Why would they need to though? The point is, the internet allows people to get information they need instantly. If you are an engineer, you need to convert things on a daily basis so of course those things are committed to memory, just like a historian might know that the First Battle of St. Albans took place on 22 May 1455. Everyone else though, could just Google the date.
All a human -really- needs to know is how to read/speak a popular language and critical thinking skills. The rest, in the 21st century will fall into place.
The problem is things are banned that don't affect others. Things that don't affect others other than yourself should never be legislated or even put to a vote. If you don't like smoking pot, then don't. It doesn't matter if your neighbor does or not. Same with violent video games, porn, etc.
The problem is these laws that do not involve fraud and force are violating the sovereignty of the individual: to do whatever they want so long as it doesn't harm others. By definition, this is freedom without resorting to utopian, unsustainable ideas about having no laws whatsoever.
Um, oddly enough humans are not robots. Do a repetitive task over and over again, you tend to make mistakes. Now take a small break, you tend to regain your focus. Mistakes cost far more money than "wasted productivity" ever will because mistakes require redundancy, someone to look at and correct jobs that have already been completed.
Stop being a dick and let people access whatever sites they please, if they don't keep up with the work load, have management fire them. But seriously, don't think you know "productivity" because if I'm doing the same task for an hour or more without a break, I'm not going to be productive. After a few minutes doing another task like checking Facebook, playing a game of Pac-man, etc. I'm back to productivity. Without those breaks, mental numbness sets in and productivity fails.
A lot of it is due to the government pushing for more control in other areas, or where irrationality has taken hold or because the government has taken upon themselves to print worthless money.
With hard currency, low regulation and a rational population you have a recipe for economic sustainability and wealth.
Other than government regulations of force and fraud (which, count under the "harming others" I mentioned in my post) the free market can, and will exist.
No it doesn't. The free market lets you enjoy life as much as you want it. Government regulated economies don't let you enjoy life.
What makes you happy? Chances are, unless it involves harming others, the free market will let you do it. Government regulated economies, on the other hand, don't let you do it unless it is a certain set of approved activities.
Because, I'm sure Google doesn't give back in terms of productivity.
I'm sure it does. Just think about everything that would need to be looked up without Google. Want to know the currency conversion between US and Canadian dollars for an estimate? Need to know Pound to Kilogram conversions? Etc.
Google lets you make much more accurate decisions without wasting time.
Humans are not engines. You can't just give us caffeine and sugar and expect us to work all that time. We require mental stimulation or else our work suffers.
What HR departments don't seem to understand is that we are not robots or programs. Put anyone and have them do a repetitive task, they will quickly get mental numbness and their productivity will suffer. Now take the person and give them some mental stimulation now and then and they won't make those errors.
If you want something that will turn out the same quality of work 24/7, get a robot or program. Humans aren't like that. And saying that it "cost" $4.8 million just isn't understanding humanity.
How is it good? It leaves the entire internet vulnerable. It pushes people not towards Linux but towards outdated versions of Windows and more or less guarantees the future has 32 bit OSes.
Look at what is keeping people from adopting Linux: Small, niche programs.
With outdated versions of Windows already online, can we afford to push even more people to old, closed, OSes with no future of getting patches?
And how do they do that? With a limited monopoly on the idea, not the implementation. It's the exact opposite coverage of copyright, which grants a limited monopoly on the expression but not the idea. Trademarks is a monopoly over a name under certain conditions.
And what are the points of those?
In the US constitution, patents are secured to "promote the sciences and useful arts", trademarks are used to protect consumers. The point of patents was to prevent guilds and companies from monopolizing knowledge by providing an incentive for them to release it to the public. Trademarks are useful because they let people understand what they are getting: if I want a Nintendo Wii and the package says Nintendo Wii, I should be getting a Nintendo Wii, not http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadgetmobile.com/media/2007/12/vii-2-white.jpg , trademarks are useful.
What patents are today, are not what patents were when they were first designed. They were to add to the public knowledge and let people do great things with it as building blocks. Today though? We have the internet, we have communication, etc. We need to seriously consider if patents are even worth it today because they fulfill none of the constitutional requirements and don't benefit the original idea of patents.
No they wouldn't be pointless, they would be useful to promote the progress of the sciences and useful arts.
Think about it this way, there are a number of ways to create an image, you can use ink, CRT, LCD, LED, etc. but with patents like the patent pool that MPEG-LA has, they have a patent for a "technology to display an image" with the result of being an etch-a-sketch, if I want to make a CRT, I still have to pay them money because it is "technology to display an image" despite me not even using their technology at all.
So unless I feel like paying extortion money, the technology lags behind because patents are preventing me from creating "technology to display an image" even if I want to do it in a radically different way.
Not to mention that half the time it isn't the people who would have created the etch-a-sketch technology but rather a business out in Texas or someplace which does nothing to do with display technology and they only target me once I'm making money with my CRT monitors.
Granted, this is a terrible example, but when you look at software patents and such, they are effectively cornering the market with an "etch-a-sketch" because a CRT or LCD would violate the "technology to display an image" patent.
Even if it is technically legal, I can't support it. I probably can't help supporting it financially (as so many products have it included) but I certainly can't support it morally.
The entire point of patents are to instruct how something works and how to make it. However, these patents are too broad and cover far too much.
Patents are supposed to encourage different ways of doing things, however, with "patent pools" like MPEG-LA and large corporations having far to many patents and lawyers plus patent trolls, you can't do anything without running into one of them.
If you don't do things exactly like the patent papers say and make non-trivial modifications, you should be able to use it. That is the only way in this day and age that patents can "promote the sciences and the useful arts"
The problem is principle, even if I use totally clean-room reverse-engineering without even taking one look at their patents, I still am guilty of patent violations, how?
Not to mention their patents become so broad that if you want to create your own compressed video standard you still have to license it out.
Really, they should license certain software for $2 and if you use clean-room reverse engineering, you should be perfectly entitled to distribute and use it. And if you make a different standard, you should be able to distribute and use that without fear of patent lawsuits.
Any company that does not make use of their patent "portfolio" to advance art and sciences is an abuser of patent laws plain and simple.
To a small degree, yes. But not to any large enough trend, especially as children. Look back to your childhood, chances are your parents chose the people you "should" be hanging around with based on their parents, and generally they were completely wrong. Because Billy's parents were nice, your parents thought you should be playing with Billy even though Billy is a complete jerk.
What I find to be quite humorous is that the scientific processes used to dismiss things like the "divine right of kings" and the like is now using genetics to form basic predestination which basic observation using the scientific method disproved.
Humans always admire those who stand up to injustice, especially if they succeed. Look at the founding fathers of the US, Civil War "heroes", etc. It makes no difference if you are 8 fighting the school bully or if you are 28 fighting against tyranny, or if you are 78 and fighting injustice in the legal system.
The problem is schools try their hardest to reduce attacks against bullies. For some reason the natural process of growing up has been demonized. Guess what? Kids fight. Guess what? They go home with a bloody nose and are made all the stronger because of it. These studies only confirm what everyone already knows that the natural process of growing up is just that: natural and beneficial.
Not to mention most corporate forums enjoy closing down and pretending anything negative they do doesn't exist or you get the helpful employee who is powerless to do anything due to the internal bureaucracy.
Plus, "large ISP" usually means they have some sort of monopoly and screw customers at will (like Comcast in the US)
AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint all have a lot to gamble on with their phones. If they gave us our devices pre-rooted, it would come down to price and performance. No one is going to jump ship from Verizon, Sprint or T-Mobile to get AT&T's Android phones because they are so #$@#$ awful. If they all allowed rooting, the Backflip might not be the complete crapfest of bloatware and stupid design decisions (seriously, no non-market apps, no Google search, non-removable crapware) and AT&T might entice more people to go to its network.
I know a few people who switched from AT&T and Verizon to T-mobile when they got open Android phones.
AT&T shouldn't put all of its eggs in one basket by shunning Android and supporting the iPhone nearly exclusively. Also, why is it that the networks feel the need to advertise rather than actually -do- something productive with their network. I mean, seriously? AT&T could have spent the money used in battling Verizon upgrading towers to 3G, all the money spent "promoting" the Backflip by ensuring its success by implementing decent designs.
Lack of control means more profit for the cell phone carriers if they can compete. With all the money they seem to be wasting on ads and such, they could have already created great networks and decent phones.
Dear Hardware providers and cell carriers: Please give us our devices already rooted. The community can easily port new versions of Android to your phones so phones like the Motorola Backflip and Cliq can have decent versions of Android already.
I mean, seriously? What do they have to lose for giving us pre-rooted phones?
The problem with doing R&D at home isn't that you might not get results, it is then what to do with them. It takes a large team of lawyers to defend discoveries and such. Patents are expensive, etc. Really, you might end up having to put more money and time in it than the actual R&D if you decide to share your results.
There is a reason why R&D projects generally are taken by large businesses: they have time and money to defend them. The days of buying the newest "toy" and making lots of scientific progress is over, even if you do make progress it will take far too much time and money to defend it than you probably want to do.
And who -doesn't- want to have a dev board with sharp solder points stuck in their pocket? And who -doesn't- want to compile everything themselves and send it via the serial port? A dev board has its place, the one you linked to would be great for a small robotics project or even a little web-enabled alarm clock or something. For replacing the Pandora? No. The entire point why we buy "consumer" electronics is that most things are simply there, we download a few binaries a few ROMs and soon we are playing Super Mario World on it. We don't need to compile the kernel, fiddle around till we get X working, spend time optimizing it for speed, etc. There is a time and place for such things, the Pandora is filling a different niche.
iPhone - Tied into an expensive contract, needs jailbroken to actually run anything decent, no hardware buttons
Kin - Tied into an expensive contract, UI fails, not open
Zune HD - Less RAM, less open, no hardware buttons
Viliv S5 - expensive, smaller, less dedicated community, expensive
The Pandora fills an important role: giving a reasonably powerful cheap-ish device in the hands of programmers and users. Its not going to outsell the DS or PSP, its not a phone, etc.
Yeah, the Pandora would have been much nicer had it shipped on time, but its still not a terrible device.
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And how often does volunteering actually end up really helping people in the long term?
There aren't too many opportunities to teach skills which will help people to actually get ahead.
Such things I'd support, but all "volunteering" has turned into is just giving handouts, these don't help humanity but rather hinder progress.
Why would they need to though? The point is, the internet allows people to get information they need instantly. If you are an engineer, you need to convert things on a daily basis so of course those things are committed to memory, just like a historian might know that the First Battle of St. Albans took place on 22 May 1455. Everyone else though, could just Google the date.
All a human -really- needs to know is how to read/speak a popular language and critical thinking skills. The rest, in the 21st century will fall into place.
The problem is things are banned that don't affect others. Things that don't affect others other than yourself should never be legislated or even put to a vote. If you don't like smoking pot, then don't. It doesn't matter if your neighbor does or not. Same with violent video games, porn, etc.
The problem is these laws that do not involve fraud and force are violating the sovereignty of the individual: to do whatever they want so long as it doesn't harm others. By definition, this is freedom without resorting to utopian, unsustainable ideas about having no laws whatsoever.
Um, oddly enough humans are not robots. Do a repetitive task over and over again, you tend to make mistakes. Now take a small break, you tend to regain your focus. Mistakes cost far more money than "wasted productivity" ever will because mistakes require redundancy, someone to look at and correct jobs that have already been completed.
Stop being a dick and let people access whatever sites they please, if they don't keep up with the work load, have management fire them. But seriously, don't think you know "productivity" because if I'm doing the same task for an hour or more without a break, I'm not going to be productive. After a few minutes doing another task like checking Facebook, playing a game of Pac-man, etc. I'm back to productivity. Without those breaks, mental numbness sets in and productivity fails.
Such as?
A lot of it is due to the government pushing for more control in other areas, or where irrationality has taken hold or because the government has taken upon themselves to print worthless money.
With hard currency, low regulation and a rational population you have a recipe for economic sustainability and wealth.
Other than government regulations of force and fraud (which, count under the "harming others" I mentioned in my post) the free market can, and will exist.
No it doesn't. The free market lets you enjoy life as much as you want it. Government regulated economies don't let you enjoy life.
What makes you happy? Chances are, unless it involves harming others, the free market will let you do it. Government regulated economies, on the other hand, don't let you do it unless it is a certain set of approved activities.
Because, I'm sure Google doesn't give back in terms of productivity.
I'm sure it does. Just think about everything that would need to be looked up without Google. Want to know the currency conversion between US and Canadian dollars for an estimate? Need to know Pound to Kilogram conversions? Etc.
Google lets you make much more accurate decisions without wasting time.
Humans are not engines. You can't just give us caffeine and sugar and expect us to work all that time. We require mental stimulation or else our work suffers.
What HR departments don't seem to understand is that we are not robots or programs. Put anyone and have them do a repetitive task, they will quickly get mental numbness and their productivity will suffer. Now take the person and give them some mental stimulation now and then and they won't make those errors.
If you want something that will turn out the same quality of work 24/7, get a robot or program. Humans aren't like that. And saying that it "cost" $4.8 million just isn't understanding humanity.
How is it good? It leaves the entire internet vulnerable. It pushes people not towards Linux but towards outdated versions of Windows and more or less guarantees the future has 32 bit OSes.
Look at what is keeping people from adopting Linux: Small, niche programs.
With outdated versions of Windows already online, can we afford to push even more people to old, closed, OSes with no future of getting patches?
And how do they do that? With a limited monopoly on the idea, not the implementation. It's the exact opposite coverage of copyright, which grants a limited monopoly on the expression but not the idea. Trademarks is a monopoly over a name under certain conditions.
And what are the points of those?
In the US constitution, patents are secured to "promote the sciences and useful arts", trademarks are used to protect consumers. The point of patents was to prevent guilds and companies from monopolizing knowledge by providing an incentive for them to release it to the public. Trademarks are useful because they let people understand what they are getting: if I want a Nintendo Wii and the package says Nintendo Wii, I should be getting a Nintendo Wii, not http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadgetmobile.com/media/2007/12/vii-2-white.jpg , trademarks are useful.
What patents are today, are not what patents were when they were first designed. They were to add to the public knowledge and let people do great things with it as building blocks. Today though? We have the internet, we have communication, etc. We need to seriously consider if patents are even worth it today because they fulfill none of the constitutional requirements and don't benefit the original idea of patents.
No they wouldn't be pointless, they would be useful to promote the progress of the sciences and useful arts.
Think about it this way, there are a number of ways to create an image, you can use ink, CRT, LCD, LED, etc. but with patents like the patent pool that MPEG-LA has, they have a patent for a "technology to display an image" with the result of being an etch-a-sketch, if I want to make a CRT, I still have to pay them money because it is "technology to display an image" despite me not even using their technology at all.
So unless I feel like paying extortion money, the technology lags behind because patents are preventing me from creating "technology to display an image" even if I want to do it in a radically different way.
Not to mention that half the time it isn't the people who would have created the etch-a-sketch technology but rather a business out in Texas or someplace which does nothing to do with display technology and they only target me once I'm making money with my CRT monitors.
Granted, this is a terrible example, but when you look at software patents and such, they are effectively cornering the market with an "etch-a-sketch" because a CRT or LCD would violate the "technology to display an image" patent.
Which is an abuse of law.
Even if it is technically legal, I can't support it. I probably can't help supporting it financially (as so many products have it included) but I certainly can't support it morally.
The entire point of patents are to instruct how something works and how to make it. However, these patents are too broad and cover far too much.
Patents are supposed to encourage different ways of doing things, however, with "patent pools" like MPEG-LA and large corporations having far to many patents and lawyers plus patent trolls, you can't do anything without running into one of them.
If you don't do things exactly like the patent papers say and make non-trivial modifications, you should be able to use it. That is the only way in this day and age that patents can "promote the sciences and the useful arts"
The problem is principle, even if I use totally clean-room reverse-engineering without even taking one look at their patents, I still am guilty of patent violations, how?
Not to mention their patents become so broad that if you want to create your own compressed video standard you still have to license it out.
Really, they should license certain software for $2 and if you use clean-room reverse engineering, you should be perfectly entitled to distribute and use it. And if you make a different standard, you should be able to distribute and use that without fear of patent lawsuits.
Any company that does not make use of their patent "portfolio" to advance art and sciences is an abuser of patent laws plain and simple.
To a small degree, yes. But not to any large enough trend, especially as children. Look back to your childhood, chances are your parents chose the people you "should" be hanging around with based on their parents, and generally they were completely wrong. Because Billy's parents were nice, your parents thought you should be playing with Billy even though Billy is a complete jerk.
You mean like every other book series on the market? You mean like serials published in magazines?
Because we know everything is genetic?
What I find to be quite humorous is that the scientific processes used to dismiss things like the "divine right of kings" and the like is now using genetics to form basic predestination which basic observation using the scientific method disproved.
Humans always admire those who stand up to injustice, especially if they succeed. Look at the founding fathers of the US, Civil War "heroes", etc. It makes no difference if you are 8 fighting the school bully or if you are 28 fighting against tyranny, or if you are 78 and fighting injustice in the legal system.
The problem is schools try their hardest to reduce attacks against bullies. For some reason the natural process of growing up has been demonized. Guess what? Kids fight. Guess what? They go home with a bloody nose and are made all the stronger because of it. These studies only confirm what everyone already knows that the natural process of growing up is just that: natural and beneficial.
* Boards: 8 * Threads: 161 * Posts: 2542
Doesn't seem like an active forum at all.
Not to mention most corporate forums enjoy closing down and pretending anything negative they do doesn't exist or you get the helpful employee who is powerless to do anything due to the internal bureaucracy.
Plus, "large ISP" usually means they have some sort of monopoly and screw customers at will (like Comcast in the US)
Which helps them how?
AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint all have a lot to gamble on with their phones. If they gave us our devices pre-rooted, it would come down to price and performance. No one is going to jump ship from Verizon, Sprint or T-Mobile to get AT&T's Android phones because they are so #$@#$ awful. If they all allowed rooting, the Backflip might not be the complete crapfest of bloatware and stupid design decisions (seriously, no non-market apps, no Google search, non-removable crapware) and AT&T might entice more people to go to its network.
I know a few people who switched from AT&T and Verizon to T-mobile when they got open Android phones.
AT&T shouldn't put all of its eggs in one basket by shunning Android and supporting the iPhone nearly exclusively. Also, why is it that the networks feel the need to advertise rather than actually -do- something productive with their network. I mean, seriously? AT&T could have spent the money used in battling Verizon upgrading towers to 3G, all the money spent "promoting" the Backflip by ensuring its success by implementing decent designs.
Lack of control means more profit for the cell phone carriers if they can compete. With all the money they seem to be wasting on ads and such, they could have already created great networks and decent phones.
Dear Hardware providers and cell carriers: Please give us our devices already rooted. The community can easily port new versions of Android to your phones so phones like the Motorola Backflip and Cliq can have decent versions of Android already.
I mean, seriously? What do they have to lose for giving us pre-rooted phones?
The problem with doing R&D at home isn't that you might not get results, it is then what to do with them. It takes a large team of lawyers to defend discoveries and such. Patents are expensive, etc. Really, you might end up having to put more money and time in it than the actual R&D if you decide to share your results.
There is a reason why R&D projects generally are taken by large businesses: they have time and money to defend them. The days of buying the newest "toy" and making lots of scientific progress is over, even if you do make progress it will take far too much time and money to defend it than you probably want to do.
And who -doesn't- want to have a dev board with sharp solder points stuck in their pocket? And who -doesn't- want to compile everything themselves and send it via the serial port? A dev board has its place, the one you linked to would be great for a small robotics project or even a little web-enabled alarm clock or something. For replacing the Pandora? No. The entire point why we buy "consumer" electronics is that most things are simply there, we download a few binaries a few ROMs and soon we are playing Super Mario World on it. We don't need to compile the kernel, fiddle around till we get X working, spend time optimizing it for speed, etc. There is a time and place for such things, the Pandora is filling a different niche.
iPhone - Tied into an expensive contract, needs jailbroken to actually run anything decent, no hardware buttons
Kin - Tied into an expensive contract, UI fails, not open
Zune HD - Less RAM, less open, no hardware buttons
Viliv S5 - expensive, smaller, less dedicated community, expensive
The Pandora fills an important role: giving a reasonably powerful cheap-ish device in the hands of programmers and users. Its not going to outsell the DS or PSP, its not a phone, etc.
Yeah, the Pandora would have been much nicer had it shipped on time, but its still not a terrible device.