Software patents illegal...

Oops... thought I was on Slashdot for a second.

But seriously, if you'd have shown me that before you sent it, I would have signed it too.

The "actually agree" was a nice touch.

Post edited to add last sentence.

In comparison with previous position statements from the European Commission, this is an improvement. It is not, however, perfect. This actually still allows for software patents to be requested and granted: it just allows a sufficiently filthy-rich litigant to overturn the patent in court. A potential side effect of this method of "invalidating" patents might be the effective shutting-out of economically less powerful parties from using patented software while larger organizations will have free reign.

Think about it for a moment: a corporation that holds a software patent might leave other large organizations to their own devices, with all the free license they need to make use of the patented technology. The patent-holding corporation need only threaten litigation for individuals and organizations small enough to be substantially financially harmed by the court proceedings regardless of whether they win or lose. This allows for a protection racket to arise, wherein back-room deals serve to provide for easy use of patented software technologies for huge corporations and required licensing for any bit player on the market.

This, of course, would effectively screw open source software projects.

In that light, this new position of the EC makes perfect sense. The large corporations both want to be able to patent their software and want to be able to use others' technologies without having to pay for them, and they all want the little guys to be shut out of the market. Now, they've found a way to do it: allow software patents to be overturned if sufficient money is available to pursue the matter in court, but otherwise allow patents to be registered and approved, providing a means by which they can be enforced by threat of litigation. It's enforcement by attrition.

He's willing to take the copyright case of Apotheon v. Apotheon for a quite reasonable retainer fee.

I like your analogy of the cookbook. I also think that software patents are rediculous. I also agree that the USPO is most possibly violating the law when it issues them, but I am no lawyer.

However, I must be very careful with your phrase "...software patents are not to be issued or respected." It is the word "respected" which is potentially problematic for me. If by "respected" you mean as an attitude, I agree. I look down on them too. If you mean "obeyed" then I must disagree. Until a court verifies that software patents are illegal, then I have a fiduciary responsibility to my employer and my clients to not do anything which can land them in legal trouble. I also have a responsibility to myself to do the same, even on private/personal projects, as I do not have the financial resources nor the emotional wherewithal to go through a court battle.

I can totally understand and agree with the idea of fighting this principle, and I support the fight, but I cannot support it through violating the current patents. If I felt very strongly about it, I would have to leave my employer and work exclusively for myself, as it would be wrong for me to put my employer or customer at risk over my personal beliefs.

J.Ja

That's an interesting analogy and an accurate one, I think. Software should be subject to copyright laws, just as a cookbook is, but I have to agree patents for software just does not make sense.

It is quite evident that you do not write software. Patents are issued to "a new idea or system; a new use of existing products, parts of or new combinations of ideas". A cookbook that lists recipes can only be copyrighted if there are "all" new recipes. And that is use of existing "parts" in a new system.
If you set to write software and spend 2 years developing a saleable product, be it a physical or virtual, you have the right to the intellectual property. The result of labor, in this case mental labor, is the merchandise, saleable and fit to make a profit from. It is only free if the writer chooses to give it away.
You legal IQ must be in the low 60's ! ! ( in lieu of more direct ways to express my contempt of people that think the way you do)

BW

1) Law historically lags technological advances, just as it does those of other natures. Thus the courts are oft times charged with the difficult task of deciding issues in the absence of clearly and directly applicable statutory law.

2) Those charged with writing statutes, and the regulations that enforce them, along with those who adjudicate such, are frequently ill equipped for such in those areas which require an in depth knowledge of the material issues, so as to yield results that are all too easily subverted.

As re. the issue here at hand, this has resulted in court decisions that may in fact have been proper within the scope of the specific cases involved having been applied in a manner that far exceeds the scope of those cases. And, as it is within the authority of Congress to oversee the USPO, and its having failed to execute such responsibility, it is they who are ultimately accountable for this current morass.

Patents never did any good to 'innovation', they stiffle it.

But living in the EU I must make a small correction. There is no such thing as a European Government. The EU is basically a very undemocratic system. What you call the EU Government is the 'Commission' with members _appointed_ by the various governments - mostly high ranking old politicians. There IS a EU parliament, but it is quite powerless commonly known as 'The Mickey Mouse Parliament', although it has got more power over the years, but it is still the commission that initiate laws, which are called directives.

The patent affair has been circulating in the system for years, and to show how the EU works the SW patent directive was silently put on the agenda for approval at an agricultural minister meeting, probably in the hope that nobody would know what it was and give it the 'rubber stamp'. We can thank the Polish minister of agriculture for calling the bluff.

take the recipes for all of the most commonly prepared dishes, making sure to include those that are the best sellers for those in the business of producing prepared meals, alter said recipes so as to be materially different, but not so as to alter their textures and/or flavors, patent the new recipes, and have monopoly on cooked foods!

We'd be so stinking rich that we could afford to acquire any other existing patent rights that we chose to, thereby becoming Gods on Earth.

All we need do is follow the path set before us by the idiot that started this sub-thread.

That's not a problem. That's a feature.

I'd be monumentally pleased to see someone have that much regard for what I had to say about an academic subject, and to have it placed into the hands of so many people for educational purposes.

"ignorantiam" is correct however. I looked it up just for something to do.

Well, given that e-trade still requires the use of particles/waves, does this mean that they claim to have found a [i]meta[/i]-physical method of effecting force at a distance?

As the presentation of a computer program in a form suitable for human understanding renders it unsuitable for its intended use, i.e. a computer cannot execute a printed copy of the program, such is in fact fair use.

As for the reproduction of a physical publication, such as a book, in its entirety, such is not fair use. And, that some abuse fair use is not a flaw of the copyright itself, but that of the abuser. Blame the thief, not that which is stolen.

I did not state that there would be no innovation without patents, but that there would be substantially less than with them.

The problem, as I see it, is that the system has been subverted, with respect to both patents and copyrights, to the point where it bears but a little likeness to the "limited" protection envisioned by our Founders.

Take, for example, Design Patents. Try as I may, I can find no justification for granting protection to the [i]shape[/i] of an object.

How can you patent a bunch of ones and zero's?? Somewhere, sometime, someone sat down and programmed those bits with toggle switches and those bits are the beginning of everything. Did they get a patent, or copyright?? Why not?? Because just about anyone could duplicate the very same function. Stack those on top of tons more and you get just that. Stacks. (sorry) Add somemore controls bits and guess what. Who thought of it first??

You're right about all that.

The upshot is that the EU is (will be) a government, officially when it is approved in some form or other, and unofficially until either that happens or the whole idea is scrapped. It's sort of a pseudo-government now, imposing regulations and sitting in judgment. The fact it sucks at enforcing those regulations much of the time doesn't change the fact that it's operating in the role of a (very very weak) government. After all, look at the successes the US (hasn't) had with the War on Drugs: it's wholly ineffective in enforcing recreational drug laws, and this is a relatively strong government.

The opposite case could be made: that for right now, the EU isn't a government, because it isn't official yet. It kinda goes either way, depending on your definitions and perspective.

Assuming it becomes official, though, it fits the technical definition of a government at that point.

that outside of the US, software patents are still in the political arena, so any discussion about them will have political content.

With the above in mind, since the EU is so weak, what real effect will this recommendation have on member countries in the software patent area?

edited for typo

Very limited, controlled conditions that constitute edge-cases and exceptions are not a very good justification for applying a rule to all conditions and circumstances.

having a couple of patents myself, filed under my current employer, I agree that most of it is just common sense software engineering. I did not even agree that these were patentable from a scientific point of view.

However, algorithms, if anyone can define them in a clear legal language (perhaps not possible) should be patentable.

Software is a work of art and falls really under the laws of copyright.
Just as a cookbook does! Or a painting or a book.
As such no dues to the patent office are needed,nor renewal fees.Validity goes even past the authors lifespan.
There where plagiarism can be proved suing is possible.
This is what I think about it.
willemw

Software is a work of art and falls really under the laws of copyright.
Just as a cookbook does! Or a painting or a book.
As such no dues to the patent office are needed,nor renewal fees.Validity goes even past the authors lifespan.
There where plagiarism can be proved suing is possible.
This is what I think about it.
willemw

Wikipedia is a good help for clarifying the issue in this thread. To ask the right question, the key points are not about legally restricting the reproduction of information (copyright). Instead the key points are about legally protecting a creator's advantaged benefit from having come up with an important new idea (patent). All rectangles are not squares, but all squares are rectangles. All software does not contain or demonstrate the logic of a new idea, but all patented software introduced and/or demonstrated an idea thought to be new by a large number of people who tried to prove it wasn't and didn't prove that.

So if you can?t patient a method or algorithm then I guess the next trick would be to encrypt the code in such a manner that it can?t be reverse engineered. That and burn the source?

does it. More like copyright in that case.

Still - you see why I have difficulty with the cookbook analogy? My cookbooks never decide when the steak is done - but my market-watch program is very vociferous when it wants me to buy or sell... with certain options set it will even act without further supervision.

Software is definitely more than a cookbook, even if - for purposes of patentability - it is regarded so...

There's a vast difference between a cookbook and a program.

Your kitchen can still be put to full and effective use without a cookbook. It is possible to prepare nutritious, tasty food without one. I do it almost every night.

Your computer is just an ornament, and not a very pretty one, without software.

To me, comparing the two seems spurious, because of that difference. There are better doorstops and paperweights available for a lot lower price.

Personally, I think patent law isn't currently the right way to protect the work that is put into software. At least, in its current incarnation, patent law seems like the wrong tool for the job. It's been abused too often and I don't see a clean way to stop that.

For one thing, the durations on patents are patently absurd (sorry, that pun was intentional but I'll appologize for it anyway) in an industry where the software rarely, if ever, is still the same for longer than a year.

Also, the idea of patenting software processes seems like a generally bad idea.

I'm not sure exactly what should replace software patents, but there needs to be some protection in place to allow people to reap the rewards of hard work. Patents, in their current incarnation, just aren't it.

But I still maintain that comparing software to cookbooks is wrong.

Software is not even similar, much less identical to a cookbook. A programming textbook might be similar. But a piece of software code, is a specific creation and should be respected as an author's work and at least subject to copyright.

This assumes that the code is original and not some cobbled up piece of "object oriented software" that is more likely to be a collection of code snippets written by as many authors over time and released into the public domain.

But actual software has more in common with a manufactured item of hardgoods than with an instruction manual on how to make something.

As the Eolas v Microsoft case showed, in which Microsoft were ordered to pay half a billion dollars in damages and forced to make changes to IE rather than pay a license fee for something they give away, the smaller organisation, if holding a patent like ?mechanisms for embedding objects within distributed hypermedia documents .. etc.? see: http://www.w3.org/2003/09/public-faq can even have an impact on the global development community (To get an idea of the impact see ?The IE Changes Explained?
http://www.dnzone.com/showdetail.asp?NewsId=508

I think whether it?s menacing cartels, or small opportunists with software patents, they are both bad for software and its future.

Software is not analogous to anything. Software ideas and concepts are just something that will help a really good bit of software get to market first and be the ?original and best? and ?tried and trusted?. It is traditional in the history of software that competition emerges that tries to either better an idea or reproduce it. That?s what has been so healthy about the software revolution. It?s fertile, competitive, and just as much an opportunity for everyone. It?s naturally that kind of industry, and not for instance, like Pharmaceuticals or Manufacturing where the need to protect investment is obvious.

Imagine hearing: Hey! - that?s my idea you?re using there, and I can prove it, you owe me. When you?d obviously had the stupid idea too. Stupid idea to develop a bit of software that is!

In one of my earlier posts (you replied to it, I think) I made clear that my difficulty (and perhaps the difficulty lots of people have with patent and copyright relative to software) resulted from software's failure to fit into standard categories and behaviors.

This was the post where I was objecting to the "cookbook" analogy ("We don't need no steenking cookbooks"). But Jaqui subsequently replied and said that his cookbook analogy was specific to the patentable portion of a piece of software - the source code.

I assumed he would know how the patent business worked, since he started the thread. You now seem to be telling me this isn't so at all - in which case, I return to my original post's arguments.

Which seem more or less identical to your own. I even used the same words: Software DOES things...
as a consequence, software doesn't fit the (at best) 19th century approach of the PTO...

That does not make the tool itself into art. Premiere and Photoshop are not art anymore than a paintbrush or a chisel are art. All are tools, which can be used to create art, but are most often used to create trash.

"[i]How can we protect innovation and offer incentives to pioneers and long term investment protections to corporate participants and freedom to developers to use best of breed and best practice?[/i]"
That's a common misconception. The truth is that we simply can't do all of that. The problem is that everyone thinks intellectual protectionism somehow encourages innovation, but the fact of the matter is that it does the opposite: it discourages innovation.

Innovators are hampered when they want to build upon the developments of others by intellectual protectionism. Even those who innovated in the first place are inclined to stop once they've come up with something others want to use, because they can just rest on their laurels collecting royalties and/or licensing fees for years afterward, and do the bare minimum to keep the money rolling in without ever producing something else new.

Patent and copyright law tends to convey a sense that once you've created something new, you're "done". That's it: it's over, you've accomplished what you set out to do. Now you can reap your rewards. Instead, if natural market forces were allowed to prevail, people would continuously innovate, and a good business model would have to substitute for the overbearing force of government as a means of enticing, rather than coercing, revenue.

"How can we protect innovation and offer incentives to pioneers and long term investment protections to corporate participants and freedom to developers to use best of breed and best practice?

"What system could we put into place that could offer the things we all need? Maybe some sort of NGO with a real grip on the issues would be able to mediate some of these conflicts and use economic enforcement for a stick..."

Apotheon: "We can't."

Damn this "maximum message depth has been reached" thing, I'm replying to Apotheon's "We can't" message.

Which was a reply to my "Obviously it's broke, how do we fix it" message.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I have trouble believing that this is completely hopeless and we have to abandon all attempts at balance in favor of some sort of free-for-all. Not that I don't enjoy free-for-alls...

Apotheon, I think it is arguable that in the early days of the patent system it worked very well both encouraging innovation and protecting innovators from rapacious cheapskate copycats. The system no longer works as it was intended to work (I think largely because protections have become too broad and long lasting, but also because the meaning of 'invention' has blurred).

But the point is, the system is broke. I think a patent system, if properly designed can:

1) Encourage creative exploration of a technological space;

2) Offer temporary protection for those who have taken risks in order to innovate;

3) Offer longer term non-exclusive rights to those who take the risk of investing in innovation, and;

4) Offer support services to new innovators who wish to expand on the utility of existing art, without artificial legal roadblocks.

These are all perfectly reasonable goals, and seem to address most of the concerns of the various sides in the debate. OF course the devil will be in the details, but I think (if a nation wishes to encourage innovation) then something like the above could be made to work.

You are on record as believing this to be impossible. Do you have something more workable to suggest? Or do you feel that the USA should simply stop trying to encourage invention and experimentation? Or is there something else going on in that well-educated noggin of yours?

"[i]Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I have trouble believing that this is completely hopeless and we have to abandon all attempts at balance in favor of some sort of free-for-all. Not that I don't enjoy free-for-alls...[/i]"
It's not about free-for-alls. It's about free markets. One of the strengths of a free market economy is that it's self-correcting. You want balance? Let economic laws do their work, and stop trying to interfere with authoritarian power trips.

"[i]I think it is arguable that in the early days of the patent system it worked very well both encouraging innovation and protecting innovators from rapacious cheapskate copycats.[/i]"
It worked sometimes, for some people. It didn't work so well for others. Thomas Edison stole ideas from people like Nikola Tesla, patenting them out from under their inventors, regularly. The "early days" of the patent system were only any better than modern days in that corrupt, incestuously interdependent governmental and business interests hadn't had time to perfect the art of manipulating a system of arbitrary distinctions and fuzzy definitions to ensure economic monopolies.

"[i]Do you have something more workable to suggest?[/i]"
Yeah. Free markets. That means removing governmental interference that attempts to control and restrict the free exchange of ideas.

"[i]Or do you feel that the USA should simply stop trying to encourage invention and experimentation?[/i]"
No, I think the USA should stop [b]trying and failing[/b] to encourage invention and experimentation. Instead, it should simply [b]allow it[/b]. All these attempts to encourage are counterproductive, and are an attempt to "fix what ain't broke".

"[i]Or is there something else going on in that well-educated noggin of yours?[/i]"
I'll take that as a compliment. Thanks.

So let's see if I understand you - the PTO is broken FUNDAMENTALLY - it cannot be fixed, it cannot be repaired, the good it has undoubtedly done in the past is submerged in the overwheleming harm it does now. Yes?

By way of solution you propose an open-ended period of unprotected free-market anarchy in which market forces will drive innovation, balance and harmony will be achieved and everyone goes away happier and wiser and freer.

That sound really good. Very similar to the earlier writings of Lenin, before he got hold of Russia. I think his experience in actually running a revolution of this scale would make really good reading, but in short, it didn't work.

Special interests groups never gave his free market a chance to innovate and their whole economic system collapsed. It got ugly, and that's when the Soviet collectives took over at gunpoint and started "leading" the revolution...

But enough hisoory.

I think our own special interests, invested to the tune of many tens of billions of dollars, will completely overwhelm a free market. Practicality: You will never get the USA to abandon its long and spotty tradition of meddling in market access and protection, which is what the PTO really does. You will never get the interest groups with a stake in the system to opt out in favor of nothing at all. (It's important, BTW, to acknowledge the legitimacy of these groups' claims even when we despise them - they do have significant investment and clout, and would be better if they're with us than agin' us)

What we migth be able to manage is some sort of working group - something that really could think creatively about these issues and balance the needs of various interest groups until we have something that a large majority of people can accept.

Certainly innovative new ideas in this area aren't going to come from the old guard, they'll come from the cagier members of the new guard. From the sorts that hang out at TR, for example.

So what could we do? What would you do, given the project of balancing these interest groups and finding a solution that would let them ALL thrive, and not at one another's expense?

Surely this isn't out of our intellectual reach. The problem is that it IS out of the intellectual reach of those tasked with achieving it.

Why don't we give them some help?

"[i]Very similar to the earlier writings of Lenin, before he got hold of Russia.[/i]"
Let's see . . . free-market capitalism vs. state socialism. Yeah, I can see how you made the connection.

Do you have any other asinine, patently absurd, wholly inapplicable comparisons to make, or are you done with the spurious nonsense? "Oh, the patent system, which restricts people from building on others' inventions unless they pay exhorbitant bribes or otherwise ingratiate themselves with consolidated power centers, encourages innovation and leads to a golden age of advancement and opportunity? That sounds amazingly like what Pol Pot said before he murdered millions in the name of agrarian socioeconomic reform." See? Doesn't your technique work beautifully? Shall we invoke Godwin's Law next?

Lenin was never in any way associated with free market economics except via ironic parody. There's no damned point in continuing a "dialog" with this kind of ludicrous BS spewing from your orifices. Seriously, guy. You're either a liar or a moron.

Which many do, his earlier essays and broadsides are to what I was referring. He was, in his teens, a very angry young fella, convinced of the sickness of his society and frustrated at being able to do nothing about it. In a long series of savage essays he dissected the Gilded Age version of Capitalism (that of the 1880s and 1890s) and Monarchism and got even angrier, and said - as do you - that this damned thing can't be saved short of revolution.

His early work was not about state scocialism, per se. It was focused on understanding the beast - not just the russian beast, but the capitalist/monarchist beast (they weren't as inclined to separate the two back in the day). And we all know that at certain times, in certain places, it is a BEAST. I have a lot of sympahty for the early Lenin.

Lenin WAS deeply involved in free market politics as a way of opposing the entrenched Russian regime. His twist was that powerless individuals band together in production related groups to have more bargaining power - communes was the shorthand he used. They were called unions over here.

THAT is the Lenin with whom I was comparing you, and I think it appropriate and to the point.

I also think it's flattering.

It wasn't meant in the least as a personal attack; I think if you'd known him then, you woud have liked him. Or at least sympathized with him. He was a brave and angry young man who in the end didn't turn out too well.

If you took the comparison as a personal attack I apologize - it wasn't meant so. But now that's cleared up, perhaps you'd care to make a suggestion?

I agree with you that the patent system has to go - or at least, that it can't be sensibly applied to software. Perhaps this is more of the "spurious nonsense"?

There are four groups I've identified as having a legitimate place at the patent table - pioneers, discoverers, financiers of discoverers, users of discoveries. We need to design a human system that will respect the needs of these four groups and achieve the following:

1) Encourage creative exploration of a technological space;

2) Offer temporary protection for those who have taken risks in order to innovate;

3) Offer longer term non-exclusive rights to those who take the risk of investing in innovation, and;

4) Offer support services to new innovators who wish to expand on the utility of existing art, without artificial legal roadblocks.

So how do we balance their needs and bring a workable compromise out of the mess that is now known as the PTO?

Perhaps in this way we can dispense with the semi-coherent fulminations about Pol Pot?

"I think if you'd known him then, you woud have liked him. Or at least sympathized with him. He was a brave and angry young man who in the end didn't turn out too well."

Lenin's murder of tens of millions of innocents is inconsistent with any moral "ideal". If he expressed ideas with which you sympathize, then did not practice them when he had the power to make the changes for which he claimed to yearn, either (1) he was a hypocrite from the start OR (2) he succumbed to emotion, either as a youth (with qualities you admire) or as a dictator (with qualities you do not admire, thankfully) rather than acting on ideals he chose [i]intellectually[/i], not emotionally. That is the most difficult thing in the world. Apotheon is not like Lenin, young or old.

Everything is primarily a tool when looked at from the "functional" point of view. Roses are tools for making seeds, hammers apply directional force, etc.

What is the "function" of the Mona Lisa?

... of Neko Case's latest music video?

Perhaps the merciless necessity of "clear and precise" definition is a failing of law and industry, rather than a standard to which we should hold ourselves. Maybe that precision IS EXACTLY THE PROBLEM.

Science doesn't require precision except in testing, and it's of two minds even about that. Precision might possibly be a symptom of disease, or at least of malaise, of our legal system.

Who are you to say that the rose's ability to propagate is more important than it's ability to please me some summer night? And why should a rose be judged based exclusively on one function rather than the other?

Photoshop is a tool. It is also a work of art, it also creates works of art. I don't see why you have to take this wonderful fuzzy thing and reduce the complexity of it, reduce the truth of it, just because somewhere, at some time, there are minds too small to understand it in all its glory.

It is MANY things. Most software is MANY things, and the making of same can be approached in many ways. To some programmers, it's a craft, to others an art, to others, some sort of lab experiment. But it's all software.

We got off on this tangent because we were trying to determine what software WAS, in order to determine how it should be dealt with, culturally.

I'm inclined, after hearing what many have had to say, to take Apotheon's tack for the most part - lift software out of the arena of legislation entirely, at least for a period of time, and see what happens. Maybe we'll have to change tack later, but a period of chaos and anarchy might prove very fruitful.

"to provide an interface for users to more convieniently send instructions to the central processor" is the definition of the USER INTERFACE

the program is the actual work accomplished, such as finding the website and displaying the contents to the screen.

Lenin was not responsible for millions of deaths. He was a Marxist theoretician and activist who died shortly after the Russian Revolution began. Perhaps he would have been a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch, but he never got the chance. He was a theoretician primarily.

I was comparing Apotheon (for whom I have a fair amount of respect) to Lenin (and I'm saying this again - doesn't anyone read my posts?) on the basis of his idealism, his 'damn the torpedoes" atttitude toward the failure of the patent system.

Which again (gosh, no one reads my posts) I am in substantial agreement with. Get it? I think Apotheon is pretty much right about all this. The system is broke, the system can't be fixed.

I was simply trying to move on past the ranting, the reiterated cries of "it's fucked up" to a more interesting possibility - that we could design something workable.

We're all professionals here - many of us are tops in our fields, but all of us are very good at what we do. I honestly think we could come up with a human system that took all the interests of all the parties into consideration and designed something that would make everyone happy.

What do you think? I promise never to compare Apotheon to Lenin (even though he was a very astute and interesting man - made even MARX sound coherent) and you all give me your thoughts on this work of art - oops - industrial tool - that I'm trying to define...

There's something the USPTO, Lenin, and Stalin all had in common: an authoritarian assumption of governance. They all believe (in the case of the USPTO, "believe" in a very abstracted sense) that government is properly employed by the task of controlling things -- of, in effect, controlling people and their behavior. They have all been fundamentally focused on the task of proactively interfering with the lives and personal decisions of others.

That right there is strictly antithetical to me and my beliefs. About the only similarities between Lenin and me, in terms of core beliefs, are:

1. We both could probably be considered less actively destructive than Stalin (in his case not as much different as me, and probably only because he wanted people like Stalin to do the unpleasant work of exercising authority directly so he didn't have to).

2. We both could probably be described as having strong convictions.

Pretty much anything else is a study in contrasts.

For that matter, the USPTO also fits number one, and likely the only reason it doesn't fit number two is the fact that it's an organization, rather than an individual, and thus fundamentally incapable of having convictions at all.

That all aside, however, I'll take your comparison in the spirit it was apparently intended: someone with strong convictions who sees potential for fixing a broken system, unfortunately via a probably necessary serious shake-up of the status quo. That definitely describes me.

pure esthetic enjoyment.

I happen to agree in the final analysis that leaving all invention to the inventors' ability to protect trade secrets using NDAs & laws to protect their [i]physical[/i] property without special rights for intellectual property would be very interesting, and probably much better for society. Apotheon has a very interesting article about this topic on a page of his own, FYI.

We aren't going to agree on the usefulness of precision in general, especially in law, science, and industry, and that's fine with me.

I'd have to know which is which, and I don't. I vaguely recall from elementary school that they were both Soviet twits. Once I know a person doesn't respect my right to what I earn, additional details don't interest me.

an additional layer of code then, to enable processing of bits such that the processor helps the user achieve a goal. See, static, how important precision is?

Suppose a new algorithm makes identity theft 99.9% more difficult. Should this algorithm (a) be protected by patent (b) be copied to all competitors, as Volvo did with the airbag, on the premise that safety is more important than market share (c) be available to anybody smart enough to reverse engineer it, meaning, hopefully, those competitors smart enough to integrate it into a truly useful way to their operating systems?

The more I think about this, the more I agree with apotheon's position that patents are wrong. My reasoning is that being first to market with a novel invention is an advantage in itself, and that removal of patent protection only takes away from inventors an option that is unnatural and inconsistent with the human condition: the option to rest on one's laurels.

I suspect Absolutely refers to this when he mentions a "very interesting article" on this subject "on a page of [my] own", since it's the one I'm sure he's read:
http://sob.apotheon.org/?p=17

I, however, find this essay of mine to be more interesting (and better written):
http://sob.apotheon.org/?p=34

In both cases, the discussion in comments that follows the essay is well worth the read if you found the essay itself interesting. There are some reasonably erudite points made by everyone involved, with the possible exception of discussions of producing superkids to rule the world.

Precision is wonderful up to and including the point where you know what you're talking about. After that, you're just as likely to shoot yourself in the foot as hit what you're aiming at. I brought up the trap of precision when Abs was insisting that software WAS this, as opposed to anything else, and then using an artificially narrow definition of what software WAS as a fulcrum for his point of view relating to how software should be managed.

Putting to one side for the moment the growing consensus here that software shouldn't be managed AT ALL, consider what this "precision" in definition has done, or has the potential to do: By limiting the definition of software to "industrial tool" we artificially twist our perceptions of existing software and warp our point of view when it comes to new and interesting programs we might write.

I'm a big fan of precision where it belongs. One of my hobbies is instrument building, and I'm a very close carpenter. But even in that realm, there comes a time when you have to abandon precision to what the eye and the ear can tell you without instruments.

That is what I was trying to say. It's still important to me. Too often I chat with people who worship the ruler and don't look closely enough at what is being measured. To their detriment and mine.

I suppose there are still people who, having read the previous dozen or so posts, still limit the definition of software to "industrial tool", or deny that an element of artistry sometimes goes into its composition?

BTW, read Apotheon's links and the following discussions. Why, you old Libertarian you .

Gotta tell you though - some rap (and definitely some hip-hop) is GOOD music (and this comes from someone old enough to vote the day he heard Hendrix died).

In order to confuse Lenin with Stalin I'd have to know which is which, and I don't. I vaguely recall from elementary school that they were both Soviet twits. Once I know a person doesn't respect my right to what I earn, additional details don't interest me.

I've heard that

"Those who count their ignorance with bliss soon find themselves with an embarrassment of riches..."

and of course, there's the always popular

"Those who fail to remember their history are doomed to repeat it..."

Apotheon, thank you for taking my comments re Lenin in the spirit with which they were meant. (I know Americans have a terrible prejudice in this regard but you really should take a look at his material. He was the inspiration for many of the finest revolutionaries of the twencen, including Che and Mao, and would truly repay study - especially for a dyed-in-the-wool Libertarian...)

(especially in our world, so desperately in need of revolutionaries...)

I think something like a loose consensus has been reached on this topic, don't you?

Libertarian? Me? Perish the thought.

If you follow enough links on that website, you'll eventually arrive at the page where it mentions I'm the volunteer webmaster for the local Libertarian Party.

I'm not wholly without knowledge of Lenin. I'm also familiar with Che Guevara and Mao Tse-Tung. Che Guevara is actually a pretty good comparison with Lenin: each of them concocted great ideas for how to kill and imprison and torture people into accepting their respective leftist ideologies, then handed those ideas and plans over to other people for refinement and execution.

I admit I didn't take the site that far - just read the linked articles and the associated comments, but it was a breath of fresh air. All the signs were there... the shifty eyes, the thorough acquaintance with history, the syncretistic tone...

... how do you sleep at night, boy? Teaching people to be responsible for themselves, and other social heresies?

and started acting out.

Or maybe they accepted death as a "tool of statecraft" - isn't that the currently popular euphemism amongst our current crop of - chm - elected representatives?

They were both idealists - maybe that's how they got into so much trouble...

Being a social heretic is great fun.