Re: Ordering Books from Amazon

[Antony Stace <antony@example.com>]

thanks folks.

what to do?....so many suggestions
i shall work out the book i want and track down the site with the best
deal
btw, do the university book shops here carry many books in english?

cheers

tony


Shimpei Yamashita wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Oct 14, 2000 at 03:11:34PM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> > There is a counterargument, which I am currently researching[1], that
> > patents could be the foundation of a social policy to encourage and
> > enforce creation of reusable software components.  I believe this is
> > theoretically tenable, although I haven't finished the model yet.
> >
> > However, it depends on an assumption that the cost of implementing a
> > patent is zero.  This is not true in the current system; patents are
> > the opposite of good documentation: they are intentionally obfuscated,
> > partly to make it hard to use them to actually construct working
> > models, and partly to support broad claims that the patent holder
> > himself doesn't understand ("I know when someone is using my idea when
> > I see it, and I see you!  Pay up!")  So even if software patents could
> > be socially valuable, we'd need substantial reform of the kinds
> > already demanded.  The simple solution is just to stop.
> 
> The good news is that business model and software patents are rather more
> difficult to get in Japan right now compared to the US. The bad news is that
> the brainless copycats [1] in the Japanese government realized that the
> Americans are getting all the patents, and are trying to adjust the
> patent-granting scheme in Japan to be as permissive as the American version.
> Sadly, when this topic is mentioned in the Japanese mainstream press, the
> writers always talk about how the Reagan-era policy change brought
> "unprecedented prosperity" in the US, and how "we need to catch up before
> we get left behind in the information superhighway," yada yada yada [2];
> nowhere are the patents' ill effects on the industry and consumers mentioned.
> It would be nice if the writers could present both sides of the view.
> 
> It's a bit disturbing that this issue isn't being discussed in the Japanese
> Linux community at all, AFAICT. I've thought about tipping off Richard
> Stallman on this issue, and asking him to evangelize on this issue in Japan as
> well, but that will probably just have a reactionary effect--I haven't met a
> single Japanese Linux hacker so far who didn't think RMS was anything more
> than a political nutcase [3].
> 
> Oh, and this seems to be a good chance to mention the following article,
> which is the most cynically satisfying thing to end up in my inbox this past
> year. Disclaimer: I haven't invested in this scheme, or even know whether
> such a scheme is actually in motion; as a finance person, I just find it
> extremely amusing.
> 
> http://www.aful.org/pipermail/patents/2000-January/000286.html
> 
> Shimpei.
> 
> [1] The Japanese government is rarely known for doing anything that isn't
> tried by the Americans or the Europeans first.
> 
> [2] Earlier this year, there was an epidemic of articles about how Japan
> needs more lawyers with the same line of argument: the US has lots of
> lawyers, and look where they are now. The only good news is that the readers
> of these articles tend to have short memeory....
> 
> [3] Well, he *is* a nutcase, but at least some English-speaking hackers are
> willing to read what he wrote before throwing it away.
> 
> --
> Shimpei Yamashita                               http://www.shimpei.org/
> 
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