross-distro)
2. Make more APIs so that you won't always be forced to install a newer version of a library to use a program.
3. Consider packaging any dependencies which are outside the LSB into your package, or make the package intelligent to only download the dependencies you need.
4. Again, use APIs, so you have greater modularity and a great reduction in duplicated effort required because you chose not to.
5. The location of where a package wants to put files should be irrelevant. If the package manager and formats were intelligent, and the package format wanted to store it's files in "non-standard-locations", or quite simply where it wanted to, then let it by defining what certain files are and not where they go. "This file is a library file. This file is a binary executable. Etc." Then the package manager puts those where it wants to for it's current setup.
Basically what I'm trying to say is I'm familiar with a lot of the issues of this, and re-hashing them doesn't solve anything or change anything. Program installation across any Linux distro needs to become a feature, a reality, whatever the technical problems afoot may be, I believe they are all solvable. I believe Linux gurus are smart enough to solve any challenge thrown at Linux in the most powerful, scalable, modular, intelligent way. A bunch of them need to sit in a room together and discuss it, all the problems, and solve them, one by one, until the perfect solution is found which allows all those involved to be pleased by allowing the flexibility needed to accommodate all problematic situations presented. I think this can occur, don't you?
Oh, and no, compilation is completely 100% out of the question. Linux will not become mainstream until it does away with the requirement of compilation completely, it should simply remain an option for those projects which are open source.
No, all patents are bad because patents are bad. Yes, read some history, like about the Industrial Revolution and it's progress in regards to the patent on the steam engine: Against Intellectual Monopoly
Economic discussions are always difficult, hence why economic advisers and theorists abound. It's fairly hard to tell if things would be better or worse, I agree. However in this instance, I believe that several things prove that a society that shares information would be a better society. Look at science. Look at open source software. Those things are traditionally sharing-based and a lot of progress has come because of them. Don't get me wrong, I understand the concept that certain things may get no attention unless a monopoly on the concept was present, but I simply disagree with it and believe where there is a need, there will be a solution. If it's several companies joining together to work on making it, or simply someone with an idea, or a company wanting to be first to market with a new idea, I believe it would get done, and get done faster, and would definitely help everyone much more quickly than a system that is based on withholding information. The only thing you can really do is give examples of things in which this is the case, and I gave two examples that I believe show it.
Regardless of the outcome of such an argument though, of course the current system is horribly corrupt and needs to be redone, at the very least.
Whoops.:) Thanks for clarifying though. Honestly though I don't care how many "mistakes" they make, as I see the whole system as a mistake. For consumers, that is.
I use ZIP, 7-Zip, Tar, BZ2, and RAR archive formats. Why is it that I can't do the same with my package manager? What kind of developers would say "Sure, we'll make our manager recognize DEBs, but not that stupid RPM standard!"? If I were making a package manager, I would make it compatible with all the existing packaging formats. By doing so, it makes it irrelevant, and developers can use which ever one they feel most comfortable with. Just like if I was creating an archive manager program, I'd make it compatible with all the most popular archive formats.
If there was a problem with, say, one package format not including some information that is wanted by the system, the format either needs to be updated to include that information, or the manager needs to deal with the package in the best way it can. I can't imagine such a case happening though, since how is it that the package manager that handles that type deals with it lacking that information then?
What worries me is vendor/distro lock-in, basically "proprietarianism", to make up a word for it. Fedora doesn't care about including new formats, and they are the ones behind the biggest RPM manager that I know of. Why? Debian doesn't care about adding the RPM format to the list of features of it's DEB package manager. Why? Could it be that it's because Red Hat has no interest in playing nicely with other distros, or that Debian admins are too stuck up to acknowledge the existence of competing formats?
Whichever the case may be, things should be as modular as archive formats and archive manager programs. When one format is used far more than any other, and becomes the most popular, all the package managers out there will end up supporting it if they want to be popular package managers. It's that simple. Or at least, it should be. If not, the problem needs to be acknowledged, the poor parts of the system thrown away, and a new functional one put into it's place. Competition needs to occur on every level, so it's imperative that modularity and ease of program installation is maximized, not some proprietary pillar of iron that prevents program installation unless you're using Distro X.
Hell, even if things weren't locked into a pillar that for some reason seems to go Distro>Manager>Package, at least unlock it (Manager>Package) to make the manager easily installable on any Linux distro, so that you can have two package managers, and then create a third program that replaces their interfaces and can communicate with both managers depending on the package format, if the packages are so locked into the managers.
That's how normal software packages/programs should work, but not a distro. You shouldn't have to install a new operating system to get feature X. If Linux was implemented correctly and things were modular like they should be, you could add and remove whatever software you want to get feature X. Progress is being able to share programs between different Linux users without having to go through compilation/dependency hell, regardless of what "distro" they are using. Make Linux do this, which also accomplishes giving any vendors/individuals/groups the ability to release cross-distro binaries without having to make packages for every distro, and it will give Linux users much more freedom, which is what free software is supposed to be all about. This will speed up Linux adoption several fold IMO by getting rid of these remaining issues.
I'm sure the summary of the basic response you'll get for each button is "it turns it on a little more".
Starting a collider is probably more like having to compile a program just to use it because it wasn't in your distro's repository and there aren't good packaging standards for the OS yet. Or, in the case of Gentoo, the program was in the repository, but you need to figure out how to get the @%$!# thing configured so it'll run properly. Oh no I did-ent! (I secretly love Gentoo. Even though now it's not a secret.)
I didn't miss the point, I simply believe that all ideas, or mostly all ideas, don't come about more quickly because of a patent system. I agree with you that the current one is incredibly broken at least.:)
"In order to get a patent in something, you need to fully disclose how it works and the best way to make and use it."
And these ideas are then actually utilized by using them in products in the world, I'm sure? Oh wait, they aren't, because they're now patented. The real way ideas are shared is to actually use and share them alongside their products, products which will be much more common when there are no restrictions. If patents didn't exist, no one would feel threatened that they might violate a patent, and inventors would be truly free to both invent and then share their product. The entire world (or at leas those countries stupid enough to adopt patent systems) wouldn't be subject to the prices and control of a single company, but could actually utilize and share an idea. Ideas which are going to exist, and will exist more rapidly without a patent system, so that ideas truly get shared. When was the last time you saw a video on YouTube of a patent? Instead it's "Oh, yay, an idea we'll never see or get to use for a few decades because it's been patented so it's completely controlled and restricted by some monopoly." Everyone would "share in the discovery" if they actually had access and could freely share and use ideas without worrying about patents.
"they are there to reward the first person to PUBLISH something"
Their ideas will get out much sooner if they don't have to go ask a lawyer to search for them through the millions of patents to try to determine if their idea is "free" to actually use first. Patents slow the adoption of new ideas and thus slow the advancements that are based on those ideas by preventing them from being placed into the wild quickly. Even if they are found in the wild to a degree, they cannot be improved upon because they are controlled, and they certainly won't be as common as they could be so that they can be utilized properly. Companies can't sit on ideas when those ideas can be actually used by competing companies and placed into products, so companies in the absence of patents will actually want to use ideas and be first to market with them unlike the current system. In other words, as soon as products and inventions aren't controlled by big mega-corps, everyone will be able to create and utilize them, allowing everyone to have them, and making the quality of life better for everyone quickly, in turn allowing for more free time, and more time to find other problems and to come up with ways to solve them. Patents have put many countries of the world at least 30 years behind in technology, but there's no way to know for sure just how bad it has been.
I agree that the Industrial Revolution, for example, was put behind due to patents. Read Against Intellectual Monopoly if you're interested in these and other arguments against patents.
"And at the end of the 20 (21) years, the entirety of your invention is dedicated to the public."
You hit the problem right on the head. Making the world wait around for twenty years on someone's patent that would have and was thought of by a hundred or more others around the time, earlier, or later, slows technological progress and innovation for many of the reasons I've already presented. The problem is you're making them wait for twenty years. What all this comes down to is would problems be solved if patents didn't exist? Yes, I think there's a lot of proof that technology would move much more rapidly. One historical proof of such is how quickly software progress occurred before patents were added to the mix. What's even more amusing is that these patents aren't even used, because so many companies violate so many other companies patents that it's like a cold war in which no one fires on the other because they each have dirt on one another. They do, however, threaten the little software developers who aren't "part" of these big companies.
All 44 patents isn't a small mistake to me. Patents need to be completely eliminated as they only help monopolies price fix whatever they want. I don't believe the world should be restricted for 20-30 years or whatnot while one company controls an idea that a billion others would have thought of, many of which thought of first, around that time period. It greatly slows technological advancements by preventing ideas from reaching everyone quickly and being utilized. Instead, everyone has to live in the dark or have lawyers defend themselves and such. If you eliminate this bureaucratic nonsense then ideas can and will be utilized by everyone quickly. There will still be plenty of incentives for companies to come up with ideas: they want products to sell to make money. Individuals, too, because where there is a problem/need, there are always those who will solve and conquer it. Besides, with the billions of brains on this planet running into problems and thus ways to solve them, do you really think you were ever the first to think of a solution? Chances are pretty damn good you weren't, and if patents didn't exist, the technology would be out much much quicker and would have the chance to benefit everyone, not just the rich or a select few. Not to mention, you would never have companies withholding products just because they compete with their existing products. The patent system has always been a failure, has always kept back technological progress, and will become more and more of a festering wound as the Age of Information Exchange progresses. Any countries that wish to stand up for true marketplace competition needs to ditch it's barbaric artificial restrictions on the sharing and utilization of ideas.
That too, and what's more, the threat that companies use towards others when they get these patents often means they get their way. Since the official "way to challenge patents" means hiring a lawyer, I'm sure it puts off most businesses, meaning the only successful ones are often those with the deepest pockets. The whole thing is designed to make the rich richer, like so many other things in the world today. Patents end up being gobbled up by monopolies any way, and then defined with their bottomless pockets, so the net effect is always less competition. It's sad when artificial restrictions set up "by citizens" end up hurting them, and everyone continues to let it happen. If consumers only realized how much richer their lives would be if their governments stood up for competition in every marketplace, or at least didn't impose rules which create and help monopolies, I swear there would be riots.
This is another instance in which Capitalism fails. If all sites need to be shared through one root server, then this system should be a very mechanized, simple, and fair one that shouldn't be owned by those who just want to profit off it. Try telling the lone African kid wanting his own site no because a company thought they should pointlessly milk money from the world. When is the government going to step in and tell them "No"?
The only thing this ruling should show to the courts is that the USPTO is a POS. They were the ones who approved those patents, so if all of them were invalid what does that say? That they don't search very hard for "prior art", is what it says to me. In this age of information technology, the only thing governments granting the monopolies more monopolies on things does is take more money from consumers and hurt everyone. We'd all have a lot more money and more free time to come up with new products if we weren't so overworked from stuffing billionaire's pockets. Of course the worst offense are software patents, the most ridiculous kind since it's extremely obvious making software to perform any task, which makes it much more of a patenting an "idea" than most any other kind of patent.
Always got me how PDF is an "open standard", but hardly any programs can fully utilize it i.e. create and modify them. You'd think it's one of the most difficult things in the universe to implement or something. Maybe it is. It's also surprised me how slow it has been for the adoption of web and computer standards for vectors and graphical shapes and such. I thought it should have been something defined in HTML 1.0. "This is a letter. This is it's size. This is a sphere. This is a line. This is it's movement speed in this direction with this acceleration until time X is reached." Someone care to explain why it is that Adobe has ruled this domain for so long? Technically Flash was Macromedia I know, but it's just strange how this giant has gobbled up so much "exclusive" software that should have never been exclusive IMO had standards actually been implemented correctly and promptly. Also never did find out why it takes so much CPU/GPU power to move a circle around on the screen. Had something "Flash-like" (but with better performance?) been a part of the original HTML standards, our lives would have all been a lot nicer.
Except that it's not fair. Businesses can actually do things that consumers and other businesses don't want, and that are not fair. See racketeering.
But you're right, whether it's marketing scams like getting OEMs and anyone downstream agreeing to suppress "advertisement" or offerings of Linux and other OSes to the masses in order to get the "special Microsoft discount" (normally called racketeering, today called business as usual), or their attempt to EEE the various markets, their artificial dominance of those markets they should have never owned, or perhaps owned for a very short time, will wither eventually, even without the unfortunate reluctance to see or acknowledge that there is such a thing as unfair business practices that defeat true competition in the free market system of most countries through the use of laws that protect them.
Actually, it is fairly safe to assume the copy they will run will be pirated, because no one in their right mind would pay $300 for Vista Ultimate or $100-200 for Home or for XP or whatnot when they could get Microsoft's "special" discount by buying a computer that comes with it.
Microsoft's ability to sell their software at different prices in different situations is not only unfair, it gives him a massive playing card, the you scratch my back I'll scratch yours card. Normally seen as anti-competitive in the past, this business practice, among others, is apparently seen as normal and ethical today. Gotta love all the ways businesses create artificial control to aid them in monopolizing markets. (see DVD region codes)
Every computer shop wants to make money, so they have to sell what's the most popular even if it's not the best in many ways. It'd be a big loss to them to do otherwise. Thus, competition can never exist if you have to make all your computers run Windows to get the special "contract price" from M$. It's called racketeering, but it's not illegal in the US apparently.:)
But seriously, where is the third test to confirm who's test is accurate and who's is a lie? Or are they different, and both Linux and BSD perform better in their own way?:)
I wondered how long it would take them to find a way to truly lock in their products all the way to the graphics card. If this catches on, they finally have. Remember back when you could put any brand of processor in your motherboard? Then they got rid of that. Then they started releasing their own north bridges and spread rumors that if you used their brand of north bridge with their brand of graphics card it could run faster. Then, they tried to go even further and tell everyone that if you used their brand of north bridge, video card, and CPU all together with their "Spider" "platform" that it would have some kind of magical, proprietary speed increase, like you were supposed to be glad that they're taking steps to kill more standards and further control the market.
Sorry AMD, I believe in standards and in competition. Make me a CPU and a video card that can work in any computer so that we can get true benchmark comparisons of your products and have the flexibility to do things like easily put in a replacement if your friend's hardware device X dies suddenly.
Yes, open source software is superior in it's license, so the issue of course is getting it developed. I would pay for software to be developed that wasn't restrictive. Compare one piece of software to another, lets say they are the same, but one has a restrictive license, obviously you choose the one that doesn't. It's a good feature of the software. There are a million reasons why open source software is better than closed source, but if you don't know them, well, Google it. So, the only problem is propelling the development of open source software as fast as possible. There are lots of paid open source programmers out there, don't get me wrong, but I think there will have to be a new system developed to give users bleeding-edge open source software. Though, I could be wrong, perhaps in the future OSS will be completely caught up with proprietary software, and it'll be really easy to pump out something new, and the world community will be able to do so much faster than any single company could.
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Bush et. al. didn't kill 4000 Americans, they sent their all-volunteer military into harm's way. The opposition killed 4000 American soldiers. Compared to most other armed conflicts, American casualties have been very light.
If you're a leader of a nation, you don't feel like you should be held responsible for the commands you issue? What is being a leader then, why even have one?
Any amount of lives lost is a lot if the reasons for a conflict aren't valid. The only conflict was between the US and the group that attacked it, and attacking entire nations for no reason without the UN's agreement and concent isn't the way to gain favor in the eyes of those who wish you gone.
Not only does this show how ludicrous software patents are, not only does this show how ludicrous our patent system is, not only do patent workers clearly need to be fired, but the definition of obvious clearly escapes the USPTO. The next logical step and feature to add to prevent having to reboot the kernel to apply updates is making it so you don't have to.
I wish Obama would eliminate the USPTO after he's president.
Companies losing billions of dollars in the market for breathing air.
"If only the government would pass stricter laws making air more proprietary and mandating more control over it, we wouldn't be losing so much money. Every time you take a breath without paying, a company worker's child goes starving." said Air Corp spokesperson Scrooge McMoneypants.
I hope I don't get modded funny, because laughing at a sad truth takes the force out of it. Citizens have no idea how much money they could be saving, aka are losing, aka are paying extra due to pro-corp laws, or the lack of anti-monopoly laws, but it's a staggering amount.
Exactly, mod all parents up. :P
Linux can and should be modular enough that it can be anything it needs to be, it's one of it's huge strengths. Leave the compilation environment, command line tools, and configuration files there for the power users who want to tinker with things beyond what the current GUIs can or may provide, and leave the GUI there for those who want to stick to it (by leave it there I mean at the very least make it easily available for installation).
Linux should be powerful, robust, modular, easy to use, friendly, and intelligent in the way it was laid out, adapting to new ideas and programs while keeping standardized and flexible ABIs/APIs so that installing drivers and any programs, whether "third-party" or not, can be a snap. The key word is "can". That's called a feature, while still allowing you to do what you want. That's what features are supposed to be. If you don't understand this concept, my guess is you probably need more sunlight.
As for the parent's game comment, THANK YOU. Linux will never get lots of games for it if it stays a complicated hacking tool and nothing else, which thankfully isn't true anymore. One has to wonder just how long it'll be before stores crack under the pressure and start telling MS to shove it, and start selling Linux alongside the TRUE price of Windows, since they won't be getting the "special" discount anymore. That is, IF they are even permitted to keep selling it, if the law isn't retarded about that too. Of course if they do that, MS will then have to backpedal and lower it's prices of retail boxes if it wants to keep generating any kind of small revenues after that point.
K, lets say we allowed patents just for drug companies...
Oh, wait, we still have patents on everything else right now, including software, so it's safe to say you're mostly against patents then.
Then you disagree that a problem exists, and/or that it would be an improvement/feature. I feel you're very much mistaken, and don't understand why you think the current state of distro lock-in is OK, or wouldn't care about having more freedom.
The program you need is not always going to be in the repository. How do I know? Because the programs I want are often not in them. Far, far from it. You shouldn't have to depend on the repository maintainer to put it in for you, nor should you have to do it yourself. Free all Linux programs by making them installable from outside the repository regardless of which distro you happen to be fortunate, or because of this problem todate unfortunate enough to install. Give developers the freedom to have all users and developers across any distro install your program and not worry about compiling it for each one.
1. Find an easy way of installing dependencies that aren't in your repository. (like apturl, except cross-distro)
2. Make more APIs so that you won't always be forced to install a newer version of a library to use a program.
3. Consider packaging any dependencies which are outside the LSB into your package, or make the package intelligent to only download the dependencies you need.
4. Again, use APIs, so you have greater modularity and a great reduction in duplicated effort required because you chose not to.
5. The location of where a package wants to put files should be irrelevant. If the package manager and formats were intelligent, and the package format wanted to store it's files in "non-standard-locations", or quite simply where it wanted to, then let it by defining what certain files are and not where they go. "This file is a library file. This file is a binary executable. Etc." Then the package manager puts those where it wants to for it's current setup.
Basically what I'm trying to say is I'm familiar with a lot of the issues of this, and re-hashing them doesn't solve anything or change anything. Program installation across any Linux distro needs to become a feature, a reality, whatever the technical problems afoot may be, I believe they are all solvable. I believe Linux gurus are smart enough to solve any challenge thrown at Linux in the most powerful, scalable, modular, intelligent way. A bunch of them need to sit in a room together and discuss it, all the problems, and solve them, one by one, until the perfect solution is found which allows all those involved to be pleased by allowing the flexibility needed to accommodate all problematic situations presented. I think this can occur, don't you?
Oh, and no, compilation is completely 100% out of the question. Linux will not become mainstream until it does away with the requirement of compilation completely, it should simply remain an option for those projects which are open source.
No, all patents are bad because patents are bad. Yes, read some history, like about the Industrial Revolution and it's progress in regards to the patent on the steam engine: Against Intellectual Monopoly
Economic discussions are always difficult, hence why economic advisers and theorists abound. It's fairly hard to tell if things would be better or worse, I agree. However in this instance, I believe that several things prove that a society that shares information would be a better society. Look at science. Look at open source software. Those things are traditionally sharing-based and a lot of progress has come because of them. Don't get me wrong, I understand the concept that certain things may get no attention unless a monopoly on the concept was present, but I simply disagree with it and believe where there is a need, there will be a solution. If it's several companies joining together to work on making it, or simply someone with an idea, or a company wanting to be first to market with a new idea, I believe it would get done, and get done faster, and would definitely help everyone much more quickly than a system that is based on withholding information. The only thing you can really do is give examples of things in which this is the case, and I gave two examples that I believe show it.
Regardless of the outcome of such an argument though, of course the current system is horribly corrupt and needs to be redone, at the very least.
Whoops. :) Thanks for clarifying though. Honestly though I don't care how many "mistakes" they make, as I see the whole system as a mistake. For consumers, that is.
I use ZIP, 7-Zip, Tar, BZ2, and RAR archive formats. Why is it that I can't do the same with my package manager? What kind of developers would say "Sure, we'll make our manager recognize DEBs, but not that stupid RPM standard!"? If I were making a package manager, I would make it compatible with all the existing packaging formats. By doing so, it makes it irrelevant, and developers can use which ever one they feel most comfortable with. Just like if I was creating an archive manager program, I'd make it compatible with all the most popular archive formats.
If there was a problem with, say, one package format not including some information that is wanted by the system, the format either needs to be updated to include that information, or the manager needs to deal with the package in the best way it can. I can't imagine such a case happening though, since how is it that the package manager that handles that type deals with it lacking that information then?
What worries me is vendor/distro lock-in, basically "proprietarianism", to make up a word for it. Fedora doesn't care about including new formats, and they are the ones behind the biggest RPM manager that I know of. Why? Debian doesn't care about adding the RPM format to the list of features of it's DEB package manager. Why? Could it be that it's because Red Hat has no interest in playing nicely with other distros, or that Debian admins are too stuck up to acknowledge the existence of competing formats?
Whichever the case may be, things should be as modular as archive formats and archive manager programs. When one format is used far more than any other, and becomes the most popular, all the package managers out there will end up supporting it if they want to be popular package managers. It's that simple. Or at least, it should be. If not, the problem needs to be acknowledged, the poor parts of the system thrown away, and a new functional one put into it's place. Competition needs to occur on every level, so it's imperative that modularity and ease of program installation is maximized, not some proprietary pillar of iron that prevents program installation unless you're using Distro X.
Hell, even if things weren't locked into a pillar that for some reason seems to go Distro>Manager>Package, at least unlock it (Manager>Package) to make the manager easily installable on any Linux distro, so that you can have two package managers, and then create a third program that replaces their interfaces and can communicate with both managers depending on the package format, if the packages are so locked into the managers.
That's how normal software packages/programs should work, but not a distro. You shouldn't have to install a new operating system to get feature X. If Linux was implemented correctly and things were modular like they should be, you could add and remove whatever software you want to get feature X. Progress is being able to share programs between different Linux users without having to go through compilation/dependency hell, regardless of what "distro" they are using. Make Linux do this, which also accomplishes giving any vendors/individuals/groups the ability to release cross-distro binaries without having to make packages for every distro, and it will give Linux users much more freedom, which is what free software is supposed to be all about. This will speed up Linux adoption several fold IMO by getting rid of these remaining issues.
A French fry almost came out my nose.
I'm sure the summary of the basic response you'll get for each button is "it turns it on a little more".
Starting a collider is probably more like having to compile a program just to use it because it wasn't in your distro's repository and there aren't good packaging standards for the OS yet. Or, in the case of Gentoo, the program was in the repository, but you need to figure out how to get the @%$!# thing configured so it'll run properly. Oh no I did-ent! (I secretly love Gentoo. Even though now it's not a secret.)
I didn't miss the point, I simply believe that all ideas, or mostly all ideas, don't come about more quickly because of a patent system. I agree with you that the current one is incredibly broken at least. :)
"In order to get a patent in something, you need to fully disclose how it works and the best way to make and use it."
And these ideas are then actually utilized by using them in products in the world, I'm sure? Oh wait, they aren't, because they're now patented. The real way ideas are shared is to actually use and share them alongside their products, products which will be much more common when there are no restrictions. If patents didn't exist, no one would feel threatened that they might violate a patent, and inventors would be truly free to both invent and then share their product. The entire world (or at leas those countries stupid enough to adopt patent systems) wouldn't be subject to the prices and control of a single company, but could actually utilize and share an idea. Ideas which are going to exist, and will exist more rapidly without a patent system, so that ideas truly get shared. When was the last time you saw a video on YouTube of a patent? Instead it's "Oh, yay, an idea we'll never see or get to use for a few decades because it's been patented so it's completely controlled and restricted by some monopoly." Everyone would "share in the discovery" if they actually had access and could freely share and use ideas without worrying about patents.
"they are there to reward the first person to PUBLISH something"
Their ideas will get out much sooner if they don't have to go ask a lawyer to search for them through the millions of patents to try to determine if their idea is "free" to actually use first. Patents slow the adoption of new ideas and thus slow the advancements that are based on those ideas by preventing them from being placed into the wild quickly. Even if they are found in the wild to a degree, they cannot be improved upon because they are controlled, and they certainly won't be as common as they could be so that they can be utilized properly. Companies can't sit on ideas when those ideas can be actually used by competing companies and placed into products, so companies in the absence of patents will actually want to use ideas and be first to market with them unlike the current system. In other words, as soon as products and inventions aren't controlled by big mega-corps, everyone will be able to create and utilize them, allowing everyone to have them, and making the quality of life better for everyone quickly, in turn allowing for more free time, and more time to find other problems and to come up with ways to solve them. Patents have put many countries of the world at least 30 years behind in technology, but there's no way to know for sure just how bad it has been.
I agree that the Industrial Revolution, for example, was put behind due to patents. Read Against Intellectual Monopoly if you're interested in these and other arguments against patents.
"And at the end of the 20 (21) years, the entirety of your invention is dedicated to the public."
You hit the problem right on the head. Making the world wait around for twenty years on someone's patent that would have and was thought of by a hundred or more others around the time, earlier, or later, slows technological progress and innovation for many of the reasons I've already presented. The problem is you're making them wait for twenty years. What all this comes down to is would problems be solved if patents didn't exist? Yes, I think there's a lot of proof that technology would move much more rapidly. One historical proof of such is how quickly software progress occurred before patents were added to the mix. What's even more amusing is that these patents aren't even used, because so many companies violate so many other companies patents that it's like a cold war in which no one fires on the other because they each have dirt on one another. They do, however, threaten the little software developers who aren't "part" of these big companies.
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All 44 patents isn't a small mistake to me. Patents need to be completely eliminated as they only help monopolies price fix whatever they want. I don't believe the world should be restricted for 20-30 years or whatnot while one company controls an idea that a billion others would have thought of, many of which thought of first, around that time period. It greatly slows technological advancements by preventing ideas from reaching everyone quickly and being utilized. Instead, everyone has to live in the dark or have lawyers defend themselves and such. If you eliminate this bureaucratic nonsense then ideas can and will be utilized by everyone quickly. There will still be plenty of incentives for companies to come up with ideas: they want products to sell to make money. Individuals, too, because where there is a problem/need, there are always those who will solve and conquer it. Besides, with the billions of brains on this planet running into problems and thus ways to solve them, do you really think you were ever the first to think of a solution? Chances are pretty damn good you weren't, and if patents didn't exist, the technology would be out much much quicker and would have the chance to benefit everyone, not just the rich or a select few. Not to mention, you would never have companies withholding products just because they compete with their existing products. The patent system has always been a failure, has always kept back technological progress, and will become more and more of a festering wound as the Age of Information Exchange progresses. Any countries that wish to stand up for true marketplace competition needs to ditch it's barbaric artificial restrictions on the sharing and utilization of ideas.
Defined = defended. :P I wish Slashdot allowed at least small tweaks of previous posts to correct errors. Oh, what's this lil preview button for...
That too, and what's more, the threat that companies use towards others when they get these patents often means they get their way. Since the official "way to challenge patents" means hiring a lawyer, I'm sure it puts off most businesses, meaning the only successful ones are often those with the deepest pockets. The whole thing is designed to make the rich richer, like so many other things in the world today. Patents end up being gobbled up by monopolies any way, and then defined with their bottomless pockets, so the net effect is always less competition. It's sad when artificial restrictions set up "by citizens" end up hurting them, and everyone continues to let it happen. If consumers only realized how much richer their lives would be if their governments stood up for competition in every marketplace, or at least didn't impose rules which create and help monopolies, I swear there would be riots.
This is another instance in which Capitalism fails. If all sites need to be shared through one root server, then this system should be a very mechanized, simple, and fair one that shouldn't be owned by those who just want to profit off it. Try telling the lone African kid wanting his own site no because a company thought they should pointlessly milk money from the world. When is the government going to step in and tell them "No"?
The only thing this ruling should show to the courts is that the USPTO is a POS. They were the ones who approved those patents, so if all of them were invalid what does that say? That they don't search very hard for "prior art", is what it says to me. In this age of information technology, the only thing governments granting the monopolies more monopolies on things does is take more money from consumers and hurt everyone. We'd all have a lot more money and more free time to come up with new products if we weren't so overworked from stuffing billionaire's pockets. Of course the worst offense are software patents, the most ridiculous kind since it's extremely obvious making software to perform any task, which makes it much more of a patenting an "idea" than most any other kind of patent.
Always got me how PDF is an "open standard", but hardly any programs can fully utilize it i.e. create and modify them. You'd think it's one of the most difficult things in the universe to implement or something. Maybe it is. It's also surprised me how slow it has been for the adoption of web and computer standards for vectors and graphical shapes and such. I thought it should have been something defined in HTML 1.0. "This is a letter. This is it's size. This is a sphere. This is a line. This is it's movement speed in this direction with this acceleration until time X is reached." Someone care to explain why it is that Adobe has ruled this domain for so long? Technically Flash was Macromedia I know, but it's just strange how this giant has gobbled up so much "exclusive" software that should have never been exclusive IMO had standards actually been implemented correctly and promptly. Also never did find out why it takes so much CPU/GPU power to move a circle around on the screen. Had something "Flash-like" (but with better performance?) been a part of the original HTML standards, our lives would have all been a lot nicer.
Except that it's not fair. Businesses can actually do things that consumers and other businesses don't want, and that are not fair. See racketeering.
But you're right, whether it's marketing scams like getting OEMs and anyone downstream agreeing to suppress "advertisement" or offerings of Linux and other OSes to the masses in order to get the "special Microsoft discount" (normally called racketeering, today called business as usual), or their attempt to EEE the various markets, their artificial dominance of those markets they should have never owned, or perhaps owned for a very short time, will wither eventually, even without the unfortunate reluctance to see or acknowledge that there is such a thing as unfair business practices that defeat true competition in the free market system of most countries through the use of laws that protect them.
Actually, it is fairly safe to assume the copy they will run will be pirated, because no one in their right mind would pay $300 for Vista Ultimate or $100-200 for Home or for XP or whatnot when they could get Microsoft's "special" discount by buying a computer that comes with it.
Microsoft's ability to sell their software at different prices in different situations is not only unfair, it gives him a massive playing card, the you scratch my back I'll scratch yours card. Normally seen as anti-competitive in the past, this business practice, among others, is apparently seen as normal and ethical today. Gotta love all the ways businesses create artificial control to aid them in monopolizing markets. (see DVD region codes)
Every computer shop wants to make money, so they have to sell what's the most popular even if it's not the best in many ways. It'd be a big loss to them to do otherwise. Thus, competition can never exist if you have to make all your computers run Windows to get the special "contract price" from M$. It's called racketeering, but it's not illegal in the US apparently. :)
It burns! Oh, it's just the BSD section.
:)
But seriously, where is the third test to confirm who's test is accurate and who's is a lie? Or are they different, and both Linux and BSD perform better in their own way?
I wondered how long it would take them to find a way to truly lock in their products all the way to the graphics card. If this catches on, they finally have. Remember back when you could put any brand of processor in your motherboard? Then they got rid of that. Then they started releasing their own north bridges and spread rumors that if you used their brand of north bridge with their brand of graphics card it could run faster. Then, they tried to go even further and tell everyone that if you used their brand of north bridge, video card, and CPU all together with their "Spider" "platform" that it would have some kind of magical, proprietary speed increase, like you were supposed to be glad that they're taking steps to kill more standards and further control the market.
Sorry AMD, I believe in standards and in competition. Make me a CPU and a video card that can work in any computer so that we can get true benchmark comparisons of your products and have the flexibility to do things like easily put in a replacement if your friend's hardware device X dies suddenly.
Yes, open source software is superior in it's license, so the issue of course is getting it developed. I would pay for software to be developed that wasn't restrictive. Compare one piece of software to another, lets say they are the same, but one has a restrictive license, obviously you choose the one that doesn't. It's a good feature of the software. There are a million reasons why open source software is better than closed source, but if you don't know them, well, Google it. So, the only problem is propelling the development of open source software as fast as possible. There are lots of paid open source programmers out there, don't get me wrong, but I think there will have to be a new system developed to give users bleeding-edge open source software. Though, I could be wrong, perhaps in the future OSS will be completely caught up with proprietary software, and it'll be really easy to pump out something new, and the world community will be able to do so much faster than any single company could.