taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

Patents: One of the key arguments in favour of the new EU software patenting directive as it’s currently worded, from the ‘pro’ side, is that it doesn’t ‘allow software patents as such’, since it requires a ‘technical’ inventive step for a patent to be considered valid.

Various MEPs have tried to clarify the meaning of this vague phrase, but without luck so far.

Coverage has mostly noted this as meaning that ‘pure software’ patents are not permissible, for example this Washington Post article, FT.com,and InformationWeek.

But is this really the case, in pragmatic terms? What does a ‘technical inventive step’ mean to the European Patent Office?

Well, it doesn’t look at all promising, according to this report from the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office from 21 April 2004, dealing with a Hitachi business method patent on an ‘automatic auction method’. The claims of that patent application (97 306 722.6) covered the algorithm of performing an auction over a computer network using client-server technology. The actual nature of this patent isn’t important, anyway — but what is important is how the Boards of Appeal judge its ‘technical’ characteristics.

The key section is 3.7, where the Board writes:

For these reasons the Board holds that, contrary to the examining division’s assessment, the apparatus of claim 3 is an invention within the meaning of Article 52(1) EPC since it comprises clearly technical features such as a “server computer”, “client computers” and a “network”.

So in other words, if the idea of a computer network is involved in the claims of a patent, it ‘includes technical aspects’. It then goes on to discuss other technical characteristics that may appear in patents:

The Board is aware that its comparatively broad interpretation of the term “invention” in Article 52(1) EPC will include activities which are so familiar that their technical character tends to be overlooked, such as the act of writing using pen and paper.

So even writing with a pen and paper has technical character!

It’s a cop-out, designed to fool MEPs and citizens into thinking that a reasonable limitation is being placed on what can be patented, when in reality there’s effectively no limits, if there’s any kind of equipment involved beyond counting on your fingers.

The only way to be sure is to ensure the directive as it eventually passes is crystal clear on this point, with the help of the amendments that the pro-patent side are so keen to throw out.

(BTW, I found this link via RMS’ great article in the Guardian where he discusses software patenting using literature as an analogy. recommended reading!)

Tags: appeal, article, board, computer, european, meaning, network, patent, patents, software, step

Patents: in a recent discussion about games and patents, it emerged that these common elements are patented:

• streamed loading
• minigames during a loading screen
• ghost cars in racing games

Looks like software patenting is coming to computer games in a big way. I’m not sure how any game on a modern platform can avoid the ’streamed loading’ patent.

Naturally, I can remember playing games on the Commodore 64 in the 1980s that included these…

Tags: computer, discussion, game, ghost, loading, looks, patents, platform, screen, software, way

Spam: WashPost: Computers Seized in Data-Theft Probe:

According to an account provided by the teenaged member of the hacker group — and confirmed by the law enforcement source who insisted on anonymity — the LexisNexis break-in was set in motion by a blast of junk e-mail. Sometime in February a small group of hackers … sent out hundreds of e-mails with a message urging recipients to open an attached file to view pornographic child images. The attachments had nothing to do with child porn; rather, the files harbored a virus (sic) that allowed the group’s members to record anything a recipient typed on his or her computer keyboard.

According to the teenage source, a police officer in Florida was among those who opened the infected e-mail message. Not long after his computer was infected with the keystroke-capturing virus, the officer logged on to his police department’s account at Accurint, a LexisNexis service provided by Florida-based subsidiary Seisint Inc. …

The young hacker said the group members then created a series of sub-accounts using the police department’s name and billing information. Over several days, the hacker said the group looked up thousands of names in the database, including friends and celebrities. The law enforcement source said the group eventually began selling Social Security numbers and other sensitive consumer information to a ring of identity thieves in California.

Tags: account, child, computer, group, hacker, message, officer, police, source, spam, virus

Patents: New Scientist: Sony patent takes first step towards real-life Matrix:

IMAGINE movies and computer games in which you get to smell, taste and perhaps even feel things. That’s the tantalising prospect raised by a patent on a device for transmitting sensory data directly into the human brain - granted to none other than the entertainment giant Sony.

It’s a very lame ‘first step’ though — Sony has done no research and development on this invention whatsoever, it’s just a patent form of the old ‘in the future, we’ll wear tinfoil suits! And here’s how they’ll probably work!’ speculation. Sony’s comment:

Elizabeth Boukis, spokeswoman for Sony Electronics, says the work is speculative. ‘There were not any experiments done,’ she says. ‘This particular patent was a prophetic invention. It was based on an inspiration that this may someday be the direction that technology will take us.’

That’s nice; I’m sure they have some in the pipeline for flying cars, too.

It’s good to know that if an inventor does eventually come up with an ultrasound-based human-computer brain interface, they’ll have to pay license fees to Sony so they can use their ‘prophecy’ in their invention. The USPTO’s high standards are being maintained, as usual…

Tags: brain, computer, imagine, invention, matrix, new, patent, patents, scientist, sony, step

Software: Mark Twomey, in response to all the Win32 API stuff recently:

We now have a generation of computer users … who have never received or sent email from a so called ‘rich client’, never had to send a postal order off to order something from some distant vendor, and are not amazed by something like a search engine. ….

Those (’rich client’) people remind me of minicomputer users who crapped on the ‘crummy little operating systems’ used on ‘crummy little desktop computers.’

He’s right, you know — for de yoot, Windows is generally just a way to access Hotmail.

Tags: api, client, computer, crummy, email, generation, response, software, something, stuff, win

Patents: According to Ciaran O’Riordan of IFSO, one key aspect of the EU Council’s meeting on the software patent legalisation proposal hinged on the use of the phrase ‘as such’, to effectively sneak a loophole past the Council members:

I recommend that everyone listen to the recordings of the Council’s meeting. Transcripts are also linked from there, but the tone of voice etc. is interesting.

Anyway, basically, the people in the room didn’t understand the implications of the text (that’s our fault).

Bolkenstein added an amendment: “computer programs will not be patentable as such” - this (rightly) fooled most people into thinking that software would not be patentable. Really, it just means you can’t patent software as software, you have to patent “software running on a computer”. I think the rejected part of the German amendment would have closed this loophole. …..

Anyway, the point is that the Council members were on our side, we just hadn’t told them precisely what we want …. We told them “no to software patents”, and they think they’ve done that. We should have said “no to ‘as such”‘, and similar textual lobbying rather then implication lobbying.

Tags: amendment, aspect, computer, council, ifso, legalisation, loophole, meeting, patent, patents, software

Patents: The pro-software-patent lobby has frequently stated that TRIPS — the Treaty on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), signed on 1993-12-15 as a constituting document of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) — requires that software be patentable. For example, here’s one from the International Chamber of Commerce:

ICC believes that the directive should follow current practice in the EPO and a number of EU member states and make it clear that computer program products can be claimed. To disallow such claims in the directive would create great legal uncertainty for holders of such patents already granted. Prohibiting product claims would also render enforcement of patents difficult and raise questions with respect to TRIPS compliance. TRIPS requires patents not only to be available, but also to be ‘enjoyable’ in all areas of technology.

Well, it actually appears that the treaty may state exactly the opposite! Christian Beauprez, a UK-based consultant, has taken a closer look at the details, and come up with this:

TRIPS Article 10.1, ‘Computer programs, whether in source or object code, shall be protected as literary works under the Berne Convention (1971).’

WIPO Copyright Treaty Article 4, ‘Computer programs are protected as literary works within the meaning of Article 2 of the Berne Convention. Such protection applies to computer programs, whatever may be the mode or form of their expression’.

This includes the execution or processing of a program, as demonstrated in the EEC software copyright Directive 1991, ‘the permanent or temporary reproduction of a computer program by any means and in any form, in part or in whole. Insofar as loading, displaying, running, transmission or storage’

They also stipulate that exceptions to exclusive rights of authors are to be limited to ’special cases’ which do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and cannot be prejudicial to the author’s rights. (e.g. the rights to sell,rent,broadcast,give away,translate, and generally enjoy.).

… Authors cannot own underlying ideas, but inventors can as part of their ‘invention’. When the field of software (aka data processing) is opened up to ‘inventors’, they can block authors from exploiting their works on the grounds that they own the ‘underlying ideas’. Therefore this is prejudicial to the rights of authors and illegal under all these Treaties.

There’s lots more at Christian’s site. FFII, one of the main anti-software-patenting players in Europe, have agreed that this is a key point in their TRIPS analysis:

In summary it can be said that the European patent establishment is 1. refusing to clarify and concretise the meaning of the TRIPs treaty; 2. wrongly equating the TRIPs treaty with ‘US practise’, using threats of alleged TRIPs-incompatibility for purposes of fostering Fear, Uncertainty and Distrust (FUD); 3. trying to impose a sui generis software patent regime on Europe which is incompatible with the TRIPs treaty.

Tags: article, berne, computer, copyright, directive, patents, program, software, trade, treaty, trips

Patents: FFII: Conferences and ‘Patent Riots’ in Brussels 2004-04-14
: ‘The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) calls on its 50.000 European supporters and on 300.000 petition signatories, including more than 2000 CEOs of European software companies, to take to the streets in Brussels on April 14 and in national capitals around 1st of May, and to temporarily block access to their websites, in protest against new moves by the EU Council and Commission to legalise patents on computerised calculation rules and business methods’.

Last year, the European Parliament voted to exclude software and business methods from patentability. Now, it appears the EU Council is secretly planning to push that through regardless — so FFII are planning another round of protest for 2004-04-14.

In other news — the European Patent Office and other pro-patent bodies have always insisted that the WTO Trade-Related Intellectual Property (TRIPS) treaty required that software be patentable. However, this poster thinks not:

Article 10 of said treaty clearly states: a.. ‘Computer programs, whether in source or object code, shall be protected as literary works under the Berne Convention (1971).’

This is the strange thing you see, the statement doesn’t seem to mean that much on first glance. It is only when reading it closely that one realises that it does not simply say that ‘computer programs are automatically copyrighted under the Berne Convention’, it specifies they ’shall be protected as literary works’.

Literary works cannot be patented because they are not inventions. Indeed if literary works could be patented one would have to concede that books, screenplays, and music could be patented as well although according to my research there is no provision for this in law. We would also have to apply patent laws to these areas since we are not allowed, apparently under article 5 to restrict on the basis of the field of technology.

On reflection, it’s actually a very interesting comparison. Like literary works, it’s not the idea of what software does (the plot summary) that makes it valuable, it’s all the fiddly details of its implementation (the full story). Hmm! Maybe TRIPS got that right after all…

Tags: article, business, computer, council, european, ffii, patent, patents, protest, software, treaty

Computer: Argh. When I bought my laptop, I had no option but to buy it with Windows XP — IBM doesn’t seem to sell them any other way. (you can pay extra to buy it that way from EmperorLinux, but really, the main reason I wouldn’t want it is to save money, I’m afraid.)

Anyway, so I kept the XP partition safe, and jumped through various hoops to keep it in one piece; after all, it had cost me money to pay for that Windows license, and you never know when I might need it to upgrade some firmware or whatever.

Well, after trying (twice) to upgrade some firmware — the BIOS, namely, to get APM hibernation working — and having XP crash on me both times, I left it for a bit.

That was a couple of weeks ago. I just tried to check some files on the /windows partition — and something has scribbled all over the FAT32 sectors. Rien de Windows plus. :(

(Prime suspect right now is the Phoenix BIOS ’suspend-to-disk’ tool — I just looks flakey, and I know it goes in and tweaks with some kind of undocumented BIOS wierdness. I bet anything it’s told the BIOS that the first FAT32 partition was a suspend partition, and one of the failed susp-to-disk attempts scribbled all over it.)

I suppose I’ll probably reinstall at some stage… if only to get this bloody BIOS upgraded and suspend-to-disk working!

Tags: argh, bios, computer, fat, firmware, laptop, money, option, partition, way, windows

eVoting: Are you an academic, or do you know any academics, working in the field of computer science in Ireland? If so, you should consider signing, or collecting signatures, on
this ICTE statement. It’s eminently reasonable — ’since computers are inherently subject to programming and design error, equipment malfunction, and malicious tampering, we join with (the ACM) in recommending that a voter-verified audit trail be one of the essential requirements for deployment of new voting systems.’ (thx for the pointer, Simon!)

Tags: academic, computer, design, equipment, error, evoting, field, icte, programming, science, statement

Linux: Doing my backups — it’s a good feeling to know your data will (probably) be safe if your computer suddenly carks it.

This time around, I have way too much data to actually back up the lot – so I’m being selective. Filelight is very helpful here; I can see exactly where my disk space is going, spot tmp files that I should have cleared up long ago, and so on.

One thing is clear — I have too many MP3s. How am I supposed to listen to all of those?

Tags: computer, disk, feeling, filelight, linux, lot, space, spot, time, tmp, way

Tech: Great. More on the ‘prevention of banknote scanning’ thread; Ed Felten notes that the European Central Bank is

considering recommending legislation to the EU to require inclusion of currency recognition into digital imaging products. Predictably, the ECB’s proposal is wildly overbroad, applying to ‘any equipment, software, or other product’ that is ‘capable of capturing images or transferring images into, or out of, computer systems, or of manipulating or producing digital images for the purposes of counterfeiting’. As usual, the ‘capable of’ construction captures just about every general purpose communication technology in existence — the Internet, for example, is clearly ‘capable of … transferring images into, or out of, computer systems’.

Let’s hope that proposal gets shot down in the way it deserves.

Tags: bank, banknote, central, computer, european, great, prevention, proposal, tech, the, thread

Vacation: We’re back. Well, technically, my body is back, but the silver thread is reeling in somewhere over Greenland. So I’m pre-classifying my mail and looking for urgent stuff with my eyes glazing over instead of doing anything more useful.

Scams: Interesting Wired News article: ‘Cyber-blackmail artists are shaking down office workers, threatening to delete computer files or install pornographic images on their work PCs unless they pay a ransom’. ‘The e-mail typically contains a demand that unless a small fee is paid … they will attack the PC … or download onto the machine images of child pornography.’

Of course, it’s simply spammed out, and they phish in anyone who is dumb enough to take it seriously and reply. But it does raise an interesting point, which I read about last week in this interview with Pete Townshend:

‘Perhaps Townshend (was) thinking of a case at Southwark Crown Court in 1998, in which the judge made it clear what constituted possession: that you were in possession of child pornography not just if you actively downloaded it, but if it appeared on your computer screen at all.’

So that sounds like, if child-porn images are found on a PC — and it doesn’t matter how they got there — the PC’s owner is liable. So theoretically this could be exploited to cause serious legal difficulties to a UK resident with a lack of computer literacy, or a bad email client that displays images in messages from unknown senders without user approval first. Another bad law.

Funny: Andy Kershaw in North Korea: songs about revolutionary cabbage-growing.

Tags: anything, body, child, computer, mail, pornography, possession, silver, stuff, thread, vacation

Security: Romania Emerges As Nexus of Cybercrime (AP). Contains this glorious nightmare scenario:

BUCHAREST, Romania - It was nearly 70 degrees below zero outside, but the e-mail on a computer at the South Pole Research Center sent a different kind of chill through the scientists inside.

‘I’ve hacked into the server. Pay me off or I’ll sell the station’s data to another country and tell the world how vulnerable you are,’ the message warned.

Proving it was no hoax, the message included scientific data showing the extortionist had roamed freely around the server, which controlled the 50 researchers’ life-support systems.

One question: why was an internet-connected computer controlling the life support systems? eeek.

Tags: computer, contains, cybercrime, emerges, message, nexus, nightmare, scenario, security, server, south

Romania Emerges As Nexus of Cybercrime (AP). Contains this glorious nightmare scenario:

BUCHAREST, Romania - It was nearly 70 degrees below zero outside, but the e-mail on a computer at the South Pole Research Center sent a different kind of chill through the scientists inside.

‘I’ve hacked into the server. Pay me off or I’ll sell the station’s data to another country and tell the world how vulnerable you are,’ the message warned.

Proving it was no hoax, the message included scientific data showing the extortionist had roamed freely around the server, which controlled the 50 researchers’ life-support systems.

One question: why was an internet-connected computer controlling the life support systems? eeek.

Tags: computer, contains, cybercrime, emerges, message, nexus, nightmare, scenario, server, south

Spam: Cloaking Device Made for Spammers (Wired).

‘Try to find the real IP,’ he said. ‘This host is in rackshack.net, the most antispam ISP.’ A traceroute to the site indicated that it was being hosted on a computer apparently using cable modem service from Comcast.

It’s using DNS trickery and a set of reverse proxies. This is standard practice among a small number of the upper echelon of spammers these days.

Of course, many of the techniques used to do this — such as the subversion of Wintel PCs on cable modem networks — are highly illegal, so the spammer/crackers are heading deep into jail-time territory.

I’m really posting this because of this entry at Boing Boing, in which Cory notes: ‘I’m pretty skeptical about the untraceability of these systems — I suspect that rather, they are resistant to some tools, not resistant to others, and not hard to write new tools to uncover.’

They’re untraceable from where we’re standing — these are compromised machines. The only way to trace from that machine onwards, is for the abuse staff of those machines’ ISPs to help out, or to get hold of the machine itself. This is not so easy — which is why the spammers do it.

(I would have posted this as a comment on BB!, but they’ve stopped accepting comments, as noted previously. grr)

Anyway. As time goes on, the development of Wintel spamware-installing worms, and hands-on cracking of Unix servers to install trojans (PDF), is becoming more and more common. There’s definitely an increasing crossover between spammers, virus-writers and crackers, as the Wired News article notes.

This is very much illegal activity under existing computer crime laws, and much more serious than whatever the anti-spam legislation out there considers spamming to be. Maybe the big spammers are going increasingly ‘all-out’, given that the lawmakers are finally giving the anti-spam laws some teeth…

Tags: boing, cable, cloaking, computer, device, machine, modem, spam, spammers, wintel, wired

Neil Gaiman writes about how, for several months, mail to his publishers, DC Comics, was intermittently disappearing into a black hole. Eventually, the culprit was found: AOL-TW’s spam/virus filters. Any mail containing the word ‘Sandman’ — ie. the name of the comic he writes for DC Comics — was being filtered silently, without notifying either the sender or recipient. Wow. His editor’s computer guy reported:

I’ve been informed that the reason why there was a delay in the delivery of this message was because one of several keywords were found within the message. In particular, the word ‘SANDMAN’ was found several times. This has been a telltale sign of one or more computer viruses, so the message was set aside to be investigated by a WB security person.

(Via Crypto-Gram)

Tags: aol-tw, computer, culprit, hole, mail, message, sandman, spam, virus, word

‘Let There Be Spam!’:

COMMITTEE TAKES CUE FROM MICROSOFT, KILLS NATION’S TOUGHEST ANTI-SPAM PROPOSAL

SACRAMENTO - Urged on by Microsoft, the Assembly Business & Professions Committee today unceremoniously killed SB 12 (Bowen), a measure to create the country’s toughest anti-spam law by requiring advertisers to get permission from computer users before sending them unsolicited ads …

‘Does anyone other than the eight members of this committee who either voted ‘no’ or took a walk on the bill really believe Microsoft has any interest in getting rid of spam?,’ wondered California State Senator Debra Bowen (D-Redondo Beach), the author of SB 12, following the bill’s defeat. ‘Trusting Microsoft to protect computer users from spam is like putting telemarketers in charge of the do-not-call list. Microsoft uses a megaphone to tell everyone how much it hates spam at the same time it’s working overtime to kill truly tough anti-spam laws. Why? Microsoft doesn’t want to ban spam, it wants to decide what’s ‘legitimate’ or ‘acceptable’ unsolicited commercial advertising so it can turn around and license those e-mail messages and charge those advertisers a fee to wheel their spam into your e-mail inbox without your permission.’

wow ;) She’s not pulling any punches there…

Tags: bill, committee, computer, cue, from, kills, microsoft, permission, spam, takes

Ah, some good old-fashioned sleazy MS stuff:

Chris O’Rourke, a Microsoft employee, described attending LinuxWorld, a trade fair in California, where he ‘purported to be an independent computer consultant’ working with several public school districts, according to an e-mail message he sent on Aug. 20, 2002. ‘In general, people bought this without question,’ Mr. O’Rourke wrote. ‘Hook, line and sinker.’

He said his goal was to glean intelligence about the competition. His guise, Mr. O’Rourke said, ‘got folks to open up and talk.’ Mr. O’Rourke did not respond to a fax and voice mail message seeking comment.

Hilarious — if you can’t beat ‘em, send in the clowns. Via the NYT.

Tags: aug, computer, consultant, employee, linuxworld, message, microsoft, school, stuff, trade

While trying to figure out why my loaner laptop is SO SLOW, I found this on the Linux Dell laptop temperature-control i8k driver website:

No credits to DELL Computer who has always refused to give support on Linux or provide any useful information on the I8K buttons and their buggy BIOS.

Makes you wonder if there are any laptop manufacturers with a concept of open hardware support.

(BTW, current theories on the woeful speed are (a) 128megs of RAM just isn’t enough to use GNOME or KDE on linux these days, and (b) a 4200rpm disk with feck-all cache can’t handle any hard work.)

Other bad news: my heavy-lifting desktop PC’s arrived and won’t power on. yikes.

But — on a brighter note: the sun’s come out; I saw an eagle yesterday; and it rained last night, and all the birds are twittering in the trees, catching worms etc. In the meantime, the lazy cat sits on the balcony and watches idly, even when one lands on the railing less than 3 feet away. I suppose catfood is a lot easier to get hold of. ;)

Tags: computer, dell, driver, information, laptop, linux, loaner, slow, support, website

Things are getting crazy in the fight against spam: it seems AOL blocked access (for two weeks) to its mailserver from Telia.com, one of Sweden’s biggest ISPs (if not the biggest), due to spam.

Attached is an unauthorized translation of an article in the Swedish IDG paper Computer Sweden (web edition, Oct 24), provided by Claes Tullbrink.

Until a (previous) article was published, noting this ban, AOL had not succeeded in contacting Telia to talk about it. Amazing stuff.

Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 14:51:19 +0200
From: Claes Tullbrink (spam-protected)
Subject: Telia.com not blocked by AOL any longer

Computer Sweden (in Swedish, password may be required after today):

http://computersweden.idg.se/ArticlePages/200210/24/20021024131806_CS539/20021024131806_CS539.dbp.asp

Oct 24, pm.

For more then two weeks mail from Telia.com was blocked by AOL.

Jocelyn Cole, AOL UK, confirmed the block, which was due to big amounts of spam sent from Telia domains to AOL. The block is now removed, and AOL is cooperating with Telia to find a long term solution to decrease the amount of spam sent from Telia, to protect AOL customers.

Press officer Jan Sjöberg, Telia, says it was the article that solved the issue: a Telia contact person name was mentioned in the article, and it seems
that AOL had read the articles [and *so* and in no other way knew who they could contact? CT]

Jan Sjöberg is still not sure how the block was related to spam: due to spam, reports of spam or a customer’s open mail relay. Telia will investigate. [proxies was not mentioned. I don’t know if “reports of spam” relates to refusing to accept plain mail reports sent to (spam-protected)

Claes

Tags: aol, article, block, claes, com, computer, oct, spam, telia, tullbrink

Adequacy.org: Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?:

Is your son obsessed with Lunix?

BSD, Lunix, Debian and Mandrake are all versions of an illegal hacker operation system, invented by a Soviet computer hacker named Linyos Torovoltos, before the Russians lost the Cold War.

Adequacy.org is pretty funny… but they really need to sort out some kind of comment voting system. They have some seriously humor-deficient readers.

Tags: adequacy, bsd, computer, debian, hacker, lunix, mandrake, org, son, system

BillG recently claimed to have invented Open Source. As part of a discussion of this, his original open letter to computer hobbyists was uncovered. Makes interesting reading, in retrospect.

An Open Letter to Hobbyists

February 3, 1976

By William Henry Gates III

To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. With- out good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?

Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby mar- ket to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.

The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these “users” never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour. Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?

Is this fair? One thing you don’t do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn’t make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.

What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren’t they making money on hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.

I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write to me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108. Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.

Bill Gates

General Partner, Micro-Soft

(Gates, 1976)

Tags: computer, hobby, letter, market, open, programming, software, thing, time, year

Alan Turing is finally being honoured for his work, with a statue in Manchester. There’s an interesting follow-up mail from Mike O’Dell there, too: “the notes go on at length about the need for subroutines, subroutine libraries for common functions, and he even invented debugging and the concept of a debugger program. he also described what we today called a relocating assembler and linker - inventing the whole notion of “relocation” as an “obvious” aside.”

ALAN TURING, the national hero who broke the Nazi’s enigma code and is credited with turning the tide of the World War Two, is to be honoured with a life-size statute.

The bronze monument, which will be unveiled today, comes almost 50 years after the brilliant scientist was driven to suicide by persecution over his homosexuality. Five years after its inception, the pounds 20,000 sculpture of Turing sitting on a bench holding an apple will be displayed in Manchester’s Sackville Park in the city centre.

The mathematical genius became a national hero after his involvement in World War Two, he also helped invent the inaugural computer, at Manchester University, but was persecuted and prosecuted for his homosexuality. He committed suicide in 1954 by eating a poisoned apple.

Many believe Turing has never been recognised properly for his outstanding contribution to science. But Glyn Hughes, the statue’s creator, is confident that Turing has finally earned his rightful place in the history books. Hughes, from Adlington near Chorley, said: “It’s stunningly realistic. I’m sure it will go a dirty black over time, but it looks wonderful today.”

GRAPHIC: Glyn Hughes’ sculpture of the wartime hero, Alan Turing, will
be unveiled in Manchester today Paul Burrows

Via: David Farber (spam-protected)
Subject: Re: IP: Statue of a computer scientist
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 22:01:00 -0400
From: “Mike O’Dell” (spam-protected)

many years ago, the Journal of the British Computer Society published a collection of Turing’s papers and notes along with some history-of-science analysis.

what was truly stunning was that Turning not only invented the general purpose computer as we now understand it, but he also invented *programming* and even *software engineering* as we now understand it. the notes go on at length about the need for subroutines, subroutine libraries for common functions, and he even invented debugging and the concept of a debugger program. he also described what we today called a relocating assembler and linker - inventing the whole notion of “relocation” as an “obvious” aside.

he had the design for a complete computer almost done, and he was fighting for resources to build it, but caught up in his other problems it fell to others to build what was probably a lesser machine.

I hope all the BCS stuff got collected and republished somewhere, and if someone knows where I’d love to know as I haven’t been able to find it.

Reading those notes makes it abundantly clear that there’s very little in modern computing that Alan Turing didn’t invent or at least fortell.

His loss was an incalculable tragedy.

-mo

Tags: apple, computer, hero, homosexuality, scientist, statue, suicide, today, war, world