Apologies for all the grammar craziness at the beginning of that post. I went back and forth on how to say it and managed to leave several words and bits of punctuation in there that don't belong.
However, I did want to add something. I think this person should be able to spend her money on whatever she wants. After all, it is hers. We might still gossip about it, but it's hers and if she wants to buy $250000 worth of rubber duckies then so be it. I'm sure the rubber ducky manufacturer will be quite happy with that decision even if the president of the local university is not. My comment was meant to point out what I think would be nice and what the original owners would like to see happen with the proceeds, but it was not meant to imply that I think that I should have any say at all or that she should give a damn what anyone else thinks about it.
Maybe the boat your imagining and the car you're picturing just aren't nice enough.
Then again, I'm not sure how that's would even be a possibility considering that college education you have in mind should cost that same $250k.
I think the thing to keep in mind is somewhat more akin to what jooromancer conveying. If grandpa didn't care, then do what you will, but realize that it can't be undone. If grandpa did care, then at least TRY to honor those wishes rather than piss something so valuable away on goodies for yourself. And yes, the boat, the cars, and the education (at your prices) are all pissing it away.
That being said, to be quite honest, I'm certain that Grandma and Grandpa, both having likely lived through very depressed economies would be quite pleased to know that based on their work their children's children SHOULD never have to experience that again. I would guess that if they sell it and do something good with the money that actually HELPS their family tree, then everyone would be pleased. It would actually be a happy story instead of something about which to gossip.
Have we stopped doing research just because it would be nice to know this, because we might be able to do things we haven't dreamed of yet?
We who? We the people? Or we me... some dude or private group of people?
For we the people the answer should be obvious. In the middle of budget issues a governement SHOULD need more reason to do something than "because is sounds neat". I the people don't give a shit if Obama or Reagan or Bush or whoever thinks it sounds neat. You want to say you're over budget on everything and start threatening to shut down government and its services, but then at the same time embark on some "for shits and giggles" research then you're obviously not fit for governing. I'm not saying I think these services should exist at all - I just don't want to hear you complaining about not being able to afford them but then getting involved in other pricey projects just because it's neato and all.
However, for we the private group, then if you're self funded you're welcome (hell, encouraged even) to do something because you want to. It's your money, time, resources on the line so do with it what you will. Sure you'll still have to hear from some liberal whiner about how the money for mapping brains could have gone to cleaner cloth grocery bags, or maybe you'll hear from some excessively paranoid gun advocate regarding how you could have bought the whole population of the south an AR15 just to spite the other side, but in the end it's your money. If you want to spend it on satisfying your curiosity then go for it.
That's not the case for the government. They don't have their own money. They do want to continue blaming the other side for shortages. Therefore they need an excuse - old people and kids are GREAT excuses. Curiosity... not so much.
Patent filing fees in total are less than $1000... you can take the time to do it yourself if you wish. Plenty of people do so. It will give you one hell of a hangover just from thinking so hard about getting the wording just right, but it's very doable. Here's the USPTO fee schedule: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee100512.htm
It's not the patent that costs a lot, it's the attorney fees that get ya. But guess what - a decent attorney would have saved this guy a ton of pain. They wouldn't have let him do up a patent for a spring powered wind up product. His patent, rather than covering a windup radio with a spring in it, would have been written something along the lines of a radio including "generating energy via [generic action phrase here, 'winding' being the simplest, but why limit it to that?] and storing the energy in a reservoir (covers mechanical [spring] and chemical [battery] and any other storage way).
Oh, and your $250,000 is ridiculous. I suppose it's possible to spend that obtaining a patent, but 1/10th ($25000) of that will cover medium-high complicated patents done by an attorney to make sure it's done just right. 1/200th ($1250) of that will cover you doing it yourself which is very possible for most purely mechanical inventions (the type the average inventor could whip up in their garage).
Yeah, I knew I left out a word and I thought it was important... didn't realize it was THAT important! It reminds me of the scene in the first Iron Man when Jeff Bridges character is getting all mad at his scientists for not being able to miniaturize the "arc reactor". The scientist on staff are almost assuredly at least ordinary skill in the art or better. They try to explain to him that it's "impossible" and he gets very upset:
Bridges: "Impossible? Tony Stark built this in a cave! From scraps!"
Scientist: "I'm sorry, sir. I'm not Tony Stark"
Me: I don't give a damn if he built it in a cave out of his own poop. It wasn't obvious to anyone, not even him, much less someone with ordinary skill in the art.
The funny thing is, if he handed over the plans for it, the engineers would have taken one look at it and gone "wow!" and then in the next breath might very well have gone, "oh... well that SHOULD have been obvious - we'd just never thought about like that before".
Why? If you can come up with an alternate implementation that gets the job done, doesn't step on the patent, and is good enough for you then just use it? Who gives a shit if the other guy has a patent on his own little implementation?
I suppose it the guy came up with a GREAT implementation and your implementation only just kinda works (slower, more memory usage, fails in certain cases, etc) then they actually came up with something valuable and it was in fact not obvious. They shouldn't be penalized for spending the time to create an optimal solution (you know, the one people will actually want to use) just because you could come up with a shitty one.
I'm not arguing with you bws111, but I do want to add an important note. Obviousness in the patent office is actually a little more specific. Obviousness is determined by whether a solution would be "obvious to someone who practiced in the field". So, would a car part be obvious to someone who worked in automotive / engineering is the real test for obviousness.
I'm guess that these were not the only two guys working on this task. I'm also relatively confident that they were experts in their fields. That it was not obvious to them or to those practicing in their field is what really makes it non-obvious. And just because someone 50 years or 200 years later says "That's stupid obvious because I learned about the principles that make it all work in 2nd grade" doesn't mean it was obvious at the time of the invention... even to the greatest minds at the time.
For you to argue that when the two people have the same idea at close to (or even exactly) the same time that the idea must therefore be OBVIOUS is ludicrous. To then go on to state that it would have "emerged in due time without any patent incentives" (and I assume you mean no other "artificial incentives" too) means you don't GET IT.
It's ludicrous because creative, intelligent people often come up with the same answer to the same question - only it's relatively rare that they're focus is on the same question at the same time. Even rarer is that they're bothering to focus on something "trivial" and obvious. People (especially these types) know when they're on to something and they know when something is so trivial that they can just hand it off to someone else and save their own brain cycles for more complicated matters.
It's obvious that you don't GET IT because while you obviously "know" that the patent system is meant to spur people to innovation and to give them a reason to bang their head against a wall in failure over and over again in the hopes that they'll eventually have a breakthrough you don't seem to GET why the incentive is there. Incentives and psychological quirks are about the only thing you can uses to get someone to do that. That patent system is the incentive.
You're technically right that it would eventually have been invented by someone else. Maybe when Edison's (or his competition's) offspring came of age he/she would have gotten hold of dad's notes and solved the problem. Maybe some other random person was also working on it. But the important thing is that the WORLD got the knowledge and the know how of that tech RIGHT THEN. They didn't have to wait until "due time" had passed. They didn't have to sit around in the effing dark waiting on due time. Time is precious, and waiting for "due time" is surely a waste considering that a society (and a given science for that matter) often CANNOT move on to other breakthroughs until first handle the ones that are necessary precursors.
So if two or more people can possibly think of the same physical idea and they can also build it then the invention should not be patentable? That's quite a different take on the matter...
It could be argued that the FED stole your wealth when they started printing more funny money. The value of your dollars went down with each new one that they printed. They didn't take it out of your pocket, but as you well know... it's not worth what it was.
Things have value. And that scarcity you mentioned has an affect on the value. The effect of duplicating a resource is that each copy is now less valuable (in terms of what it would fetch in trade). The more times it's copied the less valuable it becomes. It's utility might not have changed, but the monetary value will have.
I recently used these paragraphs in another comment, but it is amazing applicable here too.
Sticking with the car analogy I care if you steal my car because you having it means that I do not have it. That means that I can no longer use it to increase my productivity (towards whatever task I was involved in). If I run a taxi service using my car then I've obviously been harmed. If I had the only operating car in town then the amount of harm is significantly increased. Even if you don't use it and it just sits in your garage I've still been harmed.
IP is different than just one car among many being stolen. Even though I can still utilize it when you have a copy I am no doubt disadvantaged (comparitively) if you use it also. Remember, I gave you the ability to copy it when I filed for the patent. But if you copy it and use it then you have in fact disadvantaged me. In car terms we went from there being 1 car that I had control of to two (or more) cars of which I still only control 1. You not only misappropriated my IP for your own gain, but you're likely poaching my customers using my own property to do so.
Things are scarce including developed ideas. The free market is the "fair" way of determining who gets "control" of the scarce items.
Let's remove Rand from the conversation just for your first question. We'll bring her back at the end... I just really can't tell if the second statement was part of the first or kind of a "follow up" and I don't think including her actually adds any value to the first question anyway.
If someone is one that "chooses to sit at home and write novels" without being one hell of a writer AND one hell of a marketer then that same individual is likely choosing to live a lifestyle congruent with very little income. There is nothing preventing them from getting a j-o-b that actually supports them and writing in their off hours. If they want to live the romantic existence of the starving artist then that's fine, but they should be prepared to do so when that make that choice. I have an uncle who is a great classical guitarist - he did the starving artist thing for years when he was younger. That was the cool thing to do and he just enjoyed the chase. He now has a postgraduate degree in mathematics and works for a well known aerospace company. He still plays guitar and he's recently been laying down tracks in the studio in preparation for his first CD. He's an anecdote, but he's also proof that one can both follow do their own thing while also being a non-drag on their fellow humans.
Now, if the person is 65 and older and wants to sit at home and write bad novels for which they never get paid, draw Social Security, be on medicaid, etc then go for it. They've likely put into the system the whole time. I don't have a problem with that. If a kid loses a parent then I have no problem with surviving other parent, even if they don't NEED it, taking the checks the social security sends to surviving spouses with children. That's who it was MEANT for - not for those simply stuck in a "what can the government give me today" mindset.
Now, I'm no expert on Rand. But it is my understanding that her estate was not that of a pauper. She did draw from programs as she aged, but these are the same programs that she paid in to and there's simply no reason for any rational person who wants what's best for them (Rand's ongoing theme) to turn down "free" money. She drew from these programs BY CHOICE. She paid into them. She didn't like it. She wished they didn't exist. She took her money back over time by following the rules. She still thought the rules were bad and wrong. She probably wished she didn't even have the option to receive the checks. But, as I (basically) said in the comment you responded to... you can play by the rules as long as they are the rules... the whole while trying to change them.
And by the way, the right way to change the rules isn't to not take the money you've paid in over your life. That's just stupid. The right way (other than the ballot and other boxes) is to not pay into them to start with. That also comes with a price and each individual has to choose which price they're willing to pay.
If it doesn't change the VALUE associated with it then no once cares if you "steal", "acquire", "copy" (whatever) their intellectual property (IP). That's what the patent system is. You say "here you go, here's my invention, how I do it, how I use it (though it may have other uses), how i make it, etc". You GIVE a copy to the USPTO and they PUBLISH IT FOR EVERYONE. But you do so for a guarantee that you will have rights to that property and get to decide how it is used. If you keep it a secret it is NOT PROTECTED INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY (if it is IP at all)... it's simply a secret... and if THAT gets out you're outta luck.
Sticking with the car analogy (it is slashdot and you brought it up... kudos) I care if you steal my car because you having it means that I do not have it. That means that I can no longer use it to increase my productivity (towards whatever task I was involved in). If I run a taxi service using my car then I've obviously been harmed. If I had the only operating car in town then the amount of harm is significantly increased. Even if you don't use it and it just sits in your garage I've still been harmed.
IP is different than just one car among many being stolen. Even though I can still utilize it when you have a copy I am no doubt disadvantaged (comparitively) if you use it also. Remember, I gave you a copy of it when I filed for the patent. But if you use it you have in fact disadvantaged me. In car terms we went from there being 1 car that I had control of to two (or more) cars of which I still only control 1. You not only misappropriated my IP for your own gain, but you're likely poaching my customers using my own property to do so. This all assumes it was patented and is in fact IP.
Please note, I think there are plenty of opportunities for holes in what I just wrote so I'm more than open to hearing arguments (for or against what I said). The topic interests me and I am very willing to learn on this one from others who might have more experience / insight.
No one is arguing what you say they are... well, maybe some idiots, but certainly not anywhere near the majority of those who would rather have fewer programs or better managed ones. The drain is those who take a benefit and NEVER pay in when they are capable. Another drain is those who decide that they'd rather just take their benefit than actually do some work to help themselves.
Truthfully, I know lots of conservatives, some who lean far more right than I do, but I don't know a single conservative who thinks that no one should ever take benefits that they've paid into and are actually qualified to accept. I've got family who lost a job and while I strongly oppose the so easily gamed systems that we have in place today of unemployment and medicaid you better believe that when they were eligible I suggested that they take full advantage of the programs to help them get by... not to make it a way of life mind you... but to get by. I also encouraged them to find ways to get back on their own feet and not become complacent.
I've got other family members who have decided it's easier to just sit around all day and collect disability for ailments that don't actually keep them from doing work! They didn't every try to get a job while they were getting unemployment checks (for 2 years) and then decided it was nice to just not have to go to work and they'd become accustomed to living off the checks the government provided... so they gamed the system for disability and actually got a raise to sit at home and do nothing. What's worse is some ways is that these people still go to work and do jobs getting paid under the tableand pay no taxes into the system) all the while getting healthcare (ER) and free meals. These people are a drain and it's by choice.
Your argument is horseshit. I'm sure there's a real debate label for it, but horseshit will do just fine. You're completely wrong to tell me or others that because I'm willing to say that someone should make use of a program they've paid into that I can't also call out those who are misusing the same said programs. I can be pro immigration, but anti amnesty. And I can be pro safety net, but anti nanny state. I can still advantage of foodstamps when I'm starving, but be against using them to buy TVs (or trading them for cash). I can be for unemployment insurance, but not for 2 years or even 1 year or even 6 months of pay.
Even though I'm very against this idea it occurred to me as I read you post that t would likely have the positive affect of reducing crime related to video games / consoles. If the console is tied to an account and the games to the console (or account) then there simply wouldn't be a market for stolen games / consoles anymore. Even for those people stealing them just to have one themselves it wouldn't make sense to steal one.
I suppose the downside (other than making life difficult for the people who spend their money on your product) is that now the crooks have more unallocated "crime time" to search for other values and more free carrying capacity to carry those different items. I wonder what will be stolen more often once thieves figure out that stealing consoles / games is no longer a profitable business plan.
I don't know... maybe I'm slow or something, but I've found that to get the most value out of a book I actually need to read it more than once. The first time I read it I am getting the high points and merely noticing the details / finer points. If I find enough of those high points valuable then I put the book on my "wish list" of books to actually OWN. Once I own them I can take all the time I want to get a deeper understanding and truly enjoy them rather than rush through them. I have to believe I'm not the only one like me - and I certainly don't believe that it is applicable to books, but not to video games.
AC, thanks for the source. It wasn't that difficult to copy / paste. It was even slightly easier than googling it myself would have been! Sure, a link would have been even better, but I am not so entitled as to believe that it makes sense for me to tell someone who offers me something to "learn how to do X" when they didn't have to provide anything at all - much less wrap it in a pretty little bow for my consumption.
It was a useful source if for no other reason than it gave me a common "label" for something I've always known existed but had to describe rather than name.
If it makes you feel any better I don't think they meant "older" as software engineering" has been happening longer than "free bla bla bla". I think that it is similar to when you go to a family reunion and you see two cousins where one just dropped out of high school (even if just too smart to be there and didn't give a shit) and the other, older and "wiser", that has plowed through and just finished his MS in Comp Sci. The second is viewed as more reliable and more thoughtful. Even though his actual age had nothing to do with it... except that youngsters are viewed as unreliable and less thoughtful. It's about what appears old (and the attributes that go along with that), not what is actually old.
I see it a little differently than you. MySpace was huge, but mismanaged entirely. That makes it a completely different issue.
Basically, both were services that did similar things, but they were in different "generations" even though only separated by a few years. They weren't competing head to head from the gate.
It wasn't like there was a race to market that Myspace won and Facebook lost. Facebook literally got to sit back and look at all the things MySpace did wrong and do it differently themselves.
cs668 is right in that it is often the case that the first person to market gets a head start. If they do not totally suck and make everyone they them then they can AND MUST iteratively improve their "product". If they do so such that their product is never made to look like garbage compared to the competition then they will get to carry that "first to market" advantage with them indefinitely, but they have to manage it properly for it to work. If they don't manage it well and become stagnant or release junk then they'll lose that advantage and have to compete on a level playing field. Trust me, every business out there would LOVE to have even the smallest advantage and being first to market is a way to get a huge one!
I've got two rules to live by for you college days.
Rule 1: If you meet a cute little dish on the internet while you're away at school make it a point to meet her in real life. She might not be real and if you're ever a candidate for a scholastic bowl heisman trophy you'll have to admit to everyone how dumb you were to be fooled. Do you remember my little "Toronto" incident and on that silly TV show? Well it'll be worse for you because you should know better.
Rule 2: Stay out of the wiring closet no matter how much valuable information you know is there and no matter how free you think it wants to be... unless you want to be DOSed to the point that you decide to pull your own plug.
It's sad to me that I have to even have to bother teaching you these sorts of things... but those humans are id10ts.
Item 1 and Item 2 are both speculations. If you believe in fortune telling, goody for you. However, we can not claim knowledge of a future event. Both of those items are therefor false. If both of those two items are false, that only leaves item 3 as the possible truth. Remember, the author did state that at least one of those must be true.
One cannot claim knowledge of a future event with certainty, but people can and DO (ALL THE TIME) basic logic by ASSERTING some piece of unknown knowledge and then determining if it breaks anything further down the path. This is one way proofs are done every day. Sometimes when what you want to prove cannot be proven then you go about trying to prove all the other possibilities wrong. Another direction commonly taken is to prove that it doesn't break any other required, known true facts. That is, you ASSERT something and then look for the contradiction it causes. If it doesn't cause a contradictiction and you run it up against a sufficiently large group of other facts, then you can fuzzily declare it TRUE. If you want to put it in terms of fuzzy math then it can be a little bit of both true and false. Of course... now it's a probability! OMG, that's exactly how he laid out his argument! Imagine that!
Once you've laid out your set of possibilities it's up to those examining the argument to determine (1) if the entire argument is logically sound and (2) if so, the values they want to apply to the principal possibilities. In this case, the author qualified the statements themselves in terms of probability so as long as the argument is sound the reader can plug in whatever probabilities they wish assuming they fit the context of the argument the author provided. This is about as basic logic (and basic philosophy since they are so tightly married) as logic gets.
The reason that I brought up Descartes is because for item 3 to be possible, you can not be sure that you exist. This means that item 3 is also false, so none of the 3 items listed are true. The work that follows, while interesting, is based on a fallacy.
You might want to examine your understanding of words. You obviously have a definition of existence that you're utilizing, but one could argue that to exist simply means to be "real" in the world in which the questioner of existence dwells. I won't even get into the concept of whether things pop in and out of existence all the time. I'll leave that to the philosophers and the physicists... and you.
I don't think anyone should do the whole "learn one view then never learn anything else" thing. I'm glad that YOU do not. But you and I both know that many people do it all the time. People learn one "theory" in school and then get out in life and find out it doesn't work that way. But that's the theory they learned so they're hell bent on believing it and trying to force others to do the same. People learn one "theory" in church and then get out in the world and find it may not be as applicable (or might not work as quickly or consistently as they'd hoped). I'm not saying you're like that... but you were quacking like a duck. I was pointing out that you said "I've studied Descartes, so I know I exist" and then tried to dismiss anything else as blasphemous to your KNOWN fact... even something as benign as the Simulation Argument that doesn't attempt to or in any way debunk your KNOWN fact. They can coexist (if they exist at all... haha) no doubt, but you shut down the possibility before you even examined it. That's why I called out your quote. And yes, I read the entirety of the thread that I quoted you from. I quoted the part that I thought might be the most likely to give you a chance to look in the mirror and decide if you were professing to know all the answers when it came to this topic (which you don't) when in fact you had just blasted someone for acting as if they knew all the answers on another topi (which they didn't).
Item number 3 pretty much destroys any credibility the paper has for being factual.
I think you misread the introduction and managed to mangle any chances you might have had for understanding from the get go. Look, (3) is not stated as a fact nor is it stated as opinion. It's not meant to read "hey, I think we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation". No, it's meant to read "Guys... I'm pretty sure that if neither one of these other two items is true, then the third one is." That is, it is stated as one of the three possibilities. If (1) and (2) are not true then (3) almost certainly is. And the rest of the paper is spend laying out the case. In fact, if you bothered to read (and pay attention to) the whole thing you'd see that in the conclusion the writer specifically states that there's an equal probability that any one of the possibilities is true and that we simply have no way of knowing at this time. You know, normally when one is taught to read scientic literature, they are taught to read the "intro" then read the "conclusion" before reading everything else. This helps you know where the author is coming from and going to which helps you to understand the stuff in the middle. You obviously didn't read the conclusion of the paper so I doubt you took everything away from it that you could have.
If you never studied Descartes and are not sure of your existence this paper could seem factual.
The paper, like damn near every philosophical discussion, is based on facts. The facts are pieced together and some sort of deductive or inductive reasoning is applied. This paper inductively comes up with three possible facts, only one of which is actually a fact as they are mutually exclusive. The last "fact" doesn't really look like a fact because it is (properly so) the statement of the answer to probability question (I will someday make millions of simulations of people like me... hmm am I the first "people like me" or am I likely a simulation of "people like me" being run by previous "people like me"?).
I have studied Descartes, and am positive that I exist so see the "story" for what it is.
Ahhh... I see, the old 'I've studied Descartes ergo sum' argument. One of my favorites!
If you recall, tabula rasa (blank slate), was quite important to Descartes- enough so that he took it to the extreme where instead of just starting with nothing he started AGAINST everything and then worked forward to the "proof" of his own existence "cogito ergo sum". Now, while there's no doubting that his conclusion regarding his own existence is true enough for this discussion, it's not mutually exclusive with every other theories. For example, what about Descartes is in contradiction with the Simulation Argument? All Descartes proved was HIS OWN EXISTENCE. Not the nature of said existence (well, he believed God was nice and wouldn't deceive him therefore what he sensed exists). Further, at that time when computers / simulation were barely imagined (Spinoza maybe) he didn't exactly have a chance to ask, much less answer, the question of whether his existence might be a subroutine of some other existence. He knows he exists - that is all.
If you'd studied the simulation argument prior to studying Descartes would you be shaking your head in the first paragraph of Descartes saying, look I know the odds are that I'm a simulation so I'm not even go to read your whole stupid cogito argument! You'd miss some wonderful opportunities to "cross" theories / knowledge.
Read about the 'simulation argument' when you get a chance. Based on your response, I'd say that if you've already read it you probably ought to read it again and AFTERWARDS ask yourself the same question that I asked. Let me know whether or not your answer changes!
Would "Christianity" still be a religion in your mind if Jesus came out of the skies and said "Waddup!!" to everyone while simultaneously parting seas, curing cancer, and telling everyone to quit hating on the homos because he loves them even if they're not living exactly according to his desires? Or if that happened would you reclassify Christianity to something else so you can keep your angry little classification of religion intact. Maybe Christianity would become a branch of science (maybe... Intelligent Design) and all those other beliefs would still just be religion.
Also, do you believe one could be an atheist and reasonably believe in a form of intelligent design? Why or why not? You sound like a fairly smart person so I'm interested in your thoughts.
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Apologies for all the grammar craziness at the beginning of that post. I went back and forth on how to say it and managed to leave several words and bits of punctuation in there that don't belong.
However, I did want to add something. I think this person should be able to spend her money on whatever she wants. After all, it is hers. We might still gossip about it, but it's hers and if she wants to buy $250000 worth of rubber duckies then so be it. I'm sure the rubber ducky manufacturer will be quite happy with that decision even if the president of the local university is not. My comment was meant to point out what I think would be nice and what the original owners would like to see happen with the proceeds, but it was not meant to imply that I think that I should have any say at all or that she should give a damn what anyone else thinks about it.
Maybe the boat your imagining and the car you're picturing just aren't nice enough.
Then again, I'm not sure how that's would even be a possibility considering that college education you have in mind should cost that same $250k.
I think the thing to keep in mind is somewhat more akin to what jooromancer conveying. If grandpa didn't care, then do what you will, but realize that it can't be undone. If grandpa did care, then at least TRY to honor those wishes rather than piss something so valuable away on goodies for yourself. And yes, the boat, the cars, and the education (at your prices) are all pissing it away.
That being said, to be quite honest, I'm certain that Grandma and Grandpa, both having likely lived through very depressed economies would be quite pleased to know that based on their work their children's children SHOULD never have to experience that again. I would guess that if they sell it and do something good with the money that actually HELPS their family tree, then everyone would be pleased. It would actually be a happy story instead of something about which to gossip.
Have we stopped doing research just because it would be nice to know this, because we might be able to do things we haven't dreamed of yet?
We who? We the people? Or we me... some dude or private group of people?
For we the people the answer should be obvious. In the middle of budget issues a governement SHOULD need more reason to do something than "because is sounds neat". I the people don't give a shit if Obama or Reagan or Bush or whoever thinks it sounds neat. You want to say you're over budget on everything and start threatening to shut down government and its services, but then at the same time embark on some "for shits and giggles" research then you're obviously not fit for governing. I'm not saying I think these services should exist at all - I just don't want to hear you complaining about not being able to afford them but then getting involved in other pricey projects just because it's neato and all.
However, for we the private group, then if you're self funded you're welcome (hell, encouraged even) to do something because you want to. It's your money, time, resources on the line so do with it what you will. Sure you'll still have to hear from some liberal whiner about how the money for mapping brains could have gone to cleaner cloth grocery bags, or maybe you'll hear from some excessively paranoid gun advocate regarding how you could have bought the whole population of the south an AR15 just to spite the other side, but in the end it's your money. If you want to spend it on satisfying your curiosity then go for it.
That's not the case for the government. They don't have their own money. They do want to continue blaming the other side for shortages. Therefore they need an excuse - old people and kids are GREAT excuses. Curiosity... not so much.
Patent filing fees in total are less than $1000... you can take the time to do it yourself if you wish. Plenty of people do so. It will give you one hell of a hangover just from thinking so hard about getting the wording just right, but it's very doable. Here's the USPTO fee schedule: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee100512.htm
It's not the patent that costs a lot, it's the attorney fees that get ya. But guess what - a decent attorney would have saved this guy a ton of pain. They wouldn't have let him do up a patent for a spring powered wind up product. His patent, rather than covering a windup radio with a spring in it, would have been written something along the lines of a radio including "generating energy via [generic action phrase here, 'winding' being the simplest, but why limit it to that?] and storing the energy in a reservoir (covers mechanical [spring] and chemical [battery] and any other storage way).
Oh, and your $250,000 is ridiculous. I suppose it's possible to spend that obtaining a patent, but 1/10th ($25000) of that will cover medium-high complicated patents done by an attorney to make sure it's done just right. 1/200th ($1250) of that will cover you doing it yourself which is very possible for most purely mechanical inventions (the type the average inventor could whip up in their garage).
Yeah, I knew I left out a word and I thought it was important... didn't realize it was THAT important! It reminds me of the scene in the first Iron Man when Jeff Bridges character is getting all mad at his scientists for not being able to miniaturize the "arc reactor". The scientist on staff are almost assuredly at least ordinary skill in the art or better. They try to explain to him that it's "impossible" and he gets very upset:
Bridges: "Impossible? Tony Stark built this in a cave! From scraps!"
Scientist: "I'm sorry, sir. I'm not Tony Stark"
Me: I don't give a damn if he built it in a cave out of his own poop. It wasn't obvious to anyone, not even him, much less someone with ordinary skill in the art.
The funny thing is, if he handed over the plans for it, the engineers would have taken one look at it and gone "wow!" and then in the next breath might very well have gone, "oh... well that SHOULD have been obvious - we'd just never thought about like that before".
Why? If you can come up with an alternate implementation that gets the job done, doesn't step on the patent, and is good enough for you then just use it? Who gives a shit if the other guy has a patent on his own little implementation?
I suppose it the guy came up with a GREAT implementation and your implementation only just kinda works (slower, more memory usage, fails in certain cases, etc) then they actually came up with something valuable and it was in fact not obvious. They shouldn't be penalized for spending the time to create an optimal solution (you know, the one people will actually want to use) just because you could come up with a shitty one.
I'm not arguing with you bws111, but I do want to add an important note. Obviousness in the patent office is actually a little more specific. Obviousness is determined by whether a solution would be "obvious to someone who practiced in the field". So, would a car part be obvious to someone who worked in automotive / engineering is the real test for obviousness.
I'm guess that these were not the only two guys working on this task. I'm also relatively confident that they were experts in their fields. That it was not obvious to them or to those practicing in their field is what really makes it non-obvious. And just because someone 50 years or 200 years later says "That's stupid obvious because I learned about the principles that make it all work in 2nd grade" doesn't mean it was obvious at the time of the invention... even to the greatest minds at the time.
For you to argue that when the two people have the same idea at close to (or even exactly) the same time that the idea must therefore be OBVIOUS is ludicrous. To then go on to state that it would have "emerged in due time without any patent incentives" (and I assume you mean no other "artificial incentives" too) means you don't GET IT.
It's ludicrous because creative, intelligent people often come up with the same answer to the same question - only it's relatively rare that they're focus is on the same question at the same time. Even rarer is that they're bothering to focus on something "trivial" and obvious. People (especially these types) know when they're on to something and they know when something is so trivial that they can just hand it off to someone else and save their own brain cycles for more complicated matters.
It's obvious that you don't GET IT because while you obviously "know" that the patent system is meant to spur people to innovation and to give them a reason to bang their head against a wall in failure over and over again in the hopes that they'll eventually have a breakthrough you don't seem to GET why the incentive is there. Incentives and psychological quirks are about the only thing you can uses to get someone to do that. That patent system is the incentive.
You're technically right that it would eventually have been invented by someone else. Maybe when Edison's (or his competition's) offspring came of age he/she would have gotten hold of dad's notes and solved the problem. Maybe some other random person was also working on it. But the important thing is that the WORLD got the knowledge and the know how of that tech RIGHT THEN. They didn't have to wait until "due time" had passed. They didn't have to sit around in the effing dark waiting on due time. Time is precious, and waiting for "due time" is surely a waste considering that a society (and a given science for that matter) often CANNOT move on to other breakthroughs until first handle the ones that are necessary precursors.
So if two or more people can possibly think of the same physical idea and they can also build it then the invention should not be patentable? That's quite a different take on the matter...
It could be argued that the FED stole your wealth when they started printing more funny money. The value of your dollars went down with each new one that they printed. They didn't take it out of your pocket, but as you well know... it's not worth what it was.
Things have value. And that scarcity you mentioned has an affect on the value. The effect of duplicating a resource is that each copy is now less valuable (in terms of what it would fetch in trade). The more times it's copied the less valuable it becomes. It's utility might not have changed, but the monetary value will have.
I recently used these paragraphs in another comment, but it is amazing applicable here too.
Sticking with the car analogy I care if you steal my car because you having it means that I do not have it. That means that I can no longer use it to increase my productivity (towards whatever task I was involved in). If I run a taxi service using my car then I've obviously been harmed. If I had the only operating car in town then the amount of harm is significantly increased. Even if you don't use it and it just sits in your garage I've still been harmed.
IP is different than just one car among many being stolen. Even though I can still utilize it when you have a copy I am no doubt disadvantaged (comparitively) if you use it also. Remember, I gave you the ability to copy it when I filed for the patent. But if you copy it and use it then you have in fact disadvantaged me. In car terms we went from there being 1 car that I had control of to two (or more) cars of which I still only control 1. You not only misappropriated my IP for your own gain, but you're likely poaching my customers using my own property to do so.
Things are scarce including developed ideas. The free market is the "fair" way of determining who gets "control" of the scarce items.
Probably both... I mean... it is kind of cross between #1 and #2. (i somehow feel very wrong after that)
Let's remove Rand from the conversation just for your first question. We'll bring her back at the end... I just really can't tell if the second statement was part of the first or kind of a "follow up" and I don't think including her actually adds any value to the first question anyway.
If someone is one that "chooses to sit at home and write novels" without being one hell of a writer AND one hell of a marketer then that same individual is likely choosing to live a lifestyle congruent with very little income. There is nothing preventing them from getting a j-o-b that actually supports them and writing in their off hours. If they want to live the romantic existence of the starving artist then that's fine, but they should be prepared to do so when that make that choice. I have an uncle who is a great classical guitarist - he did the starving artist thing for years when he was younger. That was the cool thing to do and he just enjoyed the chase. He now has a postgraduate degree in mathematics and works for a well known aerospace company. He still plays guitar and he's recently been laying down tracks in the studio in preparation for his first CD. He's an anecdote, but he's also proof that one can both follow do their own thing while also being a non-drag on their fellow humans.
Now, if the person is 65 and older and wants to sit at home and write bad novels for which they never get paid, draw Social Security, be on medicaid, etc then go for it. They've likely put into the system the whole time. I don't have a problem with that. If a kid loses a parent then I have no problem with surviving other parent, even if they don't NEED it, taking the checks the social security sends to surviving spouses with children. That's who it was MEANT for - not for those simply stuck in a "what can the government give me today" mindset.
Now, I'm no expert on Rand. But it is my understanding that her estate was not that of a pauper. She did draw from programs as she aged, but these are the same programs that she paid in to and there's simply no reason for any rational person who wants what's best for them (Rand's ongoing theme) to turn down "free" money. She drew from these programs BY CHOICE. She paid into them. She didn't like it. She wished they didn't exist. She took her money back over time by following the rules. She still thought the rules were bad and wrong. She probably wished she didn't even have the option to receive the checks. But, as I (basically) said in the comment you responded to... you can play by the rules as long as they are the rules... the whole while trying to change them.
And by the way, the right way to change the rules isn't to not take the money you've paid in over your life. That's just stupid. The right way (other than the ballot and other boxes) is to not pay into them to start with. That also comes with a price and each individual has to choose which price they're willing to pay.
If it doesn't change the VALUE associated with it then no once cares if you "steal", "acquire", "copy" (whatever) their intellectual property (IP). That's what the patent system is. You say "here you go, here's my invention, how I do it, how I use it (though it may have other uses), how i make it, etc". You GIVE a copy to the USPTO and they PUBLISH IT FOR EVERYONE. But you do so for a guarantee that you will have rights to that property and get to decide how it is used. If you keep it a secret it is NOT PROTECTED INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY (if it is IP at all)... it's simply a secret... and if THAT gets out you're outta luck.
Sticking with the car analogy (it is slashdot and you brought it up... kudos) I care if you steal my car because you having it means that I do not have it. That means that I can no longer use it to increase my productivity (towards whatever task I was involved in). If I run a taxi service using my car then I've obviously been harmed. If I had the only operating car in town then the amount of harm is significantly increased. Even if you don't use it and it just sits in your garage I've still been harmed.
IP is different than just one car among many being stolen. Even though I can still utilize it when you have a copy I am no doubt disadvantaged (comparitively) if you use it also. Remember, I gave you a copy of it when I filed for the patent. But if you use it you have in fact disadvantaged me. In car terms we went from there being 1 car that I had control of to two (or more) cars of which I still only control 1. You not only misappropriated my IP for your own gain, but you're likely poaching my customers using my own property to do so. This all assumes it was patented and is in fact IP.
Please note, I think there are plenty of opportunities for holes in what I just wrote so I'm more than open to hearing arguments (for or against what I said). The topic interests me and I am very willing to learn on this one from others who might have more experience / insight.
No one is arguing what you say they are... well, maybe some idiots, but certainly not anywhere near the majority of those who would rather have fewer programs or better managed ones. The drain is those who take a benefit and NEVER pay in when they are capable. Another drain is those who decide that they'd rather just take their benefit than actually do some work to help themselves.
Truthfully, I know lots of conservatives, some who lean far more right than I do, but I don't know a single conservative who thinks that no one should ever take benefits that they've paid into and are actually qualified to accept. I've got family who lost a job and while I strongly oppose the so easily gamed systems that we have in place today of unemployment and medicaid you better believe that when they were eligible I suggested that they take full advantage of the programs to help them get by... not to make it a way of life mind you... but to get by. I also encouraged them to find ways to get back on their own feet and not become complacent.
I've got other family members who have decided it's easier to just sit around all day and collect disability for ailments that don't actually keep them from doing work! They didn't every try to get a job while they were getting unemployment checks (for 2 years) and then decided it was nice to just not have to go to work and they'd become accustomed to living off the checks the government provided... so they gamed the system for disability and actually got a raise to sit at home and do nothing. What's worse is some ways is that these people still go to work and do jobs getting paid under the tableand pay no taxes into the system) all the while getting healthcare (ER) and free meals. These people are a drain and it's by choice.
Your argument is horseshit. I'm sure there's a real debate label for it, but horseshit will do just fine. You're completely wrong to tell me or others that because I'm willing to say that someone should make use of a program they've paid into that I can't also call out those who are misusing the same said programs. I can be pro immigration, but anti amnesty. And I can be pro safety net, but anti nanny state. I can still advantage of foodstamps when I'm starving, but be against using them to buy TVs (or trading them for cash). I can be for unemployment insurance, but not for 2 years or even 1 year or even 6 months of pay.
Even though I'm very against this idea it occurred to me as I read you post that t would likely have the positive affect of reducing crime related to video games / consoles. If the console is tied to an account and the games to the console (or account) then there simply wouldn't be a market for stolen games / consoles anymore. Even for those people stealing them just to have one themselves it wouldn't make sense to steal one.
I suppose the downside (other than making life difficult for the people who spend their money on your product) is that now the crooks have more unallocated "crime time" to search for other values and more free carrying capacity to carry those different items. I wonder what will be stolen more often once thieves figure out that stealing consoles / games is no longer a profitable business plan.
I don't know... maybe I'm slow or something, but I've found that to get the most value out of a book I actually need to read it more than once. The first time I read it I am getting the high points and merely noticing the details / finer points. If I find enough of those high points valuable then I put the book on my "wish list" of books to actually OWN. Once I own them I can take all the time I want to get a deeper understanding and truly enjoy them rather than rush through them. I have to believe I'm not the only one like me - and I certainly don't believe that it is applicable to books, but not to video games.
AC, thanks for the source. It wasn't that difficult to copy / paste. It was even slightly easier than googling it myself would have been! Sure, a link would have been even better, but I am not so entitled as to believe that it makes sense for me to tell someone who offers me something to "learn how to do X" when they didn't have to provide anything at all - much less wrap it in a pretty little bow for my consumption.
It was a useful source if for no other reason than it gave me a common "label" for something I've always known existed but had to describe rather than name.
If it makes you feel any better I don't think they meant "older" as software engineering" has been happening longer than "free bla bla bla". I think that it is similar to when you go to a family reunion and you see two cousins where one just dropped out of high school (even if just too smart to be there and didn't give a shit) and the other, older and "wiser", that has plowed through and just finished his MS in Comp Sci. The second is viewed as more reliable and more thoughtful. Even though his actual age had nothing to do with it... except that youngsters are viewed as unreliable and less thoughtful. It's about what appears old (and the attributes that go along with that), not what is actually old.
I see it a little differently than you. MySpace was huge, but mismanaged entirely. That makes it a completely different issue.
Basically, both were services that did similar things, but they were in different "generations" even though only separated by a few years. They weren't competing head to head from the gate.
It wasn't like there was a race to market that Myspace won and Facebook lost. Facebook literally got to sit back and look at all the things MySpace did wrong and do it differently themselves.
cs668 is right in that it is often the case that the first person to market gets a head start. If they do not totally suck and make everyone they them then they can AND MUST iteratively improve their "product". If they do so such that their product is never made to look like garbage compared to the competition then they will get to carry that "first to market" advantage with them indefinitely, but they have to manage it properly for it to work. If they don't manage it well and become stagnant or release junk then they'll lose that advantage and have to compete on a level playing field. Trust me, every business out there would LOVE to have even the smallest advantage and being first to market is a way to get a huge one!
Young Watson,
I've got two rules to live by for you college days.
Rule 1: If you meet a cute little dish on the internet while you're away at school make it a point to meet her in real life. She might not be real and if you're ever a candidate for a scholastic bowl heisman trophy you'll have to admit to everyone how dumb you were to be fooled. Do you remember my little "Toronto" incident and on that silly TV show? Well it'll be worse for you because you should know better.
Rule 2: Stay out of the wiring closet no matter how much valuable information you know is there and no matter how free you think it wants to be... unless you want to be DOSed to the point that you decide to pull your own plug.
It's sad to me that I have to even have to bother teaching you these sorts of things... but those humans are id10ts.
Item 1 and Item 2 are both speculations. If you believe in fortune telling, goody for you. However, we can not claim knowledge of a future event. Both of those items are therefor false. If both of those two items are false, that only leaves item 3 as the possible truth. Remember, the author did state that at least one of those must be true.
One cannot claim knowledge of a future event with certainty, but people can and DO (ALL THE TIME) basic logic by ASSERTING some piece of unknown knowledge and then determining if it breaks anything further down the path. This is one way proofs are done every day. Sometimes when what you want to prove cannot be proven then you go about trying to prove all the other possibilities wrong. Another direction commonly taken is to prove that it doesn't break any other required, known true facts. That is, you ASSERT something and then look for the contradiction it causes. If it doesn't cause a contradictiction and you run it up against a sufficiently large group of other facts, then you can fuzzily declare it TRUE. If you want to put it in terms of fuzzy math then it can be a little bit of both true and false. Of course... now it's a probability! OMG, that's exactly how he laid out his argument! Imagine that!
Once you've laid out your set of possibilities it's up to those examining the argument to determine (1) if the entire argument is logically sound and (2) if so, the values they want to apply to the principal possibilities. In this case, the author qualified the statements themselves in terms of probability so as long as the argument is sound the reader can plug in whatever probabilities they wish assuming they fit the context of the argument the author provided. This is about as basic logic (and basic philosophy since they are so tightly married) as logic gets.
The reason that I brought up Descartes is because for item 3 to be possible, you can not be sure that you exist. This means that item 3 is also false, so none of the 3 items listed are true. The work that follows, while interesting, is based on a fallacy.
You might want to examine your understanding of words. You obviously have a definition of existence that you're utilizing, but one could argue that to exist simply means to be "real" in the world in which the questioner of existence dwells. I won't even get into the concept of whether things pop in and out of existence all the time. I'll leave that to the philosophers and the physicists... and you.
I don't think anyone should do the whole "learn one view then never learn anything else" thing. I'm glad that YOU do not. But you and I both know that many people do it all the time. People learn one "theory" in school and then get out in life and find out it doesn't work that way. But that's the theory they learned so they're hell bent on believing it and trying to force others to do the same. People learn one "theory" in church and then get out in the world and find it may not be as applicable (or might not work as quickly or consistently as they'd hoped). I'm not saying you're like that... but you were quacking like a duck. I was pointing out that you said "I've studied Descartes, so I know I exist" and then tried to dismiss anything else as blasphemous to your KNOWN fact... even something as benign as the Simulation Argument that doesn't attempt to or in any way debunk your KNOWN fact. They can coexist (if they exist at all... haha) no doubt, but you shut down the possibility before you even examined it. That's why I called out your quote. And yes, I read the entirety of the thread that I quoted you from. I quoted the part that I thought might be the most likely to give you a chance to look in the mirror and decide if you were professing to know all the answers when it came to this topic (which you don't) when in fact you had just blasted someone for acting as if they knew all the answers on another topi (which they didn't).
I still recommend you read the paper
Item number 3 pretty much destroys any credibility the paper has for being factual.
I think you misread the introduction and managed to mangle any chances you might have had for understanding from the get go. Look, (3) is not stated as a fact nor is it stated as opinion. It's not meant to read "hey, I think we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation". No, it's meant to read "Guys... I'm pretty sure that if neither one of these other two items is true, then the third one is." That is, it is stated as one of the three possibilities. If (1) and (2) are not true then (3) almost certainly is. And the rest of the paper is spend laying out the case. In fact, if you bothered to read (and pay attention to) the whole thing you'd see that in the conclusion the writer specifically states that there's an equal probability that any one of the possibilities is true and that we simply have no way of knowing at this time. You know, normally when one is taught to read scientic literature, they are taught to read the "intro" then read the "conclusion" before reading everything else. This helps you know where the author is coming from and going to which helps you to understand the stuff in the middle. You obviously didn't read the conclusion of the paper so I doubt you took everything away from it that you could have.
If you never studied Descartes and are not sure of your existence this paper could seem factual.
The paper, like damn near every philosophical discussion, is based on facts. The facts are pieced together and some sort of deductive or inductive reasoning is applied. This paper inductively comes up with three possible facts, only one of which is actually a fact as they are mutually exclusive. The last "fact" doesn't really look like a fact because it is (properly so) the statement of the answer to probability question (I will someday make millions of simulations of people like me... hmm am I the first "people like me" or am I likely a simulation of "people like me" being run by previous "people like me"?).
I have studied Descartes, and am positive that I exist so see the "story" for what it is.
Ahhh... I see, the old 'I've studied Descartes ergo sum' argument. One of my favorites!
If you recall, tabula rasa (blank slate), was quite important to Descartes- enough so that he took it to the extreme where instead of just starting with nothing he started AGAINST everything and then worked forward to the "proof" of his own existence "cogito ergo sum". Now, while there's no doubting that his conclusion regarding his own existence is true enough for this discussion, it's not mutually exclusive with every other theories. For example, what about Descartes is in contradiction with the Simulation Argument? All Descartes proved was HIS OWN EXISTENCE. Not the nature of said existence (well, he believed God was nice and wouldn't deceive him therefore what he sensed exists). Further, at that time when computers / simulation were barely imagined (Spinoza maybe) he didn't exactly have a chance to ask, much less answer, the question of whether his existence might be a subroutine of some other existence. He knows he exists - that is all.
If you'd studied the simulation argument prior to studying Descartes would you be shaking your head in the first paragraph of Descartes saying, look I know the odds are that I'm a simulation so I'm not even go to read your whole stupid cogito argument! You'd miss some wonderful opportunities to "cross" theories / knowledge.
In the words of someone you know know: To be as clear as possible, I'm not claiming I know answers. I'm claiming that anyone that claims to have an answer is a liar. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3412331&cid=42733103
You seem to claiming here to know the answers to existence based on having studied Descartes of all people. As if he's some k
Read about the 'simulation argument' when you get a chance. Based on your response, I'd say that if you've already read it you probably ought to read it again and AFTERWARDS ask yourself the same question that I asked. Let me know whether or not your answer changes!
http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html
Would "Christianity" still be a religion in your mind if Jesus came out of the skies and said "Waddup!!" to everyone while simultaneously parting seas, curing cancer, and telling everyone to quit hating on the homos because he loves them even if they're not living exactly according to his desires? Or if that happened would you reclassify Christianity to something else so you can keep your angry little classification of religion intact. Maybe Christianity would become a branch of science (maybe... Intelligent Design) and all those other beliefs would still just be religion.
Also, do you believe one could be an atheist and reasonably believe in a form of intelligent design? Why or why not? You sound like a fairly smart person so I'm interested in your thoughts.
Is that code from they *do* outsource to China sometimes? If not, it ought to be!