LED Forty Years Older Than Thought

LED lover writes "The discovery of the LED is usually credited to four US groups in 1962, but an unrecognized Russian genius got there forty years before. Oleg Losev even filed a patent on using his device for long range communications, and wrote to Einstein to ask for help with the theory — but got no reply."

Comments

How often does this happen?

[Reverse Gear]

I wonder how many very useful ideas like this one there is lying around right now? Probably quite a few.
According to the conspiracy people things similar to this happen all the time, with the big cooperations making sure that for example things to replace the fossil fuels does never get publicly known, I doubt there is very much truth in this, but this little story might make me think just a little more of the conspiracy theories.
If Einstein didn't react to this, I wonder how many other great discoveries that just perish because no one reacts to them?

I don't blame Einstein, I bet there was a lot of more or less intelligent nut cases who contacted him with all kinds of "great ideas" and "energy machines" all the time, had he been reacting to it all he would probably have had far less time to work on his own theories.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I'm as anti-corporation as anybody- but I don't think inventions are supressed on purpose. I actually think it's one of the more inefficient consequences of a free market- where money and brains are very rarely matched together enough to bring products to market fast enough. In fact, as time goes on and the standard of living becomes more expensive, brains and money will become MORE mismatched, not less, as many brilliant inventors are only brilliant for a 30 year window between the ages of 10 and 40 (peaking at 21) and then spend several decades struggling to get their brilliant ideas to market. With the cost of living going up, this will only get worse- as people at the begining of their career earn a lot less than people at the end of their career. The Venture Capital (or Vulture Capital) game can short circuit this somewhat, of course, but the problem is still matching up the old money people with the young inventors when they don't even move in the same social circles.

Re:How often does this happen?

[dattaway]

I wouldn't call LED's an invention. Light emitted by a diode is a common side effect, usually undesirable. Glass diodes have a problem if exposed to light, will generate a voltage like a solar cell. This is bad in audio and RF circuits when you want minimal noise.

Open up a transistor or diode and you can get a few hundred millivolts off the surface. Some diode junctions will transmit a red or infrared light.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Oh, and before anybody points out that this SPECIFIC invention was under Leninist/Stalinist Russia, I don't consider their form of communism to be very different than a free market. In fact, thier version of communism might be considered to be even worse when it comes to this particular property of the free market- a free market with a single Venture Capitalist (the state party chairman) through whom ALL requests for money to develop an invention must go through. The exact opposite would be the form of communism The Oregon Project (see my JE, I don't want to bother to link to it here) envisions- where anybody can request resources from the central AI, and if The Project can afford it, the inventor will get those resources to develop their product and free publicity on The Project's intranet so that others can "buy" their product immediately from the central AI.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Waffle Iron]

Light emitted by a diode is a common side effect, usually undesirable.

While using a glass diode in my 150-in-1 kit, I independently discovered bright white LEDs about 30 years ago. The only problem is that the light only lasted about 1/2 second, and then it was followed by a little puff of smoke.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot! E.g. refrigeration, including Air Conditioning, was invented long time ago http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigeration#First_r efrigeration_systems/.

One of the first "modern" refrigeration systems was dismissed as blasphemy, and was trashed in the media by an ice merchant http://www.smithsonianmagazine.com/issues/2002/jul y/object.php/ who had a vested interest in shipping ice to warm places instead of making the ice on the spot.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Looks like you invented the SED. Did you patent it?

Re:How often does this happen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it your theory that people should isolate themselves in communities of 500 and not benefit from each others work (ban trade of services and goods)? And yeah exchanging ideas is a form of service trade, taking away jobs from LED inventors.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Harmonious Botch]

I'm as pro-corporation as anybody- but I don't think inventions are supressed on purpose, either. One of the beauties of a free market is that brains and money can get matched together so readily. ( Imagine an inventor trying to get a job in some othe part of Stalinist Russia where you had to have the government's permision to move )

It costs more to supress an invention than to market it. Suppose corporation A and corp B are bidding for the proverbial great-invention-by-a-lonely-genius. Corp A wants to develop it, and corp B wants to supress it. Corp A can bid more because they intend to make a profit on it even after development expenses. So their net cost to buy is lower. Also, they get to use the patents on the technology to cut B out of the market.

Re:How often does this happen?

[zero_offset]

a free market with a single Venture Capitalist (the state party chairman) through whom ALL requests for money to develop an invention must go through

You have a... "unique" definition of the word "free".

Re:How often does this happen?

[WED Fan]

I'm not anti-corporation. I love corporations, capitalism, and money. But, one of the main reasons ideas like this get buried is because the person explaining the idea is incapable of explaining it to those who would back him/her. Call it PHB syndrome.

Saw this at HP. Someone comes up with a brilliant piece of technology. It goes nowhere. Two years later, another person with some added marketing ability comes up with the same idea and it takes off. Then the first person says, "But, I came up with that, here are the drawings and emails." Sure enough, he did, but it was so misunderstood at the time that nobody could grasp the idea.

Also, placing yourself in a good position to be heard helps. One guy at HP was a world class crackpot. For every good idea he had, he was flooding his managers with 100 ideas that ran the gamout from Rube Goldberg, conspiracies, implementation prohibitive schemes to down-right illegal-by-the-laws-of-physics-and-animal-husbandr y. Needless to say, he was ignored most of the time.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Brandybuck]

I actually think it's one of the more inefficient consequences of a free market- where money and brains are very rarely matched together enough to bring products to market fast enough.

Do you really think government control can match money and brains any better? We can barely get politicians smart enough to wipe their own asses, but you want to turn over the economy to them? Hah! The free market may not be an inefficient allocator of goods, but it runs rings around any other system that's been tried.

Re:How often does this happen?

[polar red]

And when corp B has an interest in selling its more expensive, more lucrative invention that predates this invention ? Or what if ALL relevant companies have an interest to use the older technology - like say the oil and car companies have in petrol ?

Re:How often does this happen?

[jackspenn]

You are an idiot. The reason this guy's idea was lost is that under communism there is no market place of ideas.

So a Russian invents an LED and the communist government officials who control all light bulb production cannot get their head around it. The guys who make electronic devices that could use it, continue to make devices as the people have always made them, because there is no reason to try something new. Under collectivist ideologies (like socialism and communism) there is nothing to be personally gained or lost in an exploration of something new.

This is yet another example of why socialism and communism work against the greater good they claim to support.

So the idea dies under the Soviets.

In the US, the LED is discovered and people try to make use of LEDs and other inventions in the pursuit of money. Power saving devices stem from this decades old idea, and every year its usefulness is expanded upon.

To invent something is not enough, if you want to prove your value to society, you must make an invention that is wanted by others; wanted so much that people will pay for it.

This is yet another example of how capitalism advances the greater good.

Re:How often does this happen?

[dattaway]

I found that reverse biasing a LED with a higher voltage (with resistor, of course,) say 12 volts, they will give out a soft, white light.

Re:How often does this happen?

[hcdejong]

Pfft. Any material (semiconductor or otherwise) can be made to emit smoke. It's just a matter of applying enough power.

Re:How often does this happen?

[smithmc]

  I don't blame Einstein, I bet there was a lot of more or less intelligent nut cases who contacted him with all kinds of "great ideas" and "energy machines" all the time, had he been reacting to it all he would probably have had far less time to work on his own theories.

Besides, Einstein was a physicist, not an engineer. Perhaps he should have been talking to Norbert Wiener, or Vannevar Bush, if he were interested in applications.

Re:How often does this happen?

[The_REAL_DZA]

You invented SED's (smoke-emitting-diodes) 30 years ago and didn't tell anybody?!?!

Re:How often does this happen?

[green1]

the tricky part is getting the smoke back in to the item ;)

Re:How often does this happen?

[The_REAL_DZA]

Do you really think government control can match money and brains any better?

No, in fact they're doing a better-than-decent job of separating me from my money (not that I'm all that brainy, but still...)

Re:How often does this happen?

[smellsofbikes]

The company I work for is making controllable-color LED's (by making tricolor LED drivers.) We have a sayings: any cheap LED can be a white LED... for a tenth of a second.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Brandybuck]

Let me clarify a bit. The problem most people have with the free market is that they think it is a system. It is not a system, it is the lack (or relative lack) of a system. The free market is merely an economy with a relative lack of government interventions and controls. Every other "system" requires the hand of government. Planning committees, bureaucratic trade agreement agencies, and various sorts of economic czars and their police enforcement arms.

Every non free-market solution requires the hand of government. Are you that trustworthy of government to hand them the reins of the economy? Some of you think George Bush is the stupidest person ever to be born, yet you want his government to control livelihood. Others of you think Nancy Pelosi is an utter idiot, yet you want her government to be in charge of your money. What gives Kerry or Thompson or Edwards or Obama or Romney or Clinton any special insight into your lives that you feel they are capable of running it better than you can yourself.

Any "system" other than the free market is a system that gives control of your life to vain and muddleheaded politicians.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Anonymous Coward]

And then he invented a home computer and they decided he was *really* whacked so he took it and created the multi-billion-dollar company in his garage. Right?

Re:How often does this happen?

[Mercedes308]

I don't believe that to be strictly accurate. The Soviets currency wasn't money, but power and influence. The more you provided for the state the more benefits you received from it's positive attention.

Although the economic and political system of Soviet Russia at that time was vastly wasteful, often making ridiculous decisions and was just about to enter into the period of the great purges, that doesn't necessarily mean that all innovation was completely stifled. Mr Losev might have been a notorious hack and was routinely ignored, or just couldn't explain himself, or failed to garner the attention of the right person. Plus also Russia in the 20's and early 30's wasn't exactly a hive of furious technical development. This was before the World War II and the Cold War after it were yet to happen, it was during these periods that innovation in Soviet Russia was often quite remarkable.

Perhaps had he survived the Siege of Leningrad and submitted his findings in the 50's he might have been better received.

Re:How often does this happen?

[cluckshot]

I wonder how many very useful ideas like this one there is lying around right now?

The short answer is a new one every day!

Working on the energy problem I have become aware every day how things can be known and yet nothing done about them. I know of 11 technologies that all work quite well and all of them produce energy without fuel. It is like pulling teeth and as popular as do it yourself root canal work to get investors to pony up to get any work done. Then come the "Physics Police." These are people like the loons who moderate down any comment that points out any theoretical flaws in their belief system. Don't believe me? Every time I disclose that something is wrong with the Einstein SR theory I get the "Troll" whacked on me. I am only trying to help people learn what is really going on. That is neither troll nor unfriendly.

Just to be fair for the guys who keep saying that such is not possible. I know of 3 devices that generate electricity from solid state devices and use no fuel. I know of 2 fully built and working electric motor designs. One is 7:1 over unity and the other is 3.5 over unity. All in all I would say that there is substantial evidence that the Physics Police don't know what they are talking about.

Spare the heckling about if you can do this.... Like any other technology this stuff takes time and money. It also is quite tedious. No! I didn't invent these technologies though I know how to use them. The players in this are not minor players either. There are some really big players in the field already. This is all coming in good time. Well sometime anyway. I suspect later than sooner.

Re:How often does this happen?

[zippthorne]

It is also commonly misunderstood. You cannot have a command economy. It is impossible. The free market and its invisible hand are always present, no matter what you do, except on very small scales. The best you can ever hope to do is influence the costs somewhat, and drive the free market in the direction you'd like, but even here, the free market is better than the internet at routing around damage, and you might just end up driving the free market in a direction precisely contrary to your intentions. For instance, Prohibition.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Mercedes308]

And yet not a single link or name was put forward in that entire post.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Johnboi Waltune]

With all due respect, making baseless claims about what "you know of" doesn't have the power to compel. You should back up your claims of fuelless electricity-generating devices and electric motor designs with enough evidence that someone could look at it and decide for themselves whether or not to agree with you.

Re:How often does this happen?

[WED Fan]

Read the parent, he started his by saying that was he tended to anti-corporation. His was a response to the "conspiracy theory" angles mentioned before his. Sometimes a good thread history is order.

Re:How often does this happen?

[WorseThanNormal]

I wonder if it is simply the amount of "data" we are confronted with each day. I remember reading about a Chinese book on Confucism published around before Galeleio was born. One of the lines in the book essentially said "a body in motion tends to stay in motion." But the idea never caught on because there were so many books being published (the Chinese had printing presses way before Europeans) that they were essentially being given away for free on street corners, and very few people (and probably none of influence) even read this book. Though you would think it was special in someway since it was preserved till modern times. Just a thought.

Re:How often does this happen?

[maxume]

I'm not real sure the economy would function better without government security and currency. (I can see where private currency would work, I'm just not sure it would work better...)

Re:How often does this happen?

[maxume]

You can power anything with imagination, it just makes it harder to sell.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Talla]

Do you really think government control can match money and brains any better?

Thanks to government regulation we have had only GSM pretty much all the time in Europe. Because everyone focused solely on that system, Europe was way ahead of the US in every aspect of mobile phone use for a long time. Enforcing standards can be very good for society.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Isn't it your theory that people should isolate themselves in communities of 500 and not benefit from each others work (ban trade of services and goods)?

One of many theories- I don't pretend to know which is correct. The one I'm working on now is the "pool resources to buy a commune" theory.

And yeah exchanging ideas is a form of service trade, taking away jobs from LED inventors.

Yes it is. I didn't say that the inefficency is neccessarily bad, just inefficient.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Do you really think government control can match money and brains any better?

Only if anonymity was illegal and that government control was a nearly omnipresent artificial intelligence programmed to treat everybody equally :-).

We can barely get politicians smart enough to wipe their own asses, but you want to turn over the economy to them?

A government doesn't need to be made up of human politicians.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you submit a over-intellectuallized lecture with a bunch of 50-cent words and then suggest that your opinion is "humble"?

Re:How often does this happen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really think government control can match money and brains any better?

Isn't that how Universities work? /not kidding

Re:How often does this happen?

[pclminion]

By 1927, Einstein's interest in quantum mechanics was strongly waning. It was during this general time period that he developed his rather militant views on the interpretations of quantum collapse and uttered the famous quote "God does not play dice." His work on general relativity was coming strongly to the forefront as physicists started to apply its mathematical principles in earnest to a wide range of problems. The search for a grand unified theory of all forces would essentially consume the remainder of his lifetime.

He undoubtedly received the article and read it. He may have even found it interesting. But it wasn't where he was "at" in his physics career, so to speak.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Anonymous Coward]

"One of the beauties of a free market is that brains and money can get matched together so readily. ( Imagine an inventor trying to get a job in some othe part of Stalinist Russia where you had to have the government's permision to move )"

And what is the TSA no-fly list? If you don't have photo ID, and you're on your government's watch-list, you have no more frredom to fly than in Stalinist Russia. Of course you can take the Grayhound, but it's only a matter of time...

Re:How often does this happen?

[JazzyMusicMan]

We can barely get politicians smart enough to wipe their own asses...

Or chew and swallow their own pretzels and beer...

Re:How often does this happen?

[Anonymous Coward]

"the person explaining the idea is incapable of explaining it to those who would back him"

Galois is a good example of this - no doubt there are many others.

Re:How often does this happen?

[kayditty]

According to the conspiracy people things similar to this happen all the time, with the big cooperations making sure that for example things to replace the fossil fuels does never get publicly known, I doubt there is very much truth in this, but this little story might make me think just a little more of the conspiracy theories.

the evidence is right in your fat, disgusting, capitalist face (no, I'm not a conspiracy theorist or extreme communist or anarchist; I'm just making fun of you, nerd).

AM vs FM
CDs vs MP3s (not so successful)

Re:How often does this happen?

[danimrich]

Go ahead, write a scientific paper on what you found, and send it to a couple of peer-reviewed journals to see if you can get it published. If you think that all the physicists you deal with don't know what they're talking about, you're probably wrong.

Re:How often does this happen?

[ConceptJunkie]

A government doesn't need to be made up of human politicians.

Look at the U.S., it's run by a bunch of self-serving, power-grubbing chordates who'd sell the chemicals in their grandmothers' bodies for a handful of votes.

Seriously though... um... you know I don't have anything serious to say. I just wanted to be obnoxious.

Heh, chordates.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Moofie]

The corollary disadvantage, of course, being that nobody is allowed to come up with a better idea for mobile phones, because if it ain't GSM it ain't going to be installed in Europe.

As with so many things, it's not so cut and dried, is it?

Re:How often does this happen?

[dasunt]

Fuck that.

If he has "over-unity" devices that work, start selling power back to the power companies. If they get suspicious, attach an old solar cell to your roof.

Use the money from that to keep ramping up the scale until you are a power company. Or do electric car conversions. Or whatnot.

For the record, I'm extremely skeptical of over-unity energy claims. But I do want to point out that a device doesn't have to be scientifically accepted before it makes its owner a ton of money.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Moofie]

"Only if anonymity was illegal and that government control was a nearly omnipresent artificial intelligence programmed to treat everybody equally "

You get to work on that, mmmkay? Let me know how it works for you.

*cough* Skynet *cough*

Re:How often does this happen?

[Anonymous Coward]

But, one of the main reasons ideas like this get buried is because the person explaining the idea is incapable of explaining it to those who would back him/her. Call it PHB syndrome.

You're calling Einstein a PHB?

Re:How often does this happen?

[danimrich]

If you can build your device and prove that it works, it's quickly gonna be scientifically accepted.

But those devices that aren't scientifically accepted, but still earn their owner a ton of money, are usually the ones that don't work!

Re:How often does this happen?

[DragonWriter]

The problem most people have with the free market is that they think it is a system.

It is a system of allocating goods and services. Pretending it is not is not helpful. Further, real critiques of particular policies sold as "free market" is usually based, ultimately, on the belief that the conditions which, even theoretically, make the free market work are not present in the specific context under discussion. Free market fundamentalists tend to be, or pretend to be, ignorant of those conditions.

It is not a system, it is the lack (or relative lack) of a system. The free market is merely an economy with a relative lack of government interventions and controls.

No, its not. As usually used, it is a system with a very particular kind of government intervention and control, to wit, strong enforcement of "property" and "contract", with minimal or no consideration of public costs and benefits in the process. A "system" without a government control of distribution of goods and services is anarchy, not a free market. The two are decidedly not the same.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I like money though." "Can't believe you also like money!"

Re:How often does this happen?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

*cough* The Australia Project *cough* One doesn't have to make the same design mistakes as the dystopian version, you know.

Re:How often does this happen?

[schematix]

Pfft. Any material (semiconductor or otherwise) can be made to emit smoke. It's just a matter of applying enough power.

I think you need to take a course in sarcasm detection algorithms.

Re:How often does this happen?

[servognome]

I actually think it's one of the more inefficient consequences of a free market- where money and brains are very rarely matched together enough to bring products to market fast enough.

I wouldn't call it an inefficiency; it does stifle some innovation, at the same time it also reduces waste of capital on unworkable, or not-yet-ready ideas.
Greed will always seek out brains, they have the new ideas needed to make more money. The problem is brains aren't as smart as they think they are, often not being able to fully put the idea into context - "Segway will change the face of transportation."
 

In fact, as time goes on and the standard of living becomes more expensive, brains and money will become MORE mismatched, not less, as many brilliant inventors are only brilliant for a 30 year window between the ages of 10 and 40 (peaking at 21) and then spend several decades struggling to get their brilliant ideas to market.

A fixed standard of living is not more expensive, though the average standard of living might be as we keep adding new things we "need."
Also, the cost to get things to market has gone down significantly. Manufacturing and marketing are increasingly becoming commoditized. I can get more information, build prototypes, communicate, and even market my ideas faster and cheaper than before.
 

The Venture Capital (or Vulture Capital) game can short circuit this somewhat, of course, but the problem is still matching up the old money people with the young inventors when they don't even move in the same social circles.

If the dotcom era taught us anything, it was you don't have to be in the same social circles to get funding for ideas. You do, however, need to be able to put your great idea in an economic context, and sufficiently communicate it to others.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Prune]

Wow, you're pretty dumb. It's not that the LED is glowing white (that's not possible), but that it's so bright that it's saturating all of your three cones (the response curves of the cones overlap significantly).

Re:How often does this happen?

[Attila Dimedici]

You are asking for a HUMAN to design a system that doesn't have the flaws of humans?????? You mean you are going to trust that Tom(or Dick, or Harry, or whoever) over there didn't put something into the computer system to favor him and his over you and yours? Or are you asking me to trust that you didn't put something into the system to favor you and yours over me and mine? Even if they didn't put something in like that, how do you know that they got it right? Oh, I know, we'll get Congress to check it out. Yeah, right.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Prune]

Er, by cones obviously I'm referring to the conical photosensitive cells in your retina, each of which has response curves centered around different parts of the spectrum (roughly R, G, and B), but the side lobes have very significant overlap. If the light is bright, it can saturate all three while still being monochromatic, as long as its color is at a wavelength where all three cone curves have a non-zero value (which is almost all of the color range you can see).

Re:How often does this happen?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

You are asking for a HUMAN to design a system that doesn't have the flaws of humans??????

Actually, no- we already have expert systems that do data mining on their own to find new efficiencies. This can either be used to increase oppression or dcrease oppression. But it will be done eventually because the decisions politicians and bureaucrats make are low skilled decisions- not much different from any other if-then-else tree.

You mean you are going to trust that Tom(or Dick, or Harry, or whoever) over there didn't put something into the computer system to favor him and his over you and yours?

Open Source Software shows how to take care of THAT problem.

Or are you asking me to trust that you didn't put something into the system to favor you and yours over me and mine?

I don't, I'm asking you to peer review the code and insist that this be open source. If you don't, it will happen anyway- but it will be closed source and you won't be able to do anything other than trust the guy at your door with the gun who has been ordered there by the machine.

Even if they didn't put something in like that, how do you know that they got it right?

By actually looking at and reviewing the source code yourself?

Re:How often does this happen?

[servognome]

And when corp B has an interest in selling its more expensive, more lucrative invention that predates this invention ?

Only foolish corporations would surpress inventions for any long period of time. Unless the company is in fundamental research, their competitors will have access to similar building blocks and can also develop the invention independently, or with people changing jobs, working with similar customers, getting drunk at trade shows - information gets leaked. To ensure competitive advantage a company will need to publish and protect.

Or what if ALL relevant companies have an interest to use the older technology - like say the oil and car companies have in petrol ?

Car companies are highly competitive, if they thought an electric car would make them more money they would build them (look what they are all doing now). It's not like car companies ignored electric, they have been investing for years on the technology, they just didn't spend the large amounts to bring it to consumers until there was a willing market.

Re:How often does this happen?

[servognome]

A government doesn't need to be made up of human politicians.

Now I know what side you be on during the robot uprising.... you're dead to me.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Attila Dimedici]

The problem is I don't have the level of expertise necessary to tell if the code does only what you say it does. Sorry, I'm not going to take your word for it. Do you really think that it is reasonable to expect the majority of people to have the expertise to review the code? If they don't aren't you afraid that they will accept your idea of this computerized system...and then choose the one that you don't like? The one that some other "expert" claims is better and cleaner than the one you favor? You know, sort of like the way that most people choose to use MS Windows?

Re:How often does this happen?

[mc6809e]

I actually think it's one of the more inefficient consequences of a free market- where money and brains are very rarely matched together enough to bring products to market fast enough.

You've got to be kidding.

Here we have a story about a gifted scientist with a useful device languishing under an anti-free-market, totalitarian state and you turn it into some argument against the free-market.

Incredible.

The problem for the scientist is that he lived in planned economy. Whatever dreams he had for his device, they didn't match the state's plan and so he was legally prevented from really doing anything with his device.

Under a free market, if you really have some brilliant idea, there's plenty of money out there willing to help you get it to market.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

The problem is I don't have the level of expertise necessary to tell if the code does only what you say it does. Sorry, I'm not going to take your word for it.

Ignorance can be remedied- it just takes study.

Do you really think that it is reasonable to expect the majority of people to have the expertise to review the code?

With a truly open system where knowledge is free for the taking? Only if they're not lazy. But then again, I bet you don't know how the computer module in your car works either- yet you trust it with your life every day.

If they don't aren't you afraid that they will accept your idea of this computerized system...and then choose the one that you don't like?

So what? As long as I'm free to leave and emmigrate to somewhere else, what does it matter to me? I can let other people live their lives just fine.

The one that some other "expert" claims is better and cleaner than the one you favor? You know, sort of like the way that most people choose to use MS Windows?

Fine with me- let other people go to hell in their own way. The neat thing about a computer being in charge of government is you can actually have a distributed COUNTRY.....

Re:How often does this happen?

[mc6809e]

I don't consider their form of communism to be very different than a free market.

That's because you're a complete and utter moron.

In a free market, people don't have to go to some venture capitalist or some state party chairman. They are free to go to family, friends, a private bank, or take a mortgage out on their house for funding.

Under communism they have no option but to go through the state for funding. If the state says "no", then tough shit. Private enterprise is illegal.

And your idea for a central AI is terrible. There is no way a central anything can effectivly allocate resources since there is no way for it to measure the subject value judgements of a society's participants. It has no way to objectively compute the utility of any allocation decision.

Re:How often does this happen?

[blueturffan]

I thought that was a DED - Dark Emitting Diode.

Not to be confused with the LER -- Light Emitting Reisitor. Also a bad thing...

Re:How often does this happen?

[Attila Dimedici]

Sorry, I think you are a fool. There is no way to get around that people are people. A computer is created by people, it will not be superior to people. The probability is that it will e inferior, but the best case scenario is that it will be no better than people.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

In a free market, people don't have to go to some venture capitalist or some state party chairman. They are free to go to family, friends, a private bank, or take a mortgage out on their house for funding.

Only if their family & friends are wealthy, their banker is into lending money to small business startups (9 out of 10 fail, remember), or they are stupid enough to want to take a big chance on losing their house. MOST people don't have those advantages in a free market- most people barely make enough to live on in a free market.

And your idea for a central AI is terrible. There is no way a central anything can effectivly allocate resources since there is no way for it to measure the subject value judgements of a society's participants. It has no way to objectively compute the utility of any allocation decision.

Tell it to Wal*Mart- who has effectively been using a central AI to make stocking decisions for it's stores for the past 5 years, based on a huge amount of sales data. It's possible, it's happening even in the "free market".

Re:How often does this happen?

[johansalk]

Suppose corporation A and corp B are bidding for the proverbial great-invention-by-a-lonely-genius. Corp A wants to develop it, and corp B wants to supress it. Corp A can bid more because they intend to make a profit on it even after development expenses. So their net cost to buy is lower.

I think you got this the other way round. The reason corp B wants to suppress it, usually, is because they already are making profits from a product that this invention could disrupt, whereas corp A only hopes to make them at some uncertain future point if they manage to take customers from corp B, after what will probably be considerable costs to bring it to market and let it be known. Who do you think can afford to bid more again? Corp B of course; they already have the money and can access more even 'cos they have a proven revenue stream.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Sorry, I think you are a fool. There is no way to get around that people are people.

Not all people are people. I should know- I'm one of the 1/186 people who aren't. Autism is considered a defect by the rest of you- but I know better. My lack of empathy allows me to see things in a VERY different way- and not take stupid emotions like greed into account. We're already superior to you NTs who lie, cheat, and steal.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Attila Dimedici]

Yes, but greed does exist. Your not taking it into account doesn't change that. I am sorry that you think you are not a person, but you are. You are neither more nor less than any one else.

Re:How often does this happen?

[WED Fan]

You're calling Einstein a PHB?

Of course not. I'm refering to those trying to get their superiors to buy off on an idea. This guy's Soviet Masters were the PHBs.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Brandybuck]

it is a system with a very particular kind of government intervention and control, to wit, strong enforcement of "property" and "contract"

First, I said a free market was a relative lack of government intervention, not complete anarchy. Save your arguments over anarcho-capitalism for when a real anarchist shows up. Second, enforcement of contracts and property rights is fairly minimal, and not limited to free markets. Arguing that free markets don't work because they aren't true anarchies is specious and silly. You seem to think that there are only two choices: complete anarchy of rigid authoritarianism. There is a middle ground.

When I say that free markets are not a system, I mean that there is no need for government to manage facets of the economy. The economy is the game, not the playing field. Governments can certainly ensure level playing fields without resorting to heavy handed economic czars and bureaucratic regulatory machines. Simply put, laws against theft (property protection) and fraud (contract enforcement) are not the definition of an economic system.

A "system" without a government control of distribution of goods and services is anarchy, not a free market.

I can easily think of hundreds of examples of non-anarchies where the state does not control economic transactions. It's quite easy to imagine a laissez faire society that has a government (ei. not an anarchy) yet does not control the distribution of goods and services.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Brandybuck]

I said "relative lack of government", not complete anarchy. Pretending that the free market is anarcho-capitalism is as silly as pretending that a progressive tax is totalitarian communism.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Brandybuck]

That is not an example of matching money and brains. How do you know that a better standard couldn't have been imposed? How do you know you've found all the brains and correctly matched them? How do you know that there isn't some telephony genius languishing as a third rate rocket scientist because some bureaucrat misfiled his aptitude profile?

But I guess my initial post led you astray. Free markets are not about efficiency, they are about freedom. Even if an omnisicient economic czar was able to command an economy with perfect efficiency, I would still want a free market simply because I want to be free. Fortunately, free markets are much more efficient than command economies, so I get the best of both worlds. Freedom AND prosperity!

Re:How often does this happen?

[CptNerd]

I remember SEDs when they were called NEDs: Noise Emitting Diodes.

I made an NEC once, took a 16v 1000muF electrolytic capacitor, and accidently put it across 400 VAC.

Vaporizing the electrolyte made the paper in the cap all poofy, and made my ear that was closest to it ring for a day.

I was still vacuuming fluff out of the carpet a week later.

Re:How often does this happen?

[maxume]

In that case you might as well just say market(unless you are talking about the idea and not the world as it is, I'm not sure which you are doing). There are very few markets that don't enjoy some sort of (sometimes appropriate, sometimes not) government regulation.

(something like the health care system is a reasonable example, it is very highly regulated and seems to be broken; being in a get more in services than I pay in taxes bracket, I don't actually have a problem giving Pelosi control of other people's money with the hope that I get better medical services; being relatively healthy, I wouldn't mind a world where I could buy medical services in a free market(which would not bother so much with punitive damages, so decent doctors could charge reasonable fees); being a human, it seems like a society as wealthy as the one in the US might do well to bother with baseline medical services)

Re:How often does this happen?

[mc6809e]

Only if their family & friends are wealthy, their banker is into lending money to small business startups (9 out of 10 fail, remember), or they are stupid enough to want to take a big chance on losing their house. MOST people don't have those advantages in a free market- most people barely make enough to live on in a free market.

The sucess of relatively poor immigrants is proof that you're wrong. The difference between them and those born in America is that many Americans are not willing to give up easy living now for easier living later. Many immigrants are.

"And your idea for a central AI is terrible. "

Tell it to Wal*Mart- who has effectively been using a central AI to make stocking decisions for it's stores for the past 5 years, based on a huge amount of sales data. It's possible, it's happening even in the "free market".

First, it isn't AI. Second, their system works because it responds to the market. You're idea is just the opposite. You want a system that will dictate how resources will be allocated. That's not the same thing at all.

And you completely ignore the role of prices in determining allocation. Prices don't disappear just because Walmart has an advanced system for stocking their stores. Prices ultimately control allocation from suppliers to consumers. Walmart is just the middleman. A very efficient middleman, but a middleman just the same.

Damn, this is the fscking 21st century! Anyone that is still a communist or economic central planner might as well be a creationist, global warming denier, or a believer that evil spirits cause disease, i.e. ignorant of the sciences.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Brandybuck]

I say "free" market, so as to distinguish it from unfree or managed markets. Your example of the US health care system is a good one. It is not a free market despite the fact that it still operates according to market principles. (Whether the benefits of government intervention into the health care market are worth the costs of the inefficiencies is a separate discussion).

It's like a free society. Somewhere along the curve from totalitarianism to anarchy there is a fuzzy line where we can say "on this side are free societies". Surely there is room for freedom in non-anarchist societies?

Re:How often does this happen?

[istartedi]

One guy at HP was a world class crackpot. For every good idea he had, he was flooding his managers with 100 ideas that ran the gamout from Rube Goldberg, conspiracies, implementation prohibitive schemes to down-right illegal-by-the-laws-of-physics-and-animal-husbandr y. Needless to say, he was ignored most of the time.

I can identify with that somewhat. Over the years I've learned how not to be that guy. You go into "creative mode" where anything is possible. Then, you need to step out of it. Two good ways to do that: 1. Develop your own inner "reality checker". 2. Somewhat more embarassing, but more effective, is to bounce your nutty ideas off TRUSTED colleagues rather than taking them straight to the boss. The TRUSTED part is important because if your colleague is a jerk he might tell you the idea is bad, then give it to the boss himself. Telling small groups of colleagues can solve this too. You are not likely to have your ideas uncredited by anybody unless you are so unlikeable that everybody wants to frustrate you out of office. If everybody wants you out of office, you need to start washing more than once a month, or cut down on the 15 minute screaming sessions, or stop accusing everybody of stealing the sugar packets from your desk, or whatever it is you're doing. Well, I could go on, but I think you get the idea...

Re:How often does this happen?

[Brandybuck]

What a coincidence! Speaking of market inefficiencies, I just stumbled across this interview with Robert Fogel. He made a somewhat infamous name for himself with a study that showed the South's antebellum slavery to be *more* efficient than the North's economy!

I would rather have freedom than slavery, even if it means less efficiency. I would rather be poor and free than rich and enslaved.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually think it's one of the more inefficient consequences of a free market- where money and brains are very rarely matched together enough to bring products to market fast enough.

This wouldn't happen in a truly free market that is with perfect information. Next time you see libertanians running around complaining that it's all goverments fault and it wouldn't happen in the free market smack them with the fact that a free market needs perfect information and see them run in fear because that means no trade secrets and no prefit margins (there are none in a free market).

Re:How often does this happen?

[hcdejong]

Yup. Evidence.

Re:How often does this happen?

[dajak]

Damn, this is the fscking 21st century! Anyone that is still a communist or economic central planner might as well be a creationist, global warming denier, or a believer that evil spirits cause disease, i.e. ignorant of the sciences.

Someone who believes that market allocation is by necessity more efficient than hierarchical allocation apparently reads the scientific literature on the subject very selectively. The very size and vertical integration of a company like Walmart illustrates that hierarchical allocation can work quite well. If actual markets would work as advertised, Walmart would be pushed from the market by the baker on the corner and his suppliers. Central planning is just too much, and will only work over a long period if the central planner is omniscient.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Anonymous Coward]

The free market may not be an inefficient allocator of goods, but it runs rings around any other system that's been tried.

But... what free market? While patent monopolies exist, a free market simply doesn't (except maybe in patent rights, but patent rights themselves are not the things covered by the patent right - a common mistake!).

Want to massively spur on innovation? eliminate the patent system.

Re:How often does this happen?

[jmo_jon]

[i]Every non free-market solution requires the hand of government. Are you that trustworthy of government to hand them the reins of the economy? Some of you think George Bush is the stupidest person ever to be born, yet you want his government to control livelihood. Others of you think Nancy Pelosi is an utter idiot, yet you want her government to be in charge of your money. What gives Kerry or Thompson or Edwards or Obama or Romney or Clinton any special insight into your lives that you feel they are capable of running it better than you can yourself.[/i]

The choice isn't between Bush or you handling your money. It's between Enron, McDonalds, Wallmart etc and Bush it stands between.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Talla]

But I guess my initial post led you astray. Free markets are not about efficiency, they are about freedom. Even if an omnisicient economic czar was able to command an economy with perfect efficiency, I would still want a free market simply because I want to be free. Fortunately, free markets are much more efficient than command economies, so I get the best of both worlds. Freedom AND prosperity!

The freedom to get stuck with one specific provider is certainly more limited in Europe, but on the other hand the customers freedom to switch between providers or use roaming in an area the provider you subscribe does not cover is much better. This again has lead to more customers and better services. Ie. more freedom and prosperity in almost every area other than choosing the standard to use.

Re:How often does this happen?

[DragonWriter]

First, I said a free market was a relative lack of government intervention, not complete anarchy.

You also said "every other system requires the hand of government". The "Free market" (which you also claim is "not a system") in fact requires the hand of government. It, in fact, requires the hand of government to be more strongly applied than in alternative systems in particular cases, because it other systems restrain enforcement of contract and property based on public interest concerns.

Second, enforcement of contracts and property rights is fairly minimal, and not limited to free markets.

No, it is simply an area where the "free market" system frequently calls for more, not less, government intervention than alternatives. The distinguishing feature of "free markets" is not the degree of government intervention, but the focus of government intervention.

Arguing that free markets don't work because they aren't true anarchies is specious and silly.

Perhaps, but I didn't argue that. I argued that the "free market" is not a system that does not rely on the hand of government in economic matters, and that a system that really was as you described would be anarchy. I never argued that "free markets" don't work in any broad sense. Free markets work for a wide variety of goods and services for which certain conditions hold (such as that it is practical for competing makers to enter the market, and that those on both sides of the exchange can have a good idea of the expected utilities before making the exchange). Now, there are a vast number of goods and services for which those conditions largely hold, and therefore a roughly "free" market works well. There are also goods and services for which those conditions do not even approximately hold, and for which substantial regulation may be desirable (though the effectiveness of particular kinds of regulation always has to be examined, too; even where the free market doesn't work well, it may be difficult to craft a regulatory scheme that works better.)

When I say that free markets are not a system, I mean that there is no need for government to manage facets of the economy.

This both implies a rather odd definition of system and requires a rather odd definition of "economy"; while it may be true in that context, I'm not sure its useful to distort the language until the things you'd like to be able to say are true-by-definition; usually, that's mostly useful for misleading by implicit equivocation.

The economy is the game, not the playing field.

The economy is neither a game nor a playing field, but the entire distribution of goods and services in a community.

Governments can certainly ensure level playing fields without resorting to heavy handed economic czars and bureaucratic regulatory machines.

While that may be a valid statement of your economic faith, it doesn't seem well-supported by evidence. There are few, if any, examples of governments actually ensuring level "playing fields" in the economy, by any reasonable interpretation of that metaphor, and those that might reasonably be seen as doing that tend to do it through at least some of the kind of regulation (often, the specific regulations) that "free marketeers" rail against.

Simply put, laws against theft (property protection) and fraud (contract enforcement) are not the definition of an economic system.

Laws which define who is entitled to goods and services are certainly the definition of a government economic system, regardless of what the basis for that definition is. And government coercive action to implement those laws is certainly government involvement in the economy.

I can easily think of hundreds of examples of non-anarchies where the s

Re:How often does this happen?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Yes, but greed does exist.

Greed exists for those who allow it to exist. Like any other emotion, it's just a shared mythos among the Neurotypicals.

I am sorry that you think you are not a person, but you are. You are neither more nor less than any one else.

What an extremely Neurotypical thing to say- assuming that everybody else's motives are as base as yours.

Re:How often does this happen?

[dajak]

The free market and its invisible hand are always present, no matter what you do...

The same could be said of the law. Eradicate all traces of government and rule of law in a country, and chiefs and tribal courts automatically and almost immediately pop up where government disappeared, and marketplaces will grow up around them. The perfect free market economy is just as impossible as the perfect command economy. The weakness of both models is that you have to work with real people who always sabotage utopian experiments to their own advantage, and others who want to prevent them from doing so.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Brandybuck]

No, it is simply an area where the "free market" system frequently calls for more, not less, government intervention than alternatives.

How so? How does enforcement of property rights and contracts result in more government than the alternatives? In a modern economy, that is. History has a few examples of primitive societies without property or formal agreements, but only the most rabid enviro-socialists consider those societies to be viable alternatives.

Enforcing property rights and contracts is nothing more than having laws against theft and fraud. That's not big government, just minimal government.

Sidenote: This is Slashdot, so I guess I need to clarify that I'm not talking about patents and shrink-wrap EULAs. Those are artificial properties and contracts pulled out of the government's ass. They create a market, but there's plenty of room to debate the free-ness of it.

This both implies a rather odd definition of system and requires a rather odd definition of "economy"; while it may be true in that context, I'm not sure its useful to distort the language until the things you'd like to be able to say are true-by-definition; usually, that's mostly useful for misleading by implicit equivocation.

"System" is the wrong word, and it's confusing things. What I am trying to say is that a free market does not require any formalism or state involvement beyond what is necessary for any government.

That you think that even this level is unecessarily coercive, and elsewhere that property rights and contracts are wrong, I can only conclude that you must be an anarcho-socialist of some kind. Since we have a complete lack of any common ground on which to discuss matters, I'll stop now and stop wasting your time.

Re:How often does this happen?

[zippthorne]

Very true. I would add that the tribal chiefs begin to appear even in the presence of an existing government, if the existing government fails to serve its people: there is even a free market in governments.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Attila Dimedici]

SO, you are saying that you are not motivated by reward? You would work as hard as you possibly can for no reward of any kind, just the satisfaction of a "job well done". Your employer must love you since you work so cheap. You are claiming that you are better than the "norm", that is pride. Pride is as serious a vice as greed.

Re:How often does this happen?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

SO, you are saying that you are not motivated by reward?

Not very well. The disconnect between job and reward is almost nonexistant anyway- as Maslow showed. I'm motivated by complexity and obsession.

You would work as hard as you possibly can for no reward of any kind, just the satisfaction of a "job well done". Your employer must love you since you work so cheap.

Yep- till they found somebody who worked cheaper. I'm now unionized and my employer has NO say whatsoever in what I am paid. As it should be.

You are claiming that you are better than the "norm", that is pride. Pride is as serious a vice as greed.

Actually, I'm claiming that autism in the next stage in human evolution, and I'm not the first to do so.

Re:How often does this happen?

[cluckshot]

Ok, just for the record, I know of one inventor who tried this route. Even when the scientists were given his devices to test and ask only to publish their reports they would meet him in private and say it worked, but in public, well they wouldn't say a thing. At this time he has spend over $1,000,000 on trying to get a scientific jury to do tests and report the results. Maybe soon but not today! His device uses proven planetary flyby methodology with magnets and it works.

Joe Flynn's technology is known by him and Boeing Phantom Works to be well into this arena yet they are terrified to admit it in published locations. I know of more than this.

I also know how cruel the scientific establishment is. They nearly ran out of the profession the MD who discovered Stomach Ulcers were bacterially caused. It took nearly 20 years after his discovery before they would let his work be published. I could go on and on with real stories like these and nobody would believe them even if I gave names and dates unless they wanted to.

I have seen obvious outright contradictions in published articles showing that Einstein's Special Relativity is a messed up theory. I get whacked as troll if I even point out that that is for real what an article that is referenced in /. says. Don't expect a peer-reviewed journal to say much of the truth.

Mercury is a known toxin of serious danger in microscopic amounts. Yet the American Dental Association still supports its use in people even though it is an obvious danger. In fact it is very dangerous and they will run out of the profession any dentist that even admits that fact. I guess they are just mad as a hatter at the truth.

Don't say or imagine that seeing reality is legal in the peer-reviewed journals. It is a fact of their process that in order to publish an idea it must already be "proved" by other published articles. As a result you are not allowed a new discovery or observation.

At least he got his name in the story

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike "some Indian guy"

Re:Dear Albert

[Anonymous Coward]

In soviet Russia, LED invents YOU!

What's next.. ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess,
the first man in space was Russian as well...

Re:What's next.. ?

[Tumbleweed]

Let me guess,
the first man in space was Russian as well...

It's not so easy as all that! You can't just willy-nilly put some guy into space. First they'd have to put up some type of artificial 'satellite' type object, along the lines of the idea by that sci-fi writer Clarke, though I dunno, it seems like a pretty far-out idea. But, if they can get that to work, they should send up an animal, perhaps a monkey, or, I dunno, a dog or something. One thing's for sure - any space explorer, or 'cosmonaut' for lack of a better word, involved in the Russian space program will be famous forever, whether they get into space or not. None of these brave men will ever just disappear from history.

Re:What's next.. ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now you're just talking CRAZY...

Doesn't matter

[Apocalypse111]

It doesn't matter how old the LED gets, if you ask it it will always tell you its 40.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

My LED says it is 12:00.

Unrecognised.

[warsawpact]

It's a shame so many of the greatest scientists go unrecognised or forgotten.

Re:Unrecognised.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as the LED is 40 years older than we thought, Nikola Tesla actually discovered the principle of passive RFID tags 70 years ago. He had the idea of ``wireless power transmittion'', or the idea of sending power not by wires, but by radio waves. This is of course not practical for large currents, but it works just fine for passive RFID tags, which are powered by the radio waves of the reader.
Interesting how a stupid idea 70 years ago is now rather practical and useful.

Henry Round the real inventor?

[whoever57]

Zheludev also points out notes that Henry Round, an assitant to radio pioneer Marconi, was the first to discover that semiconductors could produce light, some hundred years ago. He published only a very short note on the matter and made no further investigations. The piece was never seen by Losev, who must be retrospectively declared the inventor of the LED.

Why should not Henry Round be declared the inventor? Also, how on earth can we know that Losev did not see Round's note?

Re:Henry Round the real inventor?

[laejoh]

He published only a very short note

something like: I discovered that semiconductors can produce light, I have discovered a truly marvellous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain?

Re:Henry Round the real inventor?

[iabervon]

Presumably, he didn't actually make a semiconductor device whose stated purpose was to emit light, but just considered it a side effect of certain configurations. Vacuum tubes emit light as a side effect when overloaded, but this is undesirable most of the time. He probably didn't realize that the light emission from semiconductors could be useful.

Re:Henry Round the real inventor?

[billdar]

He probably didn't realize that the light emission from semiconductors could be useful.

How is this modded insightful? I'll grant that this may have been true at first, but TFA goes on to say:

Most significantly, in 1927 Losev filed a patent for a 'light relay' that used his devices 'for fast telegraphic and telephone communication, transmission of images and other applications...'

It sounds like he found a couple applications where it could indeed be useful...

Re:Henry Round the real inventor?

[javanree]

Vacuum tubes ALWAYS emit light when working, because of they way they are built. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_tube for the details.

Re:Henry Round the real inventor?

[Anonymous Coward]

To invent something is different from observing a phenomenon. Many people observed that thin wire can get hot and produce light when electric current passes through it. That does not mean that they invented lightbulb.

Re:Henry Round the real inventor?

[Anonymous Coward]

The way I read it, the person to whom you replied was replying in reference to Round, not Losev.

I wanted to include more pronouns, but I've got other crap to do.

Re:Henry Round the real inventor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Henry Round was British, so though the credit still goes to the West if we accept your proposal, it still doesn't go back to the US...

Re:Henry Round the real inventor?

[Mursk]

Wow... a FLT joke. Don't see those every day. ;)

Re:Henry Round the real inventor?

[number11]

Vacuum tubes ALWAYS emit light when working, because of they way they are built.

Only if they have glass envelopes. There are plenty of vacuum tubes that had metal envelopes (as mentioned in the very same reference you gave), and they emit nothing but heat. Metal tubes were often seen in '40s-'50s auto radios and in the cheap "All American 5" AC/DC sets, and are still common in high-power applications.

Re:Henry Round the real inventor?

[ncc74656]

Vacuum tubes emit light as a side effect when overloaded

Some of them throw off plenty of light even in their normal operation. Consider gas rectifiers and voltage regulators as examples, or many directly-heated tubes. The 80 in my tube tester lights up almost like a lightbulb (this page says the filament pulls 10W, which is more than your average nightlight).

Re:Henry Round the real inventor?

[multipartmixed]

> How is this modded insightful?

Round != Losev.

QED

Big difference between theory and building

[Anonymous Coward]

LEDs are not older than we thought. LEDs were built when theory was turned into reality by those that get proper credit for those accomplishments. Sounds like the concept behind LEDs may be 40 years older, and props to Losev, but he didn't make any.

Re:Big difference between theory and building

[Anonymous Coward]

That's an interesting take, as it goes against the way patents have been granted ever since their inception as a legal concept in the U.S.

Re:Big difference between theory and building

[Anonymous Coward]

Losev and Round ran current through a diode in one of his radio receivers and got light. They made actual LEDs. Losev then did research on the device, and tried to develop a corresponding theory. He also realized the potential applications. The LED wasn't used for any practical sense then, but the LED was certainly a reality.

Re:Big difference between theory and building

[bcattwoo]

He actually did make LEDs and measured some of the properties of them. He then used Einstein's theories to explain his observations. Not purely theoretical in the least. What he did is explained a little more fully here (pdf warning).

Re:Big difference between theory and building

[SydShamino]

You got it backwards. He made the devices and came up with applications, but he couldn't do the theory. That's why he tried to get Einstein's help.

That sort of thing happens frequently. An experimental physicist or engineer notices a phenomena in the lab, can reproduce it, and can think of uses for it. He or she can't however, mathematically prove why it happens. Then, a theoretical physicist (probably working at the same company or university) comes up with a mathematical model to explain the phenomena. Together, they file for and receive a patent.

However, the patent process doesn't require mathematical proof to patent something, so Losev seems to have met all the requirements to patent a new invention.

Re:Big difference between theory and building

[luder]

You got it wrong, the title says that LEDs were laying around 40 years before thought. The real question is: how could LEDs exist if thought wasn't yet developed?

Re:Big difference between theory and building

[Prune]

Mod parent down--the other replies to his post have completely discredited his argument. This is another case of didn't RTFA.

Re:Big difference between theory and building

[rubycodez]

I like that link even better, it shows he made SOLID STATE LEDs whereas from the main article I was left wondering if he made light emitting vacuum tubes (with a more controllable glow or something). That's huge, as is his equation for voltage drop relating to frequency which is in all LED texts but I've never before seen properly attributed.

Let's call them

[ackthpt]

OL-LEDs, in his honour.

nobody gives kimchi any credit

[hc5duke]

nobody gives kimchi any credit

Re:nobody gives kimchi any credit

[hcdejong]

So that's the first OLED. Truly, there's nothing new under the sun.

Re:nobody gives kimchi any credit

[K-Man]

Finally, a use for overripe kimchi. The smell would be no worse than stir-frying.

Patents

[iamacat]

I know those probably expired already, but any currently active patents claiming any part of that invention should be promptly invalidates. Fair is fair - nobody should be getting royalties for something they didn't invent.

Re:Patents

[ResidntGeek]

From http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Invent:

invent
1.to originate or create as a product of one's own ingenuity, experimentation, or contrivance: to invent the telegraph.

The groups that invented them in '62 definitely created LEDs as a product of their own ingenuity, experimentation, and contrivance.

Re:Patents

[iamacat]

In which case, if I can reproduce their scientific work independently, I should be awarded a patent of my own. Ditto for single click, RSA, MP3...

Re:Patents

[pushing-robot]

Even if he had created working prototypes, LEDs vary widely from each other. It's taken decades and millions (billions?) of dollars to produce the current spectrum of LEDs out of a wide range of chemicals and substrates. All that research didn't "invent" anything?

It's like saying that you shouldn't be able to patent a jet engine because somebody figured out how to turn fuel into mechanical energy before.

Re:Patents

[ResidntGeek]

If the inventor of MP3 had worked away from the audio encoding community and had not been published nor contributed to audio encoding technologies in any way, and you had reproduced the essentials of the work independently, you would and should have been granted a patent, yes. You'd have made a very important contribution to the world through your own work, a contribution which did not and would not have happened from the work of the earlier inventor, and your invention would have been protecte for a time. That's the way it's supposed to work.

Re:Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

How about if some guy just used audio compression for a jukebox on his computer and never had time or inclination to complete, publish or otherwise commercialize his software? In any case he thought the techniques were obvious, they must have been because he did it.

Is that how patents are supposed to work and would Carmack and Dietrich agree?

Re:Patents

[iamacat]

I didn't read any of the MP3 patents, but I see that they are not making their work available to the important open source community. So, I am going to invite a bunch of people to compare uncompressed vs compressed music and independently develop an algorithm to strip off waveforms that don't seem to matter as much as others. This algorithm may or may not share some concepts with MP3. But, according to you, I should get a patent for it anyway. After all, I made a very important contribution to the world through my own work, a contribution that wouldn't have happened from the work of the earlier inventor.

Re:Patents

[iamacat]

Well, I sure shouldn't be able to patent the concept of turning fuel into mechanical energy.

Re:Patents

[ResidntGeek]

There's no reason an inventor has to make his inventions available to the "open source community". That's the sort of thing a patent allows you to restrict if you wish. And if your algorithm is really different and better than MP3, you're perfectly correct about your contribution and are indeed deserving of a patent, with which you can release your work to the open source community. But if you just independently reinvent MP3, you've made no contribution to the knowledge and/or technological progress of the world, and deserve no patent. The system WORKS (when it's not being raped by the USPTO).

MP3 is actually a pretty bad example for this discussion. As we are both, I'm sure, aware, audio compression is widely known to be essentially stripping off bits of the waveform, and probably isn't that deserving of patent protection. However, let's pretend it's a true innovation.

Re:Patents

[iamacat]

There is no reason an inventor has to make his inventions available to anyone. Weather it's a desired attribute of society or not, current system allows one to refuse license or demand outrageous royalties. Personally, I would prefer inventors to only publish end result their invention and make full text available when someone agrees to license the work or use it only for exempt purposes such as research. This way, if I don't think your invention is valuable enough to license on your terms, I have an option of doing the work myself. Sure, there will be some cheating, but the current system allows fraud on much bigger scale. While it's in place, I would like big companies to suffer from its flaws as much as open source developers or small shops threatened by Microsoft or IBM. Hopefully they will start advocating reform.

Why exactly single out commercial development as valuable to society and discount the value of releasing work to public domain?

Re:Patents

[ResidntGeek]

Why exactly single out commercial development as valuable to society and discount the value of releasing work to public domain?

I don't. Any action that makes it available to the world furthers technological growth. Unless, of course, the patent lasts too long, which is a legitimate problem. I think the problem with your attitude is in "I have an option of doing the work myself." The work of inventing is far greater than the work needed to manufacture, and reproducing it would generally lead to a different invention, assuming the work was indeed novel and nonobvious.

Re:Patents

[iamacat]

I am just asking for fairness. If someone currently has a patent that covers work done by that Russian dude, and they are allowed to keep it, I should be able to do the same if I independently re-invent some technology developed by a big company. I don't see why their contribution to the society - commercial development, should somehow give them a higher status than an open source author who enables, among other things, commercial development by anyone.

Re:Patents

[ResidntGeek]

The difference is that the Russian dude didn't contribute anything to society, while the people who were granted patents did. If a big company employs someone who invents something wonderful that helps society (or an open-source author invents something wonderful that helps society), there's no reason you should be able to take away his glory just because you made the same thing without realizing it. His invention had already (presumably) bettered the world, and your "me too!" would add nothing.

Re:Patents

[iamacat]

In this case, lets hand over licensing inventions to USPTO that will decide how an invention benefits society and turn over licensing proceeds to the author. Because with current system, it's noone else's business on what the inventor does with his brainchild. Perhaps some inventions (tax evasion schemes for example) are the most beneficial if you keep everyone from using them.

Re:Patents

[glwtta]

It's taken decades and millions (billions?) of dollars to produce the current spectrum of LEDs out of a wide range of chemicals and substrates. All that research didn't "invent" anything?

I'm pretty sure that part is called engineering, it's what generally follows invention and is the means of reducing it to practice.

Re:Patents

[farslash]

Invalidation of patents based on prior art (generally unknown - just like in case with Russian prior art) is the point of this blog posting. It also features facsimiles of Oleg Losev's "Light Relay" patent and some other of his patents. http://russianpatentsblog.patentsfromru.com/2007/0 4/12/youd-better-not-ignore-russian-prior-art-sear ch-says-new-scientist-magazine/

Title mis-read...

[sircastor]

I misread the title. I thought that it was saying that LEDs were the age of 'thought' + 40...

Re:Title mis-read...

[vrmlguy]

I misread the previous title, "Bethesda Investigates Shivering Isles Bug". I thought it referred to Bethesda Hospital investigating a new tropical disease.

Re:Title mis-read...

[Cheapy]

How did you pull that off?

Re:Title mis-read...

[sircastor]

The Title is poorly assembled.
"LED Forty years Older Than Thought" implies literally that the LED(noun- subject) is(verb) Forty years older(modifier) than thought(noun- indirect object)

A better constructed Title would have been:
"LED forty years older than previously thought." This forces 'thought' to be a past-tense verb, rather than an indirect-object.

I've been doing an awful lot of close-reading and examining word structure recently for a class. Guess a little too much!

Patent on using his device for X?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not patent his device, period? That way he would collect royalties out of all possible uses.

The article is even more interesting.

[pushing-robot]

In November 1941 he tried in vain to get a paper based on his discovery that "using semiconductors, a tree-terminal system may be constructed analogous to a [vacuum] triode" out of Leningrad. It didn't make it. Zheludev asks: "Was it a paper on what we now know as a transistor? We shall never know for certain unless his manuscript is found."

Zheludev also points out notes that Henry Round, an assitant to radio pioneer Marconi, was the first to discover that semiconductors could produce light, some hundred years ago. He published only a very short note on the matter and made no further investigations. The piece was never seen by Losev, who must be retrospectively declared the inventor of the LED. It's amazing just how many "modern technologies" were discovered or at least described far earlier than we assume. The technological revolution has been around a lot longer than the past 50 years.

And best of all, I finally have an excuse for electronic computers in my steampunk fantasies.

Re:The article is even more interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here, btw, is the original survey article refered to:

http://www.orc.soton.ac.uk/fileadmin/downloads/100 _years_of_optoelectronics__2_.pdf [pdf]

Re:The article is even more interesting.

[Lemmy Caution]

Sometimes, one forgets the historical context of all these events. The siege of Leningrad, for example. That his research really got under way in the early, progressive years of the USSR (the period of constructivist art, experimental theatre, open research, etc.) During dynamic periods of history like that, I often wonder how scientists, artists and such get funding and support, keep producing, etc.

Re:The article is even more interesting.

[put_the_cat_out]

Look at all the modern technology that was previously described in sci-fi films of the 1950's & 1960's.

Re:The article is even more interesting.

[pushing-robot]

Or read some of Verne's stories, which is where many of those 50's and 60's films got their inspiration.

Einstein's Quantum Theory?

[HBI]

Is it the fate of those who formulated quantum mechanics to have their work subsumed by Einstein because that is the only name reporters can remember?

Re:Einstein's Quantum Theory?

[jonnythan]

Nope.

Einstein *did* develop the quantum theory in question. He got his Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effect.

Re:Einstein's Quantum Theory?

[PaulMorel]

Someone mod this guy up.

Re:Einstein's Quantum Theory?

[jonnythan]

Why? Because he knows just enough about physics to feel condescending without actually knowing enough about physics to know that the article is 100% correct?

Skeptical

[SMQ]

Am I the only one who's skeptical of this claim? It all seems just a little too perfect, especially given the original article appeared near the beginning of April...

Re:Skeptical

[ebvwfbw]

I'm highly skeptical since he observed a diode before it was even created. Long before it was even created. If he was looking at anything, he was looking at a vacuum tube.

Re:Skeptical

[VON-MAN]

Well, FTA:

Losev also published on his discoveries in German and British journals. In sixteen papers between 1924 and 1930 he comprehensively detailed the function of his LED.

Re:Skeptical

[RxScram]

Yes, he was looking at a vacuum tube in a radio receiver... and, guess what.... the particular vacuum tube he was looking at is known as a "Vacuum Tube Diode", a device which had been around since 1904. Of course, everybody on this discussion seems to think that TFA is talking about a semiconductor diode, so I can understand the confusion.

Re:Skeptical

[ebvwfbw]

the particular vacuum tube he was looking at is known as a "Vacuum Tube Diode"

Eh?... Even if you consider a vacuum tube a LED, it was discovered in the 1800's so it is still wrong. Unless you believe that Edison and many others were complete idiots and didn't notice it. Even so, he still wouldn't be a genius, he didn't invent it. It is a blog entry off of a blog entry, hardly anything of authority. Worse, people might believe it along with the flying Spaghetti monster, SCO is a great company, and the tooth fairy. Maybe this could be one for The Mythbusters!

Re:Skeptical

[RxScram]

Wrong. The Vacuum Tube Diode (also known as the Fleming Valve) was invented by John Ambrose Fleming in 1904*. While it is true that other variants of vacuum tubes (basically variants of the Cathode Ray Tube) were in existence before 1904, the specific one we are talking about was NOT around in the 1800's.

* It is true that Fleming used an effect first noticed by Thomas Edison in 1880, but Edison did not make use of this effect.

Re:Skeptical

[ebvwfbw]

Wrong. The Vacuum Tube Diode (also known as the Fleming Valve) was invented by John Ambrose Fleming in 1904*.

Actually you meant to say is that I was right. The original article has to be wrong to begin with. He didn't invent it and he didn't discover it. Probably an April fools joke posting. Sort of like the bit about Algore and inventing the Internet that got out of hand and took on a life of its own.

As for the Fleming part, you admit that Edison discovered it and then say I'm wrong trying to say the other guy invented it? How could you observe the effect without having the device considering what we are talking about? Edison discovered many things that he didn't persue, however he did in fact still invent those things. This is especially the case if he didn't see a market in it and with AC power that is certainly the case. Probably the biggest blunder he ever made, side of Tesla leaving his lab. I'm surprised you didn't concede the point as I would have and responded as you did. You should say Fleming Re-Invented it (or re-discovered it) and give credit to Edison in 1880 as I said in the first place and you acknowledged in the second place. Maybe Fleming is important to you for some reason? Anyhow, turns out it doesn't matter in this case, the guy is still wrong.

Lightbulb!

[Liquidscript]

So LEDs precede thought? No wonder people always draw light bulbs over people's heads when they get an idea.

Re:Lightbulb!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhh. So that's the joke I was trying to think of.

Transistor?

[Mr. Underbridge]

How about the possibility he may have also invented the transistor? As mentioned in the article, I don't know what else a triode would be.

Re:Transistor?

[thorkyl]

well if a diode is 2 odes then a triode is three odes

the correct question is what do you get when you mate three odes?
or what the he|| is an ode

Re:Transistor?

[ChrisMaple]

An ode is a lofty lyric poem. A diode is such a poem in two parts, like the Iliad and the Odyssey.

In Soviet Russia...

[rodney dill]

... The LED lights you up.

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[brian.gunderson]

I'm amazed it took so long for that post.

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[alienmole]

I know, I only visited this thread to see the sheer mass of In Soviet Russia jokes and the people complaining about them. Imagine my disappointment.

Apparently, when the article is actually set in Soviet Russia, it takes all the sport out of it.

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm amazed it took so long for that post. It was actually posted about 20 minutes earlier but modded down and forgotten about.

I actually thought the first one had a little bit more humor.

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[rodney dill]

The one dated earlier (RE: Dear Albert) must've been a comment that orginated in Soviet Russia, as it appears LATER in list, but is dated EARLIER.

University academics

[Toffins]

University academics, especially prominent scientists, often tend to discard letters and emails discussing or querying scientific concepts and experimental results if the communication comes from a stranger who does not have an affiliation to any recognized research organization. This is often due to lack of time or a desire not to get involved in "crackpot" theories. It can also unfortunately be due to academic snobbery.

Russians invent everything.

[Grashnak]

Those of you who remember the good old cold war days will recall that the Soviets can be credited with inventing the LED, television, ramen noodles, california rolls, snow tires, the hanging curveball, and pants.

Re:Russians invent everything.

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot Poland

Re:Russians invent everything.

[sehlat]

I seem to remember there was a line about this in Tolstoy's "Hamlet."

Re:Russians invent everything.

[FooAtWFU]

No, no, you're getting Hamlet confused with Animal Farm. I know they're both about pigs, but so is Charlotte's Web!

Re:Russians invent everything.

[Anonymous Coward]

>I seem to remember there was a line about this in Tolstoy's "Hamlet."

Bah. One can only truly appreciate "Hamlet" in its original Klingon.

Re:Russians invent everything.

[Anonymous Coward]

As you were, Ensign Chekov.

Re:Russians invent everything.

[VorpalRodent]

I much prefer Hamlet in its original Klingon...like all of Tolstoy's works.

Re:Russians invent everything.

[Anonymous Coward]

And stealth technology (the origional math paper was russian)

Re:Russians invent everything.

[ZOmegaZ]

In Russian epic "Cinderella", glass slipper wears you!

Older Than Thought?

[wiredog]

What, some pre-historic LED was found that was contemporary with the non-thinking proto-humans? Oh, and how do they know when thought began? Much less that the LED was created (by what? The FSM?) 40 years earlier?

But did he MAKE one, yes or no?

[poliopteragriseoapte]

But did the guy actually build a LED? Because we are all good at writing a fuzzy description of how something should produce light (maybe with the help of wobbly math). Quite another feat is to actually produce the device. Oh, and patents don't matter. Anybody with time and money to burn can file one.

So...

[thedeadswiss]

So, we were misLED...

Zheludev's paper

[Toffins]

Link to the Zheludev paper:

Zheludev, N.I. The life and times of the LED - a 100-year history. Nature Photonics 1(4), 189-192 (2007) pdf file (1.7MB)

Another Russian

[kidcharles]

Here's another Russian who was ahead of his time.

Re:Another Russian

[slashbob22]

I have heard good things about Rasputin as well.

Re:Another Russian

[kidcharles]

I have heard good things about Rasputin as well. Yeah, he was 90 years ahead of Karl Rove.

Re:Another Russian

[Anonymous Coward]

So... You're saying a Russian invented Karl Rove?

C'mon. Not even Reagan thought Russians were that evil.

It's kind of sweet and sad, really.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

I could imagine Losev (four letters away from Loser) coming up with an obvious and brilliant idea. And he sits there and thinks - "This is SUCH A GREAT IDEA! I must contact the greatest mind in physics and see if he can confirm this great idea and perhaps GREAT THINGS will happen of it! Excellent!"

So he thinks - who is the greatest mind in physics? He asks his wife, Tonya -

"Olga, darling, I think I will contact EINSTEIN about my great glowing semiconductor idea!"

Olga replies, "Sure honey. He's really smart. And well connected, especially since they've been confirming his ideas left and right. sounds good to me!"

So, with great pride and hope, Losev licks the stamp on the letter and walks down the street to set it off. He holds it to his heart before he puts it in the post box, and makes a small hope that Einstein will see the beauty of his idea and help him, then with finality and hope, he puts the letter in the box.

Then he and Olga went to go boil some rats for dinner, because Russia in 1922 was a freakin' mess.

RS

Re:It's kind of sweet and sad, really.

[ThisNukes4u]

LOL. I haven't laughed that hard in a while.

Re:It's kind of sweet and sad, really.

[Anonymous Coward]

If his wife's name is Tonya, who is Olga?

Re:It's kind of sweet and sad, really.

[Prune]

He was merely stereotyping.

Re:It's kind of sweet and sad, really.

[Goaway]

Tonya is his wife, who tells him that Einstein is the greatest mind in physics. Olga is some other woman he talks to later, most likely his mistress. The storytelling is somewhat terse and it's not all that easy to pick up on these things, granted.

Just great. Thanks a lot.

[jpellino]

So those LEDs that were supposed to have 11 year life spans are now going to wink out any minu

Wow. War, tyranny, and poverty sure do suck, nyet?

[Anonymous Coward]

High tech, complex invertions that don't obviously benefit "The State" can pretty predictably be expected to languish in cirumstances like his. Betcha if he'd been in America somebody would have funded this and we would all be far better off. Even Von Braun had to spend no end of time asskissing and he was building freakin' weapons!

Neext time somebody starts badmouthing capitalism or democracy, just point 'em to this guy.

Semiconductor amplifiers predate transistors

[EmbeddedJanitor]

It is thought by most that transistors were the first semiconductor amplifiers (ie. device that can give gain). That is not true. Iron pyrites negative tunnel diodes were built in the 1920s http://home.earthlink.net/~lenyr/iposc.htm. Esaki got the Nobel Prize for discovering tunnelling in 1973, almost 50 years later http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_diode

Prior art

[Junior J. Junior III]

Ancient greeks used a steam-powered LED technology, but it was regarded at the time as a mere toy.

What's his name again? Solve Lego?

[XHIIHIIHX]

seems suspicious

inventions

[polar red]

I have multiple times already heard of inventions been invented twice or more independently. Does this mean that new technology gets to be invented anyway ? And that it probably depends on the rest of the state of technology and science ? And while i am at it ... if I continue to reason, this means that any invention shouldn't be patentable, because society/history has a hand in it, because the inventor couldn't invent the new tech without being raised, fed, clothed, sheltered and educated by society ? Is this what Newton meant partially by "If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants"?

Anyone know Russian? ru.wikipedia.com needs help

[davidwr]

There's a brand-spanking-new Wikipedia article on him but nothing in the Russian Wikipedia for " " or " ."

This article is in Russian and is a good place to start. Here's the English translation, which comes out as "Oleg Vladimirovich losev - pioneer of the semiconductor electronics (to the century from the birthday)."

You're a fucking moron

[Anonymous Coward]

"How is this modded insightful? I'll grant that this may have been true at first, but TFA goes on to say"

Because it is (marginally) insightful. In this sentence

"He probably didn't realize that the light emission from semiconductors could be useful."

He's talking about Round not Losev. ROUND, not Losev.

So when you say this

Most significantly, in 1927 Losev filed a patent for a 'light relay' that used his devices 'for fast telegraphic and telephone communication, transmission of images and other applications...'

It sounds like he found a couple applications where it could indeed be useful...

It's pretty clear you're confused. ROUND not Losev.

Now, because I'm a mean person, do yourself a favor and stop commenting. Your reading comprehension will put you in the same position as you are now, looking like a god damned retard.

Re:You're a fucking moron

[billdar]

Heh, posting advice from an AC... But I was wrong, as others pointed out, and give full credit to the moderators for seeing the thread progression that I missed. -Bill

Re:You're a fucking moron

[Anonymous Coward]

"Heh,good posting advice from an AC... But I was wrong, despite the fact that I was vehement in my objection to the moderation. In this case I shot my idiot mouth off without bothering to actually understand the post, yet I was SURE it didn't deserve the mod it got. Someone should punch me in the nuts for being such a self-assured dumbass. "

FYP

Re:You're a fucking moron

[Mercedes308]

He was mistaken. A mistake in which he quickly retracted his statements when it was pointed out that he was incorrect.

Why don't you grow a pair and start leaving the AC button alone.

1922 Diode == 2 electrode Vacuum tube

[K-Man]

In 1922 diodes were vacuum tubes with two wires in them, one of them heated and capable of emitting electrons to pass a current. What he seems to have discovered is an inverse photoelectric effect, where electrons emit light when striking a metal target.

Although, come to think of it, there were Germanium diodes at the time, so it could have been something more semiconductor-related, but the article isn't clear.

Russian names filtered by slashdot

[davidwr]

Damn you Slashdot!!!!

I mean to say the Russian Wikipedia has nothing under this guy's firstname-lastname or full name. To see the names, go to the English Wiki article.

In Soviet Russia, history forgets YOU!

[davidwr]

Oh wait, um, that's actually what happened.

Don't Forget...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Russians invented the light bulb first. Oh, and math. And life in general.

Suspicious

[dlhm]

When we look back at history we see whole civilization who where forgotton, only to be recently re-dicsovered by archeologist finding hard tangible evidense (usually encrusted in earth). We remember the Egyptions whose whole language and writings where forgotton to history only to be rediscovered. Claims like the one in this article only lead me to beleive that no matter how well preserved information is, it will be eventually be forgotton until the distant future. I believe this erosion of history is evident in many cultures and civilizations, too many things are called into question, until the line of whats real and whats suggested seem to blur. IMHO The point.. If the evidense cannot be dug out of the dirt in 100 or 1000 years, then only whats suggested will survive. If he didn't build it, it didn't happen.

Obligatory Star Trek Quote

[mattt79]

Chekov: Everybody knows the LED was invented by a little old lady in Leningrad.

Dreaming in technicolor

[rumblin'rabbit]

I work for an R&D department in a corporation. When we see a good idea that might cut into the profits of our existing products, do we say "Okay, how can we suppress this?" Never. Such a suggestion would be the height of absurdity. A corporation that tries to fight the tide of innovation is doomed. Whatsmore, no one would want to work for it.

Rather the response is, "how can we exploit this idea to the max" and "how can improve on this idea". If we aren't allowed to exploit the idea, then we ask "how can we come up with an even better idea".

The idea of a company trying to keep a good idea down is pure fiction. I have never seen it in practise in my company. It's just not workable in practice.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[polar red]

Then YOU explain ME WHY there's still NO electric car available in stores? I'll buy one immediatly. I wanna buy an EV1 ! Don't say there isnt a market for it ... Some makes live on less than 5000 cars a year.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[DAtkins]

Ummm, actually I don't believe that you would buy one immediately. Why would I question your statement? Because there are already companies that make electric cars and yet you complain that there aren't any.

I could also go into the economics of why one person saying they would buy an electric car doesn't help a society that works off of the principles of mass production, but I would just bore myself to sleep. Rather, I suggest that you (and all of these other people who would like, totally get an electric car, fer sure! could - and I'm just putting it out there - buy an electric car.

Or maybe you want to buy one in a different store, like Wal Mart? In which case, I can highly recommend this high-tech model.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[Anonymous Coward]

Your wish is not my command. The reason there's still no electric car available to you is because there isn't a market for it AT the price that it would have to be to come out with it at this time WITH the underwhelming features (like not being able to drive on long trips because the battery doesn't last, takes a long time to recharge, and there is no charge station infrastructure). I know you probably don't give a shit about those features, but that lessens the demand which lessens the units they can possibly sell in total, which in turn means their profit per car has to be higher to make the investment worthwhile, which in turn drives the price through the roof, which means that you cannot buy one immediately unless you are so filthy rich that you should just be starting the goddamn electric car company yourself.

Why is it that the sort of idiots who capitalize and bold-format and punctuate their sentences randomly are the same people who seem to believe fervently that it's easy to make an electric car? You know what? If it's so easy, why don't you make the goddamn car. Is somebody suppressing you? Don't say there isn't a market for it.

What's that? Oh, it's not that goddamn simple? You don't know how? I guess you have something in common with everybody.

I really, *really* hope somebody replies to me with "whoosh" and I'm just too stupid to see that the person I'm responding to is being brilliantly satirical, perhaps with a cultural reference I'm missing.

Posting anonymously because, well, I'm flaming. I'm flaming all the idiots in the world who somehow understand that something is too complicated for them to do themselves, but so fucking simple that if it doesn't exist then there MUST be a conspiracy against it.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[rumblin'rabbit]

You're proposing that the car makers all got together and said "Okay, let's not make electric cars in any volume so it doesn't cut into our other products"? You've been watching too many Hollywood movies.

Do you really think that a bunch of companies that are normally at each others throats would cooperate in this way? Even one company failing to cooperate would screw it up for everyone. If a company sees a big, juicy market the other companies are ignoring, believe me they'll go for it.

Far more likely is that electric cars have too many technical deficiencies to create a large market. Read what Wikipedia has to say:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_cars#Chemica l-electric_power

I don't really expect you to believe this. The paranoid are persistent, I'll give 'em that.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[DAtkins]

Hey now, don't give him crap. He just doesn't know how to use google to actually look up the thing he is ranting about. Heck, the very first search page turns up Tesla Motors, the REVA, and freakin' Global Electric Motorcars, which is a Chrysler company, or even the upcoming Chevy Volt.

Maybe he thinks those electric cars suck (it's ok, a lot of other people think that too - but the Roadster and the Volt look pretty cool to me), he'd rather have a electric Civic or something like that. It's too bad there is a conspiracy to keep people from converting their existing cars to electricity. Oh, wait, no there isn't.

Google is the friend of the ranter... it keeps you from looking retarded.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[camperdave]

Being from Canada, I have to wonder how any of these vehicles handle snow. Certainly none of them look like they'd be any good for carrying a canoe and a bunch of camping gear up to the lake (although they do look like they'd fit in the canoe). The Reva may be great for bombing around the streets of Calcutta, but it looks like it would be blown off the road the first time a transport truck passed it on the 401.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[maxume]

Not a Hollywood movie(though, Sony did distribute it):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electr ic_Car?

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[DAtkins]

Being from Atlanta, I have to wonder how Canadians handle snow at all :)

Honestly though, I'd have to think that they would work poorly in the snow. At least based upon the EV1 only being offered in the southwest - supposedly due to poor performance in cold weather "GM's internal research showed very clearly that the EV1's already perilously low range would be reduced by as much as 50% for use in cold-weather states". Maybe you edited Wikipedia to say that - you're part of the conspiracy!

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[Lars T.]

I work for an R&D department in a corporation. When we see a good idea that might cut into the profits of our existing products, do we say "Okay, how can we suppress this?" Never. Such a suggestion would be the height of absurdity. Yeah, because that would be a job for marketing, not R&D.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[rumblin'rabbit]

General Motors. Those evil bastards!

Are they also going to come out with a movie about what how the electric car was killed at Honda, Nissan, Toyoto, Mazda, Ford, DaimlerChrysler, Saab, Subaru, Volkswagon, Renault, Fiat, BMW, Peugeot, Hyundai, Suzuki, and Mitsubishi?

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[MarcoAtWork]

When we see a good idea that might cut into the profits of our existing products, do we say "Okay, how can we suppress this?" Never.

exactly, you being a good R&D person will submit a patent, but the decision to act on that patent or not is not yours to make, and I wouldn't be surprised if the executives decided to sit on it (and not license it) if it proves too disruptive to your business model. I would also not be surprised at all if such a patent would be so obfuscated in its filing to make it very non-obvious to others that it would actually be a useful invention.

In any case in my opinion nowadays the biggest issues that prevent innovation are Wall Street and Litigation: if your company can't provide quarter over quarter profit increases you get slaughtered on the altar of the stock market (saying something like 'trust us, we might have 2-3 lean years but we will eventually do well' would be cause to immediately change CEO/board), and if you commercialize anything that has an even small risk factor you are painting a huge target on your back for litigation lawyers (say, you discover a cancer cure that cures 99% of the cases, however it might have fatal side effects for the other 1%, it will likely never get to market because regardless of how many disclaimers your patients will sign, the 1% will sue you for sure).

Until companies will stop operating as if a '1 year' plan is long term, and a quarterly plan is 'medium term', constantly fighting fires and so on, I am afraid that innovation will suffer. Linking decision makers' compensation to short term company performance (via stocks) is hardly a good way to motivate those executives to make anything but short-term-gain/long-term-who-cares decisions. As much as a stock market might be useful in some cases, I feel that the current situation is very detrimental to the economy as a whole.

If executives' compensation was not tied to short term profits things would be much better: I would totally be for restricting executives' options so that they would not be exerciseable for a MINIMUM of 15 years from when they were granted, if this simple change was made I feel things would be a lot better (I also would bet that outsourcing as it is now would pretty much disappear, after all firing most of your creative and experienced local staff just to save some money for a year so your options are worth a ton more, only to basically not be competitive anymore in 3-4 years due to your best staff having disappeared, would not be very attractive anymore).

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[trentblase]

What about RAM makers? They are normally at each other's throats. Yet they also seem to have recently cooperated on some price-fixing. Not that I believe in an electric-car conspiracy, either.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[jamesh]

The cooperative price fixing works because they all have about the same manufacturing costs and about the same product specifications, and collectively stand to make more money by doing that than starting a price war. If one RAM manufacturer suddenly had a breakthrough that meant they could produce memory at 1/10th the cost, I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't hesitate to drop their price to (just) below the manufacturing costs of their competition.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[maxume]

It will be interesting to see just how practical the Tesla ends up being. The whole li-ion shelf life thing is a pretty big turn off for anybody not buying it as a toy.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[trentblase]

But then they'd get their legs broken, right?

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[mc6809e]

In any case in my opinion nowadays the biggest issues that prevent innovation are Wall Street and Litigation:

Fuck Wall Street.

They WANT you to believe you need big finance to suceed. You don't.

We live in a (sort of) free market. There's no official state party representative or central allocating "AI" that you have to go through to get funding. There are plenty of people out there with money that will help you get started if you really have a good idea.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[rumblin'rabbit]

You're not seeing the big picture. We use gasoline-fueled cars until the climate heats up enough so that electric cars are practical everywhere, at which point we can then switch over and save the planet.

Or at least the important bits, like Winnipeg.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[udham]

I killed the electric car, but I did not discharge the battery

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[camperdave]

Being from Atlanta, I have to wonder how Canadians handle snow at all :)

Staring out the window, I sometimes wonder myself. However, snow doesn't lie in wait, disguised as a submerged log, eager to clamp long jagged teeth into your leg and drag you into the swamp. So I guess it's a matter of choosing your evil.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[jamesh]

Well yes... there is that aspect to it :)

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[l33t gambler]

You're proposing that the car makers all got together and said "Okay, let's not make electric cars in any volume so it doesn't cut into our other products"? You've been watching too many Hollywood movies.

Why not? We had Windows 95 to ME for generations while Amiga was actually stable and had real pre-emptive multitasking. I had no idea a computer could be that wonderful until I saw my friends Amiga in action. Why didn't people buy it sooner? The tech was literally years ahead.

Maybe servicing and spare parts are good business, guess the service interval on a battery powered electric car. 18 months.

Use that saved service and gasoline on battery service, then you are left with a silent clean vehicle that "takes off" like a spaceship.

Who killed the electric car has better arguments than you (a wikipedia link).

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[polar red]

thanx ... but the 92000$ is over my budget, and i want a family car, not a roadster.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[holymartyr75]

First of all, their production capacity is so limited that they sell them all within 4 months and I think a base price of $92k is a little steep for the average poster here

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[servognome]

thanx ... but the 92000$ is over my budget, and i want a family car, not a roadster.

That's the point, you're condemning the car companies for not making something people don't want.
The big auto companies aren't going to make a car you want, or one that you and your friends want; they are going to make a car that millions of people want.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[polar red]

they are going to make a car that millions of people want. I want to bet millions of people want something VW golf-sized with batteries, and i bet they can make it for under $30000. I don't see something like that, only expensive vehicles or unusable vehicles.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[Chris Mattern]

So you *won't* buy an electric car...if it's too expensive. Which it is (or was, we'll see what happens with the Volt). Which is why General Motors killed the EV1.

Chris Mattern

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[dajak]

I want to bet millions of people want something VW golf-sized with batteries, and i bet they can make it for under $30000.

Not if the Li-ion batteries alone cost $20.000. Maybe a Dacia Logan with $20.000 worth of batteries, but that would be an unattractive proposition.

The advantage of aiming at the high end of the market is that 1) the cost of the batteries is a smaller proportion of the total price, 2) wealthy people spend more on frills, and 2) they are more likely to have private parking facilities at home and more likely to be able to arrange access to a power outlet at work. It makes sense to start with an expensive sports car.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[polar red]

the people interested in an electric car don't want a sports car.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[polar red]

It's 6700$ for the components and 1700$ for the batteries ... Even when you have to change the batteries every year, it's still WAY cheaper than you think ... I'm still rather convinced that the electric car is being held back.

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2006/12/24/homebuilt- ev-conversion-drops-gas-bill-from-10-a-day-to-60-c ent/

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[dajak]

So what you are basically saying is that cooperative price fixing works for almost all products. Over the last few years I have heard and read about successful price fixing cartels in bricks, elevators, books, dental medicine, health care insurance, shipping, glass, power converters, banking, road construction, and beer. I see no common ground.

I think the most important factor is how attractive entering a market is for a newcomer. If you need to invest billions before you can start selling, it is a risk to enter a market with artificially high prices because the cartel will temporarily lower prices to push you out. And if even with price fixing a trade appears to be marginal nobody bothers.

Cars are actually perfect for a cartel. Mass production of the alternative-to-the-ice-vehicle requires billions in upfront investment, it has to compete against an existing infrastructure built for ICE cars by previous generations, and the major manufacturers worldwide easily fit in a small meeting room.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[dajak]

The link doesn't tell me what kind of batteries the conversion kit uses. Lead-acid? NiMH? Li-ion (if they exist)? I guess unsealed lead-acid, given the quoted price and range, and that is not adequate in terms of pollution, performance, range, battery life, cold weather issues, etc. I want a car, not a toy, and don't live in California.

GM quotes $13.000 for Li-ion Chevy Volt batteries, and the Tesla roadster batteries are better and certainly more expensive. At least $20.000. However, as this link points out, we are comparing apples and oranges here, since the conversion kits don't include labor costs, and GM's and Tesla's calculations certainly do.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[dajak]

The question is whether people interested in a sports car are interested in an electric car. Constant torque and 0-60mph in 4 seconds are certainly good selling points.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[WillAdams]

The Tesla's writeup in Automobile magazine was quite interesting.

I'd like to see an overview of available electric vehicles, esp. including alternatives such as the Twike:

http://www.twike.com/

(which is unfortunately sold out in the US until at least the middle of 2007)

William

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[mink]

"Do you really think that a bunch of companies that are normally at each others throats would cooperate in this way? Even one company failing to cooperate would screw it up for everyone. If a company sees a big, juicy market the other companies are ignoring, believe me they'll go for it."

While it isnt cars, there are audio recordings of Monsanto and a few other (I think 5) bug agricorp executives meeting to fic prices and control things.

Re:Dreaming in technicolor

[servognome]

I want to bet millions of people want something VW golf-sized with batteries, and i bet they can make it for under $30000.

Yes it would be millions would, if they didn't have to give anything up in return.

There is a market, that's why there are small manufacturers making them, however, electric car limitations keep the market small.
Limited range limits the car to Urban environments - 20% of people in the US live in rural (less than 2500 people) areas.
Limited infrastructure makes it difficult to recharge unless you own a house - 30% of people in the US live in multi-unit housing
So right there 50% of the market is gone.
Electric cars would also be appealing as a secondary vehicle due to it's limited range (Most people don't want to rent a car everytime they leave town), so this eliminates many middle-class and lower-class singles. Add in people who won't buy just because it's different, and the market is not that big.

That's why the big auto makers are going to hybrids, they appeal to those wanting to use less gas, but arent hampered by the limitations of electrics.

40 years older than thought!?

[Sippan]

How did they think it up then?

What about the LEEPROM?

[onemorechip]

Somebody in one of my college labs plugged an erasable programmable ROM (the kind with the clear window over the die for the UV erasure; who remembers those?) into its socket backwards, reversing power and ground, thereby inventing the light-emitting EPROM. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a one-time use device.

Re:What about the LEEPROM?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why they're called flash EEPROMs.

Re:What about the LEEPROM?

[camperslo]

I was once given a batch of defective radio frequency power transistors. Many had base-emitter shorts. On breaking off the top of the case I saw that they had multiple emitter sites (something to help even the current distribution and avoid a sort of localized thermal runaway where one part of a chip hogs the current). I thought maybe I could connect a power supply and blow-out the short, leaving the rest of the sites functional. It worked. I first tried it on a device with the chip exposed. I was surprised to get some light from the chip after the short was gone.

I was outdoors part of the time examining some of the chips with a magnifying glass, and comparing readings with an ohmmeter.
After noticing the readings varying when I moving things around I realized light was affecting the chip. I switched to meter to voltage and current and saw the transistor was acting as a solar cell. If focused sunlight on the chip with the magnifying glass I got a fair amount of current.
(I don't remember how much now, but I believe it was over 100 milliamperes.)

Easy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just hook them up to a little too much voltage!

They'll produce light, smoke, and maybe a few other things, as I discovered after working with them for only a short while... :-)

FURTHER PROOF OF THE SUPERIORITY OF THE USSR

[Anonymous Coward]

For new October revolutions and a reforged Fourth International!

Off-topic

[aztektum]

This thread has made me wonder how "free" our market really is when you consider the following:

Lobbyists buying laws that help their clients reduce outside innovation and competition while weakening an individuals (DMCA).

Or how the courts can be used to hamstring competitors because the government approves vague, bullshit patents (Verizon v. Vonage is the obvious one right now, how many others have been posted here over the years?).

Oh the irony for what has become of a country born of its desire to cast off the shackles of oppressive rulers and a stifling social order. Today we the huddled masses, allow our "rulers" and social elite to conspire in ways that strip away ideals we have been indoctrinated to stand up for, but simply take for granted.

The United States has lost touch with its soul.

The more magic light

[Precio-Venta]

The more strange light. The light of future ...

Don't believe this

[Laaserboy]

I have a Ph.D. in semiconductor physics. I worked in one of the labs mentioned in the article. I have to tell you that the description in Nature is really inaccurate. What the Russian likely did is luminesce off a trap in SiC, not off the full bandgap. SiC is not even a direct-bandgap crystal. Yes, it produces blue-green light. It is a point-contact diode, but it is NOT an LED. Nothing practical or useful existed until Nick Holonyak made the first visible LED, then the first visible LED laser a few months later. Bob Hall made the first LED laser. There were a bunch of guys with Ge infrared-emitting diodes before 1962, but history forgets these guys rightly. Both the SiC and Ge diodes are such poor light emitters, that they should not be considered LEDs. Another interesting moment I believe was in the 1960s. Researchers in America claimed to have a working, continuous, non-pulsed room temperature SiC laser. It looked like beautiful blue laser light, but it was a big bust. It was not a laser. Just like this Russian, there was nothing useful going on in SiC.

Re:Don't believe this

[goodie3shoes]

Thanks for a post that's actually informative and well-informed on the subject. As usual, the signal-to-noise ratio on Slashdot hovers between -20 and -40 dB.

Re:Don't believe this

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to tell you that the description in Nature is really inaccurate. What the Russian likely did is...

So what did the Russian actually do?

Re:Don't believe this

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Ph.D. in semiconductor physics. That much is obvious, you have a way with words and you're full of it.

Yes, it produces blue-green light. It is a point-contact diode, but it is NOT an LED. Yessiree, it's just a Light Emitting Diode, not a LED at all, what where they thinking!

Re:Wow. War, tyranny, and poverty sure do suck, ny

[evalhalla]

High tech, complex invertions that don't obviously benefit "The Industry" can pretty predictably be expected to languish in circumstances like ours.

How many american inventors have died poor, because they were ahead of their times, while their creations are still important today?

Not to speak of scientific research, whose results ofter start to be profitable decades or even centuries after the developement of a theory.

I'll have to go ahead and disagree...

[Liberaltarian]

The government has an immense hand in any system of "free market." The government creates and maintains the structure that the market operates in. The very corporation itself is an invention of the government, and such notions as limited liability, private property rights, patents, contract law, and copyrights are paper tigers without heavy-handed government enforcement. Capitalism developed right alongside, and only with persistent and generous assistance from, the modern nation-state (the Enclosure Acts come first to mind). There has never been a clear-cut division between politics and economics and there never will be, nomatter how much "free-market" rhetoric is imbibed. And now back to our regularly scheduled post of a completely different topic, already in progress.

Amen to that!

[Liberaltarian]

George: "Uh, Mr. President, sir. People are becoming a bit... confused by the way your and your opponent are, well, constantly holding hands."

Kang: "We are merely exchanging long protein strings. If you can think of a simpler way, I'd like to hear it!"

Wow

[slapout]

I guess Chekov was right!

Re:Steampunk

[maxume]

'Electric' typewriter:

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/04/11/virtual_typew riter_m.html

None of the above

[SuperKendall]

Some of you think George Bush is the stupidest person ever to be born, yet you want his government to control livelihood. Others of you think Nancy Pelosi is an utter idiot, yet you want her government to be in charge of your money

I don't care what people think about either of them - the point for many of us is that we want "none of the above" - we want someone at those levels controlling as little of our money as possible regardless of ideology, and let the market work itself out.

A supposed mismatch of great ideas and money? If there are great ideas laying around, people with money will find them and bring them to fruition. In fact they do today, it's called Angel Investors. There are plenty of small companies based around the kernels of great ideas, and some of them will go on to do rather well. And with the march of technology it has become a better time than ever before to get an idea aired and heard and possibly produced. Hell, you don't even need a company to have a company anymore, you can outsource everything but your idea!

What it's a bad time to be is a really large corp, or at least an inflexible large corp with unhappy workers.

Silicon Carbide LEDs

[ChrisMaple]

Cree has been selling SiC LEDs for over a decade.

Re:Silicon Carbide LEDs

[Anonymous Coward]

You and Laaserboy had a previous discussion regarding blue LEDs and SiC LEDs in particular. Given the academic credentials of Laaserboy, aka David Andrew Kellogg, it is odd that he seems to deny the existence of SiC blue LEDs. As you say, Cree Inc. does sell SiC blue LEDs.

Gas powered running boots

[Nymz]

Recent propaganda efforts have shifted focus to inventions, in order to promote Russian pride, or spread historical doubt, or who knows what they think they are doing. There's another nice video on youtube regarding their 1940s invention of gas powered running boots, kept hidden for years as a top military secret.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=xJvmAXCh6Ak

before marking it offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

before marking it offtopic, maybe the mods can read the 2nd link? yes I'm anonymously posting cuz I understand this post in itself is offtopic...

Theory eh?

[thule]

Too bad none of the communist theories have panned out. On the other hand the free exchange of products and services (including labor) and the private ownership of property have created huge economies that have benefited a great many people. Not theory, but practice. No system will turn out perfect results (depending on how you define "perfect"), but the free market made up of many distributed thinkers (a distributed supercomputer) can get closer to perfection than one single chairman can. ... and that is why we have LED's in almost every stinking electronic device these days. Motivation to sell something and the consumer's desire to buy something. No oppression, just blinkenlights! Oh yeah!

Re:Theory eh?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

On the other hand the free exchange of products and services (including labor) and the private ownership of property have created huge economies that have benefited a great many people.

I've actually yet to see this exist. Or rather- it existed at one time in my country, but 150 years ago it largely disappeared.

No system will turn out perfect results (depending on how you define "perfect"), but the free market made up of many distributed thinkers (a distributed supercomputer) can get closer to perfection than one single chairman can.

On that, you and I agree. I just think ownership and money sometimes gets in the way of that. I'd like to try two experiments: One, a small distributist colony, say 500 people arranged according to the Rule of St. Benedict. The other- a truly free market unencumbered by money or ownership, with a perfect computerized communication system to supercharge the connections between distributed thinkers. I think we'd end up with both groups achieving a level of happiness that other communities can't even approach. The first from the joy of KNOWING one's place in the universe- the second from the joy of CREATING one's place in the universe.

and that is why we have LED's in almost every stinking electronic device these days. Motivation to sell something and the consumer's desire to buy something. No oppression, just blinkenlights! Oh yeah!

And we would have had it 40 years earlier with a better system.

Re:Theory eh?

[verus vorago]

free market unencumbered by money or ownership

Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word "market" that I wasn't previously aware of.

Re:Theory eh?

[thule]

One, a small distributist colony, say 500 people arranged according to the Rule of St. Benedict. The other- a truly free market unencumbered by money or ownership, with a perfect computerized communication system to supercharge the connections between distributed thinkers. I think we'd end up with both groups achieving a level of happiness that other communities can't even approach. The first from the joy of KNOWING one's place in the universe- the second from the joy of CREATING one's place in the universe.

There was an similar experiment. In the cooperative system the people almost died out completely. So by next Winter they required each person to grow their own food and barter with others in the colony. The abundance of food was so overwhelming that its impact is still known to this day. We named a day for it: Thanksgiving. It was when people were required (as in do or let yourself die) to work in their own self interest did everyone benefit.

If you can not see the how a free market benefits everyone participating in the economy, then you are blind. How long did the Soviet Union sustain more than a year of economic growth? Denying that a free market benefits everyone in the market is like trying to deny gravity.

Re:Theory eh?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Yes, I strongly suspect that it is. Markets are unavoidable- man is a social animal. But money and ownership aren't actually preconceptions of a market- just preconceptions of a few particular types of regulated markets that are designed to give some people power over other people. Feudalism, Capitalism, laisez faire, even Soviet Communism, were all designed to preserve the right of the nobility to oppress their neighbors. A big part of this was due to an extreme lack of communication; you may not be young enough to remember the 1970s before widespread electronic text communication, but I do. We've got something MUCH better now- a way for people to *actually* be equal and have equal say, not just be on representative committees making decisions that affect the lives of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of strangers. The tyranny of the mob is indeed something that those who have money are afraid of- because if they lose control, we'll quickly have a market of surplus, where money will be almost as anachronistic as telephones and fax machines.

Re:Theory eh?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

There was an similar experiment. In the cooperative system the people almost died out completely. So by next Winter they required each person to grow their own food and barter with others in the colony. The abundance of food was so overwhelming that its impact is still known to this day. We named a day for it: Thanksgiving. It was when people were required (as in do or let yourself die) to work in their own self interest did everyone benefit.

As I remember, they also failed to take into account the stores and supplies that they'd need. They believed the idea of America as a land of Eden- where food would already be planted for the picking.

If you can not see the how a free market benefits everyone participating in the economy, then you are blind. How long did the Soviet Union sustain more than a year of economic growth?

Never- but once again I consider the Soviet Union to be the ultimate example of a monopolistic free market- a single owner, 50 million consumers. We're not as unbalanced as that- but communism it ain't. Communism is ideally the tyranny of the majority- that was the ultimate tyranny of the minority.

Denying that a free market benefits everyone in the market is like trying to deny gravity.

And yet, the homeless are still with us, the hungry are still here, and 40 million people are going without basic preventative medical care that they'd get anywhere else in the world. If this is free market benefits- then there's a lot of people the free market has to answer to.

Having said that, I think the real problem is communication- you can't have a society of more than 500 people where everybody loves and knows each other well enough to take care of each other- at least not with one-to-many mass communications or worse yet, nearly no communications at all. To get more, you need many-to-many mass communications- of which we're only now just begining to experiment with blogs.

Re:Theory eh?

[thule]

As I remember, they also failed to take into account the stores and supplies that they'd need. They believed the idea of America as a land of Eden- where food would already be planted for the picking.

Again, centrally managed economies do not work. When people had to worry about their own lives everyone benefited.

And yet, the homeless are still with us, the hungry are still here, and 40 million people are going without basic preventative medical care that they'd get anywhere else in the world. If this is free market benefits- then there's a lot of people the free market has to answer to.

There will always be poor, always. Again, no system is perfect, but communism makes everyone equally poor. Just ask the people in N. Korea, Cuba, or any other place this has been tried. Even with the imperfections of the free market, the US has a very nice standard of living. Even the poor are not poor by the rest of the world's standards.

Why do you want to push for something that is provably broken?

Re:Theory eh?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

There will always be poor, always.

Economics is an invention of mankind that can be tweaked, not a law of nature. Therefore, this is an incorrect statement- there will only be poor people as long as there are rich people- only when you allow differences between people do differences between people exist. All men are created equal- isn't it about time we made that reality?

Why do you want to push for something that is provably broken?

Because I know WHY it's broken- and how to fix it. Once again, we've only really had the technology in hardware to fix it in the last 15 years; in software in the last 2 years. It is now possible to create a truly non-representative democratic government with more than 500 citizens; it's now possible for EVERY member of a community to have an equal amount of power under the law. This is something that "N. Korea, Cuba, or any other place this has been tried" did not have. It's something that "Even with the imperfections of the free market, the US has a very nice standard of living" is only begining to have- and the rich are fighting the advent of a true electronic democracy every step of the way. Rightly so, because no truly free people would ever put up with inequalities in the marketplace OR the law. The tyranny of the mob would rectify that problem. It would also mean fewer minorities getting special attention; but we're moving past a time when a man is anything more than the words he writes in cyberspace.

Re:Theory eh?

[thule]

Economics is an invention of mankind that can be tweaked, not a law of nature. Therefore, this is an incorrect statement- there will only be poor people as long as there are rich people- only when you allow differences between people do differences between people exist. All men are created equal- isn't it about time we made that reality?

All men are created equal, but that does not mean that all are equally smart or driven, etc. The government is not meant to guarantee outcomes, it is only there to keep people in line (laws). When you introduce a law that says that a person can only sell something for what it cost to create (labor theory of value, Marxism), the government is inserting itself into *every* transaction. Two people independently deciding what value some service or item has is freedom and is the natural way things have always been done (bartering). It was only more recently that some people decided that a free transaction was somehow immoral. They thought, incorrectly, that by doing this they could cause everyone to be equally wealthy. The problem is that people are flawed. Wealth creation is what drives people. If you take this carrot away, people do not have any incentive to create wealth. That is exactly why the colony almost died out. The free market is designed to work off people's flaws, but the Labor Theory of Value is designed to work off people's goodness. The problem is that people are not good. No tweaking will fix inherent human traits. Putting some chairman in charge only makes the impact of the flaws more dramatic.

Re:Theory eh?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

All men are created equal, but that does not mean that all are equally smart or driven, etc. The government is not meant to guarantee outcomes, it is only there to keep people in line (laws).

We don't even have equal creation, let alone outcome- some are born into social circles that allow them to succeed, some are born into social circles that guarantee failure. The ONLY way to fix this is to end the freedom to oppress other people- take away that freedom, and things even out- we get an equal *starting* line. Outcomes should be up to the individual, but it's simply stupid to make unequal creation.

When you introduce a law that says that a person can only sell something for what it cost to create (labor theory of value, Marxism), the government is inserting itself into *every* transaction.

Good. Given the evil done in the name of freedom- given the basic fraud in selling something for less or more than it costs to create- that's something I want the government inserted into *given a government that has omnipresent knowledge of the transaction*. That last is very important- it's what no government so far has ever had.

Two people independently deciding what value some service or item has is freedom and is the natural way things have always been done (bartering).

True enough- it's the freedom to commit fraud. That is EXACTLY the freedom that I want ended.

It was only more recently that some people decided that a free transaction was somehow immoral.

And it's only EXTREMELY recently that there was anything we could do about it. Without perfect knowledge of cost of creation, the freedom of fraud was the best way to set prices, because there was missing information.

They thought, incorrectly, that by doing this they could cause everyone to be equally wealthy.

That is correct. Without perfect knowledge of the costs involved, any attempt to set prices is going to be an approximation. As a rule, the freedom of fraud is *better* at setting prices than setting prices based on incomplete information, if for no other reason than some other fraudster can gain your customer by accepting less profit. However, we no longer need to accept imperfect information as a given.

The problem is that people are flawed. Wealth creation is what drives people.

Only the retarded are driven purely by wealth creation, for they do not understand that wealth is a myth.

If you take this carrot away, people do not have any incentive to create wealth.

Why would we want them to have an incentive to commit fraud?

That is exactly why the colony almost died out. The free market is designed to work off people's flaws, but the Labor Theory of Value is designed to work off people's goodness.

And the Perfect Knowledge Theory of Value is desinged to make the machines our slaves, and turn over the job of governing to AIs that aren't bothered by such idiotic and outdated motives.

The problem is that people are not good. No tweaking will fix inherent human traits. Putting some chairman in charge only makes the impact of the flaws more dramatic.

Which is why I wouldn't. At least, not a human one. Machines don't have that idiotic problem of needing to be "motivated" to make something happen.

Re:Theory eh?

[thule]

We don't even have equal creation, let alone outcome- some are born into social circles that allow them to succeed, some are born into social circles that guarantee failure. The ONLY way to fix this is to end the freedom to oppress other people- take away that freedom, and things even out- we get an equal *starting* line. Outcomes should be up to the individual, but it's simply stupid to make unequal creation.
Umm. You are working under a completely wrong assumption about the meaning of that declaration. The equal part is equal under the law. Now there are examples where wealth has protected people from the law, but overall, jurys do a pretty good job. Stastically people with only a public defender do well.

Equal in status will never happen. Even in communism people do not get treated equally. Certain party memebers get more food than others. I am pretty darn sure not everyone in Cuba gets the same medical attention as Casto.

True enough- it's the freedom to commit fraud. That is EXACTLY the freedom that I want ended.

It is not fraud. It is two parties agreeing on terms. Fraud only occurs when one party lies about an aspect of the transaction.

Only the retarded are driven purely by wealth creation, for they do not understand that wealth is a myth.

It is not *just* creation of wealth. In the case of the colony, it was the will to survive.

Even is you take away the possibility for a person to better themselves over others financially, us humans will still be jealous of what we don't have. For example, people would still lust after another person's spouse or girlfriend. Thus is the human condition. How will communism help the Ugly-American? Will the state pay for all cosmetic surgery so we can all become models? Probably not, because there will never be enough supply to meet demand. With rules on price there will be overwhelming demand and thus people will have to live the rest of their lives ugly. Even though the state guarantees equality in beauty. In a free market, cosmetic surgery can be expensive and limits the demand. This is how a free market works and how a market that cannot automatically compensate for supply and demand will always be an utter failure.

And the Perfect Knowledge Theory of Value is desinged to make the machines our slaves, and turn over the job of governing to AIs that aren't bothered by such idiotic and outdated motives.

Someday we might live like the characters in Star Trek. For now, we have reality. Reality is limits on resources, flawed people, fads, etc. The funny thing about your ideal is that the only way to reach it is by capital intensive means. In other works risky investments. In communism is this immoral.

Re:Theory eh?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Umm. You are working under a completely wrong assumption about the meaning of that declaration. The equal part is equal under the law.

The poor are not equal under the law to the rich; the rich can break the law with near impunity due to being able to litigate until all participants are dead.

Now there are examples where wealth has protected people from the law, but overall, jurys do a pretty good job. Stastically people with only a public defender do well.

If you believe that, then what you're basically doing is accepting the statistics the justice department keeps on itself. And gee, they wouldn't have any reason to lie, now would they?

It is not fraud. It is two parties agreeing on terms. Fraud only occurs when one party lies about an aspect of the transaction.

And if you haven't informed the buyer the full cost of creating and shipping the product (including the costs to the environment) then you've lied by ommission about the transaction. Almost every transaction in any market today has a serious lack of information; the anonymous nature of the market guarantees that the ONLY real information the customer has is price information. That is not "two parties agreeing on terms", that's a con artist taking advantage of being relatively anonymous to cheat people.

It is not *just* creation of wealth. In the case of the colony, it was the will to survive.

Why would we need a will to survive if the computers are programmed to make sure there is a surplus of goods at all times?

Even is you take away the possibility for a person to better themselves over others financially, us humans will still be jealous of what we don't have.

Only if we are allowed to know what we don't have.

For example, people would still lust after another person's spouse or girlfriend. Thus is the human condition. How will communism help the Ugly-American?

Who ever said that it should? If anything, it should PROTECT the Ugly-American; a lack of anonymity means that you can settle such things face to face and violently, instead of stewing about it.

Will the state pay for all cosmetic surgery so we can all become models? Probably not, because there will never be enough supply to meet demand.

One day, with nanites in the bloodstream, we'll all be walking around with internal plastic surgeons. So you can't say there will never be enough supply to meet demand- it is in fact inevitable that one day there WILL be more supply than demand. Unless, of course, you let the con artists in the marketplace artificially limit supply- like diamond dealers do today.

With rules on price there will be overwhelming demand and thus people will have to live the rest of their lives ugly. Even though the state guarantees equality in beauty. In a free market, cosmetic surgery can be expensive and limits the demand. This is how a free market works and how a market that cannot automatically compensate for supply and demand will always be an utter failure.

The problem is you're still assuming scarcity. Scarcity is largely artificial already; with robotic labor it will become MORE artificial in the future, not less.

Someday we might live like the characters in Star Trek.

Yes- and given the state of tabletop fabrication machines and on the job automation today, I'd say that will be within my little Christopher's lifetime- he's 4 now.

For now, we have reality.

And the reality is- unless we engineer the economy starting now, we'll need genocide in the next 30 years to deal with all the useless people thrown out of work by automation.

Reality is limits on resources, flawed people, fads, etc.

None of which will BE reality 20 years down the road- when you can basically make ANYTHING you want out of kitchen waste in your tabletop fabricator.

The funny thing about your ideal is that the only way to reach it is

Status quo is not an option.

[rumblin'rabbit]

What you've described is a caricature of modern business, not reality.

I find modern business loaded with people with both integrity and long-term committment. Not everyone, not everywhere, but enough that the situation is no where near as dismal as you make it out.

And so far as suppressing good ideas, I state again that I've never seen it happen. I've seen good ideas ignored or under exploited, but due to ignorance or incompetence, not through evil intentions.

Businesses know that good ideas are for exploiting, not hiding. We had better innovate, better our competitors sure the hell will. The status quo is not an option.

Re:Status quo is not an option.

[MarcoAtWork]

I find modern business loaded with people with both integrity and long-term committment. Not everyone, not everywhere, but enough that the situation is no where near as dismal as you make it out.

come back to me after you've been through a few 'oops, we missed the quarter numbers we told wall street' layoffs, a few 'hmmm, we pay our people too much here in North America, fresh grads in India are cheaper' outsourcings, a few 'let's just make it an even 80 hour workweek, if they don't like it, hey, they can quit' startups, a few 'well, we can't pay you much, but here are a lot of stock options, and btw, yeah, we're going to spend $10mil+ in advertising this quarter, and look at the ceo's Porsche in the parking lot' dot bombs, and we'll see what you think about all this.

Yes, there ARE some good companies, with good vision, good long term planning, pride in hiring qualified people and retaining them (as opposed to hiring cheap grads and having a 50% attrition year over year), pride in providing good benefits and so on, but in my 10 years experience they are definitely the exception rather than the rule. And Wall Street being the way it is, it seems that companies that provide numbers no matter what (by laying off people, doing shady deals, or outright lying) are the most rewarded, at least in the short term (yeah, they crash and burn in the long run, but the execs will have made their millions before that happens).

And btw, I don't absolutely have anything against exec compensation per se, if somebody does a great job, hey, they should be paid accordingly, HOWEVER exec compensation where just for sitting in that chair you make millions in options and golden parachutes in my opinion don't foster good leadership, they just foster a 'who cares' attitude.

It depends

[Anonymous Coward]

Why retool a billion dollar operation to make a better mousetrap when you have the market, are profitable, and you could just buy the better one to put on the shelf for a rainy day. An engineer is going to be like, "hell yeah" but the thats why you will always be an engineer and not a rich bastard.

Re:Think battery insurance

[l33t gambler]

Think http://www.think.no/ are releasing a new car and with it a battery insurance plan. You pay 975NOK a month and they take care of the battery.

Why is it

[YetAnotherBob]

Why is it that the Russians claim to have invented everything first. Rockets refrigerators, aircraft, computers, now transisters and LED's. But somehow they never got around to building any of them until others invented them and built them and were using them. I've even seen the claim that Russians developed steel and writing before anybody else, but it 'mysteriously' died out before the items could be exported or used.

I have to say that it looks suspiciously like they have a minor industry going in backdating proposals and papers.

Not that it really matters. Most things have several independant inventors before someone has the opportunity and ability to make it 'the next big thing'. Who gets the credit will change many times, but it won't really mean a thing. Also, there is a big difference between a proposal and an invention that produces a real product. I don't believe an invention has happened until there is a working unit.

Re:Think battery insurance

[maxume]

Is this true?

http://www.google.com/search?q=975NOK

It says that it's 160 USD. That's nearly $2000 a year. Unless the batteries are off the charts expensive or prone to failure, it's not insurance, its a lease or service agreement.

Einstein

[Anonymous Coward]

Einstein always was an asshole.

The waiting game begins...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard that OLEG displays will be the next big thing, when can I get one?

In Soviet Russia

[codeButcher]

.... patents file you!

Win95 also older than thought...

[srussia]

Why not? We had Windows 95 to ME for generations while Amiga was actually stable and had real pre-emptive multitasking. I had no idea a computer could be that wonderful until I saw my friends Amiga in action. Why didn't people buy it sooner? The tech was literally years ahead.
in the sense that it was made before thinking was invented

Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

This happens alot, with Russian inventors in particular. The commies would hide away their inventions only to see them never implemented or declassified. Then someone else in another country might discover the same thing and the original creator will get no credit for his discovery. Either that or it becomes lost to history I suppose.

Attributed to the wrong people?

[Circlotron]

So, it would seem we have been LED up the garden path...

Long jagged teeth

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, alligators have rather smooth teeth - conical with a point. And they are relatively small, smaller per weight than the teeth of a great white shark or even your housecat. Alligators kill by drowning, not by tearing or by puncturing.

Or the DED

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

(Darkness Emitting Diode. Where did I put the spec sheet I had on that?)