again and again, everyone always forgets what patents are supposed to be about.
and it's not about encouraging innovation.
ok, perhaps, the availability of patents encourage inventors (corporate or individual) to innovate by dangling the promise of a limited monopoly in front of them, but the real reason is to encourage innovators to publish their inventions.
consider what the technology landscape would be like if you could not patent anything. for example, rca might've spent the money inventing television in the 1930s, but would then treat the insides of television sets and cameras as trade secrets. the only way you could buy a television would be to sign an agreement stating that you will not open up the back of a teevee or use anything else to decode a television signal.
thomas edison might've spent time and money inventing the light bulb and then not tell anybody how they're made. he could have maintained a monopoly on electric light bulbs for a long time since it's not readily apparent that what made them work was an effective vacuum or inert gas.
in short, practically everything technological would be bound up by end user licensing agreements preventing tinkering and reverse engineering. if you think patents are retarding technological development imaging how hard it would be when almost nothing about technology is freely published and everything is a trade secret.
patents also have defined lifespans while trade secrets can be maintained for indefinite periods of time, at least in theory.
the problem with patents began not with submarine patents or patent extortionists but with a supreme court decision that said that the only people who could look at patents wouthout worrying about infringing on them were patent lawyers. i don't know the decision - perhaps someone else can dig it up?
anyway, the decision made a mockery of the basic value of a patent being published and all research related to a patent is shut down becasue the people who could build new technologies from existing patents are now no longer allowed to even look at them. and patent holders now have a monopoly not only on the invention named in the patent, but also on all the research building on the patent too.
more to the point, the air cooled volkswagon beetle engine was designed for cooler european climates. when people began driving them across the hot dry deserts of north america, the flammable bits on the engines (rubber, grime, etc.) would catch fire.
this application brings out an interesting point. although everyone seems to talk about ipod music, ipod photo, video ipods, etc. the most interesting things people do with ipods is to hack them to perform some particular application.
i've seen ipods hacked to be used as address books, show video (before the latest ipod), as portable boot drives, portable data storage, and now medical images. ipods also include eater egg games in their firmeware. no doubt the little mp3 players have been put to all sorts of interesting uses not in their original spec sheet.
and yet no one ever seems to talk about apple opening up the ipod for third party development. apple could and perhaps ought to open up the ipod allowing third party developers to create applications.
the things certainly have enough memory - megabytes of storage and dynamic memory is cheap and compact enough. a touch sensitive display would give it and input device more flexible than the buttons and scroll wheel alone and would not be that difficult to add.
the ipod could be kind of a stealth pda coming at users from the entertainment direction as opposed to the more utilitarian direction palm and windows pdas came from. and with the ipod's user base, applications could be more interesting including simple photo and video editors as well as games and the usual pda tools.
i would speculate that just like film production, record companies use their music groups as a captive market for their own recording studios, screen printers, media production, printing, etc. the acts then get charged inflated prices for these services which they pay out of their royalties.
requiring musicians to use record company owned resources let's the recod companies control costs without having to pass on the savings to the musicians. i believe the record industry actively fights legislation that would require it to exercise fiduciary responsibility. that would end the party for the muisic companies.
it's no wonder that once an act becomes even a little successful, it then goes on to equip its own recording studio. my guess is that musicians would love to gain control over how they are promoted and distributed, if only to keep the music companies from freely spending the musicians' money.
biologists have been doing this for years
on
Martian Naming Madness
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
in biology, when someone discovers a new species, that person gets the right to name it. while most biologists will name new species after their mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, girlfiends, etc. some have been a bit more - creative.
some examples: Eurygenius (pedilid beetle) Ochisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera) Dolichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera) Florichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera) Marichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera) Nanichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera) Peggichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera) Polychisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera) Kirkaldy was criticized for frivolity by the London Zoological Society in 1912. Pieza deresistans Evenhuis, 2002 (mythicomyiid fly) Lalapa lusa (tiphiid wasp) Agra vation, Agra phobia (carabid beetles)
apparently, as long as the name can be made to sound vaguely greek or latin, it's acceptable. for more names try
would corporations even exist under a purely libertarian system? corporations are really just artificial creatures created by government regulation and tax law. limit the power of government to absolve business owners limit their liabilities (a right granted by corporate law) and corporations return back to their original purpose - to provide a formal structure to businesses owned by large numbers of investors.
a significant problem with drm is that while 'Big Media', its prime beneficiary demands it, the same 'Big Media' doesn't want to pay for it. for example, the entire cost of implementing the broadcast flag was expected to be born by electronics companies and consumers.
i don't think electronics manufacturers would care more or less about drm if Big Media was willing to pick up the tab. and why should consumers pay extra for drm when all it is likely to give them is annoyance at best and aggravation at worst? witness the popularity of cheap chinese made dvd players that play fast and loose with dvd licensing costs.
here's a question - how many people would be willing to pay extra for entertainment, movies and music, unhampered by drm? would you be willing to accept restricted access entertainment if it were priced say, 50% cheaper? for example, a CD with DRM would be priced at $8 while the unrestricted CD is $16. paradoxically, the unrestricted CD would actually be cheaper to produce (no DRM tech to license) and be more compatible with a wider variety of CD players.
ok, mars has one third the gravity of earth, and no magnetic field to protect it from the solar wind. exactly how thick of an atmosphere or air pressure at ground level can mars support?
i think that by today's standards, even dcc is a bit out of date.
done today, i'd say the trains, turnouts, and other accessories would be controlled by 802.11 modules. (1 MB per sec would be more than enought for the simple functions found in model trains.) 802.11 would be more reliable than sending instructions through the track, easier to program, and save some wiring and complexity out of most dcc setups.
didn't matter. in those days the common memory chip was still the 4164 - a 64 kilobit chip. to make 640 kilobytes took 80 chips (90 with the checksum bit). even with 256 kilobit chips that were also becoming available at the time, you needed 32 or 36 chips for 1 megabyte.
at the time there were no simms, dimms or memory modules of any type. if a motherboard manufacturer didn't leave sockets for all those chips then they have to added to the expansion bus via an 8-bit board.
the net result was that memory expansion was limited by logistics - how many chips could practically be plugged into a motherboard without blowing past power limits or generating too much heat. and motherboards in those days carried a lot of chips what with there not being any large scale integrated chips. the motherboards were wired up with row upon row of 74-series logic gates.
how about making information about a person the property of that person.
the theory is that information about an individual, such as buying habits, web surfing habits, reading habits, hobbies, investments, medical history, etc. is a compilation of creative and factual information created by that person and only recorded by a commercial database manager.
redistributing information about a person without permission then becomes a copyright violation. database owners would have to get permission from the individuals whose information is recorded in their database before they could sell that information.
individuals who don't want their information distributed can refuse permission and will have the opportunity to sue under copyright law if, say, their amazon.com buying habits are sold. individuals who don't mind their information being distributed can ask for consideration (i.e. money or free stuff) in exchange for letting their personal information and tastes being packaged and sold.
soon to come will be peecees pre-equipped with themes from the popular newsweekly, "The Onion". initial offering will be jenny teasdale, smooth b, and jimmy anchower themes.
the one surprise about this is that they didn't let the series go for a full five seasons. common wisdom has it that in order to successfully syndicate a series you have to have at least five seasons (about 130 episodes) of a series for it to be really profitable.
syndicated series are typically stripped - one episode a day five days a week. one season, 26 episodes is enough for just over five weeks. 2 seasons is ten weeks (two and a half months). 4 seasons is five or six months of programming. maybe a little more. it's kind of iffy for a 3 or 4 season series to be successful in syndication. classic trek was exceptionally successful with only 3 seasons. other series aren't always so successful.
perhaps the dynamics of syndication on cable, sales of dvd box sets, and the reduced profitablity of conventional teevee and cable broadcasts are changing how expensive series like 'enterprise' are financed. but i always thought that it was with the fifth season that the accountants could finally throw away the bottle of red ink.
that's on par with those 'audiophiles' (and the people who market to them) who think a $2,500+ power line conditioner will make their hi fi sound better.
according to reports, spyware is worth, to the spy, some $2 - $3 per computer per year. if a spyware author wrote a piece of mac spyware and managed to infect, say just 10% of all the macs online, they'd still be able to walk away with a surprisingly generous payday. particularly since they'd have captured a more exclusive and (if windows users' complaints about system prices are to be believed) wealthier audience.
do you think the creationists would tolerate a similar sticker about their favorite junk science?
"This textbook contains material on Creationism. Creationism is religios dogma, not scientific fact, regarding the origin of living things. The material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."
Slashdot Mirror
again and again, everyone always forgets what patents are supposed to be about.
and it's not about encouraging innovation.
ok, perhaps, the availability of patents encourage inventors (corporate or individual) to innovate by dangling the promise of a limited monopoly in front of them, but the real reason is to encourage innovators to publish their inventions.
consider what the technology landscape would be like if you could not patent anything. for example, rca might've spent the money inventing television in the 1930s, but would then treat the insides of television sets and cameras as trade secrets. the only way you could buy a television would be to sign an agreement stating that you will not open up the back of a teevee or use anything else to decode a television signal.
thomas edison might've spent time and money inventing the light bulb and then not tell anybody how they're made. he could have maintained a monopoly on electric light bulbs for a long time since it's not readily apparent that what made them work was an effective vacuum or inert gas.
in short, practically everything technological would be bound up by end user licensing agreements preventing tinkering and reverse engineering. if you think patents are retarding technological development imaging how hard it would be when almost nothing about technology is freely published and everything is a trade secret.
patents also have defined lifespans while trade secrets can be maintained for indefinite periods of time, at least in theory.
the problem with patents began not with submarine patents or patent extortionists but with a supreme court decision that said that the only people who could look at patents wouthout worrying about infringing on them were patent lawyers. i don't know the decision - perhaps someone else can dig it up?
anyway, the decision made a mockery of the basic value of a patent being published and all research related to a patent is shut down becasue the people who could build new technologies from existing patents are now no longer allowed to even look at them. and patent holders now have a monopoly not only on the invention named in the patent, but also on all the research building on the patent too.
more to the point, the air cooled volkswagon beetle engine was designed for cooler european climates. when people began driving them across the hot dry deserts of north america, the flammable bits on the engines (rubber, grime, etc.) would catch fire.
if it were still secret it would have made a great place to plot the conquest of thew world from.
does it come with a big red self destruct button?
this application brings out an interesting point. although everyone seems to talk about ipod music, ipod photo, video ipods, etc. the most interesting things people do with ipods is to hack them to perform some particular application.
i've seen ipods hacked to be used as address books, show video (before the latest ipod), as portable boot drives, portable data storage, and now medical images. ipods also include eater egg games in their firmeware. no doubt the little mp3 players have been put to all sorts of interesting uses not in their original spec sheet.
and yet no one ever seems to talk about apple opening up the ipod for third party development. apple could and perhaps ought to open up the ipod allowing third party developers to create applications.
the things certainly have enough memory - megabytes of storage and dynamic memory is cheap and compact enough. a touch sensitive display would give it and input device more flexible than the buttons and scroll wheel alone and would not be that difficult to add.
the ipod could be kind of a stealth pda coming at users from the entertainment direction as opposed to the more utilitarian direction palm and windows pdas came from. and with the ipod's user base, applications could be more interesting including simple photo and video editors as well as games and the usual pda tools.
i would speculate that just like film production, record companies use their music groups as a captive market for their own recording studios, screen printers, media production, printing, etc. the acts then get charged inflated prices for these services which they pay out of their royalties.
requiring musicians to use record company owned resources let's the recod companies control costs without having to pass on the savings to the musicians. i believe the record industry actively fights legislation that would require it to exercise fiduciary responsibility. that would end the party for the muisic companies.
it's no wonder that once an act becomes even a little successful, it then goes on to equip its own recording studio. my guess is that musicians would love to gain control over how they are promoted and distributed, if only to keep the music companies from freely spending the musicians' money.
in biology, when someone discovers a new species, that person gets the right to name it. while most biologists will name new species after their mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, girlfiends, etc. some have been a bit more - creative.
s .html
some examples:
Eurygenius (pedilid beetle)
Ochisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Dolichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Florichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Marichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Nanichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Peggichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Polychisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera) Kirkaldy was criticized for frivolity by the London Zoological Society in 1912.
Pieza deresistans Evenhuis, 2002 (mythicomyiid fly)
Lalapa lusa (tiphiid wasp)
Agra vation, Agra phobia (carabid beetles)
apparently, as long as the name can be made to sound vaguely greek or latin, it's acceptable. for more names try
http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/taxonomy/taxPun
or
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnepler/names.html
would corporations even exist under a purely libertarian system? corporations are really just artificial creatures created by government regulation and tax law. limit the power of government to absolve business owners limit their liabilities (a right granted by corporate law) and corporations return back to their original purpose - to provide a formal structure to businesses owned by large numbers of investors.
a significant problem with drm is that while 'Big Media', its prime beneficiary demands it, the same 'Big Media' doesn't want to pay for it. for example, the entire cost of implementing the broadcast flag was expected to be born by electronics companies and consumers.
i don't think electronics manufacturers would care more or less about drm if Big Media was willing to pick up the tab. and why should consumers pay extra for drm when all it is likely to give them is annoyance at best and aggravation at worst? witness the popularity of cheap chinese made dvd players that play fast and loose with dvd licensing costs.
here's a question - how many people would be willing to pay extra for entertainment, movies and music, unhampered by drm? would you be willing to accept restricted access entertainment if it were priced say, 50% cheaper? for example, a CD with DRM would be priced at $8 while the unrestricted CD is $16. paradoxically, the unrestricted CD would actually be cheaper to produce (no DRM tech to license) and be more compatible with a wider variety of CD players.
Q: why did the chicken cross the mobius strip?
A: to get to the other...uh...
ok, mars has one third the gravity of earth, and no magnetic field to protect it from the solar wind. exactly how thick of an atmosphere or air pressure at ground level can mars support?
how about 'womanhole'?
try http://www.wiringfordcc.com/ for more details on digital command control.
i think that by today's standards, even dcc is a bit out of date.
done today, i'd say the trains, turnouts, and other accessories would be controlled by 802.11 modules. (1 MB per sec would be more than enought for the simple functions found in model trains.) 802.11 would be more reliable than sending instructions through the track, easier to program, and save some wiring and complexity out of most dcc setups.
the article reminds me of how in Dante's "Inferno" thieves are placed in a lower circle of hell than murderers.
didn't matter. in those days the common memory chip was still the 4164 - a 64 kilobit chip. to make 640 kilobytes took 80 chips (90 with the checksum bit). even with 256 kilobit chips that were also becoming available at the time, you needed 32 or 36 chips for 1 megabyte.
at the time there were no simms, dimms or memory modules of any type. if a motherboard manufacturer didn't leave sockets for all those chips then they have to added to the expansion bus via an 8-bit board.
the net result was that memory expansion was limited by logistics - how many chips could practically be plugged into a motherboard without blowing past power limits or generating too much heat. and motherboards in those days carried a lot of chips what with there not being any large scale integrated chips. the motherboards were wired up with row upon row of 74-series logic gates.
hmmmm. can i go to your next wedding?
and in the wake of an aquistion of apple by intel, steve jobs is made ceo replacing andy grove.
war trekking actually happened in the original series. it's a key story point in the episode "assignment earth".
how about making information about a person the property of that person.
the theory is that information about an individual, such as buying habits, web surfing habits, reading habits, hobbies, investments, medical history, etc. is a compilation of creative and factual information created by that person and only recorded by a commercial database manager.
redistributing information about a person without permission then becomes a copyright violation. database owners would have to get permission from the individuals whose information is recorded in their database before they could sell that information.
individuals who don't want their information distributed can refuse permission and will have the opportunity to sue under copyright law if, say, their amazon.com buying habits are sold. individuals who don't mind their information being distributed can ask for consideration (i.e. money or free stuff) in exchange for letting their personal information and tastes being packaged and sold.
soon to come will be peecees pre-equipped with themes from the popular newsweekly, "The Onion". initial offering will be jenny teasdale, smooth b, and jimmy anchower themes.
anybody got the latitude and longitude of the beachs of st. tropez?
the one surprise about this is that they didn't let the series go for a full five seasons. common wisdom has it that in order to successfully syndicate a series you have to have at least five seasons (about 130 episodes) of a series for it to be really profitable.
syndicated series are typically stripped - one episode a day five days a week. one season, 26 episodes is enough for just over five weeks. 2 seasons is ten weeks (two and a half months). 4 seasons is five or six months of programming. maybe a little more. it's kind of iffy for a 3 or 4 season series to be successful in syndication. classic trek was exceptionally successful with only 3 seasons. other series aren't always so successful.
perhaps the dynamics of syndication on cable, sales of dvd box sets, and the reduced profitablity of conventional teevee and cable broadcasts are changing how expensive series like 'enterprise' are financed. but i always thought that it was with the fifth season that the accountants could finally throw away the bottle of red ink.
that's on par with those 'audiophiles' (and the people who market to them) who think a $2,500+ power line conditioner will make their hi fi sound better.
you know, i thought about this too.
according to reports, spyware is worth, to the spy, some $2 - $3 per computer per year. if a spyware author wrote a piece of mac spyware and managed to infect, say just 10% of all the macs online, they'd still be able to walk away with a surprisingly generous payday. particularly since they'd have captured a more exclusive and (if windows users' complaints about system prices are to be believed) wealthier audience.
do you think the creationists would tolerate a similar sticker about their favorite junk science?
"This textbook contains material on Creationism. Creationism is religios dogma, not scientific fact, regarding the origin of living things. The material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."
i suspect not.