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Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

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Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#111

Post by Chaebixi »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #96
Chaebixi wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trade secrets are worse because then the design never gets disclosed, and has to be rediscovered. Time limited patents are a good and explicit trade off between the personal benefit of the inventor and the benefit of society. > Michael Hanack (the materials chemist) used a different strategy: he would not patent anything so his inventions could be used my any market participant, and he would consult for all of them.…

Trade secrets are worse because then the design never gets disclosed, and has to be rediscovered In the sciences you'll notice that simultaneous discoveries are nothing unusual, once the groundwork is laid the idea hangs in the air, you do nothing but reach out and catch it. The Zuse example is just another instance. In the case of mathematics and computing, the invention can be copied easily by development costs are…

> In the case of mathematics and computing, the invention can be copied easily by development costs are minimal as well. These is no compelling reason why someone should reap disproportionate rewards from a government-supported artificial monopoly. Progress suffers and the economy as well.

Yes there is: because of the effort of invention. The effort required to copy is irrelevant. Also, by arguing against patents, you're basically arguing that Intel and the like should get a huge payday at the expense of this guy's efforts.

Patents only last for 20 years [1], and it's not like progress stops when they're in force. Have some patience.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent

Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#112

Post by School-Cotton »

tombert wrote: post #67
agar wrote: post #20

Considering the over-the-top language ("a game changer for the computing industry") and questionable or imprecise comments like, "[it] allows representation of real numbers accurate to the last digit" (um, who reads that without thinking of irrational numbers?) it sounds too much like a sales pitch and not like serious research. I could be wrong, but based on the similarities to interval arithmetic everyone has alrea…

That's what I was thinking too; If I do 1 / 3, then of course it will have to truncate, and integration errors would still be inevitable.

Actually it's possible to represent 1/3 perfectly accurately, but what about all the numbers that it's theoretically impossible to compute? (Almost all real numbers have this property)

Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#114

Post by relate »

danbruc wrote: post #9

Without reading the patent it sounds a lot like interval arithmetic [1] which sounds like a really good idea at first but is not without its own problems. For example the inverse 1/x for an interval x like [-1,+1] containing 0 consists of two intervals (-∞,-1] and [+1;+∞). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_arithmetic

In your example, this would correspond to having the number x = 0 +-1 and then wanting to compute 1/x. If your number can potentially be zero, why would you want to use it as a divisor?

Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#115

Post by meuk »

agar wrote: post #20

Considering the over-the-top language ("a game changer for the computing industry") and questionable or imprecise comments like, "[it] allows representation of real numbers accurate to the last digit" (um, who reads that without thinking of irrational numbers?) it sounds too much like a sales pitch and not like serious research. I could be wrong, but based on the similarities to interval arithmetic everyone has alrea…

Agreed. After reading the abstract, the method seems like a reasonable method to implement interval arithmetic. However, I haven't discovered any novel idea in it.

Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#116

Post by dekhn »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #109
dekhn wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK it sounds like you just want to have an internet argument to win internet points.

Don't be grumpy, the "it is technically allowed, therefore morally good"-argument is exceedingly weak, you shoudn't rely on it.

I didn't make that argument. I made the argument that patents are the least bad approach to the problem, and that as an incentive, it works well.

Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#117

Post by Chaebixi »

JackFr wrote: post #68
kbenson wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Under a different system that doesn't incentivize holding back global progress for small amounts of individual enrichment. Patents don't hold back global progress any more than capitalism keeps people in poverty. If we went back a few hundred years and impose alternatives, would we be better off today? I doubt it. The whole point of the patent system is to foster innovation, and free exchange of ideas. Without the…

> The whole point of the patent system is to foster innovation And if it seems like the patent system is being gamed to hinder innovation (not really in this case, but yes absolutely in the case of pharma) it should be revisited. Intellectual property laws are based in pragmatism, not natural law. If the costs begin to outweigh the benefits, they should be changed.

There are areas of the patent system that are legitimately in need of reform, but that doesn't mean the underlying concept is not sound. Many people seem to be looking at the areas where reform is needed and erroneously concluding that the whole thing needs to be burned down. That's a shame, since the core idea of patents seems like a very good trade-off to me.

Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#119

Post by Chaebixi »

kbenson wrote: post #42
Tenobrus wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under a different system that doesn't incentivize holding back global progress for small amounts of individual enrichment. There's a reason Linux and GNU utilities are so massively widely used, and overall they've probably provided billions in economic value. They do that freely, for any human to use, and in fact that's part of their main value proposition. Both were born out of the legal nightmare that was UNIX at t…

> Under a different system that doesn't incentivize holding back global progress for small amounts of individual enrichment. Patents don't hold back global progress any more than capitalism keeps people in poverty. If we went back a few hundred years and impose alternatives, would we be better off today? I doubt it. The whole point of the patent system is to foster innovation, and free exchange of ideas. Without the…

> The problem with the patent system is not the concept of patents, but what they've been allowed to apply to and how long the terms have increased.

Patents aren't copyrights. The term for patents is only about 20 years.

Re: Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem

#120

Post by mcny »

School-Cotton wrote: post #112
tombert wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I was thinking too; If I do 1 / 3, then of course it will have to truncate, and integration errors would still be inevitable.

Actually it's possible to represent 1/3 perfectly accurately, but what about all the numbers that it's theoretically impossible to compute? (Almost all real numbers have this property)

> Almost all real numbers have this property

> Almost all

I love this comment because it brings back memories of school.

In a layman's terms, I think almost all in this case means all but a finite amount

can we say almost all real numbers are irrational?

1 1/1 2/1 3/1 4/1 5/1 ... 2 1/2 2/2 3/2 4/2 5/2 ... 3 ...

so clearly we can count all the rational numbers but how many irrational numbers are there? are there (many) more irrational numbers than there are rational numbers?

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