This is one of my many grand schemes as part of my master plan.

Right now I am currently working on this latest invention of mine (patent pending, so don't get any ideas, mofo's). It is a machine that will print out every possible combination of letters, numbers, spaces, and symbols of up to approximately one thousand pages. I need to work out a few bugs with the mail service, but once I am finished, I will own copyrights on all new books, stories, jokes, anecdotes, movie scripts, sitcom plots, documents, etc. - provided they are under the one thousand page limitation. However, this will not result in any of these industries grinding to a halt. Everything will continue as normal except all authors will pay royalties to me in exchange for the use of my works. Expected gross income is estimated to be in the hundred of millions and possibly billions of dollars, and all with very little overhead.

I will also have BBS posts that have yet to be posted, the empeg FAQ written backwards in Portuguese Pig Latin, detailed accounts of top-secret government agents' various missions in the year 2096, and detailed writings explaining the secrets of life. All this and more will be in my possession when I am through.

Where's tanstaafl when you need him?

When your program has printed out The Library Of Babylon by Jorge Luis Borges, go and read it

Peter

"once I am finished, I will own copyrights on all new books, stories, jokes, anecdotes, movie scripts, sitcom plots, documents, etc"

You will also be very poor, because that is a lot of paper. Even hard drive space to store all of that information would be expensive. In addition you will get sued for anything under 1,000 pages that has already been written, unless of course your program is smart enough to weed previous works out.

For a capitalist, you don't seem to grasp how un-capitalistic your ideas on intellectual property are.

Hey I didn't share this information for negative feedback. I was looking for encouragment and morale boosting comments such as, "way to go, buddy", "I wish I would have thought of that!", "go get'em, tiger", or even a simple "good luck" would have helped push my ego up a notch.

By the way, I wouldn't violate copyrights for existing documents, as I wouldn't be selling already copyrighted material.

By the way, I wouldn't violate copyrights for existing documents, as I wouldn't be selling already copyrighted material.

Now that would take some intelligent decision making on your part to decide which works were actually already in existence, and which ones were new. Add to that that you'd actually have to GET a copyright on every work that you wanted to protect. Even if you wrote it first, unless you had proof you did it (like a copyright) you wouldn't be entitled to anything.
To make any kind of reasonable profit, you'd have to read through them all and decide which ones had already been written, and which ones were actually worth copyrighting. In the end, this defeats the purpose of what you’re trying to do. I think your energies would be better spent using your inventive imagination to actually think up and write a story. THAT might make you a profit.

All documents produced will automatically be sent to the US Copyright Office in Washington DC. Any documents that would violate current copyrights or are uncopyrightable, will be denied a copyright. All copyrighted documents will be stored in a warehouse, both on paper and on hard drives. When someone comes out with a new book for instance, they will apply for a copyright, be denied and directed to the holder of the copyright, which would be me. They will contact me and negotiate a royalty fee.

you'd actually have to GET a copyright on every work that you wanted to protect

Untrue. If I write something, it's already copyrighted. I don't have to get a copyright for it.

See this for more copyright myths.

Similarly (and here I'm unsure), if d33Zy's program generates something that someone else has already written, that's not in violation of copyright -- he didn't actually copy it. He'd probably have to turn up in court with all of the output of his program to prove it, though.

If, without reading a book, I somehow manage to write a word-for-word identical book, that's not violating copyright, as I understand it.

Library of Babylon

I had never heard of it or the author, but searching for it brought up a bunch of philosophical websites. It looks interesting, and I'm gonna have to go check a copy out from my local library now (or create a copy). But I would like to point out that my personal library created by my machine will be finite. I could start an infinite one, but that would require infinite documents....too much hassle.

I've always been intrigued by the intricacies of the human mind. Well, rather, human minds smarter than this.

"If I write something, it's already copyrighted. I don't have to get a copyright for it."

My understanding, though I could be wrong, is that if you can't PROVE you wrote it before someone else did, then you will loose in court. I actually meant to imply this in my post because I know one way to get "proof" of when something was done is to mail it to yourself. A date stamped by the post office would count as proof in court of when you wrote a document.

Still, in the end, paper, ink, or hard drive space is going to be the real limiting factor.

I could start an infinite one, but that would require infinite documents....too much hassle.

Or one document printed on infinitely thin paper (The Book Of Sand, another Borges short story). If you've never heard of him, you should definitely check out the collections Labyrinths and The Book Of Sand; I think my favourite story is The God's Script, which is in Labyrinths. Or just get a "complete works".

Peter

That's right, everything we say on here is copyrighted. I could actually sue FerretBoy in civil court for quoting my copyrighted post without my permission. However, I will grant permission for anyone to copy my posts of up to 3 per person in hard copy form and up to 10 per person in electronic form, EXCLUDING the original post in this thread, which I will charge a royalty fee of one million (1,000,000) United States dollars for every copy either in full or partial context and in either hard or electronic form, as it is very valuable information. This includes any material that derives from my copyrighted material.

All violators will be sued.

A date stamped by the post office would count as proof in court of when you wrote a document.

Until, of course, someone in the court realised that you could just have mailed yourself an unsealed envelope on that day.

Peter

On second look, I see that you did violate my copyright by quoting my original post, and although you do technically owe me a million dollars, I will let it slide just this once since you did not know.

Too bad you've just blown your chances for a patent by publicly disclosing your invention before filing.

-Zeke

"Until, of course, someone in the court realised that you could just have mailed yourself an unsealed envelope on that day."

Again, I'm speaking without real knowledge, but doing something like that is supposedly a fedral offense in the U.S. I only mentioned it because when I recorded a CD, someone told me to do this. I didn't, however, so if someone finds a copy somewhere feel free to copy it at will!

Yeah, I also heard you could do that. And I always wondered what could stop someone from cheating. Like using tape to seal it and then peeling the tape off.

I doubt you'd win in court. I didn't present the quote as my own thought, and you'd probably get thrown out as a frivolous lawsuit.

See my first post - "patent pending". How do you know I didn't apply? Many products are put up for sale while the patent is pending.

I don't know. After reading that link that Roger pointed to, it seems like for just forwarding an email you could theoretically be sued by the original writer. Even if no damages are awarded, you could win the court costs.

I will of course choose not to sue you, because I know a million dollars is hard to come by, and that will be nothing compared to the hundreds of millions I will be making soon.

By the way, if I ever am a multi-billionaire, I will give a million dollars to everyone I ever knew, including everyone on this BBS.

I'll hold my breath

Did I tell you guys about my idea for a perpetual motion machine yet?

Did I tell you guys about my idea for a perpetual motion machine yet?

<homer> Lisa, in this house we FOLLOW THE LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS!!!! </homer>

*cough*

Yup, thats the thread that reminded me of the quote

Did I tell you guys about my idea for a perpetual motion machine yet?

lol. okay, that post made this whole thread worth it.

you obviously have not filed for a patent otherwise you'd know about the relevant clause of non-disclosure and also the part about letting it sit for a year before it goes from pending to enforced.
You can't patent an idea either. You can only patent the plans for the implementation or production of the idea. If you have indeed written a program to do this futile act, you don't actually patent the program as there is nothing new about the program itself unless you've written a completely new language to program in.
Even then, If I had money behind me and saw that there was enough merit in what you were doing that I thought I should make it myself, I'd just do it. I'd even invite you to try and sue me. You'd probably run out of money first though. $1,000,000 is usually the starting fee for international patent Lawyers.

This exact thing happened to a guy I knew who does research and testing for APC UPS's. (except his product was real) He and some collegues developed a system for a linear steppar motor. Had the international patent in the works and operating and a multinational (fujitsu or someone) decided that they'd copy the plans and start manufacture of the design he'd worked on. They had to drop the patent as they didn't have enough money to even hire the lawyer to research their case as they'd put it all into R&D.

If you REALLY want to control a thing you don't patent it. Like the formulae for Coke and Pepsi. But there has to be pretty special circumstances for that.

You could try and hold the copyright for what your program produces, but actively persuing it would be really expensive and you might only win 10% of your cases. Pretty bad economics.

Try here too


here troll troll troll

Hmm, well, too bad, I already built the machine that d33zY is talking about, so no patents or lawsuits for him. I made it a few months ago... but the stupid thing keeps jamming up, so I just tossed it in the corner next to my perpetual motion machine and my universal business adaptor.

If you don't believe me, I can post a picture of it.

Yes, please post pictures.

For those of you who may have thought that this was possible, I'm afraid it is not. Yes, I was lying about having a patent pending. FerretBoy was right. To do this it would take a lot of paper.

No computer that exists today could calculate anywhere near fast enough to do this in any reasonable amount of time. In fact, just attempting to calculate the number of possible combinations would overload your desktop.

Let's say I just wanted to print out every possible sentence, up to 65 characters long (as opposed to 1,000 pages of characters long). There are 26 letters, 10 numbers, and let's say 14 common signs and punctuation marks including blank spaces. So that's 50 possible characters for each of the 65 spaces on each line. That means there are 50^65 possible combinations, which is equal to 10^110.

To get an idea of how large that number actually is, imagine that every atom in the universe represents a computer printing out these different combinations, so that we have 3x10^74 machines working simulaneously together. Now assume that these machines have been working continuously since the creation of the universe, that is for a period of 3x10^9 years or 10^17 seconds, printing at the rate of atomic vibrations, that is, 10^15 lines per second. By now they would have printed out about:

3x10^74 x 10^17 x 10^15 = 3x10^106 lines

...which is only about one thirteenth of 1 percent of the total amount required. And that's only for 1 line, not one thousand pages. So yeah, I'm gonna start working on my perpetual motion machine instead.

I actually got this idea and the above calculations from a book called One Two Three...Infinity by George Gamow. Anyone want to know what the odds are that all the air molecules in the room you are sitting in will unexpectedly collect in a far corner of the room, leaving you to suffocate in your chair?

all the air molecules in the room you are sitting in will unexpectedly collect in a far corner of the room, leaving you to suffocate in your chair?

now THAT would be cool. not so much the suffocating... but the molecular thing.

In one of my thermodynamics classes while talking about entropy, the professor actually showed us how to do the calculation for determining the likelyhood of all the ice in Antarctica melting at the same time.

If the class wasn't right around lunch time, maybe I would've paid enough attention to remember how he did that...

Yeah there's all kinds of cool stuff that can happen by chance. Like when you're drinking a cup of coffee, there's a a very remote chance that the bottom half of the coffee will freeze while the top half boils. It is so remote of a chance that it is very unlikely that it would ever happen in billions of years. Or, if every molecule bounces in the right direction at the right time, a set of clean dishes could put themselves away.

Anyone want to know what the odds are that all the air molecules in the room you are sitting in will unexpectedly collect in a far corner of the room, leaving you to suffocate in your chair?

While I'm not disputing the fun to be had playing with astronomically large numbers, the actual odds of the air molecules staying there long enough for you to suffocate are zero. Air pressure is a statistical-mechanics phenomenon, and while in normal circumstances the mechanics is such that the statistics applies, in edge cases it isn't. In this instance, air molecules are constantly moving, and change direction only when they hit obstacles or other air molecules. Once they're all at one end of the room, there's literally nothing to stop them heading straight back again, just as if you'd opened a can of compressed air in a vacuum. There's no way that collisions alone can result in none of them having any velocity in the x-direction.

Peter

So yeah, I'm gonna start working on my perpetual motion machine instead.


Or you could calculate Pi. It can't be too hard, because it has its own button on my calculator.

Sheesh, I don't know what happened to the picture of my machine... They must have replaced it with a picture of a common Pop Tart...

imagine that every atom in the universe represents a computer printing out these different combinations

Given this set of conditions, I wonder how well this would do with this little experiment or some of these projects or this small endeavour.

My team stats would beat HardOCP!

It would take a million monkeys typing on a million typewriters, a million years to come up with a good reason that we reply to anything that d33zy says.

d33zy...monkey....typewriter....hmm...

There is a joke there somewhere.

Then why are you wasting your time trying to put to me down.

Anyone want to know what the odds are that all the air molecules in the room you are sitting in will unexpectedly collect in a far corner of the room, leaving you to suffocate in your chair?

Speaking of patents, I'd like to point out that this idea is more or less already patented:

"The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability by simply hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea) was of course well understood - and such generators were often used to break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the hostess's undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance with the Theory of Indeterminacy."

For more information, I suggest consulting the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Oh my Lord. I almost hurt myself laughing at that post.

God, I'm gonna miss that man.... The rest of that entry to the Guide is brilliant as well.....

It would take a million monkeys typing on a million typewriters, a million years to come up with a good reason that we reply to anything that d33zy says.

But an infinite number of monkeys could reply instantly