Sinabro

Well, maybe not quite:

binarybits writes “I’ve written an article for the free-market Cato Institute about how patents impede innovation in the software industry. It points out that people tend not to realize how vast the software industry is. It’s not just Google and Microsoft; virtually every organization has an IT department producing potentially-infringing software. Organizations as diverse as J. Crew and the Green Bay Packers have been sued for patent infringement. It’s crazy to expect all these organizations to worry about potential patent infringement. Hopefully the Supreme Court’s Bilski decision will lead to new limits on software patents.”

I’m sure that there is a diversity of opinion even among the objectivists. But I think it’s a good thing that an adjunct scholar for Cato Institute has come out against software patent. Given that Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged views patents in general as being favorable (and the government making a “gift” of them to themselves as monstrous), I was worried for a while where objectivists would stand on the whole “intellectual property” issue.

But if they can oppose software patents (which is clearly harmful to entrepreneurs, and by extension, to the society), I think I can hope that their general approach towards other issues, such as patents in other areas (such as business methods) and role of copyright, would be a reasoned, rational approach.

Granted, it’s an old model, but that takes nothing away from the fact that this laptop is, within 10% of margin, a $100 laptop, i.e. at the price level originally promised by Negroponte.

A lot of people said that this wouldn’t be possible. Well, it turns out they were wrong. If I had to guess, even at this steep discount, this price for the old netbook must include the “usual profits”, or the reseller wouldn’t bother selling. So, it’s very possible that someone producing this at cost (i.e. substantial amount of labor by volunteers so the “usual profits” is smaller than usual) could have sold it even cheaper.

Of course, this was possible only because of the wild popularity and wide spread of the Eee PC. They didn’t sell this 7-inch model at $100 originally, and given the risks involved, I don’t think they could have. In this way, Negroponte was seriously wrong: by refusing to sell to the general market, his OLPC project lost momentum (as shown by the dismal failure of last year’s G1G1 program) and couldn’t put a $100 laptop out there before the “greedy capitalists” beat him to it.

Negroponte should have started out by marketing the XO laptop in the U.S. and Europe (I believe a lot of people would’ve bought it even at $200 or $300, if they weren’t forced to make a substantial donation in the form of G1G1) and use the proceeds to aggressively pursue R&D of future generations of XO, as well as lowering costs. At the moment, XO is at least 2 years behind in development compared to other netbooks, and with the “greedy capitalists” in the way, I don’t think the “philanthropist” has any chance: capitalism and market economy is the most efficient means of producing goods, after all.

There are now a group of people with huge incentive to hide secret in plain sight: the hackers who control botnets with Twitter.

I, for one, am excited. Here are a group of people with a profit motive (it’s the illegal kind, but, oh well) who can make a real contribution to steganography. Imagine the coming advances in the next year or so!

Slashdot has a story on newly discovered (but ever-present) Linux bug which could allow local users to gain root privileges.

I guess it’s re-install time for many of my servers, or at least one of them. I am currently keeping … a vigilant log to check that nothing out of ordinary is happening, but I am considering the machine compromised and in line for re-install as soon as I can find the time.