First theorized in the 1970's as the fourth basic circuit element, a practical memristor implementation has finally been discovered at HP Labs. If practical manufacturing can be scaled up, memristor technology could become the new standard for computer memory -- memory that combines the speed of DRAM, the persistence of Flash memory, and the bit density of hard drives. In addition, memristors can work as analog as well as digital devices, and hold promise as the basis for building neural networks
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2006-05-26
I can agree that software moves much more quickly, and I can also agree that a lot of software ideas are relatively trivial.
What I cannot agree to is that software patents (those of any significant complexity for algorithm) take "a lot less investment" than many of the other things that are patented. The problem is that most of the things that are patented in software are really not all that earth-shattering and important for advancement of the field: they're ways to lock things down when the merit of the idea is not all that great compared to what's put into it. However, there are many things that are of great practical value, that require quite a bit of investment to perfect. What a lot of people do their best to ignore is this fact: very few people become competent enough in the field to create anything that's considered "Revolutionary" without a hell of a lot of experience, education, and self-directed deep thought and research. That's why, really, it's amazing as to what's available via open source software, because people expend a huge amount of resources in the form of their time and energy first to get to the point where they're competent, and then go on and do something like that, however much more that takes.
I would, however, definitely support a shorter duration of software patents: if you can't find a use for a software patent in a shorter period of time than most manufactured things, chances are it really isn't worth anything anyway, unless you've managed to create quantum computing algorithms that aren't practical on current hardware long before hardware that can run them become feasible. However, that's a fairly uncommon type of advancement in software 
Member since:
2007-02-17
Patents on mechanical/electronic inventions are good. It takes a disgusting amount of time, energy, and equipment to research that stuff. Companies and universities need to be reimbursed for their expense or they'd never be able to research it in the first place.
These are nothing at all like software patents. Aside from software being an algorithm, software changes are a far more rapid pace than electronics and software requires far less investment to innovate with.
This is why I've never gotten on the band wagon with the "anti-patents" movements that far too many programmers push - almost all of whom I'd imagine lack any business or economic sense whatsoever - and instead work with the "anti-software-patents" movements. They're different things entirely.