You are only able to say that because you wear a genuine tinfoil hat. I wore an aluminum 'tinfoil' hat and that monoxide stuff corroded it like crazy. The story gets worse. That chemical is responsible for an enormous number of deaths worldwide. It kills more surfers than shark attacks. It is also a key component of the search for chemicals on the moon and Mars, which as everyone knows, is needed to keep the world safe from a terrorist attack whereby they set fire to say the secretive dark side of the moon and launch it at us. Dihydrogen monoxide is one of the major residues found after Shuttle launches.
You'll be happy to learn I bought a genuine tinfoil hat, in the modern bee-keeper style. Sure it is heavier, but it is pure tin, and chemical free. Only downside is you have to take it off when going into a bank. The guy with the gun told me it was a safety regulation. But he also assured me that the whole bank had a genuine tinfoil roof so that's ok.
Yup. The limit should focus on how much stored energy is allowed to be brought in a single package. I was sent an article recently on ultracapacitors, which seem near capable of powering a car. My worry was - the energy is all stored together, like rocket fuel. Low quality rocket fuel, but hey, I burn easily. At least with petrol, the oxidant is on the outside.
Possibly they should set an energy limit, in some relevant unit. For instance 10 nano-Challengers is about a gram of rocket fuel.
It was a library. They issue loans every day. They are supposed to issue loans and let people read stuff. The Feds have promised to read it and return it quite quickly.
So what's different from any other book or DVD or whatever in the library? Things might be on it that the government might not be supposed to know. From what I understand of the law so far discussed here, this is now tainted evidence. Great for eliminating suspects but likely to free the guilty. So what are you complaining about?
Incidentally, the library does appear to be quite honest in its open approach. It seems the Librarian released the information about the seizure to the Press. The original article is a bit vague about that, but the alternative is that the FBI wanted to warn the suspect in advance.
He refused to release details as he had made an agreement about what was being sought, and who knows who could be protected by that. He did indicate that anthrax scares were no more than a co-incidence. The reporting was a bit vague there as well, but increasing public panic is in the interests of the newspaper. Can't fault them on professional competence. Suppose someone had been using it to further some other crime. (Call it kiddy porn.) Release on information about that would taint the reputation of all library users. At least a confused mentioning of anthrax (and a dead suspect) keeps the other users looking innocent.
All in all, the Library Director seems to have done a good job of protecting the innocent, albeit at the expense of letting the guilty go free. Damn near a lawyer in fact.
No. The Chinese are having to do things cheaply because they have low wages. A babelfish translator is probably better than an English-speaking Chinese kid. This is because you should translate from your second language into the culture you are competent in. A Chinese-American who knows what people are looking for in a restaurant is optimal. After all, translating the Chinese for 'inexpensive' to 'dirt cheap' is correct, but even a multilingual kid might not pick up on the nuances. Beijing have supposedly removed dog off the menus for the duration of the Games. So how would they interpret someone asking for a 'Hot dog'. Call over the English speaking kid who would explain that the government had banned them.
There are possibly, a horde of examples of Americans badly translating into Chinese. You know, 'Server Translation Error' becoming 'Waiter moving sideways badly'. You have to say to yourself, I do not know about them. Possibly because I am incompetent in the languages of China, but it also could be because the Chinese may regard stuff ups like these worth relating over a drink, but not to be published to the world. It is impolite.
What I do recognize from the "Server Translation Error" is my own experience on a Help Desk when the regular guy was absent and I as junior programmer took over. I had to explain to clients what the error messages meant. Often, they meant we had not caught the error early enough, and the real explanation for say "Your registration is out of date" was that one of the networked databases had failed to update. At times the error messages totally flummoxed us. They had been there so long, without being reported, that we no longer knew they existed.
The humor I take from this is a rueful, 'Been there; Done that.'
Both of the replies to my post are really sensible. I have no deep opposition to your point of view, and also share a distrust of what I would call a 'planned economy'. Those economies are driven by a class of nobles ordering peasants about. Call them commissars and Glorious Workers of the Motherland if you like, still a medieval economy. The ones you quote have nukes, which garners respect, much as I respect a rabid dog.
But the market doesn't work too well either. Money is a fluid, if you like, and with hedge-fund power, or simply a big war chest because you are a big company, you can manipulate it. It is flexible, it is responsive, and acts often like sheep being driven by dogs. Most times I'd say, serve the silly buggers right.
The problem is, the system lacks genuine equilibrium mechanisms. For that to happen, once deviation from a likely 'optimal price' happens, buyers or sellers would have to start to move the price back to optimal. However, these buyers and sellers are not calm. They are paranoid and rightly suspicious of the more powerful. Stocks can be driven up or down by panic buying and selling, deliberately driven. I'd love to know how much money has been made by the really rich from the economic woes of the last year.
The system is probably closer to the movement of cars on a major road. In low traffic use, equilibrium rules. But in peak traffic, even small brakings and movements set up exaggerated responses. They do eventually correct, but a lot slower than equilibrium theory would predict, and this is in the absence of someone wanting to benefit from disruption.
I do not believe strongly in the equilibrium market. Conversely, I have observed honest bureaucracies in action. That said, I would also say that any bureaucracy exposed to political control will become corrupt. Not may, will. So the 'fair bureaucracy' proposal is fragile at best. There are conditions in which they do work. All of them have a highly technical, highly educated engine at the center. In Agriculture, they are called veterinarians. In medicine, they are called doctors. Roading has engineers. I even live in a country with a professional military that cares for the people of the country and are not part of the government. (It's a small OECD country. And I make no guarantees even for the next generation.)
The proposal is possible. It can be driven by economists, psychologists, mathematicians and similar to work. But in the end, it is a lot of 'given away' cash. To call it a politicians wet dream would perhaps understate the risk. And politicians are very good at manipulation. They find compliant vets, doctors and engineers to run the system. The proposal is also weakened by those same maths. That is, while competent and informed societies do act for stability, the politicians and many senior bureaucrats should really be regarded as hedge-fund operators.
So I share your scepticism as well. Is it possible to have any honest civil service that is stable and does not degenerate into a rule bound bureaucracy. Long term, I suspect the answer is no. But then, long term, antibiotics do not work. The bugs fight back. They're still pretty good in the meantime. I'm ambivalent.
Let's get back to software patents. Essentially, the slashdot community in the main oppose software patents. The main argument really isn't too much different from a wealthy teenager just wanting to drive and not caring about any global economy crap. "I just want to be able to code." In economic terms, I'd say that was medieval. I am using that as a fair descriptive term. It is how medicine operates. You learn the trade as an apprentice, practice as a journeyman, and finally set up shop as a master, taking apprentices in turn. You protect your interests using both trade secrets and a powerful guild that can and will destroy threats to its survival. It is a society of powerful, skilled individuals. (Yup, medicine.)
So what killed the guilds, albeit over centuries. IANAH. (Historian) I'd guess two things worked against
I doubt if the patent system has a discernible purpose any more. That implies a cogent intent across many years and countries. But it does have a number of functions, and encouraging research and development is I agree one of them. However, its function to reward the monopoly owner of an invention, not the inventor. Monopoly is what the Soviet Union was quite good at.
Yes, the proposal notionally increases the cost by 5%. You have to subtract from that the cost of the current system, both in terms of lawyers, (the trivial part), and the social cost of fragmenting a delivered idea into a plurality of obscurely described patents. I would agree that if the effect is to increase the cost to society, then dump it and go with the current cumbersome system. Not a problem.
The 'demand bureaucracy' would have to live on a mere 1% of the 5%. So whatever a demand bureaucracy is, it would have to deliver a lot of social product analysis quite cheaply. If by the term you mean a bunch of tyrants who demand things be done without understanding how they could be done. Yup, reasonable description of the USSR from my very distant perspective. Don't know what that has to do with bureaucrats who have to measure where and how the good of technology is flowing, and reward those that enable that flow. Bugger all demand there. I'd call them technocrats. They'd be similar in status and operation to a Department of Agriculture.
But the key idea is to reward the total delivery, not the creation. You can't patent new applications for old drugs. You can't patent finding the current applications have nasty effects. But there are alternative reward systems in place. So the proposal is up for discussion, not for zealotry. Kick it all you want.
I think it impractical to define hard and easy. In hindsight, matters are often easy. (Eg. Compare commentators after the race with those before.)
I do think that inventors should be rewarded, as should those who support them.
The following idea is not new.
Dump the patent concept. Replace it with a 5% technology tax.
A maximum of 1% of the tax may be used to administer the tax. The rest is to be returned to inventors, and to those making the inventions available, and the consequences of using them. So you can get reward for inventing a drug, for finding new uses for it, for proving the efficacy of that use, and for showing that there are nasty side effects.
Broad principle: Reward the social DELIVERY of invention to all those wishing to implement it.
No monopoly of production is granted. The most you get is a head start, because you knew of it first.
Amounts would be assigned in proportion to the contribution to social advantage. (Yeah, it's vague.) Yet another drug in a series of similar drugs has no advantage, as the cost of proving safety is too high. Showing a drug (eg thalidomide) is very dangerous in a small number of cases should also be rewarded. Finding that boring old asprin in quarter doses helps prevent heart disease is to be rewarded.
Money would also go (a substantial proportion) to those enabling people to use ideas to their advantage. Good practical descriptions, search engines, parts sourcing. There is no reward for popularization though. You may get more from competently describing someone elses arcane invention than the inventor.
Let's take the case of software. Someone invents an arcane algorithm. May get zilch. Someone finds a field in which it is useful and writes code that is effective. Gets some $. Someone expands the code into several well known languages, and comments the code so it is easier to translate into more languages. Gets $ Someone analyses the typical areas of application, generalizes them yet describes it sufficiently precisely that a searcher in a quite different field will find the code examples without expending a lot of time. Gets $
You seem to have implicitly invented a useful word (and derivatives).
Adsperger (n): Someone who advertises or engages in publicity without any understanding of how the ads will be perceived.
Adspergize (v, transitive.): To alienate a readership through poor understanding of their response.
Adsperg (n): An advert that annoys the reader not from deliberate intent, but from an inability to understand the likely range of responses to the ad.
To a lesser extent, we all act in a similar manner at times, being offensive in public. This post could well annoy people with Aspergers Syndrome. Well, I can be an insensitive clod at times, and do suspect I have a touch of AS.
Oh well. "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn." Welcome to slashdot.
Every time a political career fails, a new crater appears on the moon. Of course, most failures are too small to see, even if we think they are important. Local elections generate moon dust. You need a Ceasar undergoing an ambitionectomy to just make it visible. The really big craters probably occurred when there were only a few humans. Say about 4004 BC.
So now you understand the background behind election talk, the inner message. Talk of "Impact". Talk of "Give me a ring sometime". Talk of "The Crater Good of Mankind".
It's all covered in the Science lectures in a Political Science course. There are only 3 of those, they all occur 5 pm on a Friday, and don't get examined. Even Political Scientists know that science is irrelevant. But any senator that said that would create a 5mm crater. (Not 5 million miles. This is science. 0.2 inches.)
Can someone on slashdot please make sense of the article. It claims 1. That quantum computing needs vastly fewer bits to represent data. I thought it dealt with multiple possibilities simultaneously, but that the final reality just needed small number of bits. (Ideal for encryption cracking. Crap for storing a database) 2. That a synthetic atom was created. OK. I used to be a chemist. A new non-peridic table atom is heresy to me. But that extraordinary claim seemed to be nothing more than an odd electrical state, acting as if an unknown atom was present. 3. A molecule was created. Covalent bonds and the like. Except that it seemed to be an arsenic atom buried in a matrix. Not a separate molecule at all. 4. That faster than light communication is possible. I thought that collapsing entanglement does appear to happen faster than light, but that no information transfer happens. Mind you, that's my memory of my take on a New Scientist comment some time back. My brain has its share of garbage. Compost help ideas grow.;-)
I suspect there is great science here being reported as little more than magic.
I'll agree their gall is impressive, but they may have some really competent marketing guys running it. Just assume the software works. (Beeeeeg assumption, but go with it.) The real target is 30 something women who are worried about looking older and do not believe what anybody tells them.
So having software that tells you how old you appear would be great. Another set of bathroom scales, rated in years. It also allows a before and after evaluation at a beauty salon. There is real money to be made here. And the true beauty of the scheme is that it is being promoted in the initial and difficult start up period by targeting just the right sort of controversy.
As for telling a woman "The software is no good. A photo of you is rated just as old and haggard." Well, now she knows you are stupid, tell her she really looks young, all things considered.
Next product. Software for men. Are you balding, paunchy? No problem, your friends will tell you. But do you look sexy? You can only trust the opinion of Intellivamp from Flogadream Inc.
The summary implies a major problem, although the term 'growing' was used.
1. No evidence of substantive misuse exists. There is substantive proof of bias (particularly against women succeeding.) This is not scientific fraud. Just scientists being arseholes and using their power to diminish the lives of others.
2. More reporting of fraud is likely these days. More reporters, and lots of web search engines for them to use. But consider the activity base. Back in the days when I was a scientist, there were about 1 per 1000 of the population. At a guess then, say 2 million scientists in the world right now. (The definition of one will vary, so no exact number is possible.) Even at a absurdly low rate of 1 per 1000 being crooked, that's 2000 bent scientists. Get real. Of course there are a whole bunch of them out there. So what. Do you expect them to be inhuman. Not that would be really horrible.
3. The oath is a wishy washy load of idealistic crap. "I promise never to allow financial gain, competitiveness or ambition cloud my judgment in the conduct of ethical research and scholarship. I will pursue knowledge and create knowledge for the greater good, but never to the detriment of colleagues, supervisors, research subjects or the international community of scholars of which I am now a member." What species do they think scientists belong to. The astonishing thing in my experience was that scientists were far more ethical than people had any right to expect. The oath allows you to be a complete bastard provided you are engaged in non-thical research and scholarship. It also expects a group driven above all by curiosity to instead be driven by the 'common good'. Well, the atomic bomb was invented for the common good. (Albeit, the common good of one side in a war, but the majority of both sides of the war agreed with having such a bias.)
4. The oath will achieve nothing. There are already punitive measures in place. Get caught even mildly fudging you data and you cease to be a scientist. For ever. You may get a job washing glassware, but you can forget any position of authority.
5. I do think the measures in place are inadequate. In the main, they rely on checking on how believable a submitted paper is (peer review), and then whether the science survives. The equivalent of an environmental impact report does not exist. The best you could hope for say, if someone discovered a simple way of isolating out uranium 235 for instance, would be for someone to exterminate the idiot. Do not expect the science community to do it for you. But scientists do have ethics committees, particularly governing the use of animals. They were really picky. (As I got older, I agreed with them.) It wasn't sufficient just to be treating your animals well. The requirement was that you interfere to the least extent possible. Considering science is agnostic, they were in the main, ethical.
Excuse the rant. Science is about as safe as guns in the community. Strong opinions are not only expected, they should be expressed. But please get my key point. It is much safer having scientists being human than following 'the common good'. The common good will be defined by either a religious power group or a political one. I'd rather have scientists caring for the people around them, and being restricted in their ability to casually affect the lives of others.
Re:They have a gas analyser, but...
on
Water Ice On Mars
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· Score: 1
Good point. I was a chemist once upon a time. The H2 and O2 are excellent 'reagents'. As H2 leaks like crazy, I'd store energy other ways, in spite of knowing it was a very clean, non-toxic high energy store. A gas store means explosive potential. I do like my chemicals though, so thank you. Not so much 'fuel' as feed-stock. That makes excellent sense.
According to my local newspaper, Phoenix has 8 tiny little ovens to cook the stuff and analyse it. "Due to a software glitch, that could have to wait as long as two weeks." Currently, the score is therefore Eyeball 1, On-board Intelligence 0.
But this is mere hearsay. because the same report said: "Water is also a key element of Nasa's long range dreams to send humans to the planet because it not only would be necessary to sustain the first generation of pioneers but would be a source of fuel." Oh, Oh. I don't mind them calling water an element, as that is just an ambiguity of language. I don't mind the 'first generation' implying the next have evolved to not need water. But water as a source of fuel? Even if they did have tokamak fusion reactors that worked, they have to be light enough to send to Mars. Arrgh.
So RUMOUR has it that the software nerds screwed up. The good news is that scientists will get the blame. Doesn't matter if you are a NASA engineer or mbafailu (MBA from an ivy league university), everyone quotable is a scientist. That way, it's deniable. Because the fundamental theorem of science states that its not science unless it is falsifiable. (Political theory and science theory tend to meld at the high energies that run countries.)
Now that you point it out, it is a bit precious to separate computer generated music from any other form of recorded music where the machine could be altered. The pianola is just following a spool of punched hole program.
It is interesting how something as alien as a computer gets embedded into our culture. It does seem like tools are almost a part of our mental approach. So I suspect making machine music goes way back. I've not been to Nepal, but I think monks in that region have prayer wheels driven by water that also tinkle away on pipes or some such. Probably don't have a manufacture date on them but an archeologist could probably say they are early Gong Dynasty or some such.
Anyone know if the Ancient Greeks had automated sound producers. (Not counting thunder generators. Drum rolls to announce gods don't count.)
Which is where Siemer lives when he is not living in Springfield Missouri. So if he isn't acting out some LotR role, it seems as if he is in the Simpsons.
Whereas the judges were brought up on Witchfinder General.
There will be a period of channel hopping needed until the scriptwriters create a sitcom that synthesizes it all. Not to worry. The fuss is being created by a television channel so they are working on it.
The article you quote has an interesting photo - 4 people beside a large pool of toxic mercury. No wonder that line of research keeps getting snuffed out.
So why can't you just use a thin foil mirror to melt the lunar sand, and spin it into a high quality mirror?
Well, of course a phone conversation is a P2P interaction. You can't ban all phone conversations. That is anti-industry. I'm sure the lawyers will sort this out. It should be just a matter of allowing content free conversations to take place. So allowed would be: 'Wazzup?' 'Dunno.'
Whereas absolutely illegal would be: 'Help. Help. The building is on fire.' Not only does that convey data, it is also spreading despondency and alarm. However, it could become legal to phone movie the fire, transmit it to a TV studio, and once they have the royalties sorted out, they alert the authorities who in turn ring the fire department. (On a B2B or blob to blob basis. Blobs have area and are not points. Blobs are not lumps of data. Blobs have CEOs running them. Blobs are good. Points are bad....)
The avatar bit is irrelevant then. People choose an avatar, so it is in effect a visualization of your dreams.
So how about software (on line) where you can email a picture of yourself, and it thins you down (or fattens up) towards the norm, to a reasonably achievable body figure. Pin it on your wall and use it to focus on getting healthier.
Strine is English as spoken in Australia. Excellent example: the shark in 'Finding Nemo'
Strine is noted for converting a short 'i' into an 'ee'.
From the article. >the Neanderthal version doesn't have a quantal hallmark, which helps a listener distinguish the word "beat" from "bit," for instance.
An Aussie would say: "He ees a beet stupeed" ( More likely "He's bloodee stupeed, theek as a breek, mate.")
So on the basis of this research (from Floreeda), Neanderthals could build the Seednee Harbour Breedge, but not speak in the House of Lords.
Feer eenough mate. Wouldeent want to. Don't want a quantal hallmark stamped on me bum either.
> Personally, as the parent of a 3-year-old technophile, I'm dreading the animated cereal boxes.
I can see the counter-adverts on the ordinary boxes now "GE Free". And on the animated boxes "Cereal may contain nuts and batteries"
What I have been wanting for some time is something to brighten the sheer boredom of riding in a corporate lift. (I accept that stores and the like will batter a captive audience with ads so they are tortured into compliance by the time they arrive. Shut eyes, turn up iPod.)
The idea is to have something other than, say, a big 13 drifting past to tell you you have passed floor 13. I'd like a small 13, but some nice elevation dependent pictures. Earth and grass for the ground floor. Apples or tweety-birds for the next floor and so on. Eagles well up. And of course, space junk for senior managerial levels. Top floor a galaxy, with a warning that they are only 4% ordinary matter.
But I am bothered about the basement images. I'd rather avoid drippy caves, and anything with religious overtones. Suggestions anyone?
I am not sure what is meant by transparent? It should mean invisible. There is even an acronym,TTTU which is defined as 'Tranparent to the User', but that in turn is difficult to find a meaning for. I've understood it to mean 'You are not burdened with seeing the cogs whizzing around, it just works.' This seems a meaningful use of transparent.
Accountants seem to use the term to mean 'Fully visible'. Presumably, they regard Michaelangelo's David as the classical 'Transparent Man'. I think they should use 'translucent, but it is all a little late for that. So transparent seems to have two completely opposite meanings.
IT people mean "It works so well it is invisible" Money people mean "It doesn't have to work, but all the cogs have to be visible"
Please, is Steve Ballmer an IT professional or a money man.
Or have I got the IT meaning screwed up. Not for the first time:-)
Can anyone succinctly explain to non-US readers who and what this is about. The post gives no back-ground, the Change Congress web-site is useless and I can't be bothered to try harder.
I'll assume it was posted by someone who assumed slashdotters worldwide would have an interest. For all I know right now, it could be someone wanting to change the dress code.
Or improve the look of congresspersons web-sites. (Aka 'congressees', 'congressites', 'persons engaged in congress'. I'm open to a language lesson as well.)
Saturn: Ring, ring,... ring... Uranus: Frrthhh Neptune: Download NepTunes now. Includes Digital Rights for those who are Armed, and Suckers Rights for those who are Tentacled. Pluto: So we are not a planet, huh. Let's see who can out cold-shoulder who then. Planet X: Can anybody out there tell us where we are?
Slashdot Mirror
You are only able to say that because you wear a genuine tinfoil hat. I wore an aluminum 'tinfoil' hat and that monoxide stuff corroded it like crazy. The story gets worse. That chemical is responsible for an enormous number of deaths worldwide. It kills more surfers than shark attacks. It is also a key component of the search for chemicals on the moon and Mars, which as everyone knows, is needed to keep the world safe from a terrorist attack whereby they set fire to say the secretive dark side of the moon and launch it at us. Dihydrogen monoxide is one of the major residues found after Shuttle launches.
You'll be happy to learn I bought a genuine tinfoil hat, in the modern bee-keeper style. Sure it is heavier, but it is pure tin, and chemical free. Only downside is you have to take it off when going into a bank. The guy with the gun told me it was a safety regulation. But he also assured me that the whole bank had a genuine tinfoil roof so that's ok.
Yup. The limit should focus on how much stored energy is allowed to be brought in a single package. I was sent an article recently on ultracapacitors, which seem near capable of powering a car. My worry was - the energy is all stored together, like rocket fuel. Low quality rocket fuel, but hey, I burn easily. At least with petrol, the oxidant is on the outside.
Possibly they should set an energy limit, in some relevant unit. For instance 10 nano-Challengers is about a gram of rocket fuel.
It was a library. They issue loans every day. They are supposed to issue loans and let people read stuff. The Feds have promised to read it and return it quite quickly.
So what's different from any other book or DVD or whatever in the library? Things might be on it that the government might not be supposed to know. From what I understand of the law so far discussed here, this is now tainted evidence. Great for eliminating suspects but likely to free the guilty. So what are you complaining about?
Incidentally, the library does appear to be quite honest in its open approach. It seems the Librarian released the information about the seizure to the Press. The original article is a bit vague about that, but the alternative is that the FBI wanted to warn the suspect in advance.
He refused to release details as he had made an agreement about what was being sought, and who knows who could be protected by that. He did indicate that anthrax scares were no more than a co-incidence. The reporting was a bit vague there as well, but increasing public panic is in the interests of the newspaper. Can't fault them on professional competence. Suppose someone had been using it to further some other crime. (Call it kiddy porn.) Release on information about that would taint the reputation of all library users. At least a confused mentioning of anthrax (and a dead suspect) keeps the other users looking innocent.
All in all, the Library Director seems to have done a good job of protecting the innocent, albeit at the expense of letting the guilty go free. Damn near a lawyer in fact.
No. The Chinese are having to do things cheaply because they have low wages. A babelfish translator is probably better than an English-speaking Chinese kid. This is because you should translate from your second language into the culture you are competent in. A Chinese-American who knows what people are looking for in a restaurant is optimal. After all, translating the Chinese for 'inexpensive' to 'dirt cheap' is correct, but even a multilingual kid might not pick up on the nuances. Beijing have supposedly removed dog off the menus for the duration of the Games. So how would they interpret someone asking for a 'Hot dog'. Call over the English speaking kid who would explain that the government had banned them.
There are possibly, a horde of examples of Americans badly translating into Chinese. You know, 'Server Translation Error' becoming 'Waiter moving sideways badly'. You have to say to yourself, I do not know about them. Possibly because I am incompetent in the languages of China, but it also could be because the Chinese may regard stuff ups like these worth relating over a drink, but not to be published to the world. It is impolite.
What I do recognize from the "Server Translation Error" is my own experience on a Help Desk when the regular guy was absent and I as junior programmer took over. I had to explain to clients what the error messages meant. Often, they meant we had not caught the error early enough, and the real explanation for say "Your registration is out of date" was that one of the networked databases had failed to update. At times the error messages totally flummoxed us. They had been there so long, without being reported, that we no longer knew they existed.
The humor I take from this is a rueful, 'Been there; Done that.'
Both of the replies to my post are really sensible. I have no deep opposition to your point of view, and also share a distrust of what I would call a 'planned economy'. Those economies are driven by a class of nobles ordering peasants about. Call them commissars and Glorious Workers of the Motherland if you like, still a medieval economy. The ones you quote have nukes, which garners respect, much as I respect a rabid dog.
But the market doesn't work too well either. Money is a fluid, if you like, and with hedge-fund power, or simply a big war chest because you are a big company, you can manipulate it. It is flexible, it is responsive, and acts often like sheep being driven by dogs. Most times I'd say, serve the silly buggers right.
The problem is, the system lacks genuine equilibrium mechanisms. For that to happen, once deviation from a likely 'optimal price' happens, buyers or sellers would have to start to move the price back to optimal. However, these buyers and sellers are not calm. They are paranoid and rightly suspicious of the more powerful. Stocks can be driven up or down by panic buying and selling, deliberately driven. I'd love to know how much money has been made by the really rich from the economic woes of the last year.
The system is probably closer to the movement of cars on a major road. In low traffic use, equilibrium rules. But in peak traffic, even small brakings and movements set up exaggerated responses. They do eventually correct, but a lot slower than equilibrium theory would predict, and this is in the absence of someone wanting to benefit from disruption.
I do not believe strongly in the equilibrium market. Conversely, I have observed honest bureaucracies in action. That said, I would also say that any bureaucracy exposed to political control will become corrupt. Not may, will. So the 'fair bureaucracy' proposal is fragile at best. There are conditions in which they do work. All of them have a highly technical, highly educated engine at the center. In Agriculture, they are called veterinarians. In medicine, they are called doctors. Roading has engineers. I even live in a country with a professional military that cares for the people of the country and are not part of the government. (It's a small OECD country. And I make no guarantees even for the next generation.)
The proposal is possible. It can be driven by economists, psychologists, mathematicians and similar to work. But in the end, it is a lot of 'given away' cash. To call it a politicians wet dream would perhaps understate the risk. And politicians are very good at manipulation. They find compliant vets, doctors and engineers to run the system. The proposal is also weakened by those same maths. That is, while competent and informed societies do act for stability, the politicians and many senior bureaucrats should really be regarded as hedge-fund operators.
So I share your scepticism as well. Is it possible to have any honest civil service that is stable and does not degenerate into a rule bound bureaucracy. Long term, I suspect the answer is no. But then, long term, antibiotics do not work. The bugs fight back. They're still pretty good in the meantime. I'm ambivalent.
Let's get back to software patents.
Essentially, the slashdot community in the main oppose software patents. The main argument really isn't too much different from a wealthy teenager just wanting to drive and not caring about any global economy crap. "I just want to be able to code." In economic terms, I'd say that was medieval. I am using that as a fair descriptive term. It is how medicine operates. You learn the trade as an apprentice, practice as a journeyman, and finally set up shop as a master, taking apprentices in turn. You protect your interests using both trade secrets and a powerful guild that can and will destroy threats to its survival. It is a society of powerful, skilled individuals. (Yup, medicine.)
So what killed the guilds, albeit over centuries. IANAH. (Historian) I'd guess two things worked against
I doubt if the patent system has a discernible purpose any more. That implies a cogent intent across many years and countries. But it does have a number of functions, and encouraging research and development is I agree one of them. However, its function to reward the monopoly owner of an invention, not the inventor. Monopoly is what the Soviet Union was quite good at.
Yes, the proposal notionally increases the cost by 5%. You have to subtract from that the cost of the current system, both in terms of lawyers, (the trivial part), and the social cost of fragmenting a delivered idea into a plurality of obscurely described patents. I would agree that if the effect is to increase the cost to society, then dump it and go with the current cumbersome system. Not a problem.
The 'demand bureaucracy' would have to live on a mere 1% of the 5%. So whatever a demand bureaucracy is, it would have to deliver a lot of social product analysis quite cheaply. If by the term you mean a bunch of tyrants who demand things be done without understanding how they could be done. Yup, reasonable description of the USSR from my very distant perspective. Don't know what that has to do with bureaucrats who have to measure where and how the good of technology is flowing, and reward those that enable that flow. Bugger all demand there. I'd call them technocrats. They'd be similar in status and operation to a Department of Agriculture.
But the key idea is to reward the total delivery, not the creation. You can't patent new applications for old drugs. You can't patent finding the current applications have nasty effects. But there are alternative reward systems in place. So the proposal is up for discussion, not for zealotry. Kick it all you want.
I think it impractical to define hard and easy. In hindsight, matters are often easy. (Eg. Compare commentators after the race with those before.)
I do think that inventors should be rewarded, as should those who support them.
The following idea is not new.
Dump the patent concept. Replace it with a 5% technology tax.
A maximum of 1% of the tax may be used to administer the tax. The rest is to be returned to inventors, and to those making the inventions available, and the consequences of using them. So you can get reward for inventing a drug, for finding new uses for it, for proving the efficacy of that use, and for showing that there are nasty side effects.
Broad principle: Reward the social DELIVERY of invention to all those wishing to implement it.
No monopoly of production is granted. The most you get is a head start, because you knew of it first.
Amounts would be assigned in proportion to the contribution to social advantage. (Yeah, it's vague.) Yet another drug in a series of similar drugs has no advantage, as the cost of proving safety is too high. Showing a drug (eg thalidomide) is very dangerous in a small number of cases should also be rewarded. Finding that boring old asprin in quarter doses helps prevent heart disease is to be rewarded.
Money would also go (a substantial proportion) to those enabling people to use ideas to their advantage. Good practical descriptions, search engines, parts sourcing. There is no reward for popularization though. You may get more from competently describing someone elses arcane invention than the inventor.
Let's take the case of software.
Someone invents an arcane algorithm. May get zilch.
Someone finds a field in which it is useful and writes code that is effective. Gets some $.
Someone expands the code into several well known languages, and comments the code so it is easier to translate into more languages. Gets $
Someone analyses the typical areas of application, generalizes them yet describes it sufficiently precisely that a searcher in a quite different field will find the code examples without expending a lot of time. Gets $
And so on.
I want invention delivered to me so I can use it.
You seem to have implicitly invented a useful word (and derivatives).
Adsperger (n): Someone who advertises or engages in publicity without any understanding of how the ads will be perceived.
Adspergize (v, transitive.): To alienate a readership through poor understanding of their response.
Adsperg (n): An advert that annoys the reader not from deliberate intent, but from an inability to understand the likely range of responses to the ad.
To a lesser extent, we all act in a similar manner at times, being offensive in public. This post could well annoy people with Aspergers Syndrome. Well, I can be an insensitive clod at times, and do suspect I have a touch of AS.
Oh well. "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn." Welcome to slashdot.
I can just hear that dog saying "I keep telling them. The gun needs NINE barrels. Cats have nine lives. But do they listen....."
Yeah, but there were fewer craters then.
Every time a political career fails, a new crater appears on the moon. Of course, most failures are too small to see, even if we think they are important. Local elections generate moon dust. You need a Ceasar undergoing an ambitionectomy to just make it visible. The really big craters probably occurred when there were only a few humans. Say about 4004 BC.
So now you understand the background behind election talk, the inner message.
Talk of "Impact".
Talk of "Give me a ring sometime".
Talk of "The Crater Good of Mankind".
It's all covered in the Science lectures in a Political Science course. There are only 3 of those, they all occur 5 pm on a Friday, and don't get examined. Even Political Scientists know that science is irrelevant. But any senator that said that would create a 5mm crater. (Not 5 million miles. This is science. 0.2 inches.)
Can someone on slashdot please make sense of the article. It claims ;-)
1. That quantum computing needs vastly fewer bits to represent data. I thought it dealt with multiple possibilities simultaneously, but that the final reality just needed small number of bits. (Ideal for encryption cracking. Crap for storing a database)
2. That a synthetic atom was created. OK. I used to be a chemist. A new non-peridic table atom is heresy to me. But that extraordinary claim seemed to be nothing more than an odd electrical state, acting as if an unknown atom was present.
3. A molecule was created. Covalent bonds and the like. Except that it seemed to be an arsenic atom buried in a matrix. Not a separate molecule at all.
4. That faster than light communication is possible. I thought that collapsing entanglement does appear to happen faster than light, but that no information transfer happens. Mind you, that's my memory of my take on a New Scientist comment some time back. My brain has its share of garbage. Compost help ideas grow.
I suspect there is great science here being reported as little more than magic.
I'll agree their gall is impressive, but they may have some really competent marketing guys running it. Just assume the software works. (Beeeeeg assumption, but go with it.) The real target is 30 something women who are worried about looking older and do not believe what anybody tells them.
So having software that tells you how old you appear would be great. Another set of bathroom scales, rated in years. It also allows a before and after evaluation at a beauty salon. There is real money to be made here. And the true beauty of the scheme is that it is being promoted in the initial and difficult start up period by targeting just the right sort of controversy.
As for telling a woman "The software is no good. A photo of you is rated just as old and haggard." Well, now she knows you are stupid, tell her she really looks young, all things considered.
Next product. Software for men. Are you balding, paunchy? No problem, your friends will tell you. But do you look sexy? You can only trust the opinion of Intellivamp from Flogadream Inc.
The summary implies a major problem, although the term 'growing' was used.
1. No evidence of substantive misuse exists. There is substantive proof of bias (particularly against women succeeding.) This is not scientific fraud. Just scientists being arseholes and using their power to diminish the lives of others.
2. More reporting of fraud is likely these days. More reporters, and lots of web search engines for them to use. But consider the activity base. Back in the days when I was a scientist, there were about 1 per 1000 of the population. At a guess then, say 2 million scientists in the world right now. (The definition of one will vary, so no exact number is possible.) Even at a absurdly low rate of 1 per 1000 being crooked, that's 2000 bent scientists. Get real. Of course there are a whole bunch of them out there. So what. Do you expect them to be inhuman. Not that would be really horrible.
3. The oath is a wishy washy load of idealistic crap. "I promise never to allow financial gain, competitiveness or ambition cloud my judgment in the conduct of ethical research and scholarship. I will pursue knowledge and create knowledge for the greater good, but never to the detriment of colleagues, supervisors, research subjects or the international community of scholars of which I am now a member." What species do they think scientists belong to. The astonishing thing in my experience was that scientists were far more ethical than people had any right to expect. The oath allows you to be a complete bastard provided you are engaged in non-thical research and scholarship. It also expects a group driven above all by curiosity to instead be driven by the 'common good'. Well, the atomic bomb was invented for the common good. (Albeit, the common good of one side in a war, but the majority of both sides of the war agreed with having such a bias.)
4. The oath will achieve nothing. There are already punitive measures in place. Get caught even mildly fudging you data and you cease to be a scientist. For ever. You may get a job washing glassware, but you can forget any position of authority.
5. I do think the measures in place are inadequate. In the main, they rely on checking on how believable a submitted paper is (peer review), and then whether the science survives. The equivalent of an environmental impact report does not exist. The best you could hope for say, if someone discovered a simple way of isolating out uranium 235 for instance, would be for someone to exterminate the idiot. Do not expect the science community to do it for you. But scientists do have ethics committees, particularly governing the use of animals. They were really picky. (As I got older, I agreed with them.) It wasn't sufficient just to be treating your animals well. The requirement was that you interfere to the least extent possible. Considering science is agnostic, they were in the main, ethical.
Excuse the rant. Science is about as safe as guns in the community. Strong opinions are not only expected, they should be expressed. But please get my key point. It is much safer having scientists being human than following 'the common good'. The common good will be defined by either a religious power group or a political one. I'd rather have scientists caring for the people around them, and being restricted in their ability to casually affect the lives of others.
Good point. I was a chemist once upon a time. The H2 and O2 are excellent 'reagents'. As H2 leaks like crazy, I'd store energy other ways, in spite of knowing it was a very clean, non-toxic high energy store. A gas store means explosive potential. I do like my chemicals though, so thank you. Not so much 'fuel' as feed-stock. That makes excellent sense.
According to my local newspaper, Phoenix has 8 tiny little ovens to cook the stuff and analyse it. "Due to a software glitch, that could have to wait as long as two weeks." Currently, the score is therefore Eyeball 1, On-board Intelligence 0.
But this is mere hearsay. because the same report said: "Water is also a key element of Nasa's long range dreams to send humans to the planet because it not only would be necessary to sustain the first generation of pioneers but would be a source of fuel." Oh, Oh. I don't mind them calling water an element, as that is just an ambiguity of language. I don't mind the 'first generation' implying the next have evolved to not need water. But water as a source of fuel? Even if they did have tokamak fusion reactors that worked, they have to be light enough to send to Mars. Arrgh.
So RUMOUR has it that the software nerds screwed up. The good news is that scientists will get the blame. Doesn't matter if you are a NASA engineer or mbafailu (MBA from an ivy league university), everyone quotable is a scientist. That way, it's deniable. Because the fundamental theorem of science states that its not science unless it is falsifiable. (Political theory and science theory tend to meld at the high energies that run countries.)
Now that you point it out, it is a bit precious to separate computer generated music from any other form of recorded music where the machine could be altered. The pianola is just following a spool of punched hole program.
It is interesting how something as alien as a computer gets embedded into our culture. It does seem like tools are almost a part of our mental approach. So I suspect making machine music goes way back. I've not been to Nepal, but I think monks in that region have prayer wheels driven by water that also tinkle away on pipes or some such. Probably don't have a manufacture date on them but an archeologist could probably say they are early Gong Dynasty or some such.
Anyone know if the Ancient Greeks had automated sound producers. (Not counting thunder generators. Drum rolls to announce gods don't count.)
Yup. The biggest city is called Orcland.
Which is where Siemer lives when he is not living in Springfield Missouri.
So if he isn't acting out some LotR role, it seems as if he is in the Simpsons.
Whereas the judges were brought up on Witchfinder General.
There will be a period of channel hopping needed until the scriptwriters create a sitcom that synthesizes it all. Not to worry. The fuss is being created by a television channel so they are working on it.
The article you quote has an interesting photo - 4 people beside a large pool of toxic mercury. No wonder that line of research keeps getting snuffed out.
So why can't you just use a thin foil mirror to melt the lunar sand, and spin it into a high quality mirror?
Well, of course a phone conversation is a P2P interaction. You can't ban all phone conversations. That is anti-industry. I'm sure the lawyers will sort this out. It should be just a matter of allowing content free conversations to take place. So allowed would be:
'Wazzup?' 'Dunno.'
Whereas absolutely illegal would be: 'Help. Help. The building is on fire.' Not only does that convey data, it is also spreading despondency and alarm. However, it could become legal to phone movie the fire, transmit it to a TV studio, and once they have the royalties sorted out, they alert the authorities who in turn ring the fire department. (On a B2B or blob to blob basis. Blobs have area and are not points. Blobs are not lumps of data. Blobs have CEOs running them. Blobs are good. Points are bad....)
The avatar bit is irrelevant then. People choose an avatar, so it is in effect a visualization of your dreams.
So how about software (on line) where you can email a picture of yourself, and it thins you down (or fattens up) towards the norm, to a reasonably achievable body figure. Pin it on your wall and use it to focus on getting healthier.
Don't know who would sponsor the software. KFC?
Strine is English as spoken in Australia.
Excellent example: the shark in 'Finding Nemo'
Strine is noted for converting a short 'i' into an 'ee'.
From the article.
>the Neanderthal version doesn't have a quantal hallmark, which helps a listener distinguish the word "beat" from "bit," for instance.
An Aussie would say:
"He ees a beet stupeed" ( More likely "He's bloodee stupeed, theek as a breek, mate.")
So on the basis of this research (from Floreeda),
Neanderthals could build the Seednee Harbour Breedge, but not speak in the House of Lords.
Feer eenough mate. Wouldeent want to. Don't want a quantal hallmark stamped on me bum either.
> Personally, as the parent of a 3-year-old technophile, I'm dreading the animated cereal boxes.
I can see the counter-adverts on the ordinary boxes now "GE Free". And on the animated boxes "Cereal may contain nuts and batteries"
What I have been wanting for some time is something to brighten the sheer boredom of riding in a corporate lift. (I accept that stores and the like will batter a captive audience with ads so they are tortured into compliance by the time they arrive. Shut eyes, turn up iPod.)
The idea is to have something other than, say, a big 13 drifting past to tell you you have passed floor 13. I'd like a small 13, but some nice elevation dependent pictures. Earth and grass for the ground floor. Apples or tweety-birds for the next floor and so on. Eagles well up. And of course, space junk for senior managerial levels. Top floor a galaxy, with a warning that they are only 4% ordinary matter.
But I am bothered about the basement images. I'd rather avoid drippy caves, and anything with religious overtones. Suggestions anyone?
I am not sure what is meant by transparent? It should mean invisible. There is even an acronym,TTTU which is defined as 'Tranparent to the User', but that in turn is difficult to find a meaning for. I've understood it to mean 'You are not burdened with seeing the cogs whizzing around, it just works.' This seems a meaningful use of transparent.
:-)
Accountants seem to use the term to mean 'Fully visible'. Presumably, they regard Michaelangelo's David as the classical 'Transparent Man'. I think they should use 'translucent, but it is all a little late for that. So transparent seems to have two completely opposite meanings.
IT people mean "It works so well it is invisible"
Money people mean "It doesn't have to work, but all the cogs have to be visible"
Please, is Steve Ballmer an IT professional or a money man.
Or have I got the IT meaning screwed up. Not for the first time
Can anyone succinctly explain to non-US readers who and what this is about. The post gives no back-ground, the Change Congress web-site is useless and I can't be bothered to try harder.
I'll assume it was posted by someone who assumed slashdotters worldwide would have an interest. For all I know right now, it could be someone wanting to change the dress code.
Or improve the look of congresspersons web-sites. (Aka 'congressees', 'congressites', 'persons engaged in congress'. I'm open to a language lesson as well.)
Saturn: Ring, ring, ... ring...
Uranus: Frrthhh
Neptune: Download NepTunes now. Includes Digital Rights for those who are Armed, and Suckers Rights for those who are Tentacled.
Pluto: So we are not a planet, huh. Let's see who can out cold-shoulder who then.
Planet X: Can anybody out there tell us where we are?