The value of protecting algorithms

When I worked in Indigenous affairs, I posted my thoughts on that. Well now it's time for my new work to inspire some posts. Certainly, I'm not the first person to think about these things. And definitely, some of my friends have thought these things through much more thoroughly than I have, so I welcome your comments.

Working in the school of ITEE means I cover computer science as well. This means that a vast majority of the ideas that come across my desk are related to algorithms. Cool, right? But I'm begun to wonder, what is the value in protecting algorithms?

A researcher comes up with a really cool way to do something, say, searching video databases. The way he does it is different to his colleagues and works just as well. Now he's gonna publish a paper on this, cause that's what he's paid to do. But as soon as he publishes, the method is in the public domain, which in most countries means that you can't patent it. So, before he publishes, we rush around to get a provisional patent put in to cover the space. Phew, right, now we've got the beginnings of protection for this algorithm. He publishes, and further down the track, the patent is published as well. This means that no one else can use this algorithm without his permission, right?

But here's the rub, 1) algorithms are easy to tweak, tweak a bit here, a bit there, maybe you're no longer infringing and 2) how do you enforce it? I can suspect that Google's YouTube is using this algorithm, but I don't really know, and without being Viacom, I don't think I have much of a chance of getting Google to reveal their algorithm to me. So, why patent in the first place?

Counterpoint: Google patented pagerank (the secret sauce behind why their search engine dominates). Do they sue people they suspect of using it. Does yahoo really not use some approximation of pagerank?

Thoughts?

Next time: When is it diagnosing a problem, when is it just dobbing colleagues.

Wikipedia's limitations

"All or part of this article may be confusing or unclear"

No shit. I wish I had a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer.

Laura has questions for Australian universities

1. Why is there no food available on campus after 4pm? Will this change when classes are in session?

2. Should potato chips (regardless of whether they are chicken or pork flavoured) be considered food?

3. Not really a question: I want my $2.10 back. I paid for 2 bags of peanuts, cause the first bag got caught in the machine, and I still only got the first bag.

I should have paid more attention in undergrad

If I had known when I was 20 that when I was (nearly) 29 I'd be looking at various academic papers and trying to determine if they were novel, would I have paid more attention? Or would I have just thought, I could rely on wikipedia (which is what I do).

So many of these concepts are vaguely familiar (principal compenent analysis, eigenvectors, support vector machines), but I feel like I never really understood them. I learned enough to regurgitate it to pass the test, then immediately repurposed those brain cells.

And now I'm left wiki-ing and scrounging the web for references, simple illustrations, something to get me to pass this current test.