> Patents started out as a 20 year protection on mechanical mechanisms or chemical processes as long as what was protected was publicly documented in full.
1) Patents are not an American invention. England had them before, and the Romans before that.
2) I'll assume you implied U.S. patents. The Founders regarded patents so highly that they wrote them into the U.S. Constitution. It was written generically and not limited or fixed to only "mechanical or chemical" but rather "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries".
> Thing is though that 20 years is a very long time when we are talking software. By the time the RSA patent ran out, the algorithm described was largely obsolete.
RSA patent expired nearly 20 years ago yet RSA is still used today. For example, the public key used to secure https://news.ycombinator.com is RSA.
> Not that patents have not been a problem even before computers. Serious refinements of the steam engine for example didn't happen until after the initial patent ran out.
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> Similarly Smith and Weston sat on their refinements for the Colt revolver until the patent ran out.
The myth is that patents block innovation. The reality is that blocking someone from doing something incentives them to find another way to do it. Afterall, if all you want to do is copy then how is that "blocking innovation"?
One has to wonder who the customers this is setup to appease. If something is later found, corporate customers have litigation options - so more likely this is for nation-states.
The more slow-moving government will get involved, the more industry will be pulled towards open source where there is no need to get government approval.
Sure - it won't be easy and will come with other pitfalls, but in some circumstances these may be easier hurdle than waiting months/years for some government to approve your product sale.
Ditto. I know exactly what you're saying - tree's take long time to grow, the world is complex and subtly nuanced, once we lose that it's gone, etc. FYI I get all that - or for the purpose of this conversation pretend that I get it and try to look past that and at what I'm saying.
We can either fight change or adapt. Cavemen once complained about demand of caves outstripping supply too. The cost of fighting change is likely far greater than the cost of adapting.
Secondly, if you're going to worry about the Amazon (not saying we shouldn't worry about it) then why aren't you worried about the lost biodiversity once under Silicon Valley? Or NYC? Or Paris? Or Johannesburg? Or Beijing? It just seems we're getting involved in other people's business when we have a lot to cleanup ourselves.
Capitalism may also offer answers. For example, as tree supply diminishes, each tree will become more valuable (assuming wood demand stays stable) thereby incentivizing tree farmers to plant trees over other crops.
The world changes and humans need to along with it. I'm sure cavemen once sat around the fire worrying about how all the good caves were being used up.
"Going to be interesting watching this one play out."
I suspect, access of "14,000 highly confidential and proprietary files shortly before his resignation" will play a major role in swaying the deciders. Experience tells us that not all of those 14k were critical, what if it had be 1 or 2 critical design docs? In a different or future case, we may see that happen. Corps have incentive to reduce competitors, but now may start recognizing the potential leverage they have - "Our network logs show Joe accessed our main design doc 1 week before he left for company doing similar work!".
"It is, however, sad to think that this technology could be set back a few years because of Levandowski's actions."
I am less concerned about one piece of technology and more concerned about the future of employer relations in general. Employers will become increasingly suspicious of employees leaving and will take actions to either prevent this or to stifle the actual knowledge gained to be used elsewhere.
What concerns me is that we are going to see more and more of this in the coming years - corporations concerned over ex-employees taking their knowledge with them and taking legal recourse. In this case, they complain about access of 14k proprietary files - which is pretty damning, but I could see similar damning evidence over accessing a couple of critically important design docs relatively near the end of employment. How do you distinguish between files being accessed merely for the purpose out your work vs theft? How can you ascertain what was in their minds and hearts for accessing for those files - and worse, how little would it take to sway a judge or jury that accessing of such files were deliberate (ie part of the bigger picture)? Courts have been wrong before. Previous generations this didn't come up because they stayed in 1 or 2 jobs their entire lives, at least in this aspect, today's environment is completely different.
There is a difference between weakened and backdoored. Weakened is along the lines what you're saying - that likely others than just the governments can easily access, whereas backdoored (if done properly) means only the govt. Of course, this assumes a perfect world and that there is a proper way to backdoor - in the real world, adversaries simply attack the governments backdoors/keys.
Nonetheless, given your context of "there is no encryption going on at all" I argue does not necessarily hold for a backdoor - or at least not at the outset and if done properly. If the govt backdoor is a key for which huge amount of care is taken to protect and take the extreme example of the govt encrypting the only copy of the key and firing it off in one direction into space - there is a backdoor but this is not necessarily equivalent to "no encryption at all".
"wants to regulate cryptography"??? - I suggest it's already in place. For example, if you wish to create crypto software or hardware (or in some cases even simply importing a crypto library) - for 2 sides to communicate requires sharing either the source, software binaries, or hardware itself - and if 1 of those is outside of the country then obviously export and/or import of the source/sw/hw occurs and therefore crypto controls come into effect.
Given free market indicators such as Bitcoin marketcap and the recent rise of Monero vs zcash - perhaps absolute privacy is not what the market values?
government subsidies cause distortions. Somehow providing basic income to incentivize people to live more in rural areas would only cause those currently living in rural areas to be more costly. The salaries of farmers, oil rig workers, truck drivers, miners, lumberjacks, etc... would rise.
Plug one hole in the dike and others will pop up. Just let the free market work and people choose where they want to live and work.
That's ridiculous. The Wright Brothers changed the world. On par if not exceeding today's equivalent of Marc Andreesen (Netscape), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Brin&Page (Google) - and the last time I checked, people like that DO own big house(s) and CAN afford to travel and do experiments without any worries about rent, food, healthcare.
By today's standards, many people were "poor" back then - it's all relative. Maybe in 100+ years they'll look back and marvel at how "poor" Andreesen/Gates/etc... were too.
You can be poor today and still make it big. You don't need a college degree or the massive debt that entails, you can make up for that with a good idea + hard work + persistence + live as frugal as possible + a little luck. It's not exactly the same - some things are harder and some things are easier, but overall it's still doable.
The reason you will lose that bet is the "any country". In some less developed countries, inflation is out of control (govt sees money printing as the only solution) bitcoin as measured against their currency is rising. Daily. Couple that with the fact that those same places do ironically have high mobile phone usage, and it's only a matter of time until it's surpassed 5%.
I suspect that selling iTunes credit or pre-paid phone codes requires adhering to all kinds of rules and agreements set by the corporations (Apple, phone corps). You can't simply build a box and slap iTunes logo on the outside - there's Trademarks involved. Then there's the government regulations and taxes to comply with.
Contrast that with bitcoin - no corporations to deal with, no government rules®ulations and paperwork - all you really need is an Internet connection and and simple digital signatures.
So no - I don't think iTunes or pre-paid phone codes are easier to sell than bitcoin.
> I suspect we centralized trust at the encouragement of folks like the NSA and similar ilk.
In the mid-90's, CA certs were put into Netscape Navigator (IE joined later) in order to facilitate the new wild wacky concept that someone might buy something online. They called it "e-commerce".
Trust was centralized because it was far easier to add the then ~half-dozen CA's rather then somehow vetting every joe that wanted to self-sign their certs. PGP's web-of-trust existed but it was deemed less viable.
Besides, the whole SSL certs thing was a major business premise behind creating Netscape - profits. Without that there might not have been a dot-com and the huge amount of money that followed since then.
> lacks features such as per process rules. You have to do hacks like assign rules to users
From a practical standpoint, I find it hard to imagine that the cost of added complexity for configuring application rules per user would outweigh the benefits of simply configuring them system wide. I remember the days of terminal clients logging into mainframes but all I see are single user desktops. Things like location on the network matter more in an application firewall than which user is accessing the desktop.
1) Patents are not an American invention. England had them before, and the Romans before that.
2) I'll assume you implied U.S. patents. The Founders regarded patents so highly that they wrote them into the U.S. Constitution. It was written generically and not limited or fixed to only "mechanical or chemical" but rather "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries".
> Thing is though that 20 years is a very long time when we are talking software. By the time the RSA patent ran out, the algorithm described was largely obsolete.
RSA patent expired nearly 20 years ago yet RSA is still used today. For example, the public key used to secure https://news.ycombinator.com is RSA.
> Not that patents have not been a problem even before computers. Serious refinements of the steam engine for example didn't happen until after the initial patent ran out. > > Similarly Smith and Weston sat on their refinements for the Colt revolver until the patent ran out.
The myth is that patents block innovation. The reality is that blocking someone from doing something incentives them to find another way to do it. Afterall, if all you want to do is copy then how is that "blocking innovation"?