Here's UAntwerp's subjects for year ("deel") 1-3:
http://www.ua.ac.be/main.aspx?c=.OOD2011&n=94160
In Dutch, but 95% readable to English speakers. ("gegevens"=data, "uitbating"=operating, "inleiding"=introduction)
I'm studying law in Belgium and there's lots of general education subjects, but that makes sense for law.
To slashdotters, this may be "duh" science, but it's really important to have this on paper when we talk to judges and legislators. Otherwise, we're left explaining the problems and hoping that the legislator will agree that our logic is "obviously" correct.
Bessen also co-authored Patent Failure with Michael Meurer and a previous study An Empirical Look at Software Patents, along with Robert Hunt.
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Studies_on_economics_and_innovation
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/James_Bessen
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/An_Empirical_Look_at_Software_Patents
Dave 1.0 says:
> what if someone wants to keep their software from being compatible with someone else's software for security or profit reasons?
If you want your servers to only talk to *your* software, then the hi-tech answer is: passwords.
"Security by obscurity" is the term for your proposed abuse of incompatibility
(If you want to block compatibility for profit reasons, you either use passwords, or you're asking for a legalised monopoly and the answer is sorry, but just no.)
This is a real problem - much bigger than the usual story we hear about some big corporation maybe having to pay some amount of money.
Software, to be useful, *has to* be compatible with other software - exactly compatible for data formats, and a degree of similarity is needed in terms of interface and behaviour.
This is the real problem, and it can't be fixed by "reform" or higher standards (which are much talked about but never come).
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Harm_to_standards_and_compatibility
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Interoperability_exceptions
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Harm_with_neither_litigation_nor_threats
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Patenting_around_what_will_become_essential
AC says:
> the Supreme Court isn't designed to make changes to law.
The Supreme Court has an obligation to make a ruling. If the law is incomplete or unclear (as is the case for software patents), their decision has the same effect as what a legislature can do.
This is a fourth rebranding of the proposed Patent Reform Act. Deckchairs get rearranged but there is little substance to all this and none of the driving forces have computer users in mind.
Some procedures get changed to make X more efficient and to improve quality sometimes for Y.
None of this solves the software patents problem in the USA. The software patents problem *isn't* caused by some bad apple applications slipping through the procedures. The problem is that software has to conform to standards (interfaces and data formats), and these are being covered by thickets of patents.
If there's 900 patents on something (i.e. mpeg), then weeding out the worst 10% changes nothing.
We need abolition, and we need Congress's support in this. The current Supreme Court has shown itself to be reluctant regarding substantial changes to law, and even if we won there, if we have no support in Congress then our victory would be wiped out by a legislative change.
Yes, do work on this proposal. Work to get software clearly excluded - you have to keep trying if you want to have a chance. But don't get overexcited. This is unlikely to be a big turning point - that is, of course, unless you get active and make it happen.
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/The_Patent_Reform_Act_(USA)
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Harm_to_standards_and_compatibility
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/MPEG_LA
> Fukushima was damaged by a tsunami rather than by one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded on Earth - and Italy has no ocean coast.
The lesson from Fukushima isn't be that tsunamis are dangerous, it's that out current outlook for predicting problems is probably too narrow.
> Fukushima no.1 complex include some of the oldest operating reactors in the world
Operated and continually monitored by one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world.
And more modern reactors, they're ok for earthquake-prone regions?
Yeh, just for those who don't remember: Italia has frequent earthquakes, in all regions of the country:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Italy
Click on the epicentre cities to see where they are, dispersed along the length of the country.
Nuclear = "Progress"? Bonkers.
My favourite failed "trust technology!" argument was after the Fukushima quake when Sarkozy tried to reassure the French people by saying that France's nuclear power stations were the most advanced in the world. That's probably correct, and it would be a good point to make after a nuclear accident in a developing country, but this is Japan he was talking about.
Making them 3 years would solve many many problems.
But, the TRIPS agreement says patents have to last 20 years.
However, the TRIPS agreement doesn't say that software has to be patentable. So countries could declare that software isn't patentable, and then create some new legal thingy called "petents", and say that petents last 3 years and that software innovations can be petented.
This would be hard work because some countries (USA for example) push the idea that TRIPS requires software patents.
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/TRIPS
Really, shortening the duration would be as much work, and there's always the risk that the monopolists will find some other nasty clause to stick in to make 3-year petents really harmful.
Let's just go for abolition. It will take time, but it's the only practical solution.
This may help or slightly harm the situation.
We have a problem with thickets of patents, like the 900+ patents in the MPEG LA portfolio. Weeding out a few here and there will not help.
In the 90s, there were problems with single patents (public key crypto, LZW, etc.), but corporations nowadays don't gamble their monopolies on single patents. They use thickets.
The USA have been trying peer-to-patent, but there's no visible change in the patent problem there. What we need, for software, is abolition.
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Patent_review_by_the_public
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Raising_examination_standards_wouldn't_fix_much
No
In my defence, painting protests as terrorism is all too common nowadays:
> That sounds like terrorism to me
Yeh, I guess people concerned with public health should limit themselves to shouting. Because megacorps pay attention, y'know.
(Most forms of protesting must sound like terrorism to you.)
> Hopefully not in companies using non-free software.
No worries, the awards were for his contribution to free software. The specifics can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Recognition
(But the two wouldn't be equivalent anyway - when you work for a company, you do what they want, but receiving an award doesn't require you to do the company's bidding.)
Many people are unenthusiastic about their work.
