Easier found through this link.

In a region where cartoonists and fornicators are stoned to death for two very different acts, holding a public viewing of a movie along the lines of what got the cartoonist killed is a sure recipe for lynch mob, except this mob has RPGs and anti-vehicular weaponry in their back yards.

Don't underestimate a religion's ability to mobilize killers. Christianity had its bout, and it would seem now it's time for Islam to try. Personally, I could live without all religions, but that's wishful thinking.

IANAL, but my reading of the quoted article 10.1, particularly the phrases "...that the form in which a program is, whether in source or object code, does not affect the protection..." and "...obligation to protect computer programs as literary works means e.g. that only those limitations that are applicable to literary works may be applied to computer programs..."

The first phrase appears to apply to efforts such as re-factoring in that the new form of the code does not spawn a new copyright, but instead the old copyright applies to the new form.

The second phrase appears to preclude other forms of protection by declaring that only limitations applied to literary works may be applied to computer programs.

Together with the 50-year term (precluding shorter terms for "applied art" in the last sentence), this article appears to extend the length of time a piece of code can be protected (from a renewed 20 year coverage of 40 years to 50 years without re-application), and also implicitly broadens what counts as a single work from one file of code to all forms that do the same thing. So in other words, any new invention in software that gets applied is not only protected for longer (and under copyright infringement), but also under a fuzzier definition to only include other "forms" of the same computation. I.E. any code that returned the Fibonacci number for any given number n, regardless of the implementation, could now be called the Fibonacci Code, and would be protected as a work by the first implementer (again, any language). This would appear to be in line with the idea that under traditional copyright, the work of the adaption of a creative work also belongs to the copyright holder. So, not only does this make the Fibonacci Code in Fortran owned by the same person as the Fibonacci Code in PHP (regardless if the author may only know Assembly), but also any other derivative work of the Fibonacci Code . Such as one that outputs the numbers as it runs, one that caches an array of values to save on processing time, one that calculates the number by looking up in a table or by recursive calculation, all of it is generally reserved for the copyright holder.

Fibonacci was used as a work old enough to be beyond even this treaty's coverage, but if this could apply to something more recent, say the code that enables spawning new threads of arbitrary code. This interpretation would mean 50 years of copyright claims to any implementation of thread-spawning code (machine up through scripting) by 1 individual (or, hey, the "other" kind of individual - the corporation), and damages/fees as high as the absurdity seen in recent RIAA cases on 1 song, let alone many code translations in use on an idea like thread spawning for arbitrary code.

But, again, we're looking at how far you sub-divide the subject matter in question. A copy of Apache? Definitely whole-sale copying. Using some of the same libraries as Apache in a manor that's similar to one of the functions at Apache's core? Not so much. If one divides "a computer program" to only mean anything one can order the operating system to run and it'll perform the stated task, then the broad definition doesn't affect languages that don't compile to Assembly such as Java. If one divides it too far to mean any function or subroutine which a computer can run, then you basically have software patents with broadened scope (across all languages, and right to create derivatives reserved) and lengthened protection.

This nightmare scenario is essentially over-extrapolation from the starting point above to the legally absurd extreme. I recognize it as such, but not every judge making calls on a related case will see this side when it's spun the right way by the prosecution attorney. The end of software patents may be desirable, but I see the sentence about the code's form not affecting the protection as a very slippery-slope in the wrong direction. Be careful what you wish for. The devil you know may actually be less tyrannical than the devil you don't.

Agreed. I've had exposure to many managers who's "good attitude for the company" involves looking at employees only as a set of ROI figures. I've also worked under the minority of managers who are interested in developing both the product and skill-set base of employees. The line about "bad attitude" is exactly the attitude that likely founded tech companies in the past - take a new product on the road. Calling this a bad attitude goes against the ideals of several states which have passed provisions protecting the little guys like the OP from being squashed or taken advantage of simply because the company they works for issues the salary checks they get.

Unless he lives in California, where such things are unenforceable, and prohibited from being used as a term of employment or continued employment. The down side to triggering these provisions is that you're responsible for showing that you didn't use the company's resources, including connections to their servers, I'd imagine.

I couldn't agree more. Perhaps this approach would bring about the next few waves of major advancements in other fields that have been stuck for decades.

When was the last time you read a patent for a chemical or biological agent? The substance itself is just a valid a claim under the patent as the process that created it. US Classification 200/157.68 (definition) is one of the classes the resulting patent could land in if the process involves microwave energy.

If the person(s) who solved this challenge realize this, a landmark legal battle over crowd-sourcing for patent-eligible materials could be on the verge of happening.

Conventional wisdom is also called into question here, when the University system is trumped as the best way to continue research in an age when we could see the most significant advances in bio science come from people who are dynamos for complex rules. i.e. Gamers. Will it change? Likely not, the University system does have many advantages. But a decades-old problem solved in 3 weeks, by a single-generation crowd compared to how many layers of research papers on the topic? That's beyond embarrassing.

So you'd favor shutting down one of the greatest advances in technology purely on the grounds that the auxilliary effects would be expensive? Buy a bio-scanning lock and move on. They will become cheaper and cheaper as time goes on. Expense is no excuse to hold a technology this important back. Imagine what would have happened if your logic was considered when decisions about information technology in the early 90s were present? Not building the internet because of the distributed adjustment that needed to happen would have meant immeasurable losses in advancement on many fronts.

Years from now historians will lament over the fall of a nation. The Americas have finally reached a manufacturing technology zenith, and instead of realizing the potential for all if us, "vested" interests will hold all of us back for the sake of "we've always done it this way".

Does anyone here honestly think that China will not use this technology to empower citizens who are more nationally unified than Americans to outright cut imports from the US?

think about the potential plummet in the national debt alone if cheap plastic parts and products were domestic again.

Technical solution? Smalll merge documents, small table of possible storage locations, small table of important keyword combinations, table-valued function that returns a huge list of alpha-numeric "document number, one cartesian product, three million dollars in postage. The department handling these documents would be in quite some trouble if they try to implement a spam filter.

Atheist, as the word would imply, is one without theism. I don't think it's been used in selective context as you have done here. (Zeus, Thor)

At any rate, yes your second statement is always unreasonable to these people. You can't seem to reach their logic centers on this topic, even given the massive contradictions they've read, let alone dichotomy between the book they hold sacred and their beliefs. Womens' Rights were not part of the old or new testament, but you'll find just as fierce opposition when pointing that out - usually in a dismissive wave such as "times change."

I find it sad that these people feel the need to sequester themselves away from the rest of the information on the web. It's doesn't take much to be just-critical enough to get by in a browser, yet their answer is a new service that blacklists most of the net with horrible ranks (or no result at all)

Mod parent up!

For all those people wanting their kids to excel and succeed beyond their parents, IT (real IT, not simply tech support) is a great avenue, and introduction early will foster aptitude in their adult life. The lowest rungs will be apt enough for stable tech support and the upper rungs will be developing FAT table hacks in grade 9.

For the nationalists out there, this is how to cultivate technical prowess in a country without costing the school system in overly-burdensome licensing fees, and not insult the intelligence of our children by calling classes on MS Word an "IT" class.

Hmm...This could be just the (mis)opportunity they were looking for. Wasn't there an article sometime back about what the guys who came up with TCP/IP wanted to really do with the net and new protocols, but couldn't because of entrenched culture? Maybe now is the time...and to really look at employing that quantum entanglement effect as a communication medium. Let's see them tap that.