On Tue, May 31, 2005 00:16:44 AM -0400, Daniel Carrera
([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> Actually, very large particle accelerators are a lot more expensive
> than cars and microprocessors and they don't use the restrictive
> model (some new fuels are cheaper, others aren't).
Isn't this because there is no market for them, that is the fact that
they are scientific *instruments*, not stuff you could need at home or
sell at the mall? I am all for basic research, but again, does this
apply?
> They still grow progress in incremental steps. It's also interesting
> to note that new fules, cars and microprocessors also don't have the
> secretive model you described
Examples?
Also note that I am talking the whole process, including engineering
and mass production, not only of basic research. That's why I say
patents do have a reason to exist. The architecture of a new
microprocessor can be drawn on a piece of paper, and sharing and
discussing it on the net can accelerate progress. But to really build
many of them cheap, fast and safe you have to invest a lot. That's
where patents can help to accelerate progress.
> So yes, actually, it definitely scales, all the way up to the
> largest projects ever made.
Like what? The pyramids and the gothic cathedrals? Things that, like
accelerators and the telescopes you also mentioned, had no private
use?
> The thing about using patents to "protect" invention is actually a
> very recent aberration in a few fields,
The polio vaccine and the Internet are even more recent. Being recent does
not automatically makes something wrong or worst of what existed
before, so we should really stop using that as a criterion to decide
if something is good or bad. Said this, I had *already* mentioned, and
if I didn't I do think so anyway just like you, that drugs and genes
are a very different case which must be handled in a really different
way.
> Don't confuse the small-step development model with aulterism.
Aulterism?
> Perfectly selfish companies can bring about discovery without
> patents, and earn money. And indeed, discovery is faster. A good
> example of this is, ironicaly, in the computer
> industry. Microprocessors are not packed with patents.
ROFL. Check your facts. Whether they are real or a joke is another
issue, but check your facts before we go further. Google for "Intel
X86 patents". While doing that, don't think only to accelerators and
telescopes, scale down. Investigate if all the "low tech" machinery
needed to really make them has no patents. A processor only existing
on paper is not really useful.
> Nothing prohibits you from creating a microprocessor that copies the
> x86 design.
Today, probably yes, because the patents have probably expired. But if
I had done it when it first appeared on the market, maybe they would
have sued my ass. As they did, IIRC, with AMD some years ago. Maybe they
could have arrived some year earlier if patents didn't exist, but this
is speculation. In any case, the assertion that microprocessor exist
today without patents is not true.
Ciao,
Marco F.
--
Marco Fioretti mfioretti, at the server mclink.it
Fedora Core 3 for low memory http://www.rule-project.org/
It's not the hours you put in your work that counts, it's the work you
put in the hours. Sam Ewing
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