On Wed, June 25, 2008 1:29 pm, Tracy R Reed wrote: > James G. Sack (jim) wrote: >> I can't help asking how algorithms can be patented. I guess this comes >> up again and again, but I have some kind of mental block about accepting >> the concept, I suppose. > > It's not that you have a mental block about accepting the concept. It is > simply that the concept is nonsense. Convincing a court of that has so > far been difficult. I look at it this way: You can't patent a > mathematical formula or a number. Math is a fundamental property of the > universe. Purely functional programming is math. So what if I implement > one of Photoshop's fancy algorithms in something like Haskell? Or here's > something even stranger: A computer program is just a string of bits. A > string of bits is just a number. You can't patent or copyright a number. > But as anything can be represented as a string of bits. So you can't > count to infinity and publish the results along the way without > violating every copyright there is. "Drink coca-cola." That's 128 bits > exactly. There's another thread talking about filling up a 128 bit > filesystem. Somewhere along the way counting through that address space > they are going to reproduce someone's work. > >> The thing I've seen bear that out. In fact I believe one of the most >> common gripes (the confusion of too many windows and dialog boxes) is >> significantly improved in the next release. UI people are talking about >> how to _reduce_ choices on some menus, about removing filters in the >> "one trick pony" category, combining tools, ... The 2.6 release is >> supposed to remove obstacles to moving ahead faster -- I hope so. > > I'm really not concerned about Gimp's lack of colorspaces and other > things either. It already does everything I need to do. It's just a real > pain to learn and use sometimes. > > I'm also annoyed that it does not come with the required artistic talent > packaged into the tarball/rpm. > >> I have found some nicely done video tutorials that I highly recommend. >> Look around at >> http://meetthegimp.org/ > > Cool! I'll check this out... >
Tracy speaks for me with this addendum. Patent and copyright is in the constitution precisely because they were so abused by the 18th century English Crown. It was a rip off then and it's a rip off now. The subject was hotly contested and many, like Jefferson, thought there should be no protection for ideas. The protection that did get accepted was expressedly for the purpose of promoting commerce, not stifling it. Our Congress is bought and sold, and that's the damned truth. -- Lan Barnes SCM Analyst Linux Guy Tcl/Tk Enthusiast Biodiesel Brewer -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
