Patents, copyrights and trademarks serve an important role. They prevent theft of one’s methods and reputations, which often require heavy investment (not necessarily financial). But what about intellectual property which is fuzzy and not concrete? I will use a case study to exemplify this.

Think about the case where Xerox patented the one-stroke Graffiti input, which Palm devices later used for stylus-based input. It is the method by which drawing on a screen is translated into discrete, atomic signals such as letters and numbers. Jotting a line from top to bottom to render a “1″ should not warrant anyone property of such an idea, right? Yet, that’s what Xerox achieved. They ‘invented’ the chalkboard interpretation language and took ownership. Ultimately, as to abstain from paying royalties perhaps, Palm invented “Graffiti 2″, which is a cumbersome method of achieving the very same thing. People’s habits were broken and input made slower just because Xerox ‘owned’ a more efficient input method that involved a single, unambiguous stroke. A common language was actually possessed by one master.

Let that teach us why patents in software are evil and are not accepted in Europe. The case would of course be different in fields like medicine and especially drug discovery.

would like to take a brief moment and speak about my opinion on religion, atheism, creationism, and evolution. I will do not in a nutshell since elaboration tends drive the readers away.

From what I can gather form real-life situations, pious and devout believers confute the evolutions or try to contradict it. It is a matter of perception, which provides nothing but self satisfaction. A beholder always sees beauty in his/her thoughts, tradition and creation. At worse time, he/she even finds shelter in it.

Technology entails enlightenment. More enlightened people remain mantally bendable, which is the reason why this 21^st century slowly escapes religion (there are exceptions). Such people are not distracted by the hoi polloi and can form their own opinion and use careful judgment. To religious families, refusal to believe in God is not a million miles away from becoming mischievous, to say the very least. So what gives? In some families this can even entail corporal punishment.

Digressing to discuss the interaction between religion and science, have a look at the following recent article:

On February 20th, the infamously pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute released news that over 500 doctoral scientists had signed its statement “publicly expressing their skepticism about the contemporary theory of Darwinian evolution.”

A day earlier, a newly launched coalition of scientists, educators and clergy members called the Alliance for Science revealed a converse document at the annual meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The Clergy Letter Project snagged the signatures of 10,000 clerics on a document that in part states, “We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests.”

In my humble opinion, society as a whole will sooner or later fend off the trite and reach the inevitable vocation, which is science, spirituality aloof. A whole myriad of miracles and legends will no longer have a mental impact on people. They will find ways to feel elated, other than to pray or rely on an entity of supremacy.

OW that Windows Vista’s release has been delayed (due to security, drivers, etc.) and a revamped Office has been delayed too, certain predictions seem truer than ever before.

It was only a couple of days ago that Apache’s head permitted 10 years before the complete eclipse, wherein commercial software ceases to exist ‘in the wild’. Essentially, such a scenario would make commercial software (binaries) lose all value. It may serve no purpose as accompanying code will just lodge on the shelves to collect dust. This outlook must be the rationale behind Xara Xtreme going from commercial all the way to the GPL — a complete 180!

It seems ever more evident that any Windows ‘box booter’ and Visual Basic-only programmer could soon become obsolete, unless Open Source skills are quickly acquired. The next couple of years will be rather intersting as they will bring radical changes to the software development market.

Bill Gates recently stated very clearly that the future of computing is in services. This must the reason why many of his executives have already defected to Google and certain governmental departments are migrating to Open Source, which is independent from opaque packages. All that is left, on the face of it, are big budgets for brainwash of businesses and vendors, as well as IT managers and the public.

Related item: Windows Vista is Service Pack III (parody)

Some argue that this would be the last operating system from Microsoft

HE head of the Apache project — the project which runs about two-thirds of the world’s Web sites — suggests that free software will rein. He predicts the end of commercial software to be only a decade away.

Apache’s Greg Stein says commercial software’s days are numbered. Instead, we’ll be paying for software support in the years ahead, he says

So on the face of it, commercial software already fights a losing battle.

Related items:

• The Waning Commercial Platform
• Unisys Predicts Death of Proprietary Software
• Open Source – A Positive Turning Point
• The Death of Commercial Software
• Microsoft to Drop Shrink-wrapped Software?

My pause/resume demonstrative program

ARLIER this afternoon noticed that my MATLAB profile had gone past the 30,000 count milstone. That count corresponds to the number of downloads of my code and programs over at MATLAB Central. I keep track of these numbers three times a week using HTML syndication. After some hesitance, I thought it was worth raving about; just because I rarely get the chance! [smile /]

Related item: A short write-up on an honourable highest position: first world-wide. This was my greatest moment of excitement, for which my grandfather popped some champagne.

This clip reminds me of my teenage years as a heavy gamer. I wonder if this mentally ‘tickles’ others in quite the same way.

[UPDATE: clip omitted as it caused the page to poison and crash the browser]

The above, by the way, is not valid XHTML. It contains attributes that are application-specific. For the very first time and after almost 1,000 blog posts, I permit an invalid element to exist. Then again, it is also the first video embedment, which fortunately is cross-platform.

The new Dell XPS 600

UMOURS have revolved for over a week, according to which Dell wish to buy Alienware. This is finally confirmed to be true. High-end AMD-based computer would extend the level of choice, which is something that becomes more prevalent with Dell. They are slowly departing from Wintel as the exclusive offer. Clearly enough, they are beginning to sell Linux as well.

Dell has agreed to purchase gaming PC maker Alienware, in a rare acquisition designed to improve Alienware’s supply chain and boost Dell’s standing among PC enthusiasts.