It's a peculiarly hypocritical kind of libertarian or laissez-faire capitalist who argues that the free market demands state-enforced monopolies.
It's double the contradiction when you argue that someone should be able to have a patent to the "engine" of capitalism (business models) and insist on state-protected monopolies under them. It's not capitalism you're endorsing, it's mercantilism.
"Make patents non-transferable and make IP agreements that assign ownership invention to corporations illegal"... nice idea, but I hate to point out the "P" in your "IP" stands for "property". Intellectual property is nothing other than a legal fiction that grants the ability to dispose of an intangible in the same manner as rights associated with things.
Bit like saying we need aircraft regulations that prevent planes from leaving the ground.
Common law copyright regimes have a strange beast called "moral rights" in a work, but even those do not go nearly as far as you're proposing...
I think you've overstated things with your title. To be sure, these guys were pressing their luck. A nitrox dive, a bounce-dive (or sawtooth dive profile), flight shortly thereafter... But the question is not whether using tables are inherently safer than computers, but the same question factoring in how often people will profile their dives. I'm a divemaster and the frequency that I manually profiled dives and carefully logged each was poor before I got a computer. In my view the principle is the same in any discipline: learn your basic principles (long division) before you rely on gear to do it for you (calculator). If your electronic calculation is grossly out of whack, you will know it.
Recalling basic biology, species are capable of interbreeding (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=species) . A little chimp-changa won't produce much of anything (HIV?)
I appreciate it may not be a necessary feature of belonging to the same genus, but I also note that horses and donkeys are in the same genus at least partly because they are capable of producing infertile offspring (mules). Is the rest not simple binomial taxonomy? The apparent physical differences are minor, and the mental? A little readinng will show chimps have a sense of 'self' (will recognize their appearance has been changed in a mirror), knowledge of others beliefs (they engage in teaching), and even a capacity for commerce! (SCIAM had a wonderful anecdote about chimps that were given vending machine tokens, learned to stockpile, trade, and even counterfeit them!)
Come on, ubermensch! Fear doesn't mean *irrational fear*. I also remember these folks who were a little afraid of nuking Russia. If NATO had a little balls, think what we might have learnt about nuclear fallout and self-annihilation.
Besides, if you believe so much in genetics/biology, surely you believe fear is a survival response. It's amazing how many people simultaneously believe in some kind of dawinian determinism and yet also believe they can just 'jump the queue' by tossing a few bucks into genetics research.
Famous last words: "Foresight-smoresight! Strap me to the rocket, Jim, I'm gonna show those NASA boys a Mars Mission just requires planetary-size kahunas"
If you actually get suckered into watching the movie, you'll see another bit where these astronauts, looking at a *single* DNA strand, say "no, that's not human, it's got a chromosome missing". Good god. You think they might look up the word 'chromosome' before they insert some random genetic reference that they think the public will recognize.
I don't think that other countries will likely simply 'model' their legislation after this bill. But as Big Money has vested interests in it in the US, pressure will be applied through the WTO to enforce the provisions in other countries.
Their clout enforcing intellectual property issues is astounding--here in Canada it looks like we will be required to extend the duration of patent rights in conformity with the WTO (read US), which will rapidly inflate our drug expenses.
I can't even imagine what the precedent is assumed to be... there certainly isn't one outside software (imagine renting a car whose engine cuts out on the highway because you exceeded the allowed mileage, or the company didn't like your monitored driving habits).
I think we're looking at the revival of intellectual serfdom, where one cannot buy anything to generate their own profit, but rather is required to rent at an arbitrary and changing price fixed by the intellectual nobility. I'm surprised software companies haven't already thought of software-for-shares arrangements already. Welcome the new economy.
I could be wrong (background's philosophy, not physics), but I think what's at issue here is Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. In which case the issue is epistemological, not ontological. In other words... it's not that the particle *does not have* an exact position and momentum--just that they're not *measurable* simultaneously. I have to give the article more thought, but it seems to me that these scientists haven't proven what they think at all. Rather, their results might be simply shedding light on the fact that they started with a data structure (initial values, the relationship between matrices and their inverse, etc.)... validating Godel's theorem, but proving little about inherent randomness.
Re:It's logical to go to space
on
On to Mars
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· Score: 1
The reason why computer technology (electronics) and aeronautics aren't similar, and your quote is inappropriate is that the measures of advance *converge* with electronics, and diverge with aeronautics (and mechanics). i.e. speed, power consumption, size and cost. Pissing billions away won't change this. How about a valuable 'mission'--rather than a science 'project' to see whether you can still control your RC car when it's about a billion miles away. A lot of money unless you consider the cost of Waterworld? That's the kind of logic (or lack thereof) governing salaries in the NBA. The difference is we expect a little more intelligence from *rocket scientists*. I think one of the reasons the space program has stalled is that although the US bills itself as an idealistic nation, it has little interest in pure science. Perhaps the Soviets gave that a push...
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It's a peculiarly hypocritical kind of libertarian or laissez-faire capitalist who argues that the free market demands state-enforced monopolies.
It's double the contradiction when you argue that someone should be able to have a patent to the "engine" of capitalism (business models) and insist on state-protected monopolies under them. It's not capitalism you're endorsing, it's mercantilism.
"Make patents non-transferable and make IP agreements that assign ownership invention to corporations illegal"... nice idea, but I hate to point out the "P" in your "IP" stands for "property". Intellectual property is nothing other than a legal fiction that grants the ability to dispose of an intangible in the same manner as rights associated with things.
Bit like saying we need aircraft regulations that prevent planes from leaving the ground.
Common law copyright regimes have a strange beast called "moral rights" in a work, but even those do not go nearly as far as you're proposing...
I think you've overstated things with your title. To be sure, these guys were pressing their luck. A nitrox dive, a bounce-dive (or sawtooth dive profile), flight shortly thereafter... But the question is not whether using tables are inherently safer than computers, but the same question factoring in how often people will profile their dives. I'm a divemaster and the frequency that I manually profiled dives and carefully logged each was poor before I got a computer. In my view the principle is the same in any discipline: learn your basic principles (long division) before you rely on gear to do it for you (calculator). If your electronic calculation is grossly out of whack, you will know it.
Recalling basic biology, species are capable of interbreeding (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=species) . A little chimp-changa won't produce much of anything (HIV?)
I appreciate it may not be a necessary feature of belonging to the same genus, but I also note that horses and donkeys are in the same genus at least partly because they are capable of producing infertile offspring (mules). Is the rest not simple binomial taxonomy? The apparent physical differences are minor, and the mental? A little readinng will show chimps have a sense of 'self' (will recognize their appearance has been changed in a mirror), knowledge of others beliefs (they engage in teaching), and even a capacity for commerce! (SCIAM had a wonderful anecdote about chimps that were given vending machine tokens, learned to stockpile, trade, and even counterfeit them!)
Come on, ubermensch! Fear doesn't mean *irrational fear*. I also remember these folks who were a little afraid of nuking Russia. If NATO had a little balls, think what we might have learnt about nuclear fallout and self-annihilation.
Besides, if you believe so much in genetics/biology, surely you believe fear is a survival response. It's amazing how many people simultaneously believe in some kind of dawinian determinism and yet also believe they can just 'jump the queue' by tossing a few bucks into genetics research.
Famous last words: "Foresight-smoresight! Strap me to the rocket, Jim, I'm gonna show those NASA boys a Mars Mission just requires planetary-size kahunas"
If you actually get suckered into watching the movie, you'll see another bit where these astronauts, looking at a *single* DNA strand, say "no, that's not human, it's got a chromosome missing". Good god. You think they might look up the word 'chromosome' before they insert some random genetic reference that they think the public will recognize.
I don't think that other countries will likely simply 'model' their legislation after this bill. But as Big Money has vested interests in it in the US, pressure will be applied through the WTO to enforce the provisions in other countries.
Their clout enforcing intellectual property issues is astounding--here in Canada it looks like we will be required to extend the duration of patent rights in conformity with the WTO (read US), which will rapidly inflate our drug expenses.
I can't even imagine what the precedent is assumed to be... there certainly isn't one outside software (imagine renting a car whose engine cuts out on the highway because you exceeded the allowed mileage, or the company didn't like your monitored driving habits).
I think we're looking at the revival of intellectual serfdom, where one cannot buy anything to generate their own profit, but rather is required to rent at an arbitrary and changing price fixed by the intellectual nobility. I'm surprised software companies haven't already thought of software-for-shares arrangements already. Welcome the new economy.
I could be wrong (background's philosophy, not physics), but I think what's at issue here is Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. In which case the issue is epistemological, not ontological. In other words... it's not that the particle *does not have* an exact position and momentum--just that they're not *measurable* simultaneously. I have to give the article more thought, but it seems to me that these scientists haven't proven what they think at all. Rather, their results might be simply shedding light on the fact that they started with a data structure (initial values, the relationship between matrices and their inverse, etc.)... validating Godel's theorem, but proving little about inherent randomness.
The reason why computer technology (electronics) and aeronautics aren't similar, and your quote is inappropriate is that the measures of advance *converge* with electronics, and diverge with aeronautics (and mechanics). i.e. speed, power consumption, size and cost. Pissing billions away won't change this. How about a valuable 'mission'--rather than a science 'project' to see whether you can still control your RC car when it's about a billion miles away. A lot of money unless you consider the cost of Waterworld? That's the kind of logic (or lack thereof) governing salaries in the NBA. The difference is we expect a little more intelligence from *rocket scientists*. I think one of the reasons the space program has stalled is that although the US bills itself as an idealistic nation, it has little interest in pure science. Perhaps the Soviets gave that a push...