Preventing people from using inventions (even if they are obvious in retrospect) doesn't choke off innovation...
... unless the patent is used to threaten (or extort from) people who build upon it. For example, when a company participates in establishing industry standards, then springs a lurking patent on people once the standard has been implemented.
The current patent system does a lot to choke off innovation, in no small part by shifting emphasis away from innovators and towards lawyers crafting the most restrictive patents possible. I don't believe that patents have to have this effect but I do believe that the current regime -- a PTO driven by application fees, understaffed, overworked, and ill-equipped -- leads to a culture where patents are used as weapons and not as stimulators for innovation.
All that was required was that the wire be stretched across a hard, rather sharp edge.
I believe this is what is thought to have occurred. In fact, the wire was accidently stretched along a hinge of some compartment and repeated openings/closings had worn it through. How did a wire get stretched across a hinge? Apparently the capsule was dropping in transit, falling through the supposedly miniscule distance of under 2 cm, but enough to dislodge the wire.
For the want of a nail...
Source: One of a zillion books called Apollo, currently on loan to a friend, so I can't provide bibliographic info.:(
Re:a sad day to remember
on
Apollo 1
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Blockquoth the poster:
we'd scaled back our goals for space flight so radically, yet still there could be a disaster of this magnitude.
And that's perhaps the most bitter irony of the Challenger disaster: We set our sights lower, but we couldn't eliminate the risks. It seems that people draw one of two conclusions from accidents like Apollo 1 or Challenger:
Exploration is dangerous and we should therefore minimize our contact with the unknown.
Exploration is dangerous but crucial so we should honor their memory, learn from their loss, and get on with it.
Obviously, I fall into the latter camp. What is so depressing about the loss of the Challenger crew, in contrast to the loss of the Apollo 1 crew, is that, due to loss of vision and scaled-down expectations, the Challenger crew gave their lives for a program less audacious, less worthy, of the sacrifice than Grissom, et al. This is not meant to denigrate that sacrifice but to lament the reduced times in which we live.
In any event, let us all spend a moment in memory and thanks of these pioneers who gave their all for a vision of the human spirit and its dignity. Ad astra per aspera indeed -- but we will get there.
Remember the C64s and Tandys that would use audio tape as the storage medium?
Ah, yes, the joys of a Commodore "datasette" drive. Slow -- but what wasn't, then? -- and decidedly low-tech, but mine worked rather well. At least until I upended a bag of pretzel crumbs and salt into it. Oh, well, it had been time to upgrade to the infamous 1541 anyway.:)
Along the same lines, I had a friend who had a Timex/Sinclair Z80 computer (with all of 1 KB of memory). He programmed a "tank combat" game that simulated poor visibility by randomly turning on and off the tape-load code (which would, for the sake of timing simplicity, blank the screen). It was a pretty cool effect for two bytes of code.
I think the point is, they were arguing that DVDs should be considered "software" because the rules for software favored Warner more than the ones for movies. This wasn't a principled stand or even a licensing issue -- it was, out and out, a grab for more cash using whatever asinine justification came to hand.
I see it as one more example of creeping corporate hijacking of the police power. What follows is based on my (US-centric) understanding of copyright law; it might be different in Australia but I suspect now. It's already illegal to rent out a DVD you own, unless you make a different arrangement with the copyright holder. So Warner could have pursued the allegedly legion video stores illegally renting retail copies (ie, without a rental license). But that would be hard, and inefficient, and a lot of trouble. So instead they wanted to sic the machinery of the courts on all video stores in a blanket action.
This, I think, is much like DMCA and CSS. It's already illegal to trade in, say, digitized movies. The Content Cartel could go after all the violating users... but they almost certainly could not efficiently recover costs from thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of violators. So they buy some laws to bugify the court system and cut the problem off at its supposed source, even if that means restricting the rights of law-abiding citizens.
The evil of the Content Cartel is not just that they are control freaks building dungeons in the air. It's also that they're pathetically lazy and they're willing to distort the legal system to satisfy their laziness.
Here's the thing. $49.95 or whatever it is you pay really doesn't cover the cost of all that bandwidth if EVERYONE uses it. It's called oversubscribtion
Just because their business model depends on lying about the services they offer, doesn't mean we should applaud it. If they can't afford to actually provide the bandwidth at that cost, then they should raise the price and legitimately disclose how much the bandwidth costs. But then, of course, some subscribers would drop the service. Much better to lie about the available throughput and then put the onus on the users who dare to access what they have been told they have paid for.
What I find interesting about your post, and probably the majority of those here, is that you are saying there is no need to attempt to prove or disprove this.
There really isn't. Things that violate the laws of thermodynamics are so overwhelmingly likely to be false that the bar is pretty high. Let these inventors take real steps to test their machine... let them offer to turn one over to a university department and give the researchers full rein to fiddle with it, as well as offer to bring a researcher up to speed on whatever theory they have... let them, that is, drop the aura of secrecy that reads more like hype (Segway, anyone?)... Let them meet that level of commitment and maybe the world scientific community can take some time away from more promising and more useful endeavors to investigate it.
If you are willing to put your life on the line, I'll take a look at your perpetual motion machine
I like what an earlier poster said... Put the inventor in a small environment where this device (and only it) powers the life support. Leave him for some amount of time, depending only on it. If he'll do that, I'm more willing to listen.
Intentionally or not, you've missed the point here. It's not that science has to prove things false. It's that, for a claim to be scientific, it has be (in principle) falsifiable -- that is, there has to exist a reasonable test (or set of tests) that can distinguish between its truth or falsehood... a set of tests that could show it to be false, if they turned out a certain way.
So "I was born on 1979 November 6" is indeed a statement that is falsifiable. We can check the documentation that suffices for proof of birth and see if it corresponds to the date. Of course, we know there are lots of ways that the records can be incomplete or indeed doctored, so failure to find proof doesn't necessarily prove that you weren't. Worse, discovery of a record doesn't necessarily prove that you were. (Underage fake IDs, anyone?)
But since the scientific worldview concerns itself primarily with objective (and oft repeatable) phenomena, we can imagine refining a set of experiments until the ambiguity had been wrung out of them. That is, you might lie about the date of your birth; and you might even fake records to support your lie. But as scientists we hold that the Universe cannot lie. It can be coy, sometimes, but never outright lie. Anything that looks like a lie will, upon careful observation, turn out to have been a misinterpretation on our part. Theories that consistently lead to misinterpretation are jettisoned; those that lead to consistency tend to stick around.
To use an example that might raise hackles of a different sort, this is the most abiding criticism of string theory (as a scientific theory). It has been cooked carefully to make sure that low-energy experiments -- that is, the sort we can actually do -- all yield the same results in string theory as in the Standard Model. As such, string theory is not falsifiable, as there are no distinguishing tests.
Before Lenny Susskind or one of his disciples whack me over the head, let me add: One of the most exciting things about the current Third Wave of string theory is precisely its focus on low-energy signatures and testable hypotheses. Now it is starting to move into the proper realm of science.
Likewise, the claim "The Universe is 6000 years old but was created with everything perfectly arranged to look like it was 15 billion years old" is not falsifiable: Any attempt to bolster the 15 Gyr estimate for the age of the Universe can be met with "But it was made to look like that!". Note that this doesn't mean the argument is logically impossible. It is conceivable that such a strange thing did indeed go on -- that God did play that sort of practical joke.
But it will never be science, because you cannot even in principle disprove it.
Sadly, this thing hasn't been exposed yet, just dismissed on principle. Its a safe bet to call it a hoax/non- deliberate error, but journalistic integrity (which slashdot never had) would demand an examination of the device not just a general denial.
When the principle is one of the most well-established and far-reaching in all of modern science, then I think more than modicum of skepticism is called for. Sure the thing could be true -- many a beautiful theory has been rightfully slain by an inconvenient fact -- but the burden of proof is pretty huge. You don't get to play coy and expect to be taken seriously.
If Reuters felt compelled to investigate, they should really have investigated: Set up tests of their own, without the inventor in the same room and certainly without him telling them which ones to run. Find some high level skeptical scientists, people with good reps for solid experimental work, and have them poke at it. Demand some statement of the principles the device uses.
If the inventor isn't willing to part with this sort of control, in light of how prima facie ludicrous the claim is, then he doesn't "deserve" publicity and Reuters is safer not taking the bait, er, bet.
OK, maybe we're talking at cross purposes here. I certainly agree that citizens may require the protection of the courts... I hope the Enron shareholders sue the executives into oblivion. But the philosophy of capitalism qua a philosophy doesn't merit the protection of the courts. It's nothing sacred... it's just a system that seems to lead to the most efficient production of good. Tied to a reasonable safety net, that can lead to a generally-rising standard of living for all, which is the happy outcome we're all taught about in middle school. Nothing in capitalism demands such an outcome. Indeed, I would argue that the "success" of American captialism in achieving social good owes both to the industry of the capitalists and to the regulation first put forth by the Populists.
It's the middle ground that is fertile.
In any event, I still that that "capitalism" is not an entity and therefore cannot be protected in its own right by the courts. Of course, fair and equitable execution of contracts, for example, can create conditions much more favorable to capitalism.
Microsoft's abuse of its monopoly to grab more monopolies was a crime against capitalism
Angels and ministers of grace, let's nip that concept in the bud right now. "Capitalism" is an economic philosophy, not an entity requiring the protection of the courts!
Otherwise, in practise, only nice and likable people have access to the law. Or in other words being mean and unlikable becomes illegal because you will always lose in court.
But surely in the case where the un-nice, unlikable bully actually has broken the law, it's OK to root for the people wallopping him. After all, the court said that Microsoft did engage in monopolistic behavior, the appellate court upheld that finding of fact, and AOL is suing for that breach. It seems to me that it's alright to root against MS on this, without having to say, "Nail Microsoft because I don't like them."
Second, you need also be careful not to confuse the different sects of the Conservative movement. There are Religious/Moral Conservatives, and then there are Fiscal Conservatives.
Fair enough. But "liberal" is no more valid as a monolithic moniker than "conservative". Indeed, my point is this: the labels of "conservative" and "liberal" have outlived their usefulness, if in fact they ever had any. The fiscal and moral conservatives are linked primarily through, well, through the fact that people apply "conservative" to them. They are, at best, allies of convenience.
The idea of a single-axis spectrum to describe the wealth of human politics is a silly and outdated concept. It formed during the National Assemblies of the French Revolution -- where one group sat on the left side of the aisle and another on the right -- and we've attached far too much importance to an accidental bit of political geography.
I really believe that states cannot be reasonably or usefully characterized as "rightist" or "leftist". At a minimum, two axes -- regulation of economic life and of personal life -- is needed.
Very true, anyone who has takein a 12 grade US government should know that republicans (conservatives) are pro 'small government.'
This is a common misconception, often reinforced by conservatives themselves. Conservatives are "pro small government" if you, bizarrely, redefine government not to include law enforcement or national defense. Those two areas are considered perfectly legitimate and, indeed, generally expand considerably under conservative administrations.
It's disingenuous to say that conservatives are "freedom lovers" and liberals advocate state control. As far as I can see, the issue is where a person calls for state intervention. Liberals tend to believe that the economy should be regulated by the government and steered toward (what they see as) public goods. Conservatives of course feel that the government should stay out of the economy as far as possible and thus maximize the individual's economic liberty.
On the other hand, convservatives also tend to call for government oversight of behavior -- morally, sexually, legally, culturally -- and rely on the state to make sure people stay in line with "the norm". Liberals, in counterpoint, want to keep government out of the personal lives of its citizens and evidence a much lower drive to regulate the private actions of the people. In that sense, liberals are trying to maximize personal (or civil) liberty.
Of course both of these characterizations is overbroad. Virtually no one fits perfectly either label, and in recent years there's been a lot of diffusion back and forth across that divide. But I think it's a useful categorization scheme.
Also, in a typically American manner, the true way probably lies somewhere in between. The fount of personal liberty is economic liberty -- too much of our lives revolve around earning a living to disentangle choices made in business from choices made at home. Yet economic liberty without a corresponding freedom of conscience is empty and meaningless... such a system is pointless in the extreme. Further, as the Chinese are learning to their dismay -- following in the footsteps of the Soviet Union, which learned this lesson the hard way in the late 1980s -- you cannot have economic liberty (or its attendant efficiency) without creating overwhelming pressure for personal liberty.
Interestingly enough, the people complaining that slashdot is indirectly aiding the evil MPAA and dastardly amazon.com -- saying that the editors should have taken a principled stand -- include a large number of people who complain that slashdot has lost its journalistic integrity if it ever takes a stand...
To me totally using computers still seems to be "cheating".
I still much prefer the models, camera effects and computer fix-ups of the Enetrprise in Star Trek 2 or the Millenium Falcon in Star Was opposed to the cartoonish ships in Babylon 5 and The Phantom Menace.
Then you don't think CGI is "cheating" -- you think it's ineffective. The AFI thingy was because CGI made the process "too easy", not the mark of craftmanship or professionalism.
I think it's bull. A good image is a good image and it doesn't matter how it's made. YMMV -- probably does, since you don't like the B5 ships and I felt them to be a breath of fresh air compared to canned Trek models.
Um, Tron was originally released on DVD in 1998 . It was the very first DVD I bought when I got my Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM drive for my PC
I was even worse. I bought Tron about 2.5 years before I bought a DVD player. I wasn't sure if a Tron resurgence was in the works and was afraid it'd disappear never to be seen again.
And yes, I'm enough of a geek to buy the new version and I'm enough of a person to feel somewhat sheepish about it.
Re:I was such a TNG addict back in the day
on
Star Trek TNG DVDs
·
· Score: 2
Blockquoth the poster:
Why the hell is everyone cheesing TNG so much?
Well, it was OK, but then ST:Voyager came along and raised/hack/ the bar/gasp/...
Oh, darn, I almost said it with a straight face...:)
Slashdot Mirror
... unless the patent is used to threaten (or extort from) people who build upon it. For example, when a company participates in establishing industry standards, then springs a lurking patent on people once the standard has been implemented.
The current patent system does a lot to choke off innovation, in no small part by shifting emphasis away from innovators and towards lawyers crafting the most restrictive patents possible. I don't believe that patents have to have this effect but I do believe that the current regime -- a PTO driven by application fees, understaffed, overworked, and ill-equipped -- leads to a culture where patents are used as weapons and not as stimulators for innovation.
True enough. It's a shame that the effect of the patent system, currently, is to choke off innovation and information sharing.
I believe this is what is thought to have occurred. In fact, the wire was accidently stretched along a hinge of some compartment and repeated openings/closings had worn it through. How did a wire get stretched across a hinge? Apparently the capsule was dropping in transit, falling through the supposedly miniscule distance of under 2 cm, but enough to dislodge the wire.
For the want of a nail...
Source: One of a zillion books called Apollo, currently on loan to a friend, so I can't provide bibliographic info.
And that's perhaps the most bitter irony of the Challenger disaster: We set our sights lower, but we couldn't eliminate the risks. It seems that people draw one of two conclusions from accidents like Apollo 1 or Challenger:
Obviously, I fall into the latter camp. What is so depressing about the loss of the Challenger crew, in contrast to the loss of the Apollo 1 crew, is that, due to loss of vision and scaled-down expectations, the Challenger crew gave their lives for a program less audacious, less worthy, of the sacrifice than Grissom, et al. This is not meant to denigrate that sacrifice but to lament the reduced times in which we live.
In any event, let us all spend a moment in memory and thanks of these pioneers who gave their all for a vision of the human spirit and its dignity. Ad astra per aspera indeed -- but we will get there.
Ah, yes, the joys of a Commodore "datasette" drive. Slow -- but what wasn't, then? -- and decidedly low-tech, but mine worked rather well. At least until I upended a bag of pretzel crumbs and salt into it. Oh, well, it had been time to upgrade to the infamous 1541 anyway.
Along the same lines, I had a friend who had a Timex/Sinclair Z80 computer (with all of 1 KB of memory). He programmed a "tank combat" game that simulated poor visibility by randomly turning on and off the tape-load code (which would, for the sake of timing simplicity, blank the screen). It was a pretty cool effect for two bytes of code.
But, IIRC, the original acronym was Digital Video Disc...
I see it as one more example of creeping corporate hijacking of the police power. What follows is based on my (US-centric) understanding of copyright law; it might be different in Australia but I suspect now. It's already illegal to rent out a DVD you own, unless you make a different arrangement with the copyright holder. So Warner could have pursued the allegedly legion video stores illegally renting retail copies (ie, without a rental license). But that would be hard, and inefficient, and a lot of trouble. So instead they wanted to sic the machinery of the courts on all video stores in a blanket action.
This, I think, is much like DMCA and CSS. It's already illegal to trade in, say, digitized movies. The Content Cartel could go after all the violating users... but they almost certainly could not efficiently recover costs from thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of violators. So they buy some laws to bugify the court system and cut the problem off at its supposed source, even if that means restricting the rights of law-abiding citizens.
The evil of the Content Cartel is not just that they are control freaks building dungeons in the air. It's also that they're pathetically lazy and they're willing to distort the legal system to satisfy their laziness.
Just because their business model depends on lying about the services they offer, doesn't mean we should applaud it. If they can't afford to actually provide the bandwidth at that cost, then they should raise the price and legitimately disclose how much the bandwidth costs. But then, of course, some subscribers would drop the service. Much better to lie about the available throughput and then put the onus on the users who dare to access what they have been told they have paid for.
There really isn't. Things that violate the laws of thermodynamics are so overwhelmingly likely to be false that the bar is pretty high. Let these inventors take real steps to test their machine
I like what an earlier poster said... Put the inventor in a small environment where this device (and only it) powers the life support. Leave him for some amount of time, depending only on it. If he'll do that, I'm more willing to listen.
Intentionally or not, you've missed the point here. It's not that science has to prove things false. It's that, for a claim to be scientific, it has be (in principle) falsifiable -- that is, there has to exist a reasonable test (or set of tests) that can distinguish between its truth or falsehood
So "I was born on 1979 November 6" is indeed a statement that is falsifiable. We can check the documentation that suffices for proof of birth and see if it corresponds to the date. Of course, we know there are lots of ways that the records can be incomplete or indeed doctored, so failure to find proof doesn't necessarily prove that you weren't. Worse, discovery of a record doesn't necessarily prove that you were. (Underage fake IDs, anyone?)
But since the scientific worldview concerns itself primarily with objective (and oft repeatable) phenomena, we can imagine refining a set of experiments until the ambiguity had been wrung out of them. That is, you might lie about the date of your birth; and you might even fake records to support your lie. But as scientists we hold that the Universe cannot lie. It can be coy, sometimes, but never outright lie. Anything that looks like a lie will, upon careful observation, turn out to have been a misinterpretation on our part. Theories that consistently lead to misinterpretation are jettisoned; those that lead to consistency tend to stick around.
To use an example that might raise hackles of a different sort, this is the most abiding criticism of string theory (as a scientific theory). It has been cooked carefully to make sure that low-energy experiments -- that is, the sort we can actually do -- all yield the same results in string theory as in the Standard Model. As such, string theory is not falsifiable, as there are no distinguishing tests.
Before Lenny Susskind or one of his disciples whack me over the head, let me add: One of the most exciting things about the current Third Wave of string theory is precisely its focus on low-energy signatures and testable hypotheses. Now it is starting to move into the proper realm of science.
Likewise, the claim "The Universe is 6000 years old but was created with everything perfectly arranged to look like it was 15 billion years old" is not falsifiable: Any attempt to bolster the 15 Gyr estimate for the age of the Universe can be met with "But it was made to look like that!". Note that this doesn't mean the argument is logically impossible. It is conceivable that such a strange thing did indeed go on -- that God did play that sort of practical joke.
But it will never be science, because you cannot even in principle disprove it.
When the principle is one of the most well-established and far-reaching in all of modern science, then I think more than modicum of skepticism is called for. Sure the thing could be true -- many a beautiful theory has been rightfully slain by an inconvenient fact -- but the burden of proof is pretty huge. You don't get to play coy and expect to be taken seriously.
If Reuters felt compelled to investigate, they should really have investigated: Set up tests of their own, without the inventor in the same room and certainly without him telling them which ones to run. Find some high level skeptical scientists, people with good reps for solid experimental work, and have them poke at it. Demand some statement of the principles the device uses.
If the inventor isn't willing to part with this sort of control, in light of how prima facie ludicrous the claim is, then he doesn't "deserve" publicity and Reuters is safer not taking the bait, er, bet.
What about the legions of people who once watched Battlestar Galactica?
It's the middle ground that is fertile.
In any event, I still that that "capitalism" is not an entity and therefore cannot be protected in its own right by the courts. Of course, fair and equitable execution of contracts, for example, can create conditions much more favorable to capitalism.
Angels and ministers of grace, let's nip that concept in the bud right now. "Capitalism" is an economic philosophy, not an entity requiring the protection of the courts!
But surely in the case where the un-nice, unlikable bully actually has broken the law, it's OK to root for the people wallopping him. After all, the court said that Microsoft did engage in monopolistic behavior, the appellate court upheld that finding of fact, and AOL is suing for that breach. It seems to me that it's alright to root against MS on this, without having to say, "Nail Microsoft because I don't like them."
Um, doesn't anyone survive until very late in their life
Fair enough. But "liberal" is no more valid as a monolithic moniker than "conservative". Indeed, my point is this: the labels of "conservative" and "liberal" have outlived their usefulness, if in fact they ever had any. The fiscal and moral conservatives are linked primarily through, well, through the fact that people apply "conservative" to them. They are, at best, allies of convenience.
I really believe that states cannot be reasonably or usefully characterized as "rightist" or "leftist". At a minimum, two axes -- regulation of economic life and of personal life -- is needed.
This is a common misconception, often reinforced by conservatives themselves. Conservatives are "pro small government" if you, bizarrely, redefine government not to include law enforcement or national defense. Those two areas are considered perfectly legitimate and, indeed, generally expand considerably under conservative administrations.
It's disingenuous to say that conservatives are "freedom lovers" and liberals advocate state control. As far as I can see, the issue is where a person calls for state intervention. Liberals tend to believe that the economy should be regulated by the government and steered toward (what they see as) public goods. Conservatives of course feel that the government should stay out of the economy as far as possible and thus maximize the individual's economic liberty.
On the other hand, convservatives also tend to call for government oversight of behavior -- morally, sexually, legally, culturally -- and rely on the state to make sure people stay in line with "the norm". Liberals, in counterpoint, want to keep government out of the personal lives of its citizens and evidence a much lower drive to regulate the private actions of the people. In that sense, liberals are trying to maximize personal (or civil) liberty.
Of course both of these characterizations is overbroad. Virtually no one fits perfectly either label, and in recent years there's been a lot of diffusion back and forth across that divide. But I think it's a useful categorization scheme.
Also, in a typically American manner, the true way probably lies somewhere in between. The fount of personal liberty is economic liberty -- too much of our lives revolve around earning a living to disentangle choices made in business from choices made at home. Yet economic liberty without a corresponding freedom of conscience is empty and meaningless... such a system is pointless in the extreme. Further, as the Chinese are learning to their dismay -- following in the footsteps of the Soviet Union, which learned this lesson the hard way in the late 1980s -- you cannot have economic liberty (or its attendant efficiency) without creating overwhelming pressure for personal liberty.
Less significantly, David Warner also guest starred once.
Interestingly enough, the people complaining that slashdot is indirectly aiding the evil MPAA and dastardly amazon.com -- saying that the editors should have taken a principled stand -- include a large number of people who complain that slashdot has lost its journalistic integrity if it ever takes a stand...
Then you don't think CGI is "cheating" -- you think it's ineffective. The AFI thingy was because CGI made the process "too easy", not the mark of craftmanship or professionalism.
I think it's bull. A good image is a good image and it doesn't matter how it's made. YMMV -- probably does, since you don't like the B5 ships and I felt them to be a breath of fresh air compared to canned Trek models.
I was even worse. I bought Tron about 2.5 years before I bought a DVD player. I wasn't sure if a Tron resurgence was in the works and was afraid it'd disappear never to be seen again.
And yes, I'm enough of a geek to buy the new version and I'm enough of a person to feel somewhat sheepish about it.
Well, it was OK, but then ST:Voyager came along and raised
Oh, darn, I almost said it with a straight face...