mathieutozer.com

The downside is that I'm too sensitive to things now. I can't go to a restaurant
and order food because I keep looking at the fonts on the menu. Five minutes
later I realize that it's also talking about food. If I had never thought about
computer typesetting, I might have had a happier life in some ways.

There's an interesting issue, though. Could you
possibly have a patent on a positive integer? It is
not inconceivable that if we took a million of the
greatest supercomputers today and set them going,
they could compute a certain 300-digit constant
that would solve any NP-hard problem by taking
the GCD of this constant with an input number, or
by some other funny combination. This integer
would require massive amounts of computation
time to find, and if you knew that integer, then you
could do all kinds of useful things. Now, is that
integer really discovered by man? Or is it something
that is God given? When we start thinking of complexity
issues, we have to change our viewpoint as
to what is in nature and what is invented.

Algorithms are inherently mathematical
things that should be as unpatentable
as the value of pi.

All Questions Answered
Donald Knuth