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Comment: Re:ABC News: Comm systems shut down separately (Score 1) 377

The transmission was not shut down at 01:07 as I understand it, that was the last automatic transmission from the engine system. These are half-hourly, so you wouldn't expect another one if the plane disintegrated at 01:21.

A curious thing is that the last contact with the pilots was a handover from one ATC to another. The Malaysian ATC told them to contact Vietnamese ATC, which they acknowledged but never did. Normally, you'd do that right away (I think).

Comment: Re:The overwhelming success of open source (Score 1) 105

You could argue that patents are unneccessary because all innovation could be directly funded by government. That's another discussion, though. The innovations mentioned in the brief were things like http, gnu/linux and hadoop. One of these was government funded, the two others are knock-offs of things that to the best of my knowledge originated in private companies (unix and map/reduce). Of course there is an exchange of ideas between academia, private companies and open-souce projects. All of these also come up with new ideas, but the questions are: at which rate, and how would these rates be affected by the abolishment of software patents in the USA? I'm not at all convinced that the overall rate of innovation would suffer, but the argument in the brief does not contribute to that one way or the other.

Comment: Re:Operating systems were "open source" originally (Score 1) 105

That is a valid example of open source innovation, but can hardly be used in an argument against software patents. If we want a software industry, i.e. companies whose investment in software development isn't recouped through hardware sales, we can't go back to the business model of the 60s. And I think we all want a software industry.


Granted, you may be right about the very start of these fields, but that's a pretty pointless question. If we go with the very start of a field, it would probably be almost entirely academic.

The reason why the very start of a field is important to this debate is that this is where innovation happens, and the main argument for software patents is that it allegedly fosters innovation. That's also why the very first origins of httpd matter when it's being used as an example. Those things that originate in academia are usually not patented, since academia has a culture of publishing without patenting.

The important thing here is not the number of users or developers of a product, but its degree of innovation. As mentioned earlier, innovation also happens on a smaller scale within projects all the time, but if open source is to prove that software innovation doesn't need software patents, as the brief claims, then it should be possible to find widely known examples of innovative open source software. Maybe CMS is one, in which case it should have been mentioned in the brief instead of projects that are knock-offs of various patented and government-funded work.


software patents were practically non-existent before the 90s.

That is evidence that software innovation can happen without software patents. The success of open source (at least as far as it has been exemplified thus far) is not.

Regarding the claim that most fields start off as proprietary, I would disagree

Which fields have started off as open source? You mention CMS and web servers. Web servers started out open source, but since that work was government-funded it's a bit tangent to a debate about software patents. I don't know the history of CMS. Maybe that's a good example.

On the other hand, the argument that patents cause innovation is also false, if based only on the observation that innovations (and many things that aren't) nowadays tend to be patented.


I agree that GNU/Linux are high-quality pieces of software and that innovation takes place in large and small ways within every project, open source or not. My observation, which I think you will agree with, is that historically, most software categories (say, word processors, database servers, operating systems etc) start out as proprietary and often patented programs. Usually, several proprietary versions get produced before the FOSS versions start to come along. This is just an observation, and it doesn't mean that truly new software wouldn't get created without patents. The point is merely that you can't just point to some successful FOSS projects as proof that patents are useless, since the proponents of software patents will shoot down that proof unless the FOSS projects in question are truly new and original.

Better examples to support the argument could possibly be found by looking at software innovation done in parts of the world where software patents are not allowed, like pretty much everywhere except in the USA. Unfortunately, most examples of software innovation that comes to my mind are from the USA.

As to my claims about government funded web servers and browsers, I had httpd from CERN and NCSA's Mosaic in mind.

Comment: The overwhelming success of open source (Score 2) 105

Ok, so there is a open source "unix", open source "office", open source "photoshop" and more or less popular and successful open source versions of just about any common piece of software. The brief specifically mentions GNU/Linux as an example of the overwhelming success of open source in the software industry. The argument, as I understand it, is that we don't need software patents because innovative software gets created anyway, like GNU/Linux. But for all its qualities, GNU/Linux wasn't innovative, its stated goal is to create a knock-off of unix. There are better examples of innovation in the brief, like web servers / browsers, but these were initially government funded, and the government has never needed to patent its inventions.

There are good arguments against software patents, but "the overwhelming success of open source in the software industry" is not a very compelling proof, IMHO.

Comment: Re:Because it's fucking awesome, that's why. (Score 2) 162

by sberge (#45962633) Attached to: Why the World Needs OpenStreetMap
You seem to be confusing a map and a business directory. OpenStreetMap has a lot of map detail, i.e. street names and such, but no business listings. Google Maps is not only a map, but also a business directory. Certainly, these are useful services to combine, but I wouldn't fault OpenStreetMap for not being a business directory. That would be better handled as a separate project, and the two data sources could easily be combined to produce the service you're looking for.

Comment: Re:50% (Score 1) 322

by sberge (#44322637) Attached to: NSA Admits Searching "3 Hops" From Suspects

You must be GREATER than 50% likely to be a foreigner.

The proportion of foreign users of each of these services is GREATER than 50%, so even this infinitessimally more strict criterion is fulfilled. Whether the NSA actually uses such a pedantic and disingenuous interpretation of this rule is, of course, another question. If they are actually looking out for foreign threats, then they shouldn't need to. But you would think that they, with all their access to information and analytical power, could easily set the bar higher than 50% if foreign threats were the only ones they were interested in.

Comment: Flying's easy and there's plenty of space up there (Score 1) 205

by sberge (#44148363) Attached to: Jetstream Retrofit Illustrates How Close Modern Planes Are To UAVs
Just came back from today's Sunday trip over Berlin in a small two-seater airplane, and saw a total of maybe 5 or 6 other airplanes. Traffic control was done by a single person as far as I could tell. The cars below on the other hand, were about 10^5 times more numerous, and all at exactly the same height, 0 ft above GND, a height known to be shared with numerous fixed obstacles, bikers, children and drunkards.

An autonomous airplane is in many ways a much easier task than an autonomous car. All obstacles are for all intents and purposes point-shaped and flying under current "instrument flight rules", a pilot is not even responsible for avoiding them, if I've understood the rules correctly. All you need to do is to follow orders from air traffic controllers. The problem is that these orders are dispatched by voice, so if this were to scale one would have to devise a machine-to-machine protocol for that and automate the task of air traffic control.

Your typical smart phone has enough sensors built in for flying. The radio hardware is capable of interacting with secondary radar and instrument landing systems, the gyro/accelerometers are good enough for controlling attitude and GPS is good enough for navigation. Some phones even have the barometer which you will need to deal with pressure altitude, which is necessary under current rules. The camera is good enough for taxiing, take-off and landing. The processing power is more than ample to process the inputs and provide control inputs. The only thing lacking is the ability to interact with air traffic control and tower. And a few servos for the control inputs.

Comment: Better solution and better hackaround (Score 2) 467

by sberge (#44047449) Attached to: Altering Text In eBooks To Track Pirates
The better solution is to have the author (or translator in case of translated literature) provide multiple versions of a few sentences in the book. And the work-around is to upload only a fraction, randomly sprinkled through the book, to the sharing site which then assembles the pieces from multiple copies, garbling the watermark.
