The failing US patent system is getting ever more mainstream - The New York Times is running a long and details piece on the failings of the system, especially in relation to the technology industry most of us hold so dearly. Most of the stuff in there isn't new to us - but there's two things in the article I want to highlight.
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Member since:2011-09-15
The main problem with software patents is that unknowledgable civil servants don't know they already had an algorithm for solving a square root in Mesopotamia thousands of years ago. The civil servants should be more knowledgable, that's all.
Suppose such a thing as an interface that could suit both the traditional desktop/laptop and tablet existed. That's not an obvious idea ( look at Windows 8 ) and requires you to hire a batch of creative developers. A software patent would have use here, because you're inventing a new software product, and not just telling your computer how to do things mathematicians have been doing for decades.
Member since:2011-01-28
JoshuaS,
"The main problem with software patents is that unknowledgable civil servants don't know they already had an algorithm for solving a square root in Mesopotamia thousands of years ago. The civil servants should be more knowledgable, that's all."
Sure, patent workers may not have sufficient training and resources, but that isn't at all what I was trying to convey by my comment. To reuse your specific example, I wouldn't care whether anyone had an algorithm for solving a square root prior to me or not, every developer who is capable of deriving such an algorithm should be entitled to use it. Is it ok to step in and claim ownership of the algorithms that are the product of our own thought processes? Subsequent devs may even be more talented than the first one, their only fault by the patent system is that they weren't earlier. I say the "first" guy deserves a creditworthy mention in computer science journals, etc, but neither he nor his employer should own software algorithms at the exclusion of others who have a similar thought process. There's no reason to treat software algorithms like physical property since they aren't a limited resource needing to be managed through governance nor economics.
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces."But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance."According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.
Member since:
2011-01-28
JoshuaS,
"For example, medicins take a lot of investment, but they are very cheap to reverse-engieer."
"By abolishing the patent system entirely, many industries will stagnate because of the mear cost of innovation and small, innovatng bussinesses crushed by multi-nationals, because of their shear resources."
For the record, most software engineers are not calling for the general abolishment of the patent system in other fields like medicine, we're just saying that it shouldn't be applied to software, which is routinely derived simultaneously when multiple developers are given the same task to solve. Or when we're pressured to adopt a specific patented solution to be compatible with a defacto standard even though we'd really like to use non-infringing alternatives.
Edited 2012-10-09 15:29 UTC