'We don't know if Google is operating outside EU law' This was the week in which Mobile World Congress landed in Barcelona, producing reams of smartphone and fondleslab news, views and shiny gadgets - including waterproof mobes, which are of particular use to Brits since apparently nearly one in ten punters take their phone into the shower. These featured alongside new Sony phones …
No, not a joke. It's real and it's in fact sitting in many legal and government offices around the world. Eg look for job openings for "Google Search Appliance Specialist"
But it's not the same as Google search, the box indexes mostly internal documents and database. Although the recent "Cloud Connect" feature did bring searching of blogs and "industry websites".
I'd still worry a little bit though, Google does have a remote login facility, even one via modem, for support purposes. Plus "The root password to the search appliance is not available to customers"
The funny thing is, QC is not "just-round-the-corner" – it's already here, available for anyone with deep enough pockets and nerdy enough nerds:
http://www.dwavesys.com
I understand why IBM boffins would prefer to ignore something they didn't invent themselves, but I expected more from El Reg – particularly because those news were broken here years ago.
"So now, all that researchers have to worry about is how to scale up from vacuum tubes, how anyone could ever afford to build an electronic computer, how you would program it and how to get the answers out of it once it's done with its mind-boggling computations. Hmmm."
...and 50 years later, here we are.
I see no reason to have any laws about software, other than the usual ones against violence, other coercive force, and allowing suit for actuasl financial damages - and a VERY NARROW copywrong right applicable only to COMMERCIAL use and good ONLY for a quite limited time say 15 years. That would take care of creators and users. To hell with organized groups media companies and the rest of the vultures.
Wait, so it should only be applicable to commercial use, but not for organized groups and companies? So, basically, nobody has any form of IP protection, since doing anything beyond the most cursory effort by an individual will still require the formation of some type of LLC / sole proprietorship.
Explicit, codified lack of protection would result in stuff getting resold constantly the moment the original producers released it, making it essentially impossible to do software development for a living. So, I guess if that's what you're after, then have at it. Things are gonna get kinda tough when there isn't any software to run routers and other network hardware, though - I mean, who'd invest in it?
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