Humanity is doomed if most people share your view.
Wealth means consumption and consumption harms the environment.
Technology impoverishes as much as it builds wealth. Whatever gains you make have to come from somewhere in the system.
The rich 'good' countries who have low birth rates and 'high standards of living' are using 50 times the per capita resources of the rest of the world. We wear Nike shoes made by children in the third world. Someone is obviously paying a steep price for our 'wealth' but it is certainly not us.
Where is the 'aboutness' located in your brain? Is there an 'aboutness center' of the brain? There is not. 'Aboutness' is not an irreducible phenomenon, merely an emergent one. As such, it can just as well emerge out of inorganic systems of sufficient and appropriate complexity. See Dennett, Consciousness Explained.
'Aboutness' may indeed turn out to be an irreducible phenomenon, but that is in no way entailed by the fact that you can't locate it in the brain. By telling me that, you're not really telling me anything empirical, like you would if you said "His medulla oblongata is severed". When you say something like that, you imply that the negation of that statement could also be true. The patient's medulla oblongata might NOT have been severed. This is not the case for your assertion about 'about'. You are not saying "Gee, I really thought I was going to find aboutness in here somewhere. Since I haven't found it, it must not exist". You know darn well that nobody in their right mind would talk about 'aboutness' the way you are, so whatever you are denying exists must be some flimsy version of aboutness that you have concocted to make the original poster look bad.
This is one of those disputes where both sides have differing basic beliefs and all the 'data' agrees with sophisticated positions on both sides of the argument. The only way to really argue for one position or the other is on a pragmatic basis. In other words, the physicalist account of mind (as emergent, epiphenomenal, or reductionist) could only win if it turned out to be more useful. But in defining 'more useful', of course, we're not arguing facts anymore, we're arguing ethics.
I think you'll find that the insistence on 'aboutness' reduces to the well-debunked Cartesian Dualist philosophy, which draws a definitive separation between mind and brain which has never been found to exist. Worse yet, the idea of 'irreducible' properties of 'mind' is more primitive still -- nothing more than warmed-over Thomist accident/essence duality: medieval Catholic authoritarian ideology.
If you're just going to say 'x has been thoroughly debunked' you should at least cite a reference where one might look for an actual argument. For a sensible attempt to 'debunk' Cartesian dualism, see Gilber Ryle 'The Concept of Mind'. As I understand it (and this is grossly simplifying), Ryle argues that Cartesian dualism is a category error -- namely attributing physical properties to mental events. Whatever kind of thing thoughts are, putting them in the category of 'stuff' results in some very odd distortions of one's view of what a person is.
Keep in mind that Ryle's critique of Descartes only shows that there are conceptual difficulties with traditional mind/body dualism; it does nothing in itself to support reductionist positions in neuroscience, much less entail them.
As for being subject to the authoritarian ideology of Catholicism, some would say we've got a new and different slavemaster. Today, we're just as much slaves to ideology as we were in the Middle Ages -- except instead of "Thomism" we have an ideology of infinite and unbridled technological progress forever advancing humanity toward utopia. What's so rational about that?
No, but it's also a really bad idea for the government to be telling companies how to design software.
I agree, but punishing the bad monopolist (as opposed to just plain-old monopolist) does not entail telling companies how to design software any more than telling a child not to break the rules prevents him from finding new and better ways to succeed within the framework of the rules. It may be harder and more costly and less profitable to do so, but it is the right thing to do.
Laws based on motives (rather than overt actions) are a really bad idea.
You can't be serious. Do you mean the punishment for negligence causing death ought to be the same as for capital murder? It'll be a cold day in hell before I agree to something like that.
Me: You are just painfully naive, I think. You: And you are engaging in an ad hominum attack, I think.
Yes, you're right. I apologize for getting carried away.
Re:Drug assets seized, why not MS?
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The RICO Act is the law that's used to deprive people of their property rights.
I don't really care which law allows this. In principle, if it can be enacted for one law, then it's constitutional. That was my only point.
If it's NOT constitutional, then someone ought to return all the property that has been seized to it's rightful owners.
Re:Exactly -- so let's revoke their Corporate Char
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You're missing the point. I'm not arguing that Linux should replace Windows. I'm saying that in order to stop Microsoft from engaging in anti-competitive business practices, you simply have to dissolve the company. All the other solutions proposed would leave intact most of the back-room infrastructure that makes collusion possible. Everyone agrees that no matter whether the remedies are structural or procedural, it will be business as usual at Redmond.
If you really and truly want to stop them from choking competition, you have no option but to dissolve the company.
There are lots of ways Windows could continue to be maintained without a big company "Officially supporting" it. I can think of one or two operating systems that are developed and maintained by individuals collaborating over the internet. There is no reason, in principle, why Windows cannot be maintained in the same manner.
There are two other things to keep in mind. First, Netscape certainly doesn't look like it was hurt all that much by Microsoft's tactics. Its stockholders are now proud owners of AOL and Sun stock, and certainly better off than they were when they started. And the supposed purpose of antitrust law is to protect consumers, not competitors.
I can't believe anyone who pays lip-service to free-market ideology would even think something like this, never mind utter these words or inscribe them on Slashdot for all posterity to gape at in awe.
Let's summarize your little argument:
Netscape's stockholders are now the proud owners of AOL stock.
Owning this stock is a benefit to them.
They are consumers.
Being crushed by Microsoft enabled them to enjoy this benefit.
So who's saying Microsoft's actions didn't benefit the consumer?
Man, you've got to stop watching CNBC. The interests of the shareholder and the consumer are totally different. You have these two roles in society confused. Maybe you even have your own role in society confused.
CONSUMERS are the people who buy products. SHAREHOLDERS are the people who own stock.
Anti-trust legislation is meant to protect consumers, not shareholders.
Uh... the idea of competition is for all the competitors to make their products better. Better as in better for the consumer, not better as in f***ing up the competitor. Do you consider it fair competition in a footrace for me to trip my opponent? Is that going to result in a better outcome for human achievement?
You are just painfully naive, I think.
Drug assets seized, why not MS?
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Eh? What about it? They broke the law, just like drug traffickers. They got people hooked, just the same way the pusher does. They committed crimes to maintain control of the market, just like organized crime.
I fail to see in the American legal system the kind of absolute property rights you are espousing. There are limits to everything -- even property rights.
Property rights are elastic -- they depend on what you do with your property.
Re:Exactly -- so let's revoke their Corporate Char
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I work at a large MS-dominated shop.
Don't we all?
What's more, we are responsible for taking care of a lot of live human beings in nursing medical institutions,
Hmm. You mean taking care of human beings is even more important and complicated than working in a large MS dominated shop? Hoo wee!
and happen to be suffering financial troubles of our own.
You've doubtless suffered from monopolist tactics and pricing.
If MS is "dissolved" we will be without support for most of our large-scale financial apps and quite a number of our medical applications.
Top three reasons why you don't need MS:
How much support do you get from them now?
What do you think all those MCSE's would be doing? Working at Taco Bell?
Did Microsoft actually build your "large-scale financial apps"? Do they actually support the apps themselves? Not likely.
So why do you care about what happens to Microsoft? I am not saying "Take away all copies of Win*.* and burn them" I am just saying the company cannot be controlled except by revoking their charter. Otherwise, they will still have and abuse their monopoly.
I am sure there are many ways that existing apps could continue to be supported as well as they are at present. The whole thrust of open source software is that it recognizes that software is an ongoing service relationship, and not a manufactured, mass-produced artifact.
What will we do when we discover a bug? Who will we call?
If you don't know who to call now, then Microsoft won't be of any help to you. If you've got a legacy application, or the consultant who designed the system left no documentation and was just vaporized by a meteorite, you're up shit creek without a paddle anyways.
What if we can't pay our employees one month, for example? Do you think we ought to start writing out sixty thousand checks by hand?
Bad software is a huge problem. I'm not disputing that fact. Something like 60% of all major softare projects fail. Why hasn't software development achieved the reliability of fields like mechanical or civil engineering? Because everyone is being greedy and fighting to keep their little recipes hidden from everyone else. No one has made an effort (OK, maybe Bjarne Stroustrup of C++ fame) to standardize solutions to standard problems. (And also we've come to realize that in human-computing interfaces, there are not really "standard problems", only wierd ones.) Professional associations in the software industry seem to be more like social clubs than agents for codifying best practices.
Or do the larger consequences of this escape you? Don't forget that Microsoft is said to have a monopoly for a reason -- said reason being that MOST people appear to be using it. Is your attitude going to be "well, fuck 'em all?"
As others have said many times in this forum, monopolies aren't necessarily in and of themselves bad. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act is aimed at companies who use anti-competitive business practices to enlarge or entrench a monopoly. Oh, and by the way, saying that "MS is a monopoly because most people use it" is a little like saying "He's a bachelor because he's an unmarried man". In other words, you're not really saying that much.
Converting to Linux or some other "Government approved" OS would take more than a minor effort in an organization with nearly 1,000 servers and 6,000 clients.
I'll say it again. Shutting down MS does not imply forced installation of "US Department of Operating Systems v1.0" or something like that. If they dissolve the company, they could make the source code public domain or donate it to a university computer science department to debug. In fact, SourceForge could probably set up a site for them! I can just see it now -- http://windows.sourceforge.net
yes, microsoft had a monopoly, but they faced a highly elastic long term demand, and couldn't reap outrageous profits. Not surprising since demand will naturally become more elastic given enough time to find substitutes. The point is Microsofts behaviour in the near term and thus the short term elasticity of demand. While the operating system market wouldn't tolerate unlimited price increases, it certainly was structured so that consumers would tolerate large percentage price increases without switching.
This is the reason MS became so successful originally -- their product was distributed as part of a PC, making it a relatively small part of the cost of the hardware on which it runs.
Unfortunately, the govenment will never be brought to trial, as it also has a monopoly on courts. Although it says that it should be overthrown if it is unfair, everyone knows darn well that anyone who tried would be quickly silenced. It is probably a lost cause.
it will be those Ph/Ds in business who keep the markets afloat, and the end result will be that the rich control even more wealth at the expense of the middle class.
It's the MBA's that got us in hot water in the first place. Everybody likes to paint the CEO-type as a risk-taking entrepreneur when in reality the management "professional" is hell bent on removing any uncertainty from his environment. Nobody has stifled creativity and innovation more than management.
How do you figure that these guys are so certain about how the market works and individual investors are clueless? Is there a simple, mathematical law that can predict stock price fluctuations or one that says how or why or when a stock should be traded? If there were a simple answer to these questions, I wouldn't need a PhD to figure it out. If the answer is complicated and unclear, then how can it be anything other than hubris to claim to have certainty about market behaviour. Human behaviour is chaotic. Anybody (including MBA's and PhD'd) who thinks they know the rules obviously hasn't learned very much.
Would you rather have a government sanctioned racket of "official" traders (which is what we still have to a certain degree) who keep the trains running on time (so to speak) while the rest of us are just passive spectators?
Exactly -- so let's revoke their Corporate Charter
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Even independent software divisions could collude on secret API's and file formats.
It's pointless to go through all the red tape of breakup and regulation. Just dissolve the company and the playing field will be almost level.
Revoke MS's Corporate Charter!!
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This is the only way to effectively break up the MS monopoly. Anything else will lead to the situation we're seeing in the telephone industry where M&A's are rampant just a few years after the breakup of AT&T.
The sooner the better.
DOJ is Powerless to stop MS monopoly
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Switching operating systems is such a pain in the butt that nothing will change unless something catastrophic happens. That is why I think the only real solution is to revoke Microsoft's corporate charter and send the whole bloody works of their employees packing. This will create thousands of competing Microsoft consultants who can help people maintain their systems. Then and only then would the playing field be levelled.
My only PC at home at the moment is a crappy old P133 with the majority of its components broken and no net connection. It's practically impossible to use at all, which is why I haven't bothered.
Nothing wrong with running full-blown Linux installations on a P133.
I've been using a P133 for two years running X-Window, Gnome, plus many other cpu or memory hogs and I've never had performance problems. I have 64MBs of RAM which is not an extraordinary amount.
Clearly the artists, literati, scientists and other creators of intellectual property are being mortally and irreparably injured by the advance of technology. But rather than fighting against technology, they need a technological tool that will give them the upper hand again.
I propose that all citizens of the states who signed the Geneva Copyright Conventions should be given a data filtering brain implant at birth. The US patent office, the library of congress, the Ministry of Truth or some other suitable agent of the treaty could centrally control each citizen's access to coprighted and patented materials. Thoughts about copyrighted or patented works would simply be erased or crippled by neural noise. Visual and aural sensory data from copyrighted works could easily be blocked at the appropriate receptor sites in the cereberal cortex.
Not only would this give the artists and scientists a tremendous degree of control over their works, but whole new classes of intellectual property the laws regarding which were previously unenforceable or too cumbersome to legislate will now fall under the purview of copyright, patent, and trademark laws.
For example, employees who are privy to discoveries and inventions in the course of their employment could simply be mentally "frisked" when they are terminated or when they "defect". If any company property is found in the contents of their mind, such property could be returned to its rightful owner. The company's assets would be safe from the threat of plunder by defecting employees.
The public school system would also stand to benefit from this technology. The implant could be use to measure proficiency level much more cost effectively than standardized tests. Market pressures could be brought to bear on school trustees and administrators by making schools taxes commensurate with educational quality. You only pay for what you learn! Schools that don't measure up academically will be forced to improve or go the way of the dinosaur.
Also, this technology would remove the archaic and arbitrary restriction against patenting mathematical objects. American businesses can then leverage control of such useful technologies as the number 2 and the notion of a set. This will give them an instant worldwide market of billions of users, together with all the revenue and high-tech jobs that accompany such productivity boosting technological advancement. In a global marketplace, American businesses need to be as competetive as possible.
All this could be controlled by a single command center, ensuring the maximum return for creators of intellectual property. The NSA's Echelon project probably has the infrastructure in place to manage the worldwide access rights to American intellectual property.
Ease-of-use combined with tremendous value-added features make this the right technological solution for protecting the fruits of genius' labour.
ehh... something bugs me about mathematical induction. How do you know that n+1 is going to work for all numbers without testing? Suppose there is a number somewhere along the way that behaves differently. Primes, for example, aren't evenly distributed in the integers. How do we know that "if p(k) AND p(k+1) then for every n, p(n)"? Do you have to use induction to prove induction? How does this work in math? My proof skills are a bit weak.
The uber-rant at the end of your post kind of ruined the rest of it.
"Free Art is a gift. You should be grateful for it and pay for it or I won't give it to you".
or something to that effect. Hey buddy, your talent is a gift too, and so is the time you spend practising. Stop acting (or sounding) like you created yourself out of nothing by your own effort.
I don't subscribe to the 'information wants to be free' mindset because a lot of free information is crap, quite plainly.
The free information is crap because the content has flowed artificially away from it. If you remove the incentive, the people who really want to contribute will still do so and the quality of free content will get much, much better. An analogy would be the quality of players in the minor leagues. Sure, everyone laughs at them now, but if the majors closed down, the quality of the minors would pick up dramatically. And we'd get that increased quality distributed to more people than it's being distributed to now for less money.
Slashdot Mirror
An algorithm that could invent artificial intelligence on its own.
What do you think? Do I get a nobel prize or what?
'Aboutness' may indeed turn out to be an irreducible phenomenon, but that is in no way entailed by the fact that you can't locate it in the brain. By telling me that, you're not really telling me anything empirical, like you would if you said "His medulla oblongata is severed". When you say something like that, you imply that the negation of that statement could also be true. The patient's medulla oblongata might NOT have been severed. This is not the case for your assertion about 'about'. You are not saying "Gee, I really thought I was going to find aboutness in here somewhere. Since I haven't found it, it must not exist". You know darn well that nobody in their right mind would talk about 'aboutness' the way you are, so whatever you are denying exists must be some flimsy version of aboutness that you have concocted to make the original poster look bad.
This is one of those disputes where both sides have differing basic beliefs and all the 'data' agrees with sophisticated positions on both sides of the argument. The only way to really argue for one position or the other is on a pragmatic basis. In other words, the physicalist account of mind (as emergent, epiphenomenal, or reductionist) could only win if it turned out to be more useful. But in defining 'more useful', of course, we're not arguing facts anymore, we're arguing ethics.
I think you'll find that the insistence on 'aboutness' reduces to the well-debunked Cartesian Dualist philosophy, which draws a definitive separation between mind and brain which has never been found to exist. Worse yet, the idea of 'irreducible' properties of 'mind' is more primitive still -- nothing more than warmed-over Thomist accident/essence duality: medieval Catholic authoritarian ideology.
If you're just going to say 'x has been thoroughly debunked' you should at least cite a reference where one might look for an actual argument. For a sensible attempt to 'debunk' Cartesian dualism, see Gilber Ryle 'The Concept of Mind'. As I understand it (and this is grossly simplifying), Ryle argues that Cartesian dualism is a category error -- namely attributing physical properties to mental events. Whatever kind of thing thoughts are, putting them in the category of 'stuff' results in some very odd distortions of one's view of what a person is.
Keep in mind that Ryle's critique of Descartes only shows that there are conceptual difficulties with traditional mind/body dualism; it does nothing in itself to support reductionist positions in neuroscience, much less entail them.
As for being subject to the authoritarian ideology of Catholicism, some would say we've got a new and different slavemaster. Today, we're just as much slaves to ideology as we were in the Middle Ages -- except instead of "Thomism" we have an ideology of infinite and unbridled technological progress forever advancing humanity toward utopia. What's so rational about that?
This is a great question. It gets my vote!
I agree, but punishing the bad monopolist (as opposed to just plain-old monopolist) does not entail telling companies how to design software any more than telling a child not to break the rules prevents him from finding new and better ways to succeed within the framework of the rules. It may be harder and more costly and less profitable to do so, but it is the right thing to do.
Laws based on motives (rather than overt actions) are a really bad idea.
You can't be serious. Do you mean the punishment for negligence causing death ought to be the same as for capital murder? It'll be a cold day in hell before I agree to something like that.
Me: You are just painfully naive, I think.
You: And you are engaging in an ad hominum attack, I think.
Yes, you're right. I apologize for getting carried away.
I don't really care which law allows this. In principle, if it can be enacted for one law, then it's constitutional. That was my only point.
If it's NOT constitutional, then someone ought to return all the property that has been seized to it's rightful owners.
If you really and truly want to stop them from choking competition, you have no option but to dissolve the company.
There are lots of ways Windows could continue to be maintained without a big company "Officially supporting" it. I can think of one or two operating systems that are developed and maintained by individuals collaborating over the internet. There is no reason, in principle, why Windows cannot be maintained in the same manner.
There are two other things to keep in mind. First, Netscape certainly doesn't look like it was hurt all that much by Microsoft's tactics. Its stockholders are now proud owners of AOL and Sun stock, and certainly better off than they were when they started. And the supposed purpose of antitrust law is to protect consumers, not competitors.
I can't believe anyone who pays lip-service to free-market ideology would even think something like this, never mind utter these words or inscribe them on Slashdot for all posterity to gape at in awe.
Let's summarize your little argument:
Man, you've got to stop watching CNBC. The interests of the shareholder and the consumer are totally different. You have these two roles in society confused. Maybe you even have your own role in society confused.
CONSUMERS are the people who buy products.
SHAREHOLDERS are the people who own stock.
Anti-trust legislation is meant to protect consumers, not shareholders.
You are just painfully naive, I think.
I fail to see in the American legal system the kind of absolute property rights you are espousing. There are limits to everything -- even property rights.
Property rights are elastic -- they depend on what you do with your property.
Don't we all?
What's more, we are responsible for taking care of a lot of live human beings in nursing medical institutions,
Hmm. You mean taking care of human beings is even more important and complicated than working in a large MS dominated shop? Hoo wee!
and happen to be suffering financial troubles of our own.
You've doubtless suffered from monopolist tactics and pricing.
If MS is "dissolved" we will be without support for most of our large-scale financial apps and quite a number of our medical applications.
Top three reasons why you don't need MS:
So why do you care about what happens to Microsoft? I am not saying "Take away all copies of Win*.* and burn them" I am just saying the company cannot be controlled except by revoking their charter. Otherwise, they will still have and abuse their monopoly.
I am sure there are many ways that existing apps could continue to be supported as well as they are at present. The whole thrust of open source software is that it recognizes that software is an ongoing service relationship, and not a manufactured, mass-produced artifact.
What will we do when we discover a bug? Who will we call?
If you don't know who to call now, then Microsoft won't be of any help to you. If you've got a legacy application, or the consultant who designed the system left no documentation and was just vaporized by a meteorite, you're up shit creek without a paddle anyways.
What if we can't pay our employees one month, for example? Do you think we ought to start writing out sixty thousand checks by hand?
Bad software is a huge problem. I'm not disputing that fact. Something like 60% of all major softare projects fail. Why hasn't software development achieved the reliability of fields like mechanical or civil engineering? Because everyone is being greedy and fighting to keep their little recipes hidden from everyone else. No one has made an effort (OK, maybe Bjarne Stroustrup of C++ fame) to standardize solutions to standard problems. (And also we've come to realize that in human-computing interfaces, there are not really "standard problems", only wierd ones.) Professional associations in the software industry seem to be more like social clubs than agents for codifying best practices.
Or do the larger consequences of this escape you? Don't forget that Microsoft is said to have a monopoly for a reason -- said reason being that MOST people appear to be using it. Is your attitude going to be "well, fuck 'em all?"
As others have said many times in this forum, monopolies aren't necessarily in and of themselves bad. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act is aimed at companies who use anti-competitive business practices to enlarge or entrench a monopoly. Oh, and by the way, saying that "MS is a monopoly because most people use it" is a little like saying "He's a bachelor because he's an unmarried man". In other words, you're not really saying that much.
Converting to Linux or some other "Government approved" OS would take more than a minor effort in an organization with nearly 1,000 servers and 6,000 clients.
I'll say it again. Shutting down MS does not imply forced installation of "US Department of Operating Systems v1.0" or something like that. If they dissolve the company, they could make the source code public domain or donate it to a university computer science department to debug. In fact, SourceForge could probably set up a site for them! I can just see it now -- http://windows.sourceforge.net
This is the reason MS became so successful originally -- their product was distributed as part of a PC, making it a relatively small part of the cost of the hardware on which it runs.
Hey, ever heard of voting?
Yes it is.
It's the MBA's that got us in hot water in the first place. Everybody likes to paint the CEO-type as a risk-taking entrepreneur when in reality the management "professional" is hell bent on removing any uncertainty from his environment. Nobody has stifled creativity and innovation more than management.
How do you figure that these guys are so certain about how the market works and individual investors are clueless? Is there a simple, mathematical law that can predict stock price fluctuations or one that says how or why or when a stock should be traded? If there were a simple answer to these questions, I wouldn't need a PhD to figure it out. If the answer is complicated and unclear, then how can it be anything other than hubris to claim to have certainty about market behaviour. Human behaviour is chaotic. Anybody (including MBA's and PhD'd) who thinks they know the rules obviously hasn't learned very much.
Would you rather have a government sanctioned racket of "official" traders (which is what we still have to a certain degree) who keep the trains running on time (so to speak) while the rest of us are just passive spectators?
It's pointless to go through all the red tape of breakup and regulation. Just dissolve the company and the playing field will be almost level.
The sooner the better.
Switching operating systems is such a pain in the butt that nothing will change unless something catastrophic happens. That is why I think the only real solution is to revoke Microsoft's corporate charter and send the whole bloody works of their employees packing. This will create thousands of competing Microsoft consultants who can help people maintain their systems. Then and only then would the playing field be levelled.
I guess VW will have to change their slogan.
My only PC at home at the moment is a crappy old P133 with the majority of its components broken and no net connection. It's practically impossible to use at all, which is why I haven't bothered.
Nothing wrong with running full-blown Linux installations on a P133.
I've been using a P133 for two years running X-Window, Gnome, plus many other cpu or memory hogs and I've never had performance problems. I have 64MBs of RAM which is not an extraordinary amount.
I guess it depends on how much you expect.
I propose that all citizens of the states who signed the Geneva Copyright Conventions should be given a data filtering brain implant at birth. The US patent office, the library of congress, the Ministry of Truth or some other suitable agent of the treaty could centrally control each citizen's access to coprighted and patented materials. Thoughts about copyrighted or patented works would simply be erased or crippled by neural noise. Visual and aural sensory data from copyrighted works could easily be blocked at the appropriate receptor sites in the cereberal cortex.
Not only would this give the artists and scientists a tremendous degree of control over their works, but whole new classes of intellectual property the laws regarding which were previously unenforceable or too cumbersome to legislate will now fall under the purview of copyright, patent, and trademark laws.
For example, employees who are privy to discoveries and inventions in the course of their employment could simply be mentally "frisked" when they are terminated or when they "defect". If any company property is found in the contents of their mind, such property could be returned to its rightful owner. The company's assets would be safe from the threat of plunder by defecting employees.
The public school system would also stand to benefit from this technology. The implant could be use to measure proficiency level much more cost effectively than standardized tests. Market pressures could be brought to bear on school trustees and administrators by making schools taxes commensurate with educational quality. You only pay for what you learn! Schools that don't measure up academically will be forced to improve or go the way of the dinosaur.
Also, this technology would remove the archaic and arbitrary restriction against patenting mathematical objects. American businesses can then leverage control of such useful technologies as the number 2 and the notion of a set. This will give them an instant worldwide market of billions of users, together with all the revenue and high-tech jobs that accompany such productivity boosting technological advancement. In a global marketplace, American businesses need to be as competetive as possible.
All this could be controlled by a single command center, ensuring the maximum return for creators of intellectual property. The NSA's Echelon project probably has the infrastructure in place to manage the worldwide access rights to American intellectual property.
Ease-of-use combined with tremendous value-added features make this the right technological solution for protecting the fruits of genius' labour.
ehh... something bugs me about mathematical induction. How do you know that n+1 is going to work for all numbers without testing? Suppose there is a number somewhere along the way that behaves differently. Primes, for example, aren't evenly distributed in the integers. How do we know that "if p(k) AND p(k+1) then for every n, p(n)"? Do you have to use induction to prove induction? How does this work in math? My proof skills are a bit weak.
"Free Art is a gift. You should be grateful for it and pay for it or I won't give it to you".
or something to that effect. Hey buddy, your talent is a gift too, and so is the time you spend practising. Stop acting (or sounding) like you created yourself out of nothing by your own effort.
I don't subscribe to the 'information wants to be free' mindset because a lot of free information is crap, quite plainly.
The free information is crap because the content has flowed artificially away from it. If you remove the incentive, the people who really want to contribute will still do so and the quality of free content will get much, much better. An analogy would be the quality of players in the minor leagues. Sure, everyone laughs at them now, but if the majors closed down, the quality of the minors would pick up dramatically. And we'd get that increased quality distributed to more people than it's being distributed to now for less money.
And those that think their ideas are worth a lot generally whine about piracy until the state sends in the army.