Blue LED Inventor Loses Patent Fight

Swamp writes "Just a little heads-up for you engineers. The Mainichi Daily News is running this story saying 'A Nobel Prize candidate who invented a blue light-emitting diode (LED) used for display panels has no patent rights over the product as he conceded it to his former employer, a court ruled Thursday.' 'Japan's Patent Law provides that researchers who invent products as part of their company jobs have the patent for them, but adds that their employers can claim the patent after paying "deserving bonuses" to the inventors.' I guess not even being a Nobel Prize [contender] gives you credit anymore." His 20,000 yen bonus is about US$162 now.

Comments

True or false?

[Anonymous Coward]

I read that Steve Wozniak wanted blue LEDs to line the underground caves he build for his autistic son, but back in 1993 or 4 when it was constructed, no one made blue LEDs.

So, Woz apparently had to buy 100,000 of them (at something like $3-4 each) even though he only needed a few thousand, the rest ended up being sold in smaller lots and "jump starting" blue LED availability, at least here on the West Coast.

Does anyone out there happen to know if this story is true? I've always wondered.

Re:True or false?

[AtariKee]

At one time you could write Woz and ask him yourself, but he's a bit swamped at the moment. You might want to read his answers to other letters to see if the answer is there.

Re:True or false?

[matrix29]

At one time you could write Woz and ask him yourself, but he's a bit swamped [woz.org] at the moment. You might want to read his answers to other letters [woz.org] to see if the answer is there. Uh, when will he open up his webpage? I have tried to open the URL with Internet Explorer (The page cannot be displayed) & Mozilla (connection refused) and the page simply will not load. I can see the page content with GOOGLE cache, but nowhere else. Frankly this is sad behavior from the comedic genius behind the Mac (and much more valueable than that smirking nitwit Steve Jobs).

Bonus

[the eric conspiracy]

That's 161 dollars more than I got for any of my 12 patents.

What about my rights?

[doc_traig]

I invented the Scroll Lock key. Maybe it's time I start looking for those royalties. And no, it doesn't matter that you don't use it!

- DDT

Re:What about my rights?

[Servo5678]

I invented the Scroll Lock key.

At last, I've found you! Now tell me: what does it do?

Re:What about my rights?

[Cyno01]

yeah, i've always wondered, it makes the little light with the arrow come on, but what else, btw i swapped that light, and the others, from green LEDs to blue ones

Re:What about my rights?

[Valgar]

I guess you don't use FreeBSD in console mode?
Hit scroll lock and you can arrow key up and down on the console

Re:What about my rights?

[agallagh42]

Launch your favourite spreadsheet program. Push the down arrow a few times. See what happens? Now turn on scroll lock and try that down arrow again. See how it's different? ;-)

Re:What about my rights?

[*xpenguin*]

You mean you can't use shift-pgup and shift-pgdown?

Re:What about my rights?

[BusterB]

Nope, those damn Berkeley hippies.

Re:What about my rights?

[Anders]

You mean you can't use shift-pgup and shift-pgdown?

No, not while output is being generated - not in a meaningful way, anyway. But press Scroll Lock and you can. Even in Linux.

Re:What about my rights?

[*xpenguin*]

You mean ctrl-s and ctrl-q?

Labor/Capital balance gone awry?

[OhYeah!]

This reminds me of Kary Mullis who invented PCR. His company was sold for $700M on the basis of that invention, he got a $10K bonus.

Scientists should unionize - they typically so involved in their work that they end up getting the *shaft* monetarily, while MBA monkeys soak up all the profits.

Re:Labor/Capital balance gone awry?

[cpeterso]

You should read Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged". It's about the USA's intellectual elite going on strike because they are tired of being abused by fat-cat carpetbagger politicians and the imbecilic masses.

Actually, the book is snobbish, very poorly written, and far too long, but the concept is interesting.

Re:Labor/Capital balance gone awry?

[Chris Pimlott]

This reminds me of Kary Mullis who invented PCR. His company was sold for $700M on the basis of that invention, he got a $10K bonus.

This looks like another good example. Although you could have mentioned wtf a PCR is.

For others like me, PCR stands for "Polymerase chain reaction. A method use to make multiple copies of DNA." (danke Google)

Re:Labor/Capital balance gone awry?

[testadicazzo]

Feynman once made a cute quote about his Feynman Lectures on Physics, and some other publications. All the proceeds of which went to CalTech, and nothing to him. He commented how this was the same for some fello Nobel Laureates he knew.

He said something to the effect of "I guess we giants of physics are midgets of finance". It was kind of cute.

Re:Labor/Capital balance gone awry?

[_Knots]

IHBT. IHL. But I'm still going to bite.

> It's nobody's fault but the inventor.

Sooooo... if all the scientists currently being paid by companies decided to massively go on strike... it wouldn't matter because the really intelligent ones would have started their own company, sold their souls to the SEC, the IRS, and a zillion lawyers.

Ever think that some people are just too damned interested in their own research to want to be hastled with creating a company? So they to to work in a system which *ostensibly* rewards them for their work. Recently, repeatedly, the rewards have been... neglidgable. This is a situation of "lets screw the little guys with the big ideas."

Actually.... a massive strike could very, very quickly end the abusive IP laws, abusive practices, and who knows, maybe even get things like the DMCA thrown out.

Or maybe it's all hopeful thinking of a tired mind at 4 AM.

--Knots;

Re:Labor/Capital balance gone awry?

[MaxVlast]

The best review I ever read of that book was by archconservative icon Whittaker Chambers, http://www.potomac-inc.org/aynrand.html

Re:Labor/Capital balance gone awry?

[BitGeek]

Ostensibly compensates them? Sheesh. Every situation I've been in where we patented something (eg a couple times) its been known upfront what the compensation bonus was for delivering a patent. And I don't know anybody who takes a job without knowing what they are getting paid.

So if you're actually saying these people thought they would get rewarded and weren't, you're going to have to do more the make the case than that. At the very least a company that puts up the money and research that leads to the patent deserves ownership of it, and if someone made EXPLICIT AGREEMENT that those were the terms of employment, then they don't have much cause to bitch.

Its not like someone with a great idea who needs a little seed money can't get it.

sold their souls to the SEC, the IRS, and a zillion lawyers

What is this kind of crap? Selling your soul? You guys hate companies so much that you think they are necessarily evil? Isn't that quite stupid? Who taught you that? I find it ironic that liberals whine and whine about rich people and then hate and whine about companies and say that anyone who starts a company sells their soul. So, what, you WANT to be poor? Cause obviously anyone who makes money is evil, anyone who started a company is soulless... but then, why complain that they got rich? Why try to take all that money away, that they worked hard for? OH, I know, you WANT SOMETHING FOR NOTHING.

You don't need to even deal with the SEC unless you go public, and at that its for protection of the people buying your stock. Lawyers may be soulless but there are some genuinly well intentioned ones out there. You certainly don't have to give up your moral integrity to them, the IRS or the SEC to start a company. ARe you really that clueless about how business works in this country?

Oh, and whats abusive about intellectual property laws? That its protected? Oh, that's right, you dont' want to pay for something you didn't invent-- you want somethign for nothing!

Which is quite IRNONIC given that the topic of your post is how this guy isn't getting compensated for the INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY he created.

You want it both ways. Not surprising.

Re:Labor/Capital balance gone awry?

[BitGeek]

So sad. So many hours of your life wasted.


Which is a hilarious comment.

Either you've read it as well, and so it applies to you.

Or you haven't and you're bashing a book you have never read!

If you'd read it, you'd know it wasn't a waste because as far as intellectual books go, its at the top of the heap. Hell, in the category of moral philosophies, only the bible is read more and discussed more.

And if you haven't read it, you're just another anti-intellectual bed wetter.

Re:Labor/Capital balance gone awry?

[BitGeek]

Yet they are clearly smarter than you. Imagine that.

You should try getting an MBA sometime. I'm an engineer and I've gone thru the college textbooks my father has from when he got his.

You'd learn a lot about business and you might get rid of some of these stupid childish notions, such as the idea that MBAs are valueless exploiters.

IF you don't want to be exploited, don't agree to the terms. IF you do, you got NO RIGTH TO BITCH.

Course, we know you're just bitching, you never have been exploited.

Re:Labor/Capital balance gone awry?

[BitGeek]

I've run into two situations:

1) The company/boss is rational. They will work with you to find terms that are acceptable to you, but they want their lawyer to approve it. (which results in the same as 2)

2) The company/Boss is a lawyer, and they have this mindset that every contract should be completely and totally in the favor of their client, and any concessions left to others are possible lawsuits for not looking after their clients interests. I've had the case where a lawyer who was also CEO of the company wanted to change the agreements mid-stream and sat there and plainly told me that what I was quoting from her words didnt' say what it clearly said. Needless to say, a company with such low morals isn't worth my time. But instead of leaving, we just refused to sign. "Our current agreement gives you enough rights". (I will not concede rights to anything developed not-for-the-company.) They didn't fire us as they were implying they would, though some of the employees did sign, those of us who didn't kept our jobs. Later, though, I removed my services from the company-- why spend time with unethical people?

I think proposing a percentage is a good idea. One of the things I usually do, because the lawyers are so intractible on this issue, is that when they ask for you to list all previous inventions, and all inventions outside the scope of the agreement, I make that list so broad that it covers everything I might possibly do for the company. Apparently the lawyers don't read that list or understand it, cause I've never had one balk at it-- they seem more concerned about getting their agreement and boilerplate signed as written than exploring the fact that its allowance for inventions outside the scope of the agreement is a big gaping hole that you can drive anything thru.

Lawyers ARE the problem, and everyone should refuse to sign draconian agreements.

But don't overlook the possibility that the agreement has a clause that allows it to be modified in such a way that it is acceptable to you.

Re:Labor/Capital balance gone awry?

[_Knots]

Yes, ostensibly compensates. Since $162, as the writeup says, is sufficient compensation for inventing a blue LED, ok, remove ostensibly. Do you know how *hard* it was to get a blue LED working?

Actually, in this day and age, venture capital is harder to come by than you might imagine, since we're slumping and all that.

Alright, selling your soul was over the top. I simply meant that many researchers don't want to be bothered with the details of making a company.

And what's abusive about IP laws? Oh.... let's see. Overbroad pattents, gene patents, trivial algorithm patents, never-ending copyrights, oppressive restrictions on research and speech... that should be a good start.

Actually, I think the most expedient way to get rid of the hypocracy that is Intellectual Property would be to severly restrict the laws we have in place - shorter term patents, copyrights, etc, and a requirement that the actual inventor(s) always maintain rights over their invention - they may be required by employment contract to allow their company to use it without limits but not exclusively.

No, I don't want it both ways - at least, I don't see a "both ways" in there.

--Knots;

Re:Labor/Capital balance gone awry?

[canadian_right]

The company paid for the lab, the materials, the energy, the scientist's time - everything. The company had no guarantee that the research they paid the scientist to do would pay off. The company took a calculated risk, and in this case it paid off.

The scientist entered into an agrement to work for wages, and he knew that any inventions he came up with would be property of the company. The scientist is trading a steady wage for the risk of inventing, or not, something valuable.

If you strongly feel you have a great idea, don't become an employee.

Re:Labor/Capital balance gone awry?

[BitGeek]

Yeah, you want it both ways-- you want people to get paid to invent things for others, but still retain all the rights to their invention.

Any external restriction on employment is removing the right of employee and employer to negotiate the relationship they choose to have.

You (And all the people on slashdot who continually make this claim) have not shown that there's anything wrong with IP laws. I hear a lot of complaining, and sometimes mistakes are made, but fundamentally they are sound and are working correctly.

I doubt that $162 is the sum total of what he was paid by the company. I also doubt that he individually is the one that came up with the idea and that no effort or money was spent by the company in getting it put in practice, or patented-- it costs a lot to get something to the point that it can be patented.

Re:Labor/Capital balance gone awry?

[BitGeek]

This is why the Nissan plant in California went 5 years without unionizing. (I don't know if they are still union free, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were.)

They offered their workers a great situation and they didn't vote union. course that didn't stop the union from using strong arm tatics, and violating worker and company rights to try and FORCE them to unionize.

ITs bullshit to say that without unions we wouldn't have health care. There was no union in most of the places I worked but they offered health care without it being asked for.

And you neglect the early history of unions where they used violence and force to get into places, not the free choice of the employees who wanted protection.

You say they only take two hours of your pay, fine. Well, my friend had to pay %15 of her pay. Different union, but your two hour example is not universal.

AND they guy a guy with a wife and kids to support fired for not joining the union. He could afford to pay, but he chose not to submit to their EXTORTION, and so they got him fired. I guess he should be grateful that they didn't also bust his kneecaps.

Yeah, they were looking out after him, sure.

ITs a protection racket, always been, always will be. How many times have unions sold out their memberships to get a better deal with the company? A better deal for the UNION, not the employees?

How much control over unions to the members have verses the mob? I'd say, very little.

Oh, and as to the "Criminal CEOs making high pay" this is your standard socialist sob story-- they make more money than you so you attack them out of jealousy. Unions are like communism-- they want control over the means of production ostensibly so that profits are distributed "fairly" but somehow the profits never make it out of the head union office, or politburo as the case may be.

I'll support unions the day they allow people to freely choose whether to join them or not. But as long as they get state laws written so that they control whether you can work without their permission, they can go to hell.

Oh, and by the way, why is it "Right" for me to have to pay some idiot $75 to carry my computer into a trade show, when he drops it, and breaks it, and I'm not allowed to carry it in myself? Its a scam, like all union crap-- they got a deal with the people who own the trade show facility so they get to extort money from the companies that exhibit there. We have to pay their people absurd rates and aren't allowed to do it ourselves or have our employees do it. ITs total crap-- its criminal and it only exists because the local politicians are on the take.

I love the sopranos. Its entertaining, but I will never do business with a union, and I will exercise all my abilities to avoid it. That you're a sucker that thought you got a deal out of it isn't surprising- there are millions more just like you. But thinking you got a great deal doesn't make you less of a sucker. How much you think it would be worth it to the company to get the union off of its back? Alot. The only reason it won't happen is you guys can't go independant... you think they wouldn't boost your salary to get rid of the union? They woould. And you think they'd then cut salaries to the bone without union protection? No, they'd loose you all to other employers that were unionized-- the only way they could keep production going is to keep you happy.

You're a sucker and you're thinking your crumbs are a goldmine.

Re:Labor/Capital balance gone awry?

[BitGeek]

Yes, I agree that the issue is the USPTO. And you're right about them being synthetic crutches.

However, most of the anti-IP movement is people who are generally anti-property.

I'm perplexed where this idea that "property is theft" came from, and what does it have to say about "You own your own body"? Did you steal it from your parents?

The story in a nutshell

[ergo98]

Nichia...owns the patent because Nakamura had signed a certificate handing the ownership of the patent to the company....[he] countered by saying that the certificate is invalid because he didn't know scientists working for a company could legally claim patents for their products when he signed the certificate...apan's Patent Law provides that researchers who invent products as part of their company jobs have the patent for them, but adds that their employers can claim the patent after paying "deserving bonuses" to the inventors.

Sort of like the countless articles about boohoo musical acts that decide after taking the signing bonuses and all the perks that they don't like the RIAA, this is a case of "guy signs away everything and now wants an undo button".

I can see both sides

[Trepidity]

On the one hand, it is true that patent law is becoming increasingly skewed against individual inventors. But on the other hand, if your job at a company is to come up with new ideas and methods of doing [whatever your particular field is], it wouldn't make much sense if you could come up with them, patent them, and then hold the company hostage, demanding they license your ideas. I mean that was what they were paying you for in the first place.

Re:I can see both sides

[OhYeah!]

"I mean that was what they were paying you for in the first place."

Lots of professionals are able to hold on to a piece of their work, even if they did it under contract/salary. Think Hollywood, songwriters, photographers, some journalists, etc. Why couldn't it be different for scientists? No Reason! It would be trivial to arrange for a few percent royalty on Patents developed. Many universities operate this way with an 80%university/20%researcher split.

Re:I can see both sides

[ivan256]

Lots of professionals are able to hold on to a piece of their work, even if they did it under contract/salary. Think Hollywood, songwriters, photographers, some journalists, etc.

Actually, photographers are the only group that is true for. If you pay somebody to create something, then it should be yours at the end. If it's worth more then what was paid, then that should have been taken into account during negotiations. (A royalties split would be a good way to do it)

Photographers shouldn't get to keep rights over work you pay them to do.

Re:I can see both sides

[gnovos]

Sure, but there are two issues with what you say. Considering that the company will make hundreds of billions of dollars off the patent, there is no MORAL way for the company to claim it without putting the inventor and his family on easy street for the rest of thier lives. And second, how quickly are the rest of the scientsts going to work now that they know that thier inventions can be taken away... they might as well invent nothing and get paid thier normal salary and then come out with the full-scale inventions after everyone gets laid off. How does that help humanity?

Re:I can see both sides

[Midnight Thunder]

While it may be true that you may have developed the product in the company's time, the company can still treat the employee with some sort of consideration. If a company rewards the employee correctly, then the employee is more likely to respect the company and do better things. On the other hand if they are shafted by the company, and the employee ends up realising, then the stress of the resentment against the company will kill the person's creativity until he or she moves on. In this case giving the employee the right to be named on the patent and giving 1% gross profit of the product, is certainly something that is going to make the employee a happier person and the company will earn the employee's respect.

No offense but...

[Twid]

I doubt this guy was rich enough to start his own Blue LED research lab, which I am sure cost millions and millions of dollars.

If he wants to own his own patents, I'm sure there is no law in japan stopping him from quitting and starting his own lab with his own money.

This is just crazy to me. The guy is a RESEARCHER working for a COMPANY and people think that he should have a right to the PATENTS on things that he researched and invented ON THE JOB?

This is as bad as the MP3 whiners. Want free music? Make some, and give it away. Problem solved.

Re:No offense but...

[sh4de]

You certainly have a point there, but please, remember that the person is Japanese. This implies a whole different work culture, which may (and will) not correspond to the one you've seen.

As far as I know, the Japanese value their work and their job takes top priority. I don't claim I understand the intricacies within, but I'm sure our Western values do not apply.

Slashdot has time and time again shown that it's a service (?) for Americans, and other cultures aren't understood here. I'm going to be moderated down for this, but what the hell, got karma to burn:

There are other cultures than American. Deal with it. You don't have a snowball's chance in hell to understand them because you never cared in the first place. Don't criticize something you can't understand.

Re:No offense but...

[evilviper]

I'm sure there is no law in japan stopping him from quitting and starting his own lab with his own money.

1. Work on revolutionary product for firm with deep pockets
2. Make a major breakthrough
3. Hide major breakthrough from employers
4. Quit your job
5. Spend a little to open (what you will tell everyone, is) a lab.
6. Spend hours in lab, watching TV
7. Come out with patentable idea that you invented in your "lab".
8. Patent Idea
9. ???
10. Profit!

Yeah, longer than the usual 3/4-step process, but it works out much better.

Re:No offense but...

[Planesdragon]

Don't criticize something you can't understand.

No. Always, always, ALWAYS critizie that which you can't understand. Those that do understand it will defend it, or the overly cumbersome lie will come to rule us all.

see: Communism. The Inquisition. Thong underwear.

Re:No offense but...

[iamacat]

I am also sure there is no law in Japan against this guy sharing his opinion about the COMPANY with business magazines, top Ph.D. students about to look for industry jobs and so on. He can make a point that this company is known to screw it's employees and is therefore also likely to screw it's business partners. Him being a Nobel winner, people will listen much more to him than say to slashdot posts. If he still works on LEDs in some form, he can also develop impovements to the process and then license them to Nichia for a "reasonable" fee. He can also move to some country that would recognize his rather than company's right to the patent and flood the marker with cheap blue LEDs. The bottom line is that a corporation is much like a person. I have a legal right to do a lot of nasty things but then eventually nobody will deal with me. On the other hand, if the company shared 0.1% of it's profit from blue LEDs with the inventor, they would right now have to fight off the world's best scientists trying to sign up.

Re:No offense but...

[NeMon'ess]

I would add that generally Japanese men spend far more than 40 hours a week on the job. It is expected they sacrifice for the company. After a 50 or 60 hour week what time is left might be spent drinking at a bar with co-workers. Only then might men go home to their wives who have been taking care of the children on his salary. That's a gross generalization and its less true today than it used to be. More companies also used to offer employment for life. That kind of committment from employees and employers would explain the Rav4. This sort of committment runs through the Japanese idea of what a family should be, also how one should feel about the country. It is important to committ oneself to family, including the extended family, work, and the rulers of the country.

Re:No offense but...

[evilviper]

The problem with #11 is that it's extremely hard to prove

Re:No offense but...

[geekoid]

your a PROGRAMMER working for a COMPANY and people think that you should use the CODING TECHNIQUES you learned while ON THE JOB for someone else? thats absurd!
Please, its a matter of degree. Frankly, I think if someone envents something, they should get 1% or 2% of the profit. OTOH if I was an actual genius, I would put something like that in my contract.

can't I just turn on the radio to get free music?
Finally, using capitals in that manner ion know way validates your point. Normal case would have been fine.

Getting Screwed by your Employer

[Anonymous Coward]

There used to be a time when good advice was "don't bend over" in prison. Now I guess the same thing can be said about work.

Slashdotting

[guttentag]

It looks like we slashdotted their content server, but not the Web server:

http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/

The URL cannot be located on this server.
Please click on : http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/ ,to redirect.

In other words, "our index page is missing. Please go to our index page to find what you were looking for."

Face it...

[OneFix]

Corporations are not going to pay for employees to sit around all day doing expensive scientific research if they don't get the patents. The guy may have only been paid ~$162 for his patent, but how much did he earn from his employer while he was busy developing the technology?

Now, if the guy was a janitor that happened to come up with a blue LED, then I might say he has a point....but, Nichia Corporation is in the business of LEDs!!!

Re:Face it...

[OneFix]

But, I doubt that he was actually producing anything the other 98% of the time. They are paying him to invent. Yes, he may have made the company alot more money than they were paying him...but that's what is commonly known as a good employee.

Re:Face it...

[OneFix]

Yea, but just like the "good music" helps to pay for all of the "bad music" that gets made, "good employees" help to make up for all of the "bad employees". And as a result, employers are more hesitant to let "good employees" go...because they are making them money.

If you aren't making your compnay money, then you are a liability!!!

Question

[Knife_Edge]

I'm curious. If you invent something in Japan, can you patent it first in, say, America, or any other place that you may not happen to live? And would it help you if you did? By 'help' I mean perhaps have a chance at realizing some personal gains from your intellectual property.

Some ideas can be based upon new discovery of universal scientific truths. One would think that where the person who had an idea like this resided would be less important than in many other issues of law. Especially if there was a potential market in the location where the inventor patented it.

Patents are so complicated.

Wow!

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

Think of how many blue LED's $162 will buy!

Yes, cheap sarcasim, I am trully crying inside at all these HORRIFIC patent laws... sad times indeed...

$162!?!??!

[Cyno01]

these things cost $3 apice and with his bonus for inventing them he could only buy 54 of them, jeez

difficult to measure

[Trepidity]

With songwriters, you can say "you get 10% of the profits from the sale of this album," which is relatively straightforward to measure (and even then you have a lot of disputes). With industrial patents, it's a lot more nebulous. How do you determine how much money the company has made from your patent? For example, say they make something with a blue LED. What percentage of the value of that product does the blue LED account for?

Re:difficult to measure

[kris_lang]

you can say "you get 10% of the profits from the sale of this album," which is relatively straightforward to measure

The point where they screw you is the word "profits". Profit is not straightforward. This is why movies like Forrest Gump rake in hundreds of millions of dollars and authors (Winston Groom, in this case) don't make a lot because they were promised a percentage of net profits, not gross profits. If you think Arthur Andersen was doing creative accouting, you haven't heard what Los Angeles production companies publish as the ultimate in fiction: their accounting books. All sorts of movies that make a lot of money are on the books as losing money and if your calculations are on the net profit and some of the producers promise themselves X megabucks regardless of income, then the movie might never see a net profit. Those in the know make sure that they're signed on for a percentage of the gross profits instead.
It's the new and naive who fall for the net profits.

And in fact, this is also how songwriters and musicians get screwed. A few kilobucks as an advance may sound great to a start-up band and they sign on without looking at the details of the contract. They have then entered indentured servitude where the record producers get to dictate whether they will accept the quality of the product submitted to them AND they get to charge for studio time, production time, art work, pressing the discs, promotion, all of which take a big chunk of the money before anything even makes it to the artist.

It's actually quite difficult to assign the value of a single element to a whole. How about the digit 'zero'? Prior to the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, the standard for written numerals in the west was the Roman Numeral system: not conducive to multiplication or division easily, and not too easy to write fractions with (as the sumerians and babylonians could with their systems). Now admittedly, the zero is only 10 percent of the numerals usually written, but as a place holder to indicate orders of magnitude or a missing value at an order of magnitude, it's priceless.

Re:Mainichi Daily News

[zaren]

I never thought to look up the word until you posted that...

From Jeffrey's Japanese{-}English Dictionary Server:

mainichi
(n-adv,n-t) every day; (P)

(BTW, this site is a good place to go if you want to see the kana for an English word.)

MDN is one of the two Japanese news sites I go to, along with Japan Today. MDN is more into WaiWai and shocking news, while JapanToday covers a wider range of news topics, and has comment sections for just about everything they post, from quotes to pictures to news of the day.

Amazing

[Ace905]

I read the exact story on this when Wired first published it, I believe it was called "True Boo-Roo" - a reference to the japanese use of the english language to discribe "true blue" since their word for Blue is the same as Green.

What I don't find amazing is the fact that the company took the right to the Blue Led. In the wired article they talked about how the company funded his research efforts for YEARS hoping that he would develop something. I don't know about you, but if I were to make such a risky investment I'd expect something for it - like what I invested in.

From the article itself, "Nakamura chose to work on gallium nitride not because he was confident of success, but "because I had had the bitter experience that if you do the same as everyone else, when it comes to making products, you can't sell them. So I chose a material that almost no one else was working on ... and our chairman and president let me have the money I needed."

Not only did he let him have the money, he paid his salary as an inventor for the company. This case is rediculous, on this one I'm for the corporation.

Re:Amazing

[foghorn19]

I'm finishing up my PhD in Gallium Nitride research, and have been a part of the GaN effort at a U.S. university for ~ 6 years. The story is not as simple as it appears.

Nakamura indeed got extensive support from the company. The company and Nakamura BOTH bet on this family of semiconductor materials, with Nakamura leading the way and the company providing him the money and the freedom to take the risky path. Before Nakamura's breakthrough inventions, Nichia sold phosphors for use in CRTs, stuff NOWHERE near semiconductor materials.

Nakmura invented practically all the necessary materials science research and laboratory equipment to make blue LEDs feasible. At research conferences such as MRS (http://www.mrs.org) his results completely cleaned out the field. Lightyears ahead of the rest of the research community combined. He often did not understand the physics of the stuff to as much accuracy as others later figured out, but he made GaN WORK. He is an awesome inventor. Never took a vacation for more than a DECADE!

Nichia owns more than a hundred patents because of the research he led and contributed to enormously. To be compensated a few thousand bucks for those patents (I believe it is $182 PER PATENT), is a frickin' JOKE. How bad will Nichia look if Nakamura gets a Nobel Prize and Nichia does not compensate him better?

The commercial potential of GaN is ENORMOUS. In addition to blue LEDs, you have a huge improvement in optical storage (see http://www.licensing.philips.com/information/bd/ ).

So, in a fair world, Nakamura would have been compensated much better than he has been. The rest of the researchers on his team should've been, too.

F.

Re:Amazing

[timeOday]

I assume you apply the same rules to CEOs?

And for that matter, to investors? After they get their 10-15% annual return, they've been justly compensated and surely couldn't ask for more?

Re:Amazing

[Ace905]

"To be compensated a few thousand bucks for those patents (I believe it is $182 PER PATENT), is a frickin' JOKE."

That's a shame, I guess he shouldn't have agreed to be compensated so little for his efforts.

If I pay workers minimum wage to invent a teleporation device, and they spend their entire lives doing it, and then finally succeed. The agreement was still the same always.

He could have walked at any time, instead he invented what he did for the company that paid him and paid for his research ; no matter how little they paid.

Re:Amazing

[Ace905]

The same rule applies to any agreement. There was nothing 'up in the air' about this. He worked for a company that hired him to invent what he invented. They funded his research, they paid his salary.

Where is the question? Some socialist / communist who thought he was being super insightful made a comment about people building a house and then claiming they own it even though they were paid to build it. Yeah they would own it, if they weren't paid to build it. There's no question, this is simple.

IF you want to own what you make, don't agree to make it for somebody else using their money.

Re:Amazing

[timeOday]

This is capitalism as Marx said it would be: genius, inspiration, and even hard work count for nothing, because those with capital take the fruit of *everyone's* effort and keep it for themselves.

The inventor is left with the 'choice' of doing nothing with his life, or coming up with something brilliant, only to make somebody else wealthy. Meanwhile the rich and talentless stay ahead by doing what they do best: paying people to manage and invest all the money they inherited.

The fact that it's all perfectly legal (and therefore "right") only makes matters worse.

Re:Amazing

[Ace905]

Wrong.

The fact that people agree to do it only makes matters worse.

You can bitch about your job all you want, you're still working there.

Re:Amazing

[Drakula]

Sten is that you?

Half-hearted capitalists

[ArcSecond]

No offense, but isn't the whole point of capitalism to serve the interests of capital? And isn't it in the best interest of capital to reward those make your company a whole bunch of money? I mean, you can go around beating your dog whenever he licks your hand, but he probably won't be licking your hand for very long. Similarly, if you want to attract the best and brightest minds, you should probably reward the ones who actually DO come up with the groundbreaking applications/products. A couple of million dollars is hella incentive to come up with the next revolutionary invention, wouldn't you agree? Much more than, say, GETTING THE SHAFT APPLIED TO THE RECTAL AREA YET AGAIN, perhaps?

Sorry if I'm being to radical here. I just think that if you are going to be a good little capitalist you should at least play by the rules of capitalism. Unfortunately a lot of corporations these days practice a sort of soft communism where the administrators set the plan, divide the profits among themselves, and keep the prols in line with an alternating conga line of downsizing consultants and motivational speakers. No wonder they have to cook the books in order to look good to their shareholders.

Re:Half-hearted capitalists

[timeOday]

Yes, the long term remains to be seen... the message is lound and clear: "Don't Bother."

File in Japan, up to 12 months, file in USA

[yerricde]

You can't patent something in the US if it has been patented elsewhere

Yes you can. According to 17 USC 102, he who files a foreign patent has twelve months to file a U.S. patent.

but they don't work on commission

[Trepidity]

The people who never ever come up with a useful invention still get paid by the company. And the people who come up with lots also get paid. If they worked on commission, the first group of people would get nothing and the second group would become rich. But instead they all get paid for working, not for the results of their work (to a certain extent; if you're a really crappy employee you'll never get promoted and might get fired).

Not news but...

[mark_space2001]

This is standard practice. Companies own the patents that result from your work on company time (some claim all patents, company time or not, which is a little murkier).

This guy invented something on company time and that's it.

I was reading elsewhere though, that the real tragedy is that Japanese companies do not reward their employs for the patents they do file. In the US, "real" companies will give employs 1-2K $ (or more) for patents, just because companies like to own patents. If it's a BIG patent, the inventor is more hansomely reward (often with stock and options).

Because of this, Japanese employees really don't have much incentive to work on hard patents for their companies. Their are probably exceptions -- Sony comes to mind as a company that almost surely has a more sensible patent reward system. But many "common" Japanses companies don't see things as Sony does, and overall this tends to hurt the Japanese economy.

So that's what's really going on here. This guy is trying to call attention to the fact that the common patent system in his country is broken and needs attention.

Re:Not news but...

[lovebyte]

I used to work for a European Pharma. When you patented something (chemical usually) in the US, the company rewarded you with a one US dollar note in a plastic case. Apparently, by US law, the company had to somehow reward you. Obviously the one dollar was seen by most employees as a sick joke.

Shuji at UCSB

[NeuroKoan]

Shuji is now a professor at UCSB and is making wonderful advancements in materials engineering. Here's a quick link to whats he's up to recently.
http://www.engineering.ucsb.edu/Announce/2awards.h tml.

Just a little more information on this great thinker.

However if he was the CEO

[Camel Pilot]

And regardless if the company bled red ink during his reign he would still have access to the company jet, etc.

Re:Just thought I'd point it out.

[F13]

midori - green

but as i understand it Aoi is blue/green

aoi umi - blue sea

aoi shibafu - green grass

Deawyn ROCKS. Highly recommended.

[wackybrit]

Good to see this posted here. Dwayne's music totally kicks ass.

Re:Deawyn ROCKS. Highly recommended.

[wackybrit]

Yeah, I actually randomly found his site a few months ago while scouring Slashdot sigs.. probably yours! I dropped him an e-mail and found it hard to believe that was just one guy.

Looking forward to the new MP3s for sure. I'll have to see if he's doing any gigs when I go the US next.

We need to bring back Guilds..

[pedro]

IE:Professional societies that closely resemble 'lodges' ... guys like the masons, glassblowers, or the starguild of Dune fame.
Not in the sense that we keep our knowledge secret, but in the sense that anyone who does 'the work' (whatever that might be) can join and speak and Move as one voice, IYGWIM.
Let's face it. The tech classes and the worker (fruit pickers, farmers, assemblers, etc) classes have much more in common than we see at first blush.
1) We provide a VITAL service to any capitalist economy, and could really fuck it up if we chose to.
2) What we do is mostly invisible. Everything Just Works(TM) when we're doing it right, and SINCE we're doing it right, we're unappreciated.

We really should form guilds and unions so as to exercise our collective clout in a manner that will be noticed by those freeloading bastards who play currency against currency, do differentials on options, etc.. No useful work whatsoever, yet they claim to control our lives.
Guess what?
They don't.
A global 'geek strike', work slowdown, or even better, (twirls moustache) a sudden 'stupidity strike' (oooh! looky! shiny server crashy! Code really bad!) would get these lusers' attention.
Only Guilds or something like them could accomplish this. You need members who all agree to do something in unison. We don't have that yet.
GeekPac is a teensy tiny baby step in the right direction, but it will fail.
Until we learn to act as one, and embrace a common ideal, we won't make a dent.
This ain't hard guys.
It might take secret handshakes (chuckle), actual face-to-face contact (OHMIGOD!) and shit like that to get it done, but it CAN be done!
Think about it.

Btw, we should try to bring the fruit guys and the farmers with us.
Let us leave No Man Behind!
(notajoke)

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[autopr0n]

Read Atlas Shrugged.

Actualy, Don't.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[Windcatcher]

I once worked for a company where we were in such a union. Association of Scientists and Professional Engineering Personnel (ASPEP). They had a collective bargaining agreement and were able to get a (slightly) better deal for their employees. The dues were more than reasonable (pennies, really) but the progress they got was limited. Some employees complained that they didn't push the company hard enough, but the company was barely staying afloat as it was so there wasn't much that could be done anyhow. Nevertheless, I thought it was a neat idea.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[arkanes]

Agree. Don't. Watch revenge of the nerds III instead. Same idea, same result, much more entertaining. And better written. Not to mention without the air of pompous superiority.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[BitGeek]

No useful work whatsoever,

This is the standard liberal bogeyman.

"Nobody understands me. I do all the work in this company. I don't get paid enough. I know my boss gets paid more,and he's incompetent".

It doesn't take a union to control your own life. A union is what you turn to when you abdicate control over your own life because you're too weak and you fall prey to the local mafia thug (eg: local 217).

Especially in the tech industry, where people are paid well, employment is generally good, and employees are given lots of perks. There are fewer jobs, but the fooseball table is still there ,and I've not heard of many companies instituting uniforms or dress codes.

Oh, poor you, you don't understand what Marketing, Finance, Sales, and Management people do, so you assume they do no useful work whatsoever. Tough titties. Either learn enough about business to see why they are getting paid more than you....(if they are. I once worked with a VP of marketing that was getting paid less then me, and it hasn't been uncommon for CEOs I work for to be getting paid less than me- usually the CEOs take compensation in stock and are thus incurring significant risk in the process-- and on average that risk has only broken even.) Or shut up and remain a bedwetter.

But the last thing you need is to bring the local goons into the mix.

I will never support a union for tech workers affiliated with any of the big unions (and they always are.)

And I will make it clear to any employer that I refuse to be represented by a union-- that is if I ever go work for anyone again.

And I will not tolerate unionizing of my employees. IF they are unhappy they can bring their issues to me. If they are unable to understand why things are the way they are, and they want to bring violence and force to bear (Which is what a unions is for) then they should seek employment elsewhere.

Collective bargaining is 4 or 5 employees coming to me and telling me that they'd rather have a fooseball table than the pacman machine we'd talked about getting. Of course I'm going to listen to that.

Collective bargaining is employees telling me that they'd rather take stock than cash, and of course I'd look into that (there are legal issues with it.)

Or that the parking situation seems unfair, or that they think marketing set a poor date for release or any of the dozens of issues that come up in a company every month that have to be worked on, fixed, or explained.

Unionization is when some guy who does not work for the company ,does not know what the company does, or its state of affairs, comes in and demands that I give him control of the company, or he will shut the company down. Unions are an agent of violence force and extortion.

The only reasonable response to such a threat is to tell them to piss off and to never enter your property again. Then go tell the employees that you are willing to listen to employee issues but you will not deal with terrorists and thugs. That any union employee is free to leave that day and never return and that you'll be happy to replace them with people with enough horse sense to come to you and work out the issues or understanding of the way business works and economic realities. Who needs employees who don't know business and want to bring in thugs to get something for nothing? Hell, if they are already thinking like that they are not part of the team and are not pulling their weight. They are deadweight to begin with.

The idea that business doesn't know the value of tech people is idiotic. Sure, a few don't, but they are not doing well-- we just had a boom in bonuses and a feeding frenzy over tech employees. Now that the market has changed they haven't forgotten tech workers value, they just have more to choose from and competition is different.

Generally, employers in the US compensate tech workers very well.

Anyone in this day and age saying that tech workers need to organize is someone who wants something for nothing.

If you're a tech worker in this country and you have a job, odds are very good that you're being well and fully compensated.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[BitGeek]

Yeah a book about a strike of geeks is not relevant to this discussion.

Anyone who tells you not to read atlas shrugged is, by definition, someone who wants to eliminate human rights. Unless they are giving you an alternative book that explains the same things Atlas Shrugged does.

The reason there is so much opposition to Atlas Shrugged is that it tells you that you have the right to be free, and it shows you just how you can be free.

But there are a lot of oppressors- those who have internally oppressed themselves and those who want to oppress others who hate the idea of freedom.

And so they will poo poo atlas shrugged every chance they get.

You should read it (and I mean, really read it, all the way thru) if you have an open mind. Then you can give a better answer than "no no, don't read that book!"

So far, nobody has taken up my challenge to read atlas shrugged and tell me logically what is wrong with it-- everyone who has tried has ended up agreeing with it.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[Chris Johnson]

"Anyone who tells you not to read atlas shrugged is, by definition, someone who wants to eliminate human rights."

*ROFL*

You see, this is the problem with you and your Rand there. Do you not understand that most people, seeing the words 'human rights', will think of SOCIETAL benefit rather than some hypothetical 'I get to do whatever I want' system in which 'human rights' means 'kill the unfit'?

Don't read Atlas Shrugged because it sucks and is endless boring ranting- the actual ideas can be found more cheaply in the posts of many Slashdot posters, saving you the trouble of acquiring the actual book.

But don't believe Ayn Rand because the woman was so scarred by Stalinism that she went to the opposite extreme, totally rejecting ALL societal benefit and trying to construct a society of ideally rational superhumans, of which she was the infallible leader (I do not exaggerate- she did consider herself infallible.)

In your evaluation of Ayn Rand and whether to bother with her, consider that she would have not only agreed with the statement "Anyone who tells you not to read atlas shrugged is, by definition, someone who wants to eliminate human rights"... she also would have told you that such a person was so fundamentally dishonest and committed to deception that they could not be listened to on ANY SUBJECT. In essence, she'd tell you that such a person could not hold such an opinion without secretly believing in Atlas Shrugged but maliciously professing the opposite for some evil purpose: to her, her ideas were so unchallengable that one COULD NOT disagree without being insane or intentionally falsifying.

Those of us who consider Ayn Rand was a dangerous loony can make a pretty good case for it, really. And no, that doesn't mean that all her ideas are invalid- but she was crippled by demonizing the very idea of collective society itself.

When our society (here in the US) resembles Stalinist USSR, then you can demonize collective society. Oddly, though, this movement in the direction of Cold War Russia is being spearheaded by the selfish, and resisted by the more socially aware...

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[BitGeek]

do not exaggerate- she did consider herself infallible.

No you don't exaggerate, you lie.

Do you not understand that most people, seeing the words 'human rights', will think of SOCIETAL benefit

No I think that most people when they read the phrase human rights think it means the rights of humans. I don't assume that people are going to think some hypothetical non-sequiter thing about what I have said. I expect them to pay attention nto the words meanings and understand that I used them to mean exactly what I said.

Code words and doublespeak are the realm of those who wish to deceive, such as yourself:

'I get to do whatever I want' system in which 'human rights' means 'kill the unfit'?

Which is a flat out lie about what objectivism says.

But you can get away with such lies because your cronies don't really care about reality, they just want to believe what they want to believe and will believe what you say because its convenient. Even if you redefine objectivism to say something fraudulent. Socialism is not a realm of intellectual integrity, that's for sure.

Those of us who consider Ayn Rand was a dangerous loony can make a pretty good case for it, really.

As usual you slander, but never bother to make your case. I've hard lots of people compalin about Rand, but interestingly when pressed all the y can come up with is subjective opinions about how she constructed her novels. Yawn.

IF you can make this case, make it. You never do, because you know it is based on falsehoods and sophistry and that making it in front of a rational person will result in you being shown for the fraud that you are.

resisted by the more socially aware

Sure that's why the democrats oppose the war on drugs and oppose gun control, right?

Sheesh. You're yowling your angry head off, just as predicted by her:

"...just listen to anyprophet and if you hear him speak of sacrifice-- run. Run faster than from the plague. It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where' there's service, there's someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master. But if ever you hear a man telling you that you must be happy, that its your natural right, that your first duty is to yourself-- that will be the man who's not after your soul. That will be the man who has nothing to gain from you. But let him come and you'll scream your empty heads off, howling that he's a selfish monster. So the racket is safe for many, many centuries." -- The Fountainhead


An excellent description of those, in general, who tell you not to read Atlas Shrugged. We know what you're afraid of.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[PD]

The only reasonable response to such a threat is to tell them to piss off and to never enter your property again. Then go tell the employees that you are willing to listen to employee issues but you will not deal with terrorists and thugs.

What are you, a damn liberal? You get out the damn firehoses and hose down those dirty unwashed scumbags until they get back to work. You shoot the ones that cause trouble, beat the rest, and cut their pay. They ought to be happy just having a job.

You obviously don't remember the good old days.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[Fjord]

It really depends on why the company was barely staying afloat. If it was because they didn't have revenue, then that's one thing. If it's because they are paying 2+ mil/year to the CEO, then thats another.

Note, I am all for CEOs getting a lot of money (I think bonuses to a that high of a base salary is better) when they are doing the right things for the company, but there also has to be balence between what they get and what the people under them get.

One unfortunate thing I've found, however, is that boards of directors often don't really care if the bonuses get to the people they don't know, when really they should since it does affect their investment. Oh well.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[WNight]

The problem with Atlas Shrugged is that people use it to prove something, which it can't do. I can write a book in which the tall people are proved to be naturally smarter and end up taking over the world, but it doesn't prove anything. It wouldn't even make a valid argument for tall people being superior because I wouldn't have presented any evidence, or looked at possibly contrary evidence.

What a book can do is give you something to think about.

However, many people have read Rand's books and though about them, and found them lacking. I sure did. It's not that I didn't agree with her ideas, I'm a bit of a libertarian, but I didn't agree with her conclusions or that simply writing the story proves anything like so many other people do.

Furthermore, I think her ideas would come across more easily, and more usefully, if they were written into a twenty page essay than a long book. The book clouds the basic idea presentation with a plot (that quite frankly wasn't that good).

As such, I wouldn't recommend that anyone read the book. There's no reason to not read it, except that unless you're a strong libertarian in need of a feel-good read.

What's wrong with the book is that all the rich people are geniuses. There's nobody who's rich simply because their grand-parents fenced off a huge tract of grazing land because their wagon got there six months ahead of everyone else's. Nobody in the book made deals to cut off a competitor's raw materials in order to build a monopoly, or sabotages their product in a subtle way and blamed the other product for failing to inter-operate.

If someone like Rearden existed, someone who invented an honestly better product, and who was happy just to profit on his product instead of trying to use some bogus license agreement to forbid trains on track he made from carrying food (for competitors), to allow him to corner the market, I'd support them. In fact, I do. I have no problem with companies that compete strongly, as long as they aren't so afraid of competition that they have to ruin the other company outside of the market. These days companies contribute so heavily to politics that most ruinous laws are passed in favor of the corporations, instead of in favor of the loafing people as Rand suggested.

It seemed simplistic. All of the antagonists were pathetic caricatures and all of the protagonists were uber-men (and women). None of the big business in the book was using standard big-business tactics. Nothing really seemed to apply beyond the scope of the book.

I'd suggest you read Heinlein. He's got the same libertarian viewpoint (quote: "When a place starts to require ID, it's time to leave.") except he's usually got a story behind it. And he's not trying to prove anything so he focuses on plot instead of the politics.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[BitGeek]

You mean the good old days of Jimmy Hoffa firebombing your business, or striking workers taking out an entire cities telephone service?

I was there for the latter.

In a free society people deal with each other on a free basis- they make agreements with each other and discuss differences of issue. IF they can't agree they are free to cease doing business.

Unions in theory should work in this model, but unfortunately, they use violence to achieve their means.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[BitGeek]

I have read heinlein. I'd apply most people criticisms of AS to his work, actually. He writes ok stories and I enjoy them, but it isn't intellectually rigorous.

Atlas Shrugged does prove something. Just because its a novel doesn't mean that it can't have a logical proof stuck in the middle of it, it does.

Unfortunately most people skip it because its too dry, but it is there.

That 20 page pamplet you talk about would be Galts Speech.

Its a logical proof of the philosophy of objectivism.

And while I've had tussles with lots of people online over its logic (I'm still trying to make sure it is correct) most of the disagreements with it resolve down to them re-defining words to means something they don't mean (dictionary wise) and she didn't mean (context wise).

The people who want you not to read atlas shrugged are afraid of exposure to the ideas it presents -- because they blow away the lies that these same people tell everyone.

As a libertarian, you'd previously been exposed to the ideas and probably didn't have the misconceptions that needed blowing away.

But you take a random liberal, one who thinks he hates libertarians, but still has an open mind, and give him Atlas Shrugged, its the most dangerous thing you could do (to the liberal establishment).

I haven't read many libertarian books that are like that. I got interrupted in the middle of one of Harry Brownes books, and I'm open to others-- thinking I should pick up some L. Neil Smith. But AS provides an excellent, logical, proof for its philosophy.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[PD]

I'm just ragging on you because you used the conservative bogeyman "the liberal". I'm a liberal, but I'm not a union fan for the most part.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[WNight]

Oh, I didn't say Heinlein is intellectually rigorous. In fact, often the opposite. He doesn't try to prove anything, he just writes a fun story.

I think you'll find your quest is hopeless. No matter how consistent a philosophy is, it can't be directly related to the world. Logic can prove consistency, but it can't prove a physical reality.

Also, Rand makes a few assumptions that I don't think are valid. In a world of people who are only striving for themselves, all of whom have started equal and are intelligent enough to act in their long-term best interest, you can start to see the effects of libertarianism. In a world (ours) where many people are rich only because their parents stole (literally, with force) resources from the original holders and where people irrationally pursue actions that hurt them as well in the end, I don't think we can rely on enlightened self interest.

But yes, exposure to these ideas is good. I just don't think Rand is the proper way to do it. If Galt's speech is the key, that's probably what people should read. I'm sure it's on the net, google for it and post a link instead of pointing people to a book they'll probably get bored with before the 'good stuff' shows up.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[BitGeek]

I can accept that there are "liberals" who do not support unions... but that puts you in a small minority. The democratic party, and every liberal institution and organization I know about supports unions and sees them as part of the "Governemnt will take care of everybody" agenda.

So, I don't think characterizing liberals in general as supporting unions is that unfair.

Note that I am not a conservative, I'm an ex-liberal who's come to become a libertarian. While this puts me at odds with conservatives, I find its rather easy to convince conservatives that social rights exist just like economic rights... but it seems much harder to convince liberals that economic rights are part of human rights.

If I misrepresented you by being overly general, I apologize.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[BitGeek]

n a world (ours) where many people are rich only because their parents stole (literally, with force) resources from the original holders

Who are you talking about here? You use this as a broad indictment of objectivism, but I don't see it. Obviously objectivism would say theft is immoral and would authorize force to defend or prosecute it.

If by "many" you mean "most rich people stole their wealth" then you're going to have to make that case. Looking at the top 10 forbes list, some are walton's kin, and Sam Walton didn't steal his wealth, and most of the others are self created.

In fact, the majority-- vast majority- of millionaires in the US earned their money by working for it and saving their income prudently, or by starting their own business. A small percentage (%7 by recollection) received it by inheritance.

I'm interested in hearing the case that the rich stole their wealth-- I hear that a lot, but nobody ever wants to provide reason to believe it other than broad statements like "property is theft", and my investigation (made for other reasons) into the nature of wealth in the US has shown otherwise. I'm totally perplexed why so many people believe that people who are rich got that way by theft/fraud.

and where people irrationally pursue actions that hurt them as well in the end, I don't think we can rely on enlightened self interest

Now thats an odd conclusion. I concede that many people act against their best interest. Yet, I cannot see how that justifies taking rights away from anyone (them, or the people who don't act against their self interest.)

On the contrary-- taking the pain out of self mutilation (speaking figuratively here) only increases the likelihood that someone will engage in that behavior repeatedly. When the social safety net is one constructed of people voluntarily helping each other out, then those people can judge whether they are helping someone out or enabling someone's self destruction. The government doesn't distinguish between the two cases.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[PD]

So, I don't think characterizing liberals in general as supporting unions is that unfair.

It's no more unfair than characterizing Libertarians as the party that cares first and foremost about seatbelts and motorcycle helments.

Tom Harkin was probably one of the Democratic Party's most pro-union people. And look where that got him. And that doesn't even address the fact that the Democratic Party is hardly liberal. Conservatives generally cry 'liberal' so often about so many different things that it's clear that they have no idea what liberal means.

Democracy is liberal. The bill of rights is liberal. The constitution is liberal. The space program is liberal. So is the National Endowment for the Arts. And the Smithsonian Institution. And the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. So was the Italian Rennaissance. And universal education. and on and on and on.

If I misrepresented you by being overly general, I apologize.

That's cool, but you actually weren't being general enough. I am sick to death of people saying that liberals are idiots and morons, and just want to give away fish rather than teach people to fish. The ironic thing is that everyone who blames the damn liberals for everything that's wrong with this country doesn't understand what liberalism is!

Well, I guess that turned into a pretty good rant...

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[WNight]

I don't see this as a indictment of objectivism, as you put it. What I see is that that many people are incapable of behaving rationally. Objectivism and many other schools of thought assume that people are going to act in their long-term best interest.

If people don't, assumptions about how things will come into balance eventually aren't valid.

As for the issue that many people stole their wealth... I think that many people are where they are as the result of theft, or very questionable practice, by them or their ancestors.

The Hearst empire is largely built on nearly-fraudulent land grants just after the US civil war. This ignores all the shady deals of the publishing side of the business. This is just an example off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more but I can't back up any of my suspicions without more research.

Objectivism requires people acknowledging that skill and ability is what gets you where you are. In a world where this isn't the case, how do you expect people to respect the property "rights" of those they perceive as criminals.

This is what makes it more of a theoretical system instead of something that I think would work.

btw, your figures for self-made wealth ignore the free schooling and often interest free loans that many children of the rich receive which gives them a huge hand up over the real self-made. Lumping Bill Gates in with Dave Thomas (Wendy's) is quite unfair for Dave. Dave grew up poor and fought for everything. Bill went to Harvard(?) for (worth it for the contacts even though e dropped out) and his parents supposedly loaned him money to get started in business at a few critical times. But I don't think this is really on topic.

As for the "self mutilation" idea... A lack of enlightened self interest is most damaging when someone acts economically because of non-economic motives (religion, anger, etc) and hurts many people. Someone could act to destroy a competitor because of some irrational reason and in doing so, destroy their own business. I believe this is very common behaviour and that it means we can't expect a stable social order to emerge simply by trusting that those with money earned it by being rational and will thus keep being rational.

The foundation of libertarian ideals is that people will respect basic human rights and that from this, everything will come into place. I don't see this happening.

See, for example, all the idle and stupid rich in Atlas Shrugged, if you wish to use it as an example. In the libertarian world people would still pass riches to useless children and in a generation or two we'd be right back where we are now, expect that this useless rich would have almost total power over the less rich. (Not that it's much different from today...)

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[BitGeek]

Sorry, you don't get to redefine liberal. ITs already been done.

Actually "Liberal" is what is now known as libertarian. But since so many anti-rights people started calling themselves liberal, libertarians chose a more precise term, and libertarianism is often called classical liberalism.

Liberalism today DOES mean giving away fish rather than teaching people to fish. That is their ideology and in running into them (and having been one in the past) that ideology is consistant. Generally they are morons, or more precisely, uneducated and ignorant about economics and market forces.

You want to say liberal has some specific definition, then fine: I'm willing to hear it. The list of wasteful government programs you listed does not give a specific definition, just the implication is that liberalism is about government spending. Which is certainly a correlation, but liberalism is about why liberals support government spending: They are ignorant of the poor use of money that governments make.

You certainly don't get to claim that liberalism is about freedom and human rights when so many liberal organizations come down squarely in opposition to freedom and human rights. That doesn't clarify liberalism, that just repeats liberalism's Great Lie.

I met Tom Harkin once. He's a liberal for sure. He's pro union. He's an example that supports my statement, not a contrary one. That he lost to Clinton isn't exactly an indictment of the assertion that liberals support unions-- clinton was a union supporter.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[BitGeek]

Not surprisingly your position is based on some false assumptions, probably told to you, and that you did not have the necessary information to discard.

First-- the wealthy did not get their money by theft. This is the cry of those who think all property is theft and want a repressive brutal dictatorship in the guise of a "Workers paradise". It is, objectively, a false statement. There are people who have stolen money, but in order to make this claim in the broad, a significant portion of the rich people would have had to steal their money. And THAt is plain false.

Secondly- you ignore the fact that those who inhereit wealth often squander it.

Thirdly- you have not provided reason to believe that given correct information people won't act rationally. I think they will.

Fourth- you are false in the assumption that Objectivism or Libertarianism only "works" if people act rationally- it doesn't. These systems model the REAL WORLD and the REAL WORLD exists whether people act rationally or not. They only say that governments should not take away the rights of rational people because the irrational people want them.

This is literally, and exactly, the same as saying that a majority of white people should not be allowed to take away the rights of the minority of black people. You know taking those rights away is wrong, yet you still support the majority of irrational poor people taking away the rights of the rational rich people?

The foundation of libertarianism is that the only purpose of government is to protect human rights. That some people are irrational is not a reason to avoid libertarianism-- it is the reason that we should have it.

Encoding irrationality into law, as you advocate, is not an acceptable alternative.

Nothing in Libertarianism or Objectivism requires all people to act rationally for it to work. Actually, the contrary-- these systems point out how the real world works. It is the alternative, republican-democratism that pretends the world works in a way that is impossible: Notice the social security pyramid scheme. They think they can just spend money they don't have forever.

This idea that the rich have power over the less rich is only true as long as we have the fundamentally corrupt government that you advocate. In a libertarian or objectivist government the rich would have NO power over the less rich. For we would eliminate the use of violence to compel people to work against their interests that the current system employs.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[PD]

Sorry, you don't get to redefine liberal. ITs already been done.

By Conservatives. I don't consider them experts on the subject by any means.

Actually "Liberal" is what is now known as libertarian.

In some senses you are correct, but not entirely. I don't think there's a single party out there that corners the market in liberalism.

You want to say liberal has some specific definition, then fine: I'm willing to hear it.

Definitions 1 and 2 from the encyclopedia linked through google:

1. Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
2. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.

liberalism is about why liberals support government spending

Liberalism has nothing to do with government spending, but with the definitions I gave above. The problem that I have with some parts of Libertarianism is that government spending tends to be uttered in the same breath as the word "wasteful" which is sometimes true, and sometimes not true. Knee jerk reactions and unconsidered judgements of government spending aren't what I consider to be particularly insightful, or helpful.

You certainly don't get to claim that liberalism is about freedom and human rights when so many liberal organizations come down squarely in opposition to freedom and human rights.

Which ones? If the organizations oppose human rights they cannot be liberal.

That doesn't clarify liberalism, that just repeats liberalism's Great Lie.

That's nothing but jingoism.

I met Tom Harkin once. He's a liberal for sure. He's pro union. He's an example that supports my statement, not a contrary one.

Oh yea, I remember President Harkin. His pro-union platform really took him a long way. Amazing how supporting unions allowed him to beat out Dukakis for the nomination and then go on to beat GHWB at the polls to become our president. Er, wait, actually Harkin had his ass kicked quite badly. My bad.

Isn't the Libertarian party fond of saying that the Repubs and the Crats are just two sides of the same coin, offering no real choice? Then why do you continually hold up Democrats as ideals of Liberalism? I've already mentioned that I don't consider the Democratic party very liberal at all. Argue the issues and facts, not the personalities. Tom Harkin isn't liberalism. If Harkin is an idiot (and he is) then that doesn't mean that liberals are also idiots (they are not).

Now, having said all that, this liberal Texas resident will most likely be voting for the Libertarian in the next governor's election. That's because our current governor actually led a prayer in a public school, and the democratic candidate supports school prayer. I don't care what other qualifications a person might have - first and foremost our elected officials must obey and understand the law of the land. The libertarian candidate here is running on a 1st ammendment platform of separation of church and state. Therefore, Jeff Daiell will get my liberal vote.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[BitGeek]

Well good for you.

Unfortunately, your definition of liberal and that provided by the encyclopedia you quoted are not what is in use-- by conservatives, or by liberals.

When I say it was redefined, I mean it was redefiend when what is modern day liberals took that word.

Everything that liberals agree with that libertarians disagree with is a place where liberals took a word and lied about what they believe.

When liberals stop calling for gun control, then I'll believe they actually support human rights. By your statements, you want me to believe that liberals by defintion oppose gun control, and I find that hard to believe. Even more, the right to keep and bear arms is part of the Bill of Rights.

If liberals, as a group, supported the Bill of Rights (All of it) then I would not have a problem with it, but they all oppose it. They argue for affirmative action, which violates the bill of rights. Tehy argue for Unions support which-- while unions themselves don't violate it, the laws that support unions do violate the bill of rights.

Etc.

This might be interesting: List the top 5 positions you consider to be core of liberalism and I'll explain how they violate human rights (if they do, maybe they won't.)

Yes liberal is a word that has its meaning changed-- but it wasn't the conservatives who did it-- that's recent history. It was done by liberals sometime between the 1800s and the mid 1900s.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[WNight]

Sheesh. Read your message again and try to understand why libertarians come off as crackpots.

Libertarianism isn't based on reality any more than communism is. Both are philosophies dreamed up by people who think the whole world thinks like they do, or would, given the chance.

You attribute many motives and actions to me which aren't in what I wrote. You say that I support taking the rights of the rich people. You say this simply because I don't believe that a stary-eyed idealism is going to magically change the world. How can this be seen as support for something?

You later say that in an objectivist world the rich would have no power over the poor. Perhaps this is right in an ownership sense, but how can you support this claim? There are many instances in our less-capitalist world now where a wealthy landowner controls all the means of food production and guards them jealously, letting someone have a job, but never letting them gain control of their own life by being able to own land or a controlling share of a factory.

Furthermore, there are factory towns where workers are brought and then given jobs that will never pay enough for them to leave, unless they pack their family up and walk the hundreds of miles back to a big city. It's pretty easy to imagine how someone ruthless, with control over resources and the willingness to bankrupt others through foul play (paying their suppliers to not deal with them, etc) could end up with a fairly controlling monopoly. They could then leverage this control into making the workers virtual slaves. Sure, someone could leave, but where could they go, and if they got there, chances are that the owner of that territory would refuse to deal with them, in solidarity with the other landowner because if the workers got the idea that life could be better elsewhere, they might try to pack up and move.

I would accept a world where you and I started equal and you got ahead of me by virtue of working harder (or smarter) and actually earned your way. Why though would I accept a world where I started out below someone else because of past crimes?

You keep claiming that the rich earn their place, as if completely blind to the example I mentioned and the obvious fact that this sort of behaviour is all too common. Why would I accept that I had to start farming a plot I didn't own, or working in someone else's factory, because there was no land for me, having all been claimed (by force) by the ancestors of the current landowner? For this to not be a problem, the number of people whose wealth was created (even in part) by theft (of any form) would have to be statistically insignificant. Any honest reading of history indicates the opposite.

As for the irrationality that would destroy the system, it's a commonly held belief that "the rising tide floats all boats" and that a stronger economy, though it may not directly help you, will indirectly help you by enriching the world including your potential customers, and developing new products for you to buy. However, large controlling monopolies tend to stifle creativity and eventually, the economy. They still bring in money for their owners, but that money isn't as useful because the economy they'd spend it in is weaker. This suggests that everyone would be better off if they tolerated some competition and didn't stifle new development as a threat to their monopoly control. History is full of examples though of people who attempt to strangle the economy just to make themselves marginally richer.

This is irrational. All the money in the world wouldn't have gotten a medieval king to the moon, or given him a heart transplant. Money is only a means of getting things, if you horde it indefinately it's useless. This hording however destroys society and often leads to a bloody rebellion as people try to gain freedom.

The problem with objectivism in the real world is that people all want to be insanely rich without any final goal so they end up working towards stifling everyone else instead of developing towards something. The monopolies of today are powerful enough and exert enough non-government control, creating a world where they could grow unchecked would simply speed us to the point where we'd need to throw the bastards out and start over.

One way around this roadblock is to expand what "human rights" encompasses. If it doesn't include an education many people will be poor (and thus useless to society) for life because of their parents bad economic choices. A little investment here can help everyone in the "rising tide" sense. Also, someone forced through economic means to work in a dead-end job at a factory doesn't help society much either, or the factory owner who isn't motivated to modernize because he's got a steady supply of essentially slave labour. If you guarantee everyone a basic income (or the ability to work for it) that doesn't enrich anyone else, perhaps by giving everyone a birthright of enough land to farm to raise a family in a self sufficient way, you give the family a way out of economic slavery (though a low-end way) and you give the factory owners incentive to develop jobs that are better than this subsistence living.

Currently in the third world many companies are actively interested in destroying farming land and moving the subsistence farmers to the cities. They don't do this to increase the standard of living for these people, they do it to create a cheap workforce for themselves. If the people had an option to dirty and dangerous factory work they'd probably take it. But as their only source of food is the company store, they'll take the work just to stay alive.

Basically, I'm saying that there are many forms of force that don't involve me sticking a gun to your head but that leave you with the same lack of real choice. If you don't recognize this and provide choice for people, you're allowing force by those big enough to control others. They may do this only because they can't see that they'd be better off in the end through cooperation (being irrational) but it still destroys the economic system by taking away everyone else's chance to better themselves through work.

The simplistic form of the libertarian ideals is valid in small groups where everyone has the same goals (live and let live) and where people retain enough power to chuck out someone who starts using force. To mandate that everyone follow these ideals though, without refining them for large group dynamics, is ridiculous. They need to be a general guiding principle "through work, one improves *himself*" instead of a set of hard dogma.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[PD]

When liberals stop calling for gun control, then I'll believe they actually support human rights. By your statements, you want me to believe that liberals by defintion oppose gun control, and I find that hard to believe.

I'm not sure how you parsed what I said to get that. It certainly wasn't implied at all.

List the top 5 positions you consider to be core of liberalism and I'll explain how they violate human rights

Now that's interesting. Here we go - the core of liberalism according to me:

1) Universal education
2) Scientific skepticism
3) Rejection of dogma
4) Rejection of priveliged birth (royalty)
5) Freedom of thought.

Some of the items might appear related, but in my opinion if you have those things as the highest ideal, you are a liberal. Stand up and be proud!

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[BitGeek]

1) Universal education
2) Scientific skepticism
3) Rejection of dogma
4) Rejection of priveliged birth (royalty)
5) Freedom of thought.


Sorry, I'm looking for liberalisn the political movement, rather than what you seem to see as a philosophical movement. Only the first of these is a political position, really.

But here we go:

Universal Education: Having this as an ideal doesn't violate human rights, but the political enacting of this ideal does. Rather than making sure an education is available to everyone, you steal from some to educate others. That violates the rights of those who are having their money taken from them (by force) to pay for the education of others.

2) Scientific skepticism
This isn't a distinction-- objectivists have this as a core belief. And in fact, I would say that most people who call themselves liberal do not practice this.

3) Rejection of dogma
This is quite interesting in light of your previous choice-- it seems that they conflict. If you reject dogma (eg: any authoritarian set of morals) you have to reject the scientific method as it is an authoritarians set of morals. I assume you mean the rejection of religious dogma, in which case this also isn't unique to liberals. Objectivists and libertarians both reject religious dogma. Conservatives don't though.

4) Rejection of priveliged birth (royalty)
Well, we don't live in a monarchy, so this ideal isn't saying much. If you mean that people who are wealthy shouldn't be allowed to pass their wealth to their kids, then, again, you are advocating the theft of property from people by force.

5) Freedom of thought.
Doesn't violate any human rights.

Let me clarify a bit about how taxes are theft. IF you have personal soverignity-- eg: you own your body, something liberals agree with when it comes to abortion-- then you then also own the decision of how you use that body. When you are a free person and you enter into an agreement to do labor for someone else in exchange for property, you are essentially renting your body (which you own) in exchange for property (which has value). If you didn't receive the property that was agreed on, you would stop participating, and you would be a victim of a crime. I assume you agree with me so far.

Next since you freely consented to rent your body for that property, that property thus does belong to you. It is the product of your labor.

Anyone who then comes and takes that product (eg: in the form of taxes) without proir explicit consent, is stealing from you. A mugger who shoves a gun in your face is no more justified in doing so than the local taxing authority-- the taxing authority looses its moral right to your money because it did not obtain your prior consent to be taxed. Furthermore, it is not simply a matter of paying one bill for a variety of services because you have not consented to those services (and the bill is for far more than the market value of those services.)

Thus, taxation, like unions, are a third party using force to extract value from people that they did not consent to give. In a sense, for all the time that you are using your body to earn that money that is later forcibly extracted from you, you are the slave of the person you ware working for-- a slave to the state.

Thus anyone- whether he calls himself a liberal or conservative, and both groups do- who supports the forced extration of labor without compensation, is violating human rights.

On another point, if you reject dogma, how can you ever agree with anyone? How can you agree with anyone on any kind of common basis? If you reject all concepts of authoritarin information or morality, on what basis can you make any decision about what is morally correct? Murder is not illegal because of religious dogma, it is illegal because it violates the universal reality of human rights.

A lot of arguing goes on without ever addressing what the foundation of human rights is-- you can't argue for or against it without really identifying it-- and, more importantly, if it isn't universal, then it is merely the expression of your will.

Some may think its immoral for two guys to marry, but unless they make that argument based on some universal morality (The dogma you reject) they are merely imposing their will. (An act that clinton took when he signed the "Defense of marriage act".)

Thus most arguing about political issues gets nowhere because both parties are attempting to force their will, rather than arguing from a position of agreement on some universal morality. I suspect that the liberal rejection of dogma amounts to "whatever I want to do, even if it violates others rights, is ok" in practice, if not intent.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[BitGeek]

Basically, I'm saying that there are many forms of force that don't involve me sticking a gun to your head but that leave you with the same lack of real choice.

This encapsulates the problem with your position. You illogically believe that someone who FREELY CHOOSES to do something, without force, is not responsible for those choices because they were "forced to".

I'm still waiting for you to provide examples showing that rich people got rich by stealing property.

Its nice to think that and it makes those who are poor feel better for a little while because they can assume that their position comes because opportunity was stolen from them-- but its not true, and it certainly doesn't help the poor change their situation in life- it provides and incentive not to.

The percentage of rich people who got that way by theft or by inheriting property that was stolen is vanishingly small. You made this claim, and you have not supported it.

Your whole idea of economics is based on this idea that all the rich people got that way thru theft, yet this is an absurd proposition.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[PD]

Sorry, I'm looking for liberalisn the political movement

Aha! I think I figured out something. You see liberalism as a political movement, and I see it as a philosophy for an individual.

Universal Education: Having this as an ideal doesn't violate human rights, but the political enacting of this ideal does. Rather than making sure an education is available to everyone, you steal from some to educate others. That violates the rights of those who are having their money taken from them (by force) to pay for the education of others.

I have had many arguments with objectivists about this. As I understand it, and objectivist is not opposed to universal education, but the coercion of it. True or not? I don't know how much of an objectivist you are, but Libertarianism is somewhat inspired by it. I think that this idea ignores the fact that individuals can benefit from a collective work, particularly when that collective work involves things that are not physically limited. For example, education unleashes the potential of the human mind which has limits we do not know; free software is also unlimited in the sense that I can give it away and still have complete use of it myself.

regarding your statement that items #2 and #3 conflict

They don't because scientific skepticism is the definition of an open mind. In hindsight, I'd roll them both up into "open mindedness" but that term is just about as misunderstood as "liberal" so maybe it's better that I didn't. Dogma is a belief that is presented as the truth, and must not be questioned. To pick on what you term a "liberal" idea - unions - I'd say that the idea that unions should be powerful and that stronger unions would help workers is definitely dogma. With the immense shifts in our society in the last 100 years, that is probably not true anymore.

regarding point #4 - rejection of privelidged birth

It's not just kicking out the queen, it's mainly the idea that the law applies to princes and paupers equally. Not a terribly new idea, but it still applies today. A person who is born wealthy should not have more privelidges than someone who made their money through hard work. We're pretty good about this in the US, but in many parts of the world it's not the case.

On another point, if you reject dogma, how can you ever agree with anyone? How can you agree with anyone on any kind of common basis? If you reject all concepts of authoritarin information or morality, on what basis can you make any decision about what is morally correct? Murder is not illegal because of religious dogma, it is illegal because it violates the universal reality of human rights.

About the "taxes are theft" argument you make: I haven't made up my mind about that. I view that part as a bit of Libertarian dogma, and honestly haven't invested enough thought into it to either agree or disagree with you. Rest assured that it has been on my "to think about" list for a while now, and eventually I'll make up my mind on it.

Rejecting dogma doesn't mean that I can't agree with someone. All it means is that if someone tells me "that's the way it is" I won't believe it. I'll judge for myself. Virgin birth dogma? I don't believe it. Taxes are theft? I don't believe it either. If I freely come to the same conclusion that a particular dogma espouses, it's not the same as accepting dogma without questioning it.

I'm also not a believer in an absolute morality, for the same reason that I'm not a believer in a consistent and complete derivation of mathematics. Have you read Goedel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid? If there's one math book everyone should read, that one is it.

I suspect that the liberal rejection of dogma amounts to "whatever I want to do, even if it violates others rights, is ok" in practice, if not intent.

Just to be redundant here: a "liberal" who accepts that unions are universally good is neither liberal, nor rejecting dogma. If you go back to the dictionary definition of liberal it says not limited to ... dogma. A person who accepts dogma cannot be a liberal, by definition.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[BitGeek]

Clearly we're using liberal to mean two different things, and I understand what you mean by liberal now. I wasn't talking about the same set of people when I used the word liberal before, as you realized.

I think education is a good thing. I'm pro education. In fact, one of the biggest reasons I oppose our current education system is because it doesn't work. If it were working, I might be inclined to say that the good created outweighs the damage to people that occurs by taking their money by force. But it doesn't.

One thing I've come to realize is that this is not a coincidence--- whenever you fund something by forcibly extracting wealth, what you end up funding is going to be of poor quality. The reason for this is human nature- up and down the line people think its "free money". But there's another component-- the forcible extraction of funding eliminates the effect of market forces.

If people were paying for their own education, then they would shop around, find a better deal, and if there wasn't one, they'd create one.

Here we have the situation where you HAVE to send your kids to public school, by law, and you have to go thru hoops to home educate them. You can't just band together with a dozen other families and form your own education collective, where each family has one person teach a subject on a rotating basis (eg: a class of twelve to twenty four kids and every day they get an all day lesson in a given subject by one of the parents) -- or any of a number of other models.

My point being, since this "free" education is required by law, people just send their kids to school and start thinking about it as the "schools problem". This is something I've heard repeatedly from educators, and just the other day some (excuse the word) liberal educator on NPR was saying how black kids are at such a disadvantage because their parents think of education as the schools problem.

Atlas Shrugged (we were talking about that originally, right?) presents and objective morality. It isn't imposed from upon high, it is presented with the instructions that you should use your own judgment and determine independently if it is correct or not.

Moral relativism (Which I used to practice) pretty much believes in situational morality-- but in that case there can be no such thing as human rights. All concepts of morality in the relativism case are merely one group attempting to impose their view of morality on the other.

The alternative to this is to attempt to define an objective, universal, morality. This provides the flexibility of moral relativism -- judgment replaces dogma and thus situations can be accounted for where they aren't in christian style fundamentalism-- without the complete lack of philosophical basis of moral relativism. Moral relativism is essentially throwing out the philosophical baby with the dogma bathwater!

If I'm not confusing threads and you have read Atlas Shrugged, did you find fault with the judgment based morality provided in Galt's speech? What did you think of the speech on money given by Francisco Anaconda at the party?

To bring this into highlight, my problem with unions is not that they exist, but that they are able to violate people's rights by interfering with the right of free association and free trade of labor. They can get you fired if you don't join the union and that is unacceptable-- that the law allows this is totally unacceptable.

I've found that the philosophy provided by Atlas makes many difficult questions easier. For, I think a typical liberal (my definition) if they understand the problems with unions, they have qualms and have to just shut down those qualms because they want to believe in "Workers rights". Their propaganda and thinking links these together, along with a lot of hate speech about "union busters" thus they start thinking anybody who criticizes unions just wants to oppress workers.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[WNight]

Sigh. My 'Whole Idea of Economics' may be based on that, if you decide to ignore the other 95% of it.

You really need, and I mean the word NEED here, to stop using the word "logical" and by extension, illogical, until you understand what they mean. "Logical" doesn't just mean something that seems to make sense to you, it means something rigorously provable as the result of something else. A=B, B=C, thus logically, C=A. The things you call logical are not. This is hand in hand with you mistaking a philosophy for the objective truth.

What would you say if you and I were living in a libertarian utopia and you pissed me off such that I decided to use my money to attack you? Pretend that I go to every store in town and threaten economic ruin to anyone who sells you anything, and I go to all the businesses in town and I threaten then with ruin if they hire you. So I leave you, not owning any real property (means of production) without food or work. But I've also threatened to ruin anyone who gives you transportation to leave, so that you're stuck in a town without work, or food, or even a way to go elsewhere. If you starve for lack of food, did you "freely choose" to do so?

This kind of blacklisting goes on in our world, even with laws against it. In a libertarian world where there was no higher power to appeal to what would stop me from ruining you?

Don't forget that all I'm doing is investing my money as I see fit, I'm not actually directly hurting you in any way.

What you need to see is that there are many forms of force that don't involve physical violence.

What proof that some prominent rich people got rich through theft do you need? Will one example do, or do you expect me to prove that *some* did by showing you proof that everyone did? Tell me exactly what you require if you aren't happy with the example (Hearst empire, unreasonable land grants during the civil war era) that I provided.

When will you realize that this isn't the basis for any argument, this is merely a supporting point?

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[BitGeek]

Clearly it is you who does not understand logic.

"What you need to see is that there are many forms of force that don't involve physical violence."

BZZT wrong. The example you provided, absurd as it is, does not involve violence and thus does not involve force. You could merely go to another town.

As if the example were plausible to begin with.

You said rich people got that way by stealing the property- now you say some do. Ok, some -- where some is a very small number-- do. But that's irrelevant. It means nothing.

You just want to call rich people thieves-- illogical and irrational as it is-- and you want to try and take one example and pretend like that's everyone. And the reason you want to do this is cause you want to justify being a THIEF YOURSELF and forcing those people to give you money you haven't earned. If that's not your reason, why bring up this bullshit about how rich people stole their money? Its a lie, and you know it. I've provided the statistics-- all you have to do is go look at the forbes richest people list and see how most of them made their own wealth, or look at the books where they've analyzed the situation such as millionaire mind.

I don't confuse philosophy with objective reality-- I know objective reality, and you are objectively in denial of it-- I've pointed out that rich people don't get that way by theft-- logically, they would be in jail and have their money taken away from them, more often than not. Yet you pretend it isn't true.

And you bring up this absurd idea of someone forcing someone else to starve-- that you have to be that desperate to find some "force" that libertarians allow is just amazing.... all to the ends of servicing your fantasy that people aren't responsible for their own actions because they were "forced" to do them, even when no real force was involved.

Show me a company that bought up all the resources and FORCED people to work for them, and I'll point you to Jimmy Hoffa who firebombed businesses that didn't unionize. I don't think you can find a single example on your part, buy Hoffa's antics are well documented.

Objective reality exists-- you can pretend it doesn't and entertain the fantasies you do. But don't talk to me about logic. I've shown the lillogic of your position more than once, and in my experience irrational people cannot be made to see the light-- they have some desperate insecurity that forces them to be irrational. Fine. So be it.

But we both know the truth.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[WNight]

You're a nut. This is a religious issue for you and you can't see that it's completely cracked. You make as much sense as a guy standing on the street corner waving a "JESUS" sign screaming about how perfect the world will be when we all follow his ideas.

Non-physical force is all too common, that fact that you don't admit to the blatant truth shows that you're afraid of it. It's a hole in your argument. The world wouldn't be any better off under your little scheme because the people with money would still be free to abuse those without. It's no worse than right now, but you can't claim it to be a perfect system while it's got gaping holes.

You also really need to settle the fuck down and try to understand that I'm not advocating anything. Nothing at all. *YOU* are pushing an agenda. Me, I'm just telling you that it's not as perfect as you think. I'm not advocating passing any laws, or ushering in any new social order.

If you want examples of corporate crime look at Enron. If you want historical examples, search for "Robber Baron", "Company Town", and "Land Grant". Cornelius Vanderbilt, the real-world inspiration for Rearden (he invented Steel rails which revolutionized the industry) prefered to ruin opponents financially rather than fight court battles. The Hearst empire was largely funded by the "shady" aquisition of land grants after the civil war and the publishing empire was built into a monopoly by ruining anyone who supported other newspapers. The Kennedy empire has many ties to organized crime and a lot of their money comes from borderline-legal stock manipulation in the period after the '29 crash.

Bill Gates today has simply stolen products from competing companies (Stacker) and waited them out in court until they've died, or sabotaged Windows in such a way as to not work over DR DOS in such a way as to make it appear to be the fault of DR DOS. And there's a reason the saying "DOS ain't done with Lotus don't run" was coined.

None of that is legal, but when you can afford to drag court battles out for ten years or more you find that nobody can afford to sue you, or as the DoJ found out, punish your illegal activities.

As I pointed out, these guys weren't very nice to workers. When you've got a worker hundreds of miles from the nearest city and dependent on you for food and shelter you can fuck him over a fair bit, especially if you have enforcers to deal with anyone trying to unite the workers.

The fact that Jimmy Hoffa used similar rough tactics doesn't invalidate my point that businesses have often done the same or worse. I'm not arguing for any one system, you can't simply point out Jimmy Hoffa and watch my argument crumble.

It doesn't take much of a stretch to find "force that libertarians allow", they allow anything that defends their interests, expecting anything that hurts them to of course be a violation of their human rights.

Look at the hollywood blacklists of McCarthy, where careers were ruined because nobody, anywhere, would hire them. This has happened in many other cases, often non-governmentmal. Piss off one of the robber barons and you'd find out that you couldn't get a job anywhere, literally. If you did, someone would come along and "explain the situation" to your boss who would then fire you or suffer "accidents" or perhaps just be blacklisted themselves.

It wasn't possible to just "go to the next town" because the reach of these guys was basically unlimited and they felt that by making examples of people who pissed them off they'd avoid that sort of thing in the future.

Of course your reading materials, from Forbes and similar places, won't admit this. I'm not saying you need to read socialist newsletters or anything, but as long as you read certain sources only, you're going to get a biased view.

Look at the ammount of old money backing up "new money". Sure, the Kennedy kids made their own money, but would they have if they'd had to start from scratch and pay for their university education? Would some anonymous factory worker have been in a dead-end job if he didn't have to get a job at a young age just to support the family because he dad was killed in a mining collapse, or because the family's savings were wiped out by the bank collapse?

Truly, many people are where they deserve to be. Many rich people did get where they are by working harder and smarter. Many poor people are where they are because they don't try as hard. But not all. Not enough to base a moral philosophy on.

You claim that rich people wouldn't have more power than the poor, basing this on the lack of government, which your statement implies is the sole source of this uneven power. I have shown how power can be based directly on money without government, that means your original point is wrong. You made a connection that wasn't supported by the facts, which seems all too common in your "logic".

Tell me, if you were a business owner in the early 1900s and you spoke out against illegal practices, would you not feel "forced" if your suppliers and customers were compelled to avoid you. If once your business died, nobody would hire you and you couldn't buy anything with your savings? And if the situation would be exactly the same even if you did manage to get to another town... Imagine it with a family and tell me that you wouldn't be forced to back down.

And you think you live in the real world.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[BitGeek]

And you think you live in the real world.

Whatever. I showed the logical flaw in your position. If I'm wrong, you should be able to show me to be wrong logically, rather than resorting to calling me names and listing a long list of conspiracy theories. An example: Your claim that the kennedy's (liberals mind you) had ties to organizaed crime is irrelevant. Its not clear whether its true and it doesn't say a thing about this discussion.

Lets take your example and make it a better one. Say shopkeeper in a small town-- say the towns only general store-- decides not to serve black people because he's a bigot. In a just world, he'd have that right. In your world, he'd be compelled by force to work against his own interests. We both agree that such a policy is irrational-- black people the country over would be angry, his name would be mud, and it would be on CNN within the day. That's the real world-- CNN covers things like that. But it would be his right- he doesn't have to do business with ANYONE. Its in the fucking bill of rights, even. But it would be a really stupid thing to do... cause everyone, black and white, who disagreed with him would go elsewhere. And he certainly wouldn't be stopping black people from buying food, etc. Just only in his store.

Now say he has a chain of stores. You seem to think he could stop black people everywhere, but he wouldn't-- within a day of it hitting CNN some competitor would announce that black people are especially welcome in his stores and our racist idiot will more likely than not be out of business or changing his policies. That's the real world.

Your long list of conspiracy theories-- you even ihnvoke the dreaded "Enron" word, as if Enron meant anything to this discussion. Fraud is a crime and would still be under a just government. Libertarians see fraud as a form of force and would not tolerate it. Are you really so desperate that you have to make up positions to attribute to me in order to knock them down? You really think libertarians see nothing wrong with the actions of enron? Even the implication is an outright lie, or admission of ignorance on your part. I will not grant you the luxury of thinking you don't know what libertarianism is.

Your long list of conspiracy theories only shows that the basis and "reason" (for lack of a better word) for your position is hatred of corporations. This is a common malady of liberals. You hate corporations, and I'm sure you think its because they are evil, but I suspect its because they are successful. They represent what you think you can't have. (Which is only true because you make it true.) The proof of this, of course, is that liberals hate corporations that do not engage in illegal behaviour. For ever enron you guys hate there's a Starbucks which has done nothing wrong, but puts your panties in a wad all over the place.

Hell, the fact they are buying coffee-- that without them would never be sold-- pisses you off because they pay less for it than they charge us when we buy the latte. Yeah, the poor person selling that coffee isn't making as much as they would here in the US, but hey are making more than they would IF STARBUCKS DIDN'T EXIST. Furthermore, you think they were "forced" to sell for a low price because they needed the money-- how idiotic! They CHOSE to sell it because they needed the money. The market sets the prices-- if they want more than their competitors, then they will sell less coffee. If they charge less, they sell more. ITs simple economics.

No, I am beginning to believe your position is that of bigotry and there is no arguing against bigotry. I've provided logic and examples and explanation, and what I've gotten back in return is insults.

IF you had a problem with my logic, you would be able to provide a logical response. That you haven't shows that your problem is not with logical errors on my part.

Re:We need to bring back Guilds..

[WNight]

I called you a nut because you're not arguing with me, you're arguing with some "Liberal", whatever that really means to you. You're attributing to me things that I didn't say.

You wanted a list of people who got rich through criminal acts, I provided one. I *KNOW* it's fraud. It's what you asked for. The children of Ken Lay will be rich even though neither them nor their father did anything to deserve it. This is to show that the criminal acts in the past are still here today. You said that a vanishingly small number of rich people got there through fraud, I think I illustrated that a fairly significant number did. A large percentage? Who knows. But certainly more than statistical noise.

Next, you go on about Liberals, as if they're directly opposed to Libertarians... In the USA it's conservatives who want to pass laws requiring religion in school, forbidding the teaching of evolution, etc, etc... You really need to look at the two-dimensional political chart. "Liberal" and "Conservative" (the tags are pretty silly because they don't represent the views of those labelled that way) are on the left and right side. Libertarians are on the top, fascists on the bottom. The left-right axis is sort of social freedom, the vertical axis is economic freedom. It's a lot more accurate because liberal/conservative have nothing to do with people's economic views. A quick google search should find this.

I say this because I want to say of "... kennedy's (liberals mind you) ..."; What the hell does it matter? Ghandi could commit a crime and it'd still be a crime.

And then. You say I'm anti-corporation... I only mentioned two corporations on my "conspiracy list" as you call it. It's purely a list of those who broke or skirted the law (often with the help of bribes). You asked for the list and I went to compile data on it, don't you dare call it a conspiracy list.

Your example of the racist shopkeeper is a bit beyond my example. The people I named had often pursued more personal vendettas, breaking individuals by threatening people who would deal with them. Few companies are big enough to dangerously discriminate against a whole class of people, but against a few "troublemakers" is easy. You built a strawman that resembled my argument superficially, but you didn't adress the actual issue which is a very rich person taking actions directly against a single poor person. It has been done, you provide no reason to believe that a Libertarian system would prevent it from happening.

Draw a logic chain in your next post. Say "Fact ..." and make it a fact, not opinion, make it something you could back up. Then say "Conclusion ...", show how it's a reasonable conclusion from the facts. That's logic, and proving something with it. Calling me a commie liberal isn't logic.

Go read *my* posts. Don't label me a Liberal, don't tell me I hate corporations. Answer *my* points without resorting to straw-men or misdirection.

well yes

[Trepidity]

They certainly should've given him a nice bonus.

At one time IBM operated in this manner

[pedro]

Ok.. it was the 70's and I was probably buzzed, but I was told by the IBM salesguy who had shown us that neat APL/Basic toteable box they were marketing at the time (51xx?) that anyone who chalked up a patent or significant invention/process improvement got a cut of the profits/savings/royalties that they had created, and due to Blue's pervasiveness, that those perks could add up to some rather princely sums for the contributor.
My take on IBM at the time is that they were exceedingly generous to their employees.
As they are NOW exceedingly generous to US, as the OSS community, it would seem that some of that elder ethos has hung on.
Input?

there's still the same problem....

[jacobb]

...but reversed. if he had the patent and was given fair compensation, what would stop him from selling licenses to other companies, thus not giving the company the monopoly that it paid the inventor for?

the only real way I see it working would be to specify a percentage of revenues for all patent outcomes that the scientist gets, and perhaps specify in the contract that for a period of X years, he could not license the patent to anyone else.

Comments?

probably not

[autopr0n]

since copyrights and patents are not the same theng.

Not really.

[autopr0n]

Actually, photographers are the only group that is true for. If you pay somebody to create something, then it should be yours at the end.

Authors also keep their copyright to their work, of course they usually write first and license to the publishing companies/magazines.

Film companies get a copyright, but when you think about how much work goes into making a film, it makes sense. Music companies get the copyright to their artist's music, but that's just because they've been able to rape musicians for a lot of money.

Re:Not really.

[crawling_chaos]

Authors also keep their copyright to their work

Not if it's work-for-hire, which is a better equivalent of what's going on here. The same is actually true for some photographers, although that means putting them on salary instead of contract, and most employers don't want to incur that expense.

Re:Not really.

[ivan256]

I have been unable to find a photographer who will give up a copyright to their work under work-for-hire. If you ask, they turn down the job. Independant photographers included.

Re:Not really.

[crawling_chaos]

Most newspapers have salaried photographers. They also make heavy use of freelancers. The salaried guys and gals often do lose the rights to their photos, depending on the contract. The salaried folks are often the ones who are just starting out, so they don't have much leverage yet.

I'm getting this info directly from an employee of The Washington Post, so I've got a feeling it's pretty reliable.

What!?

[autopr0n]

The people who never ever come up with a useful invention still get paid by the company.

Or maybe they get fired. I certainly wouldn't keep someone on my payroll if they had never thought up anything even theoretically useful...

And the people who come up with lots also get paid. If they worked on commission, the first group of people would get nothing and the second group would become rich.

Are you honestly saying that intelligent people should subsidize stupid people? If people can't think up shit, they should go flip burgers or something that actually helps society.

Hmm....

[fireboy1919]

Riiigggghhhht...because before that company, Kary Mullis was an intellectual midget who never did anything. And he wouldn't have done anything without getting paid for it.

Lets pretend that scientists like him couldn't work in companies. Recognizing his sheer genius, people would buy him lab equipment if he promised to share his future wealth. Why would they do this even though he had no company? Because he's a freakin' genius.

Then he'd get rich.
And those who invested in him would get rich.
There wouldn't be any worry about HOW to sell it; he built the best mousetrap, and the world would have beaten a path to his door.

All without the benefit of that company.

Try thinking the other way: if Kary Mullis didn't exist, that company wouldn't have lasted very long.

Saying that those who take the risk cause inventions is like saying that those who jump off of buildings cause gravity. Necessity and passion are the mother and father of invention; business is merely an unfortunate side-effect- like the splat at the end of the jump.

Re:Hmm....

[matrim99]

Lets pretend that scientists like him couldn't work in companies. Recognizing his sheer genius, people would buy him lab equipment if he promised to share his future wealth. Why would they do this even though he had no company? Because he's a freakin' genius.
Then he'd get rich.
And those who invested in him would get rich.


Although the geniuses of the world surely have the potential to make "leaps and bounds" type discoveries, that does *not* guarantee a monetary reward to anyone.

There wouldn't be any worry about HOW to sell it; he built the best mousetrap, and the world would have beaten a path to his door.


Umm, dangerous ground there. Remember the "Dot Com New Economy"? The one that touted the Field of Dreams marketing philosophy of "If you build it, they will come"? Believe it or not, there were a lot of geniuses who built a lot of really innovative things in that bubble, and only the ones with a decent, solid compamy behind them saw their products succeed in the market. Those who didn't have that are working elsewhere now, with little to show for their past "mousetraps".

It's fine and well to make the world's best mousetrap, but that mousetrap isn't worth anything until it's a successful product and people can actually buy it, and only then does the inventor get the financial rewards coming to him/her. That takes solid business skills.

without the discovery, there is no new product

[Anonymous Coward]

This argument goes both ways.

Sure, without development, marketing, sales, etc an invention is just an invention, not a product.
But without invention and innovation, there is no new product (at least no profitable product).

The chain of product innovation science->invention->inovation->development->market ing->sales
is MULTIPLICATIVE, not ADDITIVE. If any of those terms is zero, the whole thing is zero.

A common misunderstanding is to give too much credit to the last steps (sales and marketing) because by the time the product gets in their hand, they take it for granted. Then, they can say: "see? before we got involved, this thing
was worthless. We turned it into something valuable, give us the big bonus".

That's why scientists and innovators get fscked
by marketing/sales. Scientist SHOULD unionize
and fight to retain ownership of their own fscking ideas.

The most common scenario is:
1 - you invent something
2 - your employer doesn't feel like turning it into a product and puts your invention on a shelf
3 - you get pissed off and tell them you quit
4 - they tell you that you can't work on anything
similar because THEY own the patent, and it's THEIR proprietary information, not yours. You can't use that information to build products outside the company.
5 - you say "it's my brain"
6 - they say: "in effect, we own a piece of your brain".
7 - you say: "well, if you won't develop and market this thing, at least let me put it out in opens source".
8 - they say: "oh no, why would we give away our valuable intellectual property".
9 - you quit in disgust, your invention never sees the light of days. You realize that 5 years
of your creative life went down the drain and
you are mad as hell.

Ask around you. Every creative techie has a story like this one to tell. The blue LED guy was lucky: at least his invention made it out the dooe, and he landed a nice academic post in the US.

- Anonycous Moward.

Re:without the discovery, there is no new product

[BitGeek]

If course in your little fear mongering mind that would be the "most common scenario".

But in reality, if a company isn't going to makret it they will often sell it to you. If they didn't have a use for it, they wouldn't have spent 5 years working on it. Etc. etc. etc.

Hell, if they didn't want to market it they wouldn't have gone thru the time and expense of patenting it, and you could have quit and walked out with your mind without them really having much of a claim at all.

I understand that people don't understand business, but why post something that is so blatantly wrong and insist its the most common scenario?

...but he deserves more.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I think I should point out that:

1. This was an underground, one-man work done under a pressure from the company to stop him. In fact, this work had pretty much destroyed his career in this company (even AFTER the invention).
2. They didn't know he was working on this and making a significant progress until somebody outside read his paper (which he published secretly as research activity was not welcomed) and asked about it.
3. Although law doesn't forbid it, firing or quitting is quite unrealistic in this part of Japan. Anyone who do would be considered as a loser - not a good reputation to have. It was good for him that he found a great reason to get out - it's really stupid that he had nowhere to go in Japan even after the invention.

That said, even with his lossage, I think he had won. Before this fight, it was not widely known that person who did the invention did have copyright on one's work. It was assumed - just like the air - that company owns everything even without any specific agreement. Now everyone know that they do have a right and does not necessary have to give it away for free upon employment. Nakamura's major goal with this fight was to raise controversy on this copyright issue, and it is now accomplished.

Now, commenting on detail, I won't be surprised if he had signed the thing even without reading a single word on it - there was a time that people believed that company will do you a good if you blindly follow what they tell you to do. So his 20,000yen was probably not paid for the invention itself, but was more like a "bonus" in Japanese way.

In Japan, you get "bonus" twice a year. Everyone get it if anyone gets it. You don't get it for doing exceptional work or such, but company gives it to you to show that they care about you. But telling the truth, it's actually a part of your regular salary - you just get less monthly payment. You can tell because when you make a loan from a bank, it is always suggested to pay more back on month you get your bonus. Ever heard of a "bonus" that is expected to be given every year on same month? Well, this is the one and meaning of the word is really blurring here (though things are changing).

I bet this 20,000yen was given in similar way - not for his invention, but just as some kind of social custom. The company just had to give him the money. On the other hand, the only way for Nakamura to get acknowledgement was by receiving the money. At the time, both of them probably didn't even had in their mind that they were exchanging the invention and the money.

But anyway, he did sign the agreement, and the court judgment is made. I think court decision was fair enough from today's standard, but feel pretty sad because they never mentioned one important piece on this case - history. In Japan, signing an agreement was traditionally not considered that important or critical. It's not that people ignored it - but it's just they "believed" unwritten social contract would protect them more than signed paper would. This was especially true for a relation between employer and employee. Of course, this had never been a truth in the court (but it was so uncommon to use the court in old days), and this is why Nakamura is having a problem right now. I'm expecting more and more "Nakamura"s are following - rebellion against a company that one used to believe as an absolute (but nice) ruler.

Where did V/UV LEDs come from?

[jafuser]

Since we're talking about materials, I am curious, what material is used for the (new?) Violet/UV LEDs? These things are quite nifty, as they actually generate black light (making things flouresce).

I don't have any idea where they came from all of the sudden, but why aren't these at least as newsworthy as the blue LEDs? They have a shorter wavelength, so they should be more useful in applications which demand a higher frequency...

Re:Where did V/UV LEDs come from?

[Drakula]

It's the same basic material system.

Sapporo

[sigwinch]

Ah, Sapporo, just about the biggest can/bottle of beer you can buy in OK that doesn't have "malt liquor" written on it. The gyrations currently being felt in my head were contributed to in a major way by two big-ass cans of Sapporo. That reminds me, I'm out of sake...

OTOH, they're not an efficient use of aluminum--the cans are damn thick.

Obligatory on-topic Nakamura statement: Nakamura's situation is a damn shame. He has done more for the human race than most medium-sized cities. Nichia's failure to reward him is shameful, and as an electrical engineer who designs blue emitters into products, I shall not forget it. Can you say design loss?

His employer

[jsse]

is an idiot. He's the best man around in this field, and if you don't serve him right, he'll look for somebody who does. Even evil empire as we called it does repect their developers ("Developer! Developer! Developer!").

A little bit straying away from the topic, but this explain why opensource is a huge success - the inovations come from the developers, inventors etc., not those who take the fruit of their labours and make money out of them.

Only a few years ago I heard an PHB said "Open Source?! Blah! It's so foolish of them to give their work away for free! Without our marketing and sales their work worth nothing!" (this PHB still works for big blue)

Re:His employer

[Fjord]

Even evil empire as we called it does repect their developers ("Developer! Developer! Developer!").

I'm guessing you mean Microsoft here? Do you think, in the same situation, that MS would give the guy $2B. Do you think they would give him $162 dollars?

Personally, I don't. Then again, I don't sympathise with this guy very much. I don't work for places that don't allow me to retain my ideas in some fashion (my current workplace requires I document them and work on them on my spare time with my own equipment. my previous employer owned rights in the medical vertical market only unless an exception was approved, which I was fine with). My understanding of the MS employee agreement is that it is not liberal enough for me to work there (though it is just hearsay).

None taken.

[Kibo]

Scientific American did a profile on him and his unbelieveably brilliant work. He solved the problems everyone else was trying to solve with mountians of money with little more than table scrapps. His work was the fruit of his singular pursuit and almost inhuman determination. The support his company gave him, if you can call it that, was limited enough that most research universities could have made room for it, to say nothing of how easy it would have been for him to get a government grant with some of his results with an all but abandoned technique.

There's no question he company should own some of the patent. But his contribution was worth a hell of a lot more than $162 dollars US. If that's your reward for brilliance. Your blood sweat and tears forcing a brilliant concept down the throat of a company that doesn't fully appreciate it, finding somehow to not just keep the project alive, but to make it a world leader with a 6 month head start, in the semiconductor industry no less, and then have them keep the billions of dollars, cut you a check for a cool 162 bucks (before taxes), and a pat on the back, that's incentive to you, or anyone? I hope he gets all that's comming to him. His accomplishment is impressive. When viewed from the perspective of how little he did it with, it's simply astonishing. I'd hate to have as a research advisor, you're not going to get much sympathy if you say something can't be done.

At the very least...

[emil]

...Nichia should endow a chair at a major research institute and arrange to have Nakamura granted tenure.

Nakamura's profession is scientific research. If relations have soured between Nichia and Nakamura to the extent that direct cooperation between them is no longer possible, then at the very least Nichia should arrange a setting where Nakamura can continue his research elsewhere.

Lots of companies endow chairs at major universities, and there are significant tax benefits for doing so. Nakamura also has obviously wasted a large part of his career on this pointless lawsuit, and might welcome such an opportunity to return to his passion.

Even if Nakamura has no interest in such an offer, the PR value for Nichia would be inestimable... right now their PR position seems very, very bad to me.

Nichia, be a magnanimous victor.

Poor Scientist...

[Perdo]

He will only get the $960,000 (10,000,000 swedish crown, 118,490,495 Yen) prize.

His company may have screwed him but at least he'll get the prize money.

Plus, a Nobel Prize looks pretty good on your resume after you ditch your dead beat employer.

I'm supprised this wasn't settled

[ces]

Surely Nichia could have paid him the equivalent of a couple of million US in return for being quiet and going away. Before his breakthrough Nichia was a small chemical manufacturer specializing in phosphor compounds, afterward they became the world leader in blue, violet, and UV LEDs and laser diodes.

Perhaps innovative, but...

[fireboy1919]

not useful. Unlike a mousetrap.

Plus, you're wrong. The internet was about a new economic system. An economic system is not an invention. Being brilliant in that is being a brillaint businessman. I can't think of any internet businesses that are successful because of an amazing product that they sell. They're doing well because of their business model.

Conversely, I can't think of any internet business that went under in spite of their amazing products; they went under because of their stupid business model.

The only two technological innovations I can think of (and these pale in comparison to Kary Mullis' idea) are Yahoo's idea of HAVING a search engine, and Google's idea of having a heuristic-based categorization of searches. And these two ideas have prospered...

Perhaps you could come up with a counter example. Let me ask you this for whatever example you hold: could the product that failed have a profound, obvious and life-changing effect on at least 1,000 people? 'Cause if not, it'll succeed based upon its marketing, not its usefulness. The example would just not be a good enough mousetrap.

Re:OK, I read atlas shrugged,

[BitGeek]

Yeah, you didn't really pay attention to the book it seems.

There are 5 or so heros in the book because each one is different in an important way, philosophically. Rearden totally screws up when he gives up his metal to the thugs, etc. She shows errors and flaws in all of her heros. She also shows goodness and variations in thought in all of the bad guys. For instance, dagny's brother isn't evil, he's just incompetent.

I find it interesting that all of the criticism of atlas shrugged by apparently reasonable people (I'm excluding the christian fanatics and socialsits) focuses on how bad they thought the prose was-- completely subjectve stuff, as you concede. I liked the way it was written, and it is that long because she fully fleshes out the philosophy in detail AND explains why it is relevant to the real world.

The interesting thing is initially I thought the book was unrealistic, but by the end of it, and especially in the intervening years, I've come to see that all of the anti-human peoiple she illustrated exist in the real world. And other than some speculative science that hasn't come to pass and stuff like making colorado a rich oil state, she accurately represents the real world.

Hell its not uncommon for people on these very forums to quote the book without having ever read it because they are thinking and spouting the same falsehoods that characters in the book do.

If you are a libertarian, you can't say her philosophy doesn't work in the real world-- there is nothing anti-libertarian in her philosophy and most of modern libertarianism embraces it. Hell, at its core (ignoring peripheral issues) they are the same philosophy.

sure thing!

[Erris]

Scientists should unionize - they typically so involved in their work that they end up getting the *shaft* monetarily, while MBA monkeys soak up all the profits.

What union do the MBA monkeys belong too? Oh, I see.

How many dot-coms would still be in the black?

[SgtChaireBourne]

How many businesses that have 'downsized', that is issued mass firings, or just plan gone bankrupt would still be in the black if managment compensation were on par with employee compensation?

According to Businessweek, average executive compensation is 531 times higher than average hourly employee compensation. Cost-wise, that's 1 FTE for a manageer {sic} and 530 FTEs to entropy. That's really got to cut into the bottom line.

I bet even after hiring staff to cook lunch or reduce the general workload, there's plenty of that 530 FTE left over.

Re:OK, I read atlas shrugged,

[BitGeek]

In the real world, however, there are many people and businesses who will use unethical methods or other means to gain profits. ....
She didn't write about these types of businesspeople,

The hell she didn't. Thats what makes me wonder if you really got the book. I'm not trying to be insulting, but I don't see how you could have missed this. One of the great examples of an unethical businessman is Orren Boyle trying to steal Reardon metal. She showed businesspeople that can be unethical as well. She never said that business people are somehow inherently ethical.

Who would you rather have influencing your life? A government elected by the people (as flawed as that may be) and accountable to the people? Or an edifice of a company answerable only to the shareholders and board of directors?

There is no question-- with businesses you are free to not do business with them. You are free to do business with their competition or start your own business in competition with them.

Businesses, generally, don't use guns to enforce their will on you.

Government, on the other hand, is completely unaccountable. Government uses guns to enforce their will on people. Government is not answerable to market forces.

All a politician has to do is keep the thin veneer of competence going and people will be mollified. but if you sell someone a defective car, they will go elsewhere.

You get your house blown up by a bunch of thugs serving a drug warrent that got the address wrong (never mind that the criminalization of drugs violates human rights to begin with) and you have NO RECOURSE.

You get screwed over by a business and you can sue them. The government? You can't generally sue, and you definitely can't sue the federal government.

This is why when you go to a business you get decent service-- competition is enough that if you don't provide decent service you go out of business.

But have you ever heard of the DMV being "Excellent" to deal with? Have you ever heard of the government providing decent service? Hell, we just lost $50 million in property here because the local fire department was not providing the coverage it should, and had KNOWN THIS FOR 5 years! What's your recourse?

IF you have an insurance company that doesn't pay its claims, you can sue them. You pay taxes for fire coverage but if you don't get it, you're SOL.

You go to a private company and they will sell you an annuity agreement. IF they don't keep up their end of the bargain they can be sued, furthermore they are watched and how they manage the money is watched so that if they mismanage it, they will be prevented from it.

But the social security program- which was sold as an annuity benefit- is managed in such a way that a private company doing so would have been sued out of existence for violating their fiduciary responsibility. The federal government just dips its hands in the till whenever funds are tight.

Social security is a great example-- there is a direct private comparison, and people have known about it for a long time.... yet they have not gotten financial responsibility from the government in that regard. IF you have more control over the government, why is the SS fund still mismanaged and going broke? When was the last time you heard of a major insurer going broke and leaving its customers empty handed? Its pretty rare.

I'm not an anarchist who wants to eliminate government, but government should be limited and ONLY uses where it is the BEST solution to a given problem. Not used for every situation. There is no reason the government needs to be mismanaging rail service with Amtrack or the USPS, or even dealing with Social Security.

As we have seen in Florida and many states before and since then, the election system is rigged- -hell its flat out obviously rigged as the two parties have set it up so that only their candidates can get on the ballot. We used to laugh at the USSR when they had voting but all the candidates were party choices-- yet that's exactly what we have here. The differences between the Democrats and Republicans are small enough to be tow halves of the same single party, and we only are allowed to vote for their candidates.

The answer is clear. There are businesses that act poorly or screw up, but they tend not to survive. Government fraud, waste and abuse goes on for decades... and you have no recourse.