On Mon, 07 Feb 2011 02:29:29 +0000 Richard Dobson <richarddob...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> On 06/02/2011 18:53, Andy Farnell wrote: > > Since there is nothing to divide the line between "this" virtual device > The DX7 is an automaton. But in principle it can be modeled by a UTM. > That does not mean there is no dividing line between them. Hi Richard, Thanks for the considered and thoughtful reply. I want to jump quickly though the following points because it is the end of your message where things get interesting. > > "Well they're the same thing", you may say. > Of course, I ~wouldn't~. It is best in these sorts of discussions not to I'm sorry to put words into your mouth. Yes, I need to be careful with any kind of theatre... that voice was the idealised interlocutor... not you specifically... how _most_ people react to that. But I assert, they are the same thing in practice. We are arguing as experts of course, which actually makes this interpretation more difficult, and less useful. And I'm ironically guilty of the same behaviour I hate by substituting the general case for the specific. Yikes. sorry! > Speed and acceleration are likewise > related, but not the same - one is the rate of change of the other. > ... > You will have to give your definition of "congruent" - speed and > acceleration are I suspect not "congruent", unless all you mean is that Yes I mean they are trivially derivative. Note "trivially". And this is what demands a symbolic representation to "put your money where your mouth is", at which point, as I continue to argue, a patent is neither effective nor appropriate (compared to copyright). ... much that is interesting and true snipped > In this respect I cite the often-quoted definition of an engineer: > "someone who can build for two bucks what anyone can build for > three". That's one pretty narrow definition of an engineer, and a little uncharitable. Sure you can get those kind of engineers to build you a Tahoma bridge or solid fuel boosters for your space shuttle, but the dollar saved will cost you two. Here's a real engineer for ya: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~frede005/Brunel.html Notice the hat. That's what you pay the extra dollar for. I prefer this definition by Mr N. W. Dougherty: "The ideal engineer is a composite ... He is not a scientist, he is not a mathematician, he is not a sociologist or a writer but he may use the knowledge and techniques of any or all of these disciplines in solving engineering problems." Sometimes our engineering problems are social. But a little pressure here, a little oil there, and always the gentle force of the better argument... :) > > Should Yamaha have been able to monopolise the use of FM in > > music synthesis as a result? > > Categorically no! No! No! No! > But they couldn't, and didn't. Wherever did that idea come from? Do a search on "Yamaha Patent FM". Does that look like a widespread interpretation that is clear and unambiguous to you? My argument is simple at this point. Development was stifled. It is the effects, not the letter of the law that interests me. Those (ordinary developers) who are threatened by a patent do not have the financial means to get clarification, so there's no point raising the possibility of challenge here. I just came back from a meeting at a major research university where they are so afraid of submarine patents in "unrelated areas" that they have no choice but to "jump in an take a risk" because the complexity and cost of search is overwhelming. Does that sound like a system that is working? To use a drastic analogy from tin pot dictator politics; if I allow one group of people to carry arms and legalise "self defence", that has the chilling effect of another group staying at home on election day. Without writing any laws to some effect, I can obtain that effect. It is the effects of software patents that is the problem. They cannot avoid having this effect because they are insufficiently well defined. If they were so defined they would be written as code and qualify for copyright not patenting. Thus I return to my argument. > sell a ~physical implementation~, i.e. in the form of a real-time Are you saying that no software implementations of FM, whether in stand-alone or plugin form, whether free or for sale, were ever held up or stifled by the existence and interpretation of the Yamaha "FM patent"? What about hardware implementations that didn't infringe on Yamaha's patent but never made to market because of fear, uncertainty and doubt? That _never_ happened right? > I think there almost certainly are strong arguments to be made against > at least the mechanisms and implementations of software patents, but I > suspect these are not them. I take the inability to distinguish general and special cases without recourse to lengthy and expensive examination by experts to be a knockdown argument against them. Who pays for the "better expert", or can hang on making appeals the longest wins. There is no room for this kind of ambiguity, interpretation and happenstance in a fair system. It's a now legal system to create two tiers of intellectual property. > The arguments of triviality and prior art > are surely the most important, No. They are important, but of course these work by degree and rest on the acceptance of software patents in the first place. The _most_ important argument is that the logical basis of software patents is shaky and rotten. > Perhaps what we > really need is for economics to be more "congruent" with philosophy > (especially if you want to subpoena Aristotle). Philosophy is an attitude which allows human beings to formulate the necessary questions to tackle human problems. Economics, to the degree it has moved outside a sphere of human values is one of those problems. Proper human values shape the observed economics, which are epiphenomenal, not the other way around. Keeping the hell outa my business, allowing me absolute freedom of intellect and, to the extent it does no genuine harm to others, the right to self determination and freedom to trade, are some of those values I believe are worth fighting for. Human freedom is an end not a means to something else. "Investment and growth" can come afterwards, as a consequence of freedom, not as an excuse to suspend it. Any "economics" that doesn't start from that position is questionable. > It remains the case especially today that no company can get investment > funding of any significance without the visible security of a "healthy" > patent portfolio. That cannot be universally true. I have worked for many companies that have significant investment and no patents (and many companies with no investment at all... you know it's not mandatory, some people are able to survive by this old trick of "actually making money"). In some cases it's because they could not afford the patent process but absolutely contrary to your argument their investors considered the outlay too much for the protection offered. Mainly however, it is because they realised they have ill defined assets, work in progress. The paradox of making R&D investment contingent on patents in order to justify them is that you would need to know the results before you started. This merely exposes another motivation to submit vague abstractions and hope to "flesh out the details later". So I'm not investing in that argument...:) Besides, that interpretation could be a problem with the risk aversion and ignorance of the investors, so let's not use one tragic error to support another. Technically ignorant investors will always need a reassurance, but if they use the prior existence of a patent to justify investment... ...caveat emptor. > Of course the system is > thereafter addictive - the company has to continue to extend their > patent portfolio for investors to stay on board, and investors may be > encouraged to look more at the quantity than the quality; Great value indeed! A cash sucking money pit, yay! I don't really understand the mechanism you describe here, but it has all the anatomy of a confidence trick. > Ultimately, you will not be able to persuade people to stop > depending on patents, until you can somehow persuade investors that > they are not needed Assuming that they need investors. It's quite an assumption that everyone is beholden to them. But yes, you're right and that's in my plan. Given the opportunity I'll spend time quietly and patiently helping investors too, gently using the force of the better argument to discuss the uselessness of software patents. Investors are the most bamboozled of all, because the patent lawyers with a vested interest in hooking people into that system often have a very poor technical understanding of a product but eagerly jump to encouraging patent filings. It's a no-brainer why. What alternative point of view do investors have? No wonder they are easy game. The important thing is to keep up a visible opposition so that fellow engineers, scientists and artists can see it's not pointless to try changing things for the better. > That's a tough ask; and it may be concomitant on arguing against the > very idea of owning shares as a present or future source of income. I don't see any link there. And I don't own any shares worth jack. What a great deal the ones I bought in the 90s turned out to be, hell yeah! Money I could have spent on beer and fireworks. And besides, there are very good business arguments against not having shareholders since they will always choose a quick return over the long term interests of the company. There is no reason to suppose the current failing system cannot be reformed or an alternative found. But that is completely outside the scope of this conversation, which is already on planet OT. > Maybe that is an argument you also want to make, but just note it > carries side-effects such as - no pension (state or otherwise) in your > retirement. I live in the UK. Private pensions were all but wiped out. After the last financial crisis governments across Europe began raising the pension age, moving the goalposts so that people my age will likely never get to see a pension. So I find your argument strangely unmoving. Those of us in Europe will manage our own savings, or likely work until we die, and needing more and more to use our minds than bodies we have an even greater incentive to liberate the markets for intellectual labour. > Forget "investing money", just donate it to "deserving" > inventors with no strings attached. That's pretty much what some governments are considering. Pfizer just pulled out of Kent in the UK and there as been talk of massive cash injections into local biotech to kick-start the economy. I don't agree with that policy myself. Investors need companies, just as much as the other way about. I believe that scrapping patents (government intervention) would unjam the economy, release loads of capital lost to legal costs, open up markets to competition that is currently blocked by fear and stagnation caused by too few, too powerful corporations. But that's a political opinion of mine, which I don't want confused with my rational, logical arguments against software patents. > (BTW, I'm a ~particularly~ deserving > inventor of something not a million miles from FM, but it needs > HPC-style resources to run in real time). Well that's cool. Maybe I've got a couple hundred thousand and looking for a project to put some money into. Problem is, I'm a bit nervous about this patent mess. Tell you what, you fund a patent search and come back to me with irrefutable proof that your design doesn't infringe on any existing patents and we will talk. ;) > In the meantime, in the > present climate, we can certainly expect the number of such generally > trivial or non-original patents to increase, as share-holders get > increasingly twitchy about, well, just about everything. Cue the price > of gold... Yes it's a tragedy. But unless you cynically relish the consequences of such a race to the bottom, which will likely impact on your own career and wellbeing, what are you planning on doing to help tackle this problem? sincere respects, Andy Farnell -- Andy Farnell <padawa...@obiwannabe.co.uk> -- dupswapdrop -- the music-dsp mailing list and website: subscription info, FAQ, source code archive, list archive, book reviews, dsp links http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/music-dsp
