The only thing wrong with your analysis is the statement "ENORMOUS expense". The second time this is done it will probably be cheaper than hiring a gunman who believes he's working for someone else. (I'll grant you that the first time it's done a lot of expensive research will be involved, but most of that will have been done for other reasons.)
Two things: 1) Solving crimes is a lot more difficult than committing them. 2) You're assuming that solving crimes is their priority. Their priority is maintaining order. Solving crimes is just a means to that end, and not the most important one.
If it could dependably be targeted to just one individual, it wouldn't cause me any worry at all. Less than a pistol or a knife. Very few individuals have enemies that determined, and the ones who do generally deserve it.
But it's not that reliable. Look at it's means of spreading. Every time it reporduces there's the likelihood of at least one minor mutation. (You probably have about 40-50 in your germ-line cells, and viruses have less error-correcting machinery, albeit their genetic information is shorter.) So it may have been designed to target only one individual, but at best it's going to be a shot-gun approach, with one "golden b-b". There's going to be a LOT of collateral damage, and nobody can predict ahead of time just how bad it's going to be.
THAT's the reason I consider it a very bad weapon. Also the fact that it's cheap. OTOH, it will probably only injure people. So it's much better than nuclear weapons. Still, unless an early infection gives you an immunity to further infection, it could easily wipe out all humanity, even if properly designed. Just a few wrong mutations during the spreading phase.
I think that you're missing something. This thing is going to be CHEAP to pull together. The first one may be expensive, but the second is just going to be a few thousand dollars. (If I read correctly, the equipment would be around 400 thousand at today's prices, and the price of the equipment is dropping rapidly.)
Targeting a particular small group might be difficult. The smaller the group targeted, the harder it would be to build. E.g., it's much easier to target "humans with blood type O" than John Jacobs Jingleheimer Schmidt. (And even then you kill more than one person.) So if your replacement candidate is pretty much like the guy being replaced, he could well be within the circle of error.
P.S.: 90% of all genetic variation of humanity is located in Africa. Those who left still form a tight cluster. You REALLY can't judge genetic similarity from appearances, unless you're talking about very close relations.
All that said, one would expect amateurs building their first microbes to make lots of mistakes. One of them might target any human with hemoglobin. And wipe out humanity through "malicious inadvertence". (If it were intentional, they could do it today with current knowledge...and, admittedly, a bit more cash than it will require in a few more years.)
All that said, it's humorous to contemplate cycles in human customs. Polenesian royalty used to also guard all their bodily extrusions lest it be used to cast a curse upon them.
I don't think that religion had much to do with that. If I did, I'd agree with you. (Do you really believe what politicians say?)
In my book anyone who asks god what to do and believe an answer that they receive is crazy. I don't think either Blair or Bush was crazy. Deceitful, manipulative, sociopathic, yes, but not crazy...or at least not in the "God told me" kind of way...except as a part of being deceitful and manipulative.
I'm not particularly pro-Israel, but I don't like ANY missionary or crusading religion. And currently that means Islam. (I'll certainly grant that in the quite recent past it meant Christianity even more, but it doesn't seem to currently. OTOH, if a major country become dominated by the Fundies, which the US seems to threaten, then Christianity would be worse than Islam.)
He didn't say they used 100MB for new stuff. He said they used it *then* (though "then" wasn't completely specified. I interpreted it as being years ago, though.)
I think his essential point was that they used very-non-bleeding-edge hardware. To the point where there WASN'T any advantage in getting something with lower specs, i.e., not even high-end consumer grade equipment. This is, of course, a moving target which will change over time.
I'll agree that support of learning by the family is significant. Not *quite* essential, given an optimal for learning school environment, but even then significant. (And no school in the country, in the world as far as I know, offers an optimal for learning environment. It requires 1-3 teachers/child, e.g. [and not even always the same 1-3 teachers.])
OTOH, my wife teaches music and art in her studio, and she reports that children whose mothers don't go to work tend to have children that are about twice as easy to teach. These parents are obviously committed to their children's learning, or they wouldn't enroll with my wife, but so are the parents that work. The probable conclusion that I draw from this is that working full-time strongly interfers with doing a good job as a parent.
Again, there was I study that I read reporting on class size vs. learning in highschool. That reported a sharp decline in learning when the class size exceeded 18. There was a smooth curve drawn, but I don't know how well it actually fit the data. Still, there was a slow decline in learning rate from class size of 15 approaching 18, 18 was the knee of the curve, and there was a fairly rapid rise beyond 18. One needs to wonder what other effects were present, e.g., what other factors do students that good to schools with a small class size have in common. Still, it's not a totally unreasonable conclusion, given the difficulty that high school teachers have in controlling their classes (any effort spent in controlling the class obviously takes away from effort that could be spent instructing), and also attending to each students unique needs can be time consuming. Large classes prohibit that.
That said, the "teach to the test" is guaranteed to produce students inferior in every way except in test taking. And it's not clear that they'll be much good even in taking different kinds of tests. It's not clearly an entirely wasted effort. Twice a year would be reasonable. Say once at the start of the school year, and once at the end. More frequently is a waste of time, resources, effort, attention, learning, money, etc.
If I understand correctly, "rare earths" aren't rare at all. It's just that they're hard to refine, because they're chemically quite similar to each other. So "good ores" are rare, because most ores are expensive to refine. But there isn't a real shortage. (OTOH, if we need to turn to low grade ores, expect the price to jump by at least an order of magnitude.)
Still, my knowledge on this is decades old. So maybe I'm wrong. But I'd need a good reason to change my mind, and an article in the popular press doesn't count. Neither does what a manufacturer told a congressman (or committee).
OTOH, we DON'T have any active mines. So it would take time to open new ones (and re-open closed ones, as I understand is in process). A new mine might take 5 years to get into decent production, if there weren't unexpected problems. So having China decide to reserve its resources is no minor problem. (And companies are reluctant to open new mines, because China could undercut their prices whenever it felt like it. China's mines are already amortized.)
You are making a strong assumption. You are assuming that you know about the times when it happened, and they weren't caught. But that is not what one should expect.
The real answer is "We don't have any real idea how often it happens and isn't found out." We know that it happens, because it occasionally is found out. What we don't know is what fraction of the time is it found out. My guess would be a very small fraction. Probably considerably less than 1%. But I must acknowledge that a guess is all this is.
OTOH, I consider that anyone who asserts definitely any particular percentage is misrepresenting the truth. I suspect that most of them are not intentionally lying, but the action they are performing is lying, even if that isn't their intent.
I doubt that it's possible to come up with a reasoned estimate. To assert that it's a common activity is, probably, more plausible than to assert that it almost never happens. The truth is likely to lie somewhere in between, but just where is not determinable without evidence that has been carefully hidden in diverse ways by diverse people (and NEVER centrally collected).
Sorry, but it's not the same crime. MS had to agree to this to avoid prosecution for (??abuse of monopoly?? maybe. I forget the exact charge). It did agree. Now it's broken the agreement with the court. So what we're back to is punishment for the crime for which they had originally been found guilty.
E.g., I have a distant relative who was arrested for drunk driving, and let off after promising the court not to drink anymore. He's now in the slammer because he showed up in court drunk on some other business. There's talk of revoking his license, or perhaps just putting a breathealyzed on his car, so he can't start it if he's been drinking. But showing up in court drunk wasn't THAT big an offense. Perhaps, but he violated his promise to the court, and the court noticed.
In the stories that I can remember in which such things existed, they were not commonly available. The lead character had one, but there was some special reason (government job, secret agent, etc.)
One exception is the Fenachrone of Skylark Three where flying cars were commonly available (to the Fenachrone, on their home planet). These cars were so extremely fast that a CSMACD system was pratical, and they had guide beams that ran FAR ahead of the car. No other car was permitted to plan to use the same space at the same time.
Then there's the Norlaminians, in the same story, who had personal aircraft. They appear to have used a somewhat similar guidance system, though no details were supplied.
The Lensman series *could* have used flying cars, as they had inertialessnes, total coversion of mass to energy, and gravity control. But they don't appear to have actually used that capability in that way.
The prototypical flying car, to my knowledge, was in a Sam Merwin book, whose title has slipped my mind. None of the action takes place in the world (parallel earth) from which that car originated, so I don't know anything about how the social system made it work.
P.S.: If you really want a flying car there are about three different models available that I know of. Admittedly, you need to build at least on of them yourself, and possibly all three. And you need to get FAA approval to use it. Also, the mileage is horrible. But it does exist.
Given the current system, and the current history of legal decisions, the easiest way to fix the system would be to revoke all current authorizing legislation and start from scratch...or maybe from about the 1800 form of the law.
Saying he made a huge mistake is making an assumption about his purposes. It is not clear to me that he made any mistake at all. You just assume that the CEO of a company will want it to succeed.
But I don't WANT to adapt to Unity. Some people have used it for an entire year and still despise it, so why should I put myself through that. And don't say "to escape from Gnome3". Gnome3 has driven me to KDE4. I still don't like KDE4 as well as I liked Gnome2, and I didn't like Gnome2 as well as I liked KDE3.
Do you see a pattern here? The interface designers are progressively designing interfaces that are LESS adapted to my needs. At some point I'll probably switch to XFCE or LXDE despite my wife's objections. (Neither of those is as good as Gnome2, but they're pretty nearly as good as KDE4.)
P.S.: My wife's objections are based on I haven't been able to get electric sheep to run on XFCE or LXDE. And it's significant to her, so I need to pay attention. KDE4 I found instructions for how to get it to work that succeeded. Gnome3 *I* rejected...and I would prefer to also reject KDE4, but it's less worse than the alternatives.
That's not totally true. The USPTO was famous for bad patents even before Regan arranged for them to be a "self supporting" part of the government. And while it's true that there was a quick uptick in nearly anything being patentable, and in people who rejected patent applications getting poor performance evaluations, it wasn't as dramatic as you are implying. There are other reasons. (Like not being specialists in all the areas in which they are required to evaluate patents. As the number and specialization of these areas increase, the quality of the decisions declines.) Also, in areas where a skilled individual would earn more working for industry than as a patent clerk, the clerks with any skill level tend to be either relatively incompetent, or focused on security and conformity. So they make the decisions they believe their superiors would want them to make. Generally this means accept anything they find sort of plausible.
So it's not just that the patents now pay their salary. In fact, I believe that this has been changed, and while the USPTO is still supposed to be a profit center, it now pays into the general fund rather than into the USPTO budget. But this didn't improve things, because it's still supposed to be a profit center, and clerks are still evaluated on how many patents they... I'm not sure whether it's accept or process. They may have curbed the worst of the excess, and it may be process rather than accept. But even this means that no patent is given a thorough study, even by those individual clerks who are competent. And, of course, one shouldn't neglect the "corporate culture", which focuses on getting the job done quickly. And superiors can't easily evaluate whether any particular patent should have been accepted or rejected, and if you reject it, it's likely to just be resubmitted with modifications to deal with your reasons for rejecting it, which lowers you count of patents processed.
Therre's LOTS of reasons why the USPTO so often makes poor decisisons. To focus on one particular reason misses the boatload of others.
Apple is a corporation. Corporations do not have beliefs. Steve Jobs believed that Android stole their look and feel from Apple. (Or possible he believed that it stole something else, it's hard to be certain.) Apple accomodated Jobs belief. Perhaps the current CEO also believes that. Perhaps he's just being loyal to the memory of Jobs. It's hard to tell.
Their lawyers probably don't believe that anything was stolen. The engineers probably don't believe that anything was stolen. In these cases though we're talking about a large number of people who probably have varying beliefs. And the lawyers probably don't care. It's their job to fight the battles their client chooses. They don't need to care that their client is being unjust and unfair. In fact, IIUC, their code of ethics says that they are supposed to behave as if the client were in the right whether they believe that he is or not. Which is a real bonus to the wealthy who are unethical, but also to wealthy monomaniacs. It's hard to be sure which is being dealt with here. However, even though the corporation is officially the one paying for their services, they represent the CEO, whether it's in the best interests of the corporation or not. (If it isn't, the board of directors is supposed to replace him, not the lawyers to second-guess him.)
P.S.: I don't believe that this system is fair, just, honorable, proper, or efficient. But I believe that my descriptions are accurate.
You wrong him. He does understand. He just doesn't care as long as he gets paid.
P.S.: Most of what it was reported that he said (by the parent) was correct, even though the weighing he gave to the various pieces is readily disputable. I'm sorry that it's unpleasant, but it's true. The USPTO is a *huge* obstacle to anyone who wants to innovate, even if they have deep pockets. If they don't... when the trolls decide to notice you you've got to either find a buyer with deep pockets or die.
That said, AFAICT all of the patents being applied against Android are weak and flimsy. But IANAL, and certainly not a patent lawyer. And I also rely on second hand reports, as I refuse to read patents (danger of triple damages). But when he's describing what I interpret as the malignant bias of the US patent system (not just the USPTO), he's pretty much accurate.
I doubt that he works for a drug company. This doesn't mean he's well informed, but you don't seem to be either (nor am I).
One thing that I do know is that children of different ages metabolize drugs significantly differently. So adjusting the dose of a drug proportional to the weight of a child, when it's figured for an adult, and result in EITHER overdosing or underdosing. Depending on the age of the child. This may not be true for all drugs, but it certainly is for many. As I understand it, doctors and pharmacists who are experienced in this area have a series of "rules of thumb" that "sort of work". The tests required to bring these procedures up to standard are regularly proposed, and regularly rejected by the drug companies, because of the costs involved. (They're quite happy selling for off-label use. It's off label, because there aren't any approved tests that evaluate it. And those tests are expensive.)
Note that this is also true for lots of other drugs. Often a drug will only get tested for use against a particular disease when the patent on one use is about to run out. This allows the patent to be issued for the new use (which previously was off-label) and maintains the patent on the drug. Similarly, combinations of asprin &... (various drugs) have been replaced by combinations of acetominophin &... (those same other drugs) to extend the life of the patent, even when the new formulaiton is inferior to the old. The old one just becomes unavailable. One of the drugs that I take to control gout (colchicine) has recently (a couple of years) gone BACK into "no generic formula allowed". Nobody has been able to give me a better explanation as to how that happened than "some money must have changed hands". So I don't trust the pharmaceutical companies to have an ethical principle other than "The customer be damned, give me the money." It''s true that the FDA has been largely captured by the pharmaceutical companies, but it's better than non-regulated, if, because of the WAY that the regulations are implemented, not enough better. (E.g., FDA officials, all management levels, should be prohibited from EVER taking ANY remuneration of ANY form either while they work for the agency, or afterwards. That one regulation, if enforced, would help things immensely.)
Maybe. It's not at all clear in my mind that this is actually what's happening.
Yes, I've heard that hospitals must eat the expense if the patient is readmitted quickly, but what that seems to be doing is causing lots of patients who should be admitted, to be classified as "under observation" for a short while and then kicked out. So it doesn't risk the hospital being charged for an admittance that *THE INSURER* deems unwise. This is not good at all.
I would have said "even nominally philanthropic corporations". With that slight change I agree with you.
But I've heard too many stories of deals where "gifts" from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation were closely associated in time with contracts with Microsoft to actually consider them very philanthropic. This isn't to deny that they've done some good things, but when someone does good things for pay you don't normally call it philanthropic. (In this case I think I'd call it a tax avoidance scheme.)
Ah, I see your mistake. You're assuming that P = NP.
Many things which are hard to calculate are easy to check. So it takes a much better expert to create good code than it does to find a hole in the same code.
This implies that MANY "experts" who wouldn't be qualified to write the code, are still qualified to punch holes in it. Lots of them have large egos, and would like the world to know how smart they are, so some percentage of them would shout it from the rooftops. *IF* they have access so they can find the holes.
Unless P = NP. Or unless there has been more progress in quantum computing than is yet known. Practically all current cryptographic techniques fall readily to a decent quantum computer. I don't know about Zimmerman's approach, but since it was specified as having originated quite awhile ago, I would expect that it would also fall readily to a quantum computer.
So possibly the real answer is that the Feds have got themselves a decent quantum computer, and no longer care how secure your cryptographic key is.
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The only thing wrong with your analysis is the statement "ENORMOUS expense". The second time this is done it will probably be cheaper than hiring a gunman who believes he's working for someone else. (I'll grant you that the first time it's done a lot of expensive research will be involved, but most of that will have been done for other reasons.)
Two things:
1) Solving crimes is a lot more difficult than committing them.
2) You're assuming that solving crimes is their priority. Their priority is maintaining order. Solving crimes is just a means to that end, and not the most important one.
If it could dependably be targeted to just one individual, it wouldn't cause me any worry at all. Less than a pistol or a knife. Very few individuals have enemies that determined, and the ones who do generally deserve it.
But it's not that reliable. Look at it's means of spreading. Every time it reporduces there's the likelihood of at least one minor mutation. (You probably have about 40-50 in your germ-line cells, and viruses have less error-correcting machinery, albeit their genetic information is shorter.) So it may have been designed to target only one individual, but at best it's going to be a shot-gun approach, with one "golden b-b". There's going to be a LOT of collateral damage, and nobody can predict ahead of time just how bad it's going to be.
THAT's the reason I consider it a very bad weapon. Also the fact that it's cheap. OTOH, it will probably only injure people. So it's much better than nuclear weapons. Still, unless an early infection gives you an immunity to further infection, it could easily wipe out all humanity, even if properly designed. Just a few wrong mutations during the spreading phase.
I think that you're missing something. This thing is going to be CHEAP to pull together. The first one may be expensive, but the second is just going to be a few thousand dollars. (If I read correctly, the equipment would be around 400 thousand at today's prices, and the price of the equipment is dropping rapidly.)
Targeting a particular small group might be difficult. The smaller the group targeted, the harder it would be to build. E.g., it's much easier to target "humans with blood type O" than John Jacobs Jingleheimer Schmidt. (And even then you kill more than one person.) So if your replacement candidate is pretty much like the guy being replaced, he could well be within the circle of error.
P.S.: 90% of all genetic variation of humanity is located in Africa. Those who left still form a tight cluster. You REALLY can't judge genetic similarity from appearances, unless you're talking about very close relations.
All that said, one would expect amateurs building their first microbes to make lots of mistakes. One of them might target any human with hemoglobin. And wipe out humanity through "malicious inadvertence". (If it were intentional, they could do it today with current knowledge...and, admittedly, a bit more cash than it will require in a few more years.)
All that said, it's humorous to contemplate cycles in human customs. Polenesian royalty used to also guard all their bodily extrusions lest it be used to cast a curse upon them.
I don't think that religion had much to do with that. If I did, I'd agree with you. (Do you really believe what politicians say?)
In my book anyone who asks god what to do and believe an answer that they receive is crazy. I don't think either Blair or Bush was crazy. Deceitful, manipulative, sociopathic, yes, but not crazy...or at least not in the "God told me" kind of way...except as a part of being deceitful and manipulative.
I'm not particularly pro-Israel, but I don't like ANY missionary or crusading religion. And currently that means Islam. (I'll certainly grant that in the quite recent past it meant Christianity even more, but it doesn't seem to currently. OTOH, if a major country become dominated by the Fundies, which the US seems to threaten, then Christianity would be worse than Islam.)
What do you suggest be done about it? I haven't thought of anything effective that wouldn't make things worse.
He didn't say they used 100MB for new stuff. He said they used it *then* (though "then" wasn't completely specified. I interpreted it as being years ago, though.)
I think his essential point was that they used very-non-bleeding-edge hardware. To the point where there WASN'T any advantage in getting something with lower specs, i.e., not even high-end consumer grade equipment. This is, of course, a moving target which will change over time.
I'll agree that support of learning by the family is significant. Not *quite* essential, given an optimal for learning school environment, but even then significant. (And no school in the country, in the world as far as I know, offers an optimal for learning environment. It requires 1-3 teachers/child, e.g. [and not even always the same 1-3 teachers.])
OTOH, my wife teaches music and art in her studio, and she reports that children whose mothers don't go to work tend to have children that are about twice as easy to teach. These parents are obviously committed to their children's learning, or they wouldn't enroll with my wife, but so are the parents that work. The probable conclusion that I draw from this is that working full-time strongly interfers with doing a good job as a parent.
Again, there was I study that I read reporting on class size vs. learning in highschool. That reported a sharp decline in learning when the class size exceeded 18. There was a smooth curve drawn, but I don't know how well it actually fit the data. Still, there was a slow decline in learning rate from class size of 15 approaching 18, 18 was the knee of the curve, and there was a fairly rapid rise beyond 18. One needs to wonder what other effects were present, e.g., what other factors do students that good to schools with a small class size have in common. Still, it's not a totally unreasonable conclusion, given the difficulty that high school teachers have in controlling their classes (any effort spent in controlling the class obviously takes away from effort that could be spent instructing), and also attending to each students unique needs can be time consuming. Large classes prohibit that.
That said, the "teach to the test" is guaranteed to produce students inferior in every way except in test taking. And it's not clear that they'll be much good even in taking different kinds of tests. It's not clearly an entirely wasted effort. Twice a year would be reasonable. Say once at the start of the school year, and once at the end. More frequently is a waste of time, resources, effort, attention, learning, money, etc.
Have you missed all the posts detailing where Cisco is built?
Was Texas a part of the US at that time? My memory says that it was still in "independant country".
If I understand correctly, "rare earths" aren't rare at all. It's just that they're hard to refine, because they're chemically quite similar to each other. So "good ores" are rare, because most ores are expensive to refine. But there isn't a real shortage. (OTOH, if we need to turn to low grade ores, expect the price to jump by at least an order of magnitude.)
Still, my knowledge on this is decades old. So maybe I'm wrong. But I'd need a good reason to change my mind, and an article in the popular press doesn't count. Neither does what a manufacturer told a congressman (or committee).
OTOH, we DON'T have any active mines. So it would take time to open new ones (and re-open closed ones, as I understand is in process). A new mine might take 5 years to get into decent production, if there weren't unexpected problems. So having China decide to reserve its resources is no minor problem. (And companies are reluctant to open new mines, because China could undercut their prices whenever it felt like it. China's mines are already amortized.)
You are making a strong assumption. You are assuming that you know about the times when it happened, and they weren't caught. But that is not what one should expect.
The real answer is "We don't have any real idea how often it happens and isn't found out." We know that it happens, because it occasionally is found out. What we don't know is what fraction of the time is it found out. My guess would be a very small fraction. Probably considerably less than 1%. But I must acknowledge that a guess is all this is.
OTOH, I consider that anyone who asserts definitely any particular percentage is misrepresenting the truth. I suspect that most of them are not intentionally lying, but the action they are performing is lying, even if that isn't their intent.
I doubt that it's possible to come up with a reasoned estimate. To assert that it's a common activity is, probably, more plausible than to assert that it almost never happens. The truth is likely to lie somewhere in between, but just where is not determinable without evidence that has been carefully hidden in diverse ways by diverse people (and NEVER centrally collected).
Sorry, but it's not the same crime. MS had to agree to this to avoid prosecution for (??abuse of monopoly?? maybe. I forget the exact charge). It did agree. Now it's broken the agreement with the court. So what we're back to is punishment for the crime for which they had originally been found guilty.
E.g., I have a distant relative who was arrested for drunk driving, and let off after promising the court not to drink anymore. He's now in the slammer because he showed up in court drunk on some other business. There's talk of revoking his license, or perhaps just putting a breathealyzed on his car, so he can't start it if he's been drinking. But showing up in court drunk wasn't THAT big an offense. Perhaps, but he violated his promise to the court, and the court noticed.
Re: The flying car
In the stories that I can remember in which such things existed, they were not commonly available. The lead character had one, but there was some special reason (government job, secret agent, etc.)
One exception is the Fenachrone of Skylark Three where flying cars were commonly available (to the Fenachrone, on their home planet). These cars were so extremely fast that a CSMACD system was pratical, and they had guide beams that ran FAR ahead of the car. No other car was permitted to plan to use the same space at the same time.
Then there's the Norlaminians, in the same story, who had personal aircraft. They appear to have used a somewhat similar guidance system, though no details were supplied.
The Lensman series *could* have used flying cars, as they had inertialessnes, total coversion of mass to energy, and gravity control. But they don't appear to have actually used that capability in that way.
The prototypical flying car, to my knowledge, was in a Sam Merwin book, whose title has slipped my mind. None of the action takes place in the world (parallel earth) from which that car originated, so I don't know anything about how the social system made it work.
P.S.: If you really want a flying car there are about three different models available that I know of. Admittedly, you need to build at least on of them yourself, and possibly all three. And you need to get FAA approval to use it. Also, the mileage is horrible. But it does exist.
Given the current system, and the current history of legal decisions, the easiest way to fix the system would be to revoke all current authorizing legislation and start from scratch...or maybe from about the 1800 form of the law.
Saying he made a huge mistake is making an assumption about his purposes. It is not clear to me that he made any mistake at all. You just assume that the CEO of a company will want it to succeed.
But I don't WANT to adapt to Unity. Some people have used it for an entire year and still despise it, so why should I put myself through that. And don't say "to escape from Gnome3". Gnome3 has driven me to KDE4. I still don't like KDE4 as well as I liked Gnome2, and I didn't like Gnome2 as well as I liked KDE3.
Do you see a pattern here? The interface designers are progressively designing interfaces that are LESS adapted to my needs. At some point I'll probably switch to XFCE or LXDE despite my wife's objections. (Neither of those is as good as Gnome2, but they're pretty nearly as good as KDE4.)
P.S.: My wife's objections are based on I haven't been able to get electric sheep to run on XFCE or LXDE. And it's significant to her, so I need to pay attention. KDE4 I found instructions for how to get it to work that succeeded. Gnome3 *I* rejected...and I would prefer to also reject KDE4, but it's less worse than the alternatives.
That's not totally true. The USPTO was famous for bad patents even before Regan arranged for them to be a "self supporting" part of the government. And while it's true that there was a quick uptick in nearly anything being patentable, and in people who rejected patent applications getting poor performance evaluations, it wasn't as dramatic as you are implying. There are other reasons. (Like not being specialists in all the areas in which they are required to evaluate patents. As the number and specialization of these areas increase, the quality of the decisions declines.) Also, in areas where a skilled individual would earn more working for industry than as a patent clerk, the clerks with any skill level tend to be either relatively incompetent, or focused on security and conformity. So they make the decisions they believe their superiors would want them to make. Generally this means accept anything they find sort of plausible.
So it's not just that the patents now pay their salary. In fact, I believe that this has been changed, and while the USPTO is still supposed to be a profit center, it now pays into the general fund rather than into the USPTO budget. But this didn't improve things, because it's still supposed to be a profit center, and clerks are still evaluated on how many patents they ... I'm not sure whether it's accept or process. They may have curbed the worst of the excess, and it may be process rather than accept. But even this means that no patent is given a thorough study, even by those individual clerks who are competent. And, of course, one shouldn't neglect the "corporate culture", which focuses on getting the job done quickly. And superiors can't easily evaluate whether any particular patent should have been accepted or rejected, and if you reject it, it's likely to just be resubmitted with modifications to deal with your reasons for rejecting it, which lowers you count of patents processed.
Therre's LOTS of reasons why the USPTO so often makes poor decisisons. To focus on one particular reason misses the boatload of others.
Apple is a corporation. Corporations do not have beliefs. Steve Jobs believed that Android stole their look and feel from Apple. (Or possible he believed that it stole something else, it's hard to be certain.) Apple accomodated Jobs belief. Perhaps the current CEO also believes that. Perhaps he's just being loyal to the memory of Jobs. It's hard to tell.
Their lawyers probably don't believe that anything was stolen. The engineers probably don't believe that anything was stolen. In these cases though we're talking about a large number of people who probably have varying beliefs. And the lawyers probably don't care. It's their job to fight the battles their client chooses. They don't need to care that their client is being unjust and unfair. In fact, IIUC, their code of ethics says that they are supposed to behave as if the client were in the right whether they believe that he is or not. Which is a real bonus to the wealthy who are unethical, but also to wealthy monomaniacs. It's hard to be sure which is being dealt with here. However, even though the corporation is officially the one paying for their services, they represent the CEO, whether it's in the best interests of the corporation or not. (If it isn't, the board of directors is supposed to replace him, not the lawyers to second-guess him.)
P.S.: I don't believe that this system is fair, just, honorable, proper, or efficient. But I believe that my descriptions are accurate.
You wrong him. He does understand. He just doesn't care as long as he gets paid.
P.S.: Most of what it was reported that he said (by the parent) was correct, even though the weighing he gave to the various pieces is readily disputable. I'm sorry that it's unpleasant, but it's true. The USPTO is a *huge* obstacle to anyone who wants to innovate, even if they have deep pockets. If they don't ... when the trolls decide to notice you you've got to either find a buyer with deep pockets or die.
That said, AFAICT all of the patents being applied against Android are weak and flimsy. But IANAL, and certainly not a patent lawyer. And I also rely on second hand reports, as I refuse to read patents (danger of triple damages). But when he's describing what I interpret as the malignant bias of the US patent system (not just the USPTO), he's pretty much accurate.
I doubt that he works for a drug company. This doesn't mean he's well informed, but you don't seem to be either (nor am I).
One thing that I do know is that children of different ages metabolize drugs significantly differently. So adjusting the dose of a drug proportional to the weight of a child, when it's figured for an adult, and result in EITHER overdosing or underdosing. Depending on the age of the child. This may not be true for all drugs, but it certainly is for many. As I understand it, doctors and pharmacists who are experienced in this area have a series of "rules of thumb" that "sort of work". The tests required to bring these procedures up to standard are regularly proposed, and regularly rejected by the drug companies, because of the costs involved. (They're quite happy selling for off-label use. It's off label, because there aren't any approved tests that evaluate it. And those tests are expensive.)
Note that this is also true for lots of other drugs. Often a drug will only get tested for use against a particular disease when the patent on one use is about to run out. This allows the patent to be issued for the new use (which previously was off-label) and maintains the patent on the drug. Similarly, combinations of asprin & ... (various drugs) have been replaced by combinations of acetominophin & ... (those same other drugs) to extend the life of the patent, even when the new formulaiton is inferior to the old. The old one just becomes unavailable. One of the drugs that I take to control gout (colchicine) has recently (a couple of years) gone BACK into "no generic formula allowed". Nobody has been able to give me a better explanation as to how that happened than "some money must have changed hands". So I don't trust the pharmaceutical companies to have an ethical principle other than "The customer be damned, give me the money." It''s true that the FDA has been largely captured by the pharmaceutical companies, but it's better than non-regulated, if, because of the WAY that the regulations are implemented, not enough better. (E.g., FDA officials, all management levels, should be prohibited from EVER taking ANY remuneration of ANY form either while they work for the agency, or afterwards. That one regulation, if enforced, would help things immensely.)
Maybe. It's not at all clear in my mind that this is actually what's happening.
Yes, I've heard that hospitals must eat the expense if the patient is readmitted quickly, but what that seems to be doing is causing lots of patients who should be admitted, to be classified as "under observation" for a short while and then kicked out. So it doesn't risk the hospital being charged for an admittance that *THE INSURER* deems unwise. This is not good at all.
I would have said "even nominally philanthropic corporations". With that slight change I agree with you.
But I've heard too many stories of deals where "gifts" from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation were closely associated in time with contracts with Microsoft to actually consider them very philanthropic. This isn't to deny that they've done some good things, but when someone does good things for pay you don't normally call it philanthropic. (In this case I think I'd call it a tax avoidance scheme.)
Ah, I see your mistake. You're assuming that P = NP.
Many things which are hard to calculate are easy to check. So it takes a much better expert to create good code than it does to find a hole in the same code.
This implies that MANY "experts" who wouldn't be qualified to write the code, are still qualified to punch holes in it. Lots of them have large egos, and would like the world to know how smart they are, so some percentage of them would shout it from the rooftops. *IF* they have access so they can find the holes.
Unless P = NP. Or unless there has been more progress in quantum computing than is yet known. Practically all current cryptographic techniques fall readily to a decent quantum computer. I don't know about Zimmerman's approach, but since it was specified as having originated quite awhile ago, I would expect that it would also fall readily to a quantum computer.
So possibly the real answer is that the Feds have got themselves a decent quantum computer, and no longer care how secure your cryptographic key is.