Darren New wrote:

> Well, except that he's wrong.

Heh. Few people would have the nerve to suggest such a thing. ;-)

>  > as if numbers were somehow different from other kinds of precise 
> information
> 
> Of course they are. Numbers have no units.  Measure me out three of milk.

Units can be encoded as numbers. Well *everything* can be encoded as 
numbers. And numbers, of course, can be encoded as things.

>  > If software code is "a series of instructions" then it's like a manual
> 
> No, it's like an industrial process, which is patentable. Why should an 
> industrial process written down in a book be patentable but an 
> industrial process written down in a machine-readable file not? Indeed, 
> that's how software patents are written. You don't patent the code. You 
> patent machines running the code.

Not last time I checked. E.g., the patent on LZW, the patent on using 
XOR drawing, the patent on clicking a button to order stuff off the 
Internet, etc.

If you have a machine that does something, which somewhere involves a 
computer, sure, that should be patentable. But I don't think you should 
be able to patent the fact that a if you multiply two numbers together 
and then multiply the product by the multiplicative inverse of the 
second number in some finite field it yields the first number should be 
patentable. That's more or less the definition of what multiplication 
and multiplicative inverses *are*!

> Mind, I'm not saying we should have software patents. I'm just saying 
> that the argument "all software is mathematical and hence should not be 
> subject to patent" is an invalid argument.

I'm just upset that I could sit at my desk, make up some computer 
program, and then get sued millions because somebody I've never heard of 
already thought of it.

But hey, I guess that's no different than some guy in his guarage making 
a new extra-soft kind of foam and then getting sued because some 
petrochemical giant somewhere already makes something similar...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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