100% of that is used... Anyway, the point is: you use water power plants to store energy.
Germany doesn't have anywhere near enough pumped hydro storage to use 100% of the wind power it generates.
Even a massive construction of pumped hydro storage stations would only allow to store at most hours' worth of electricity. However windy periods (and non-windy periods) can last for weeks and can vary between seasons.
and I've yet to hear anyone suggest any alternative power, that could be done today, and be used to replace the coal+nuclear plants already in place.
Then you don't read the right stuff... Why don't you look around how other countries produce energy?.. Germany already produces over 25% from wind and solar. And on peak days
I've looked into how Germany produces energy, and it seems to me that Germany is an example of the failure of renewable energy.
Germany is an extremely "green" country. It has a large and influential green party that really influences events. It has the largest and most vocal anti-nuclear crowd anywhere in the world. It's also more committed to the rollout of renewable energy than any other large industrialized country, by far. It also funds and subsidizes renewables to an incredible degree, and has done so for decades.
Still, renewables have been mostly a failure in Germany. It still gets far more power from nuclear than from renewables, despite decades of trying to "phase out" nuclear. Furthermore Germany still gets the majority of its electricity from coal burning, despite spending tons of money on alternatives. Furthermore Germany is among the worst c02 polluters for industrialized countries of similar population density, despite being at the forefront of renewable energy usage.
Germany already produces over 25% from wind and solar. And on peak days, lots of wind and lots of sun, we do over 60%.
Obviously on non-peak days (or weeks!) where the sky is overcast, without wind over a wide area, Germany produces 0% of its energy from wind and solar.
The total amount of electricity produced and used from renewables in germany is 16.1%, not 25% as you claimed. That's after decades of aggressively promoting renewables and paying very high energy prices.
It would be optimistic for Germany to replace even its current nuclear generating power with renewables over the next 10 years.
Don't get me wrong, I admire the effort, but I think it's very premature for them to shut down their nuclear power plants.
Only nuclear power can inflict that kind of long term, irrecoverable damage in the event of an accident;
I don't know if you're a believer in Anthropogenic Global Warming or not. If you are, I should point out that coal-burning plants could make Florida, Louisiana, and most of the country of Bangladesh underwater for several hundred thousand years.
It's ironic, but it has long been recognized as a danger. When a nuclear power plant loses all power, it's called a "station blackout," and is regarded as one of the most dangerous things that can happen at a nuclear power plant. That's why they have so many backup diesel generators (which were all inundated by the tsunami).
That said, I can't understand why the spend fuel pool is not inside any containment structure and not at ground level.
The main spent fuel pool is actually separate from the reactor, even in Fukushima. However, each reactor has its own small spent fuel pool for recently used fuel. It's located on top of the reactor.
I think the reason that the small spent fuel pool is located on top of the reactor, is because they load the fuel using a crane from above, and it's very quick to move the fuel from the reactor to that pool.
So what has barred the Japanese from buying those hypothetical "plenty of new, modern, safe nuclear reactors." So why wasn't it replaced 20 years ago?
Economics. Older nuclear reactors are incredibly cheap sources of electricity. Although the older reactors were expensive to begin with, their loans have been paid off entirely by now, leaving only the operating costs of the plant which are very low. As a result, there is an incredible economic incentive to keep older plants operating. If they wanted to replace the older plants with newer ones then they would spend more than $30 billion (!!!) just for Fukushima Daiichi, just to get the same level of power output they have now.
Parent post was not only informative, but unusually well-written for slashdot.
I think it's extremely inadvisable for armchair engineers etc to make sweeping, unqualified claims while an uncertain situation progresses. Any such claims may be true when uttered but could become false very rapidly. For example, the armchair enginners claimed that the amount of radioactivity released from the reactor was no more than you would get from a banana, which was true at the time, but it appears that conditions are progressing rapidly.
Your views are nonsense, there is far more contamination in any one of those pools than was released in Chernobyl.
rubycodez, there is a big difference between Chernobyl and the spent fuel pools. The pools contain cores which are already depleted, and have control rods permanently inserted. As a result, they cannot fission, cannot vaporize, and cannot spread themselves over a wide geographic area by those means. Also, the cores in the pools no longer contain any short-lived and extremely dangerous isotopes (like iodine-131). They contain only Cesium-137 and Strontium-90 and transuranics etc which are less than 1/10,000th as radioactive.
That said, I suspect that a meltdown and/or fire in the spent fuel pools might necessitate an "exclusion zone" similar to what they have around Chernobyl today. The spent cores still contain Cesium-137 and Strontium-90, etc, in larger quantities than Chernobyl, and those isotopes will be around for hundreds of years. Of course, an exclusion zone would be a permanent reminder of this accident, to the Japanese and others.
Not to get into one side or the other of this debate, but when I see something like that statement I have to point out that the Titanic was unsinkable.
Just so you know, that's a myth. Nobody ever claimed that the Titanic was unsinkable, at least nobody knowledgeable. The Titanic was designed to withstand flooding of four compartments, and five compartments were damaged and taking in water. Right after the accident, the ship's engineer did a rough calculation and figured out that the flow of water into the ship was faster than could be pumped out, and it would eventually sink.
All the engineers who worked on the Titanic knew that it would sink under those circumstances. It was only years afterward that this rumor emerged that enginners thought it couldn't sink.
It's like the quotation you see all the time that nuclear power was supposed to be "too cheap to meter." Nuclear engineers in the 1950s never thought that nuclear power would become too cheap to meter, and they had realistic ideas about its costs. The quotation about "too cheap to meter" was actually said in support of nuclear power, but only once, during a speech, by one person who wasn't an expert about it. That's not the same as nuclear engineers generally believing that nuclear power would be "too cheap to meter".
While the reactors of today may be safer than Chernobyl, they are products of fallible people and subject to failure themselves.
That may be true, but the kind of meltdown which happened at Chernobyl really isn't possible at a negative void coefficient plant. Of course, other kinds of accidents and meltdowns are possible.
You're speaking from a US PoV. For example, in England, an arrest does appear on your criminal record even if you aren't charged, let alone convicted. And this record can be searched by any prospective employer, and is routinely used against people.
Oh crap, that's terrible. I didn't know it was like that in England. Whatever happened to presumption of innocence? Didn't you guys come up with that idea?
Why is it necessary to own or rent a house in order to be able to sleep in its bedroom? Because otherwise you are at the mercy of the whim of the owner, who will probably let you do nothing at all in the house, but at best will only let you apply yourself to the extent that it furthers his profits.
You said "why is it necessary to own OR RENT" a house, but in that case you contradict your own point. Renting a house is not owning the means of occupancy. The question is: why must everyone own his house? Why should renting be illegal?
It's not required to own the means of production in order to exercise one's skills. Many people work in professions like programming, engineering, science, etc, and exercise their skills without owning the means of production. You might say "well what prevents the owner from just firing him" but remember that the owner is harmed by firing a productive or talented employee, which is why the owner paid him in the first place. However, in the case that an employee is fired, he can easily exercise his skills somewhere else if those skills are needed. I work as a programmer now, and I've noticed that nobody in this field who has any talent finds himself unable to exercise his skills.
Even if the employees were owners of the factory where they worked, it still wouldn't accomplish your goal. An employee could still be fired by the other employees or by whatever management the other employees had nominated. The other employees would still have to care about profits and losses, as much as a businessman, because otherwise the factory would not make enough revenues to cover its expenses. Nothing would change unless each employee owned his own factory. Nor would it change anything to eliminate the system of profits and losses because that would only mean that others would have to pay to supplement the workers at the factory, or there wouldn't be enough money/credits/goods/capital equipment/etc coming in to the factory for it to function.
Of course, anyone who feels that he must own his means of production is perfectly welcome to work for his own consultancy, or start his own small business, or work in an agricultural commune, etc. This is legal, at present, in capitalism, and should definitely remain so. The problem is that some people wish to make illegal anything else, or wish to take the property which others gained through their work or investment. That is simply a theft, and a kind of parasitism.
This is the negative, narcissistic, selfish view of humanity.
I'll confess that I find your morals to be truly disgusting. They make me want to vomit. Anyone who deprecates ordinary self-interest, and finds appealing the notion of selflessness or self-dissolution or the "greater good", frightens me.
I'm definitely not trying to insult you, and I imagine that you find my own view (self-interest) to be disgusting, which is fine. You should live as you wish, and if you wish to devote yourself to giving away your labor or not being paid, then you should do so. You should also start a small business if you really feel you must work for yourself.
The problem is that your morality necessarily involves force. Presumably you don't just mean that you wish to start your own company or join a commune, because those options have always been available to you. You have a vision for society and for others.
Personally, I would rather have 3rd degree burns than spend ten minutes in any kind of leftist utopia. What's more, I find the idealized descriptions of leftist utopias (such as are found in utopian novels etc) to be even more horrifying and disgusting than the actual practice. I find horrifying these claims that socialism was a great idea "in theory" but the practice fell short. Socialism was horrifying in theory, and the practice thankfully fell short. The only redeeming feature of any socialist society is that it's unable to exert
I liked your troll;-)... it ought to provoke lots of responses.
Those without jobs become prisoners and are hauled off to be warehoused for the rest of their lives, just like what happens with the insane... The courts make money from people dragged in front of them
I'm sure you know that unemployment is not currently a criminal offense. I was once unemployed for 2 years (although by choice, living off my meager savings) and I wasn't imprisoned.
Police departments show they are nailing felons (when a felony could be a guy pissing on a bush in his backyard.)
Pissing on your own bush is not a felony.
Don't forget the debtor prisons. Debtor prisons are already a reality for parents who can't pay child support
There aren't debtor prisions. Also, being unable to pay child support is legal; it's refusing to pay despite being able which is a problem. Also, child support is not a debt.
So, for the people who are not trust fund babies, nor have a skillset, there is a big future awaiting them in the US: An inmate at a correctional facility.
I know many people who have no skills and who inherited nothing but avoided prison their entire lives.
Even without a life sentence, even a *mere* arrest (not a conviction) is a guarantee of not finding work, so it likely means an eventual return to the slammer.
Arrests without convictions are not included on your criminal record, and have no effect on your employment prospects.
a *mere* arrest (not a conviction) is a guarantee of not finding work...With the three strike rule, it isn't hard to see people winding up with a life sentence without actually committing a mala in se crime against property or person.
Three strikes refers to three convictions, not three arrests.
Dude, your troll was awesome. You skillfully navigated the boundary between genuine hysteria and sarcasm.
To the socialist, who views humans in a far better light, people want to play a useful part in society to the best of their ability. The reward is the opportunity, through control of the means of production, to apply one's skills to improve the lot of humanity.
Why is it necessary to own the means of production in order to apply one's skills? The two are totally unrelated.
To create a society in which everyone is able to play a willing part without being exploited - in the crudest sense, everyone "has a job" - is the height of advancement.
In capitalism normally everyone who wants to have a job is employed, except during recessions which are temporary. Although there is a 4% unemployment rate normally, this is because some workers quit their old job in order to search for a new one, and will soon be employed again. In normal circumstances we have nearly full employment in capitalism. Is this the height of advancement? No, because what matters is not employment, but the amount produced, which is the purpose of employment. If we wanted more employment then we could just have everyone dig ditches.
The reward is the opportunity, through control of the means of production, to apply one's skills to improve the lot of humanity.
The reward of employment is money, otherwise it would be charity work and not employment. Of course charity work is highly commendable, but let's not confuse the two.
To make things short and simple, socialism is when the workers own the means of production.
This is the traditional/Marxist definition of the term socialism, which is not how the word is generally used now. If we used this definition of socialism, then very few people advocate it anymore, since it was such a stellar catastrophe.
These days, the word socialism more often means that the state runs medical billing and pays medical bills equally for everyone out of taxes. The word socialism also sometimes refers to progressive income taxes and income redistribution, or some other form of welfare statism.
As the author points out, soon every book will be about $1. That's great, but are people going to buy 10 times as many books as a result?... A mediocre writer (of which there are plenty) that could still make a living on $10/book is now forced to compete with great authors (of which there are few) that are selling at $1/book... what do we, as a society, do with that chaff?
If consumers pay $1 for a book when they used to pay $10, then they will have $9 extra left over, per consumer, which they can spend on something else. Which means that some other industry will expand, and the mediocre author can go there (as well as the printer employees, paper employees, etc).
The end result of all this, is the same level of employment, but more is produced, which is economic growth. Previously, it took many employees to produce books, but now it takes fewer, and there are more people producing other things, which means that we as a society are richer.
The common answer is "Not my problem". But isn't it?
No, it isn't. It will work itself out without any effort from you. Society has already undergone many episodes where vast numbers of people became unemployed and new industries took up the slack, returning employment to normal. In previous eras, 95% of the population worked in agriculture. Almost all of them got laid off; and something similar has happened repeatedly as the economy has advanced. Are 95% of people unemployed? Have conditions grown worse? No, the level of employment is still near full employment (except during recessions, which are temporary) and the per-capita income has increased by about 40x.
I see your point. However, you're claiming that many patents would be unenforceable or worthless in various ways. In which case, the patents have no force to them and don't deter invention. Others could simply challenge the patent in court, or use an alternative, or manufacture somewhere that the patent isn't enforced, as you mentioned. If, on the other hand, the patent is enforced, then it increases the incentive for the owner to develop it.
This is a different issue. This involves patenting things which are obvious, which has nothing to do with burying breakthroughs in alternative energy. I'm not saying that the patent system is ideal; I'm saying that breakthrough energy inventions haven't been buried.
Actually I do know what I'm talking about, unlike you. The conspiracy theories which you maintain are held in contempt among anyone who really does know what he's talking about (not you). I have frequently worked with high-tech patents and patent attorneys. Furthermore, my professors in upper level econ courses would giggle at your astounding ignorance, and they frequently do giggle at the kinds of claims you've made.
1) far-off more years can not overcome the risk and uncertainty associated with large capital investments now,
You're saying that an invention can have benefits which are so trivial that they don't justify the risk and cost of development. In that case, the invention is being ignored because it's not worth it. In which case, the invention is even less likely to be developed without a patent, because the invention certainly wouldn't justify the risk and investment you mentioned without any hope of exclusive marketing.
Generally, the technology is 1) stripped for present commercial viability (in my case food processing technology)
You're using the wrong terminology here. Intellectual property can't be "stripped" as if it were a factory or something.
In fact, incremental process patents are easily one of the cheapest ways to hedge rising fuel costs.
If an invention is minor, and it gets patented as a hedge, then the patented invention is not viable at current prices. Otherwise it wouldn't hedge anything.
In this case, the existence of a patent doesn't deter the development of the invention. It was prices which had deterred the development (thus the hedge). The invention wouldn't have been developed with or without the patent.
As such, they likely violate the original intent of the patent system.
That's not even the point here. The original poster claimed that patents were being purchased and held in order to prevent a transition to alternative energy. His claims were incorrect regardless of the original intent of the patent system. Nor should the original intent have any bearing on whether we choose to retain the patent system now.
What free marketeers fail to realize is that individual firms can make suboptimal decisions, certainly for themselves,
If some company didn't realize the value of a patent it held, why wouldn't someone else offer money for it? If some other entity offered a lot of money, wouldn't the holder of the patent either 1) sell it; or 2) realize that it's in his own self-interest to pursue it? Wouldn't the owner sell it for a lot of money, if he thought it was worthless and had no intention of doing anything with it? If nobody realized the value of the invention, then what difference did the patent make? How would the invention have been developed in the absence of any realization of its value?
If the owner thought the patent had some value, but was waiting, or using it as a hedge, and someone else recognized its revolutionary nature although the owner did not, wouldn't the outside party offer enough money for the patent to outweigh its benefit as a mere hedge? Wouldn't many outsiders recognize the value of it, and bid for it? Wouldn't the owner sell it to bidders while the price was increasing, since he remained convinced the patent was worth no money? If he changed his mind, and realized the patent was worth a lot, wouldn't he develop it, rather than throwing that money away?
If the owner were a misanthropist or wanted to hinder development just for the sake of it, neither developing nor selling the patent despite profit for himself, then he would be unable to invest in the future and would be weeded out.
Your emphasis on revolutionary patents is a straw man.
I'm not sure you know what "straw man" means. Straw man means refuti
The article just repeats a bunch of silly leftist conspiracy theories. These theories crop up over and over again, and tbey're refuted over and over again, but they never seem to die.
First, with regard to NIMH batteries. GM did not kill the electric car, nor did they buy nimh patents in order to bury them. GM discovered that electric cars costed $40k for a subcompact which was uncompetitive when gas costed $2 per gal.
Second, companies never buy or develop patents in order to bury them. The reason some patents never show up in products is because most patents turn out to be non-viable or difficult to commercialize at current prices. Thus the company drops the patent. Just ebcause a patent languishes doesn't mean it's a conspiracy! Any company which had monopoly rights (through patent) to some revolutionary energy source would MARKET IT. Burying the patent would be throwing away something worth hundreds of billions to them. They could ALWAYS make more from the revolutionary patent than they could from selling gasoline because they don't have a monopoly on gasoline. Of course, genuine revolutionary breakthroughs in energy are VERY RARE, which is why we still use gasoline (not conspiracy!).
With regard to the "patent trolling" allegation. The linked article says that this is the first patent lawsuit over biofuels from big oil EVER. That is not patent trolling. Also, the patent appears to be very narrow, precise, and un-obvious. Maybe it's a valid patent that was a product of their research. The orig poster provided no evidence for his claim that it was trolling.
One important point (which I haven't seen raised yet) is that Nokia can demand concessions out of Microsoft in order to make this deal happen. Without Nokia, Windows Phone 7 was certainly dead. Nokia was the only way of saving WP7. As a result, Nokia could dictate terms to Microsoft in a way it couldn't do to Google. Android doesn't need Nokia, but WP7 definitely does.
I strongly suspect that Nokia arranged favorable terms in long-term contracts with Microsoft before agreeing to this. Nokia probably negiotiated very low licensing fees for WP7, which are locked in using long-term contracts. Nokia also required Microsoft to bundle Nokia's maps software in WP7, which Microsoft will have to pay Nokia for, every time they sell a copy of WP7 to any vendor.
This strategy could give Nokia a competitive advantage compared to other phone makers. This strategy revives WP7 from being a dead platform, and at the same time makes Nokia the preferred vendor of that platform. Although this strategy allows other vendors to offer WP7 phones, those vendors would have to pay royalties which are higher than those Nokia pays, and they would even have to pay some royalties to Nokia (indirectly) for the maps software which will be bundled with WP7.
Elop is taking a very big risk with WP7. It could blow up in his face. However, Elop's decision appears to be a rational one.
um, NO. Android outsells it in SMARTphones. Include dumbphones and Nokia is way, way ahead. [gartner.com]
Did you read the message you're responding to? It said: "You could at least look up Q4 2010 numbers before starting to spew bullshit." In response, you provided a link to data from Q1, which by now is obviously extremely outdated since Android grew by something like 700% last year.
On top of that, the link you provided doesn't even support your claim that "Nokia is way, way ahead", not even for Q1. The article says that Nokia sold 35% of all units, but the chart is broken down by vendor (like Samsung, etc), not by OS, so it doesn't say if Nokia outsells all Android phones or not.
You might try that with someone else next time so you don't appear to be such an ass.
IMO this version of slashdot is vastly better than the last one. I'm surprised that you liked slash 2.0 which (IMO) was far worse than any other version.
Slashdot Mirror
Germany doesn't have anywhere near enough pumped hydro storage to use 100% of the wind power it generates.
Even a massive construction of pumped hydro storage stations would only allow to store at most hours' worth of electricity. However windy periods (and non-windy periods) can last for weeks and can vary between seasons.
I've looked into how Germany produces energy, and it seems to me that Germany is an example of the failure of renewable energy.
Germany is an extremely "green" country. It has a large and influential green party that really influences events. It has the largest and most vocal anti-nuclear crowd anywhere in the world. It's also more committed to the rollout of renewable energy than any other large industrialized country, by far. It also funds and subsidizes renewables to an incredible degree, and has done so for decades.
Still, renewables have been mostly a failure in Germany. It still gets far more power from nuclear than from renewables, despite decades of trying to "phase out" nuclear. Furthermore Germany still gets the majority of its electricity from coal burning, despite spending tons of money on alternatives. Furthermore Germany is among the worst c02 polluters for industrialized countries of similar population density, despite being at the forefront of renewable energy usage.
Obviously on non-peak days (or weeks!) where the sky is overcast, without wind over a wide area, Germany produces 0% of its energy from wind and solar.
The total amount of electricity produced and used from renewables in germany is 16.1%, not 25% as you claimed. That's after decades of aggressively promoting renewables and paying very high energy prices.
It would be optimistic for Germany to replace even its current nuclear generating power with renewables over the next 10 years.
Don't get me wrong, I admire the effort, but I think it's very premature for them to shut down their nuclear power plants.
I don't know if you're a believer in Anthropogenic Global Warming or not. If you are, I should point out that coal-burning plants could make Florida, Louisiana, and most of the country of Bangladesh underwater for several hundred thousand years.
It's ironic, but it has long been recognized as a danger. When a nuclear power plant loses all power, it's called a "station blackout," and is regarded as one of the most dangerous things that can happen at a nuclear power plant. That's why they have so many backup diesel generators (which were all inundated by the tsunami).
The main spent fuel pool is actually separate from the reactor, even in Fukushima. However, each reactor has its own small spent fuel pool for recently used fuel. It's located on top of the reactor.
I think the reason that the small spent fuel pool is located on top of the reactor, is because they load the fuel using a crane from above, and it's very quick to move the fuel from the reactor to that pool.
Economics. Older nuclear reactors are incredibly cheap sources of electricity. Although the older reactors were expensive to begin with, their loans have been paid off entirely by now, leaving only the operating costs of the plant which are very low. As a result, there is an incredible economic incentive to keep older plants operating. If they wanted to replace the older plants with newer ones then they would spend more than $30 billion (!!!) just for Fukushima Daiichi, just to get the same level of power output they have now.
Parent post was not only informative, but unusually well-written for slashdot.
I think it's extremely inadvisable for armchair engineers etc to make sweeping, unqualified claims while an uncertain situation progresses. Any such claims may be true when uttered but could become false very rapidly. For example, the armchair enginners claimed that the amount of radioactivity released from the reactor was no more than you would get from a banana, which was true at the time, but it appears that conditions are progressing rapidly.
rubycodez, there is a big difference between Chernobyl and the spent fuel pools. The pools contain cores which are already depleted, and have control rods permanently inserted. As a result, they cannot fission, cannot vaporize, and cannot spread themselves over a wide geographic area by those means. Also, the cores in the pools no longer contain any short-lived and extremely dangerous isotopes (like iodine-131). They contain only Cesium-137 and Strontium-90 and transuranics etc which are less than 1/10,000th as radioactive.
That said, I suspect that a meltdown and/or fire in the spent fuel pools might necessitate an "exclusion zone" similar to what they have around Chernobyl today. The spent cores still contain Cesium-137 and Strontium-90, etc, in larger quantities than Chernobyl, and those isotopes will be around for hundreds of years. Of course, an exclusion zone would be a permanent reminder of this accident, to the Japanese and others.
You're exaggerating. Although it was in the bottom 40%.
Just so you know, that's a myth. Nobody ever claimed that the Titanic was unsinkable, at least nobody knowledgeable. The Titanic was designed to withstand flooding of four compartments, and five compartments were damaged and taking in water. Right after the accident, the ship's engineer did a rough calculation and figured out that the flow of water into the ship was faster than could be pumped out, and it would eventually sink.
All the engineers who worked on the Titanic knew that it would sink under those circumstances. It was only years afterward that this rumor emerged that enginners thought it couldn't sink.
It's like the quotation you see all the time that nuclear power was supposed to be "too cheap to meter." Nuclear engineers in the 1950s never thought that nuclear power would become too cheap to meter, and they had realistic ideas about its costs. The quotation about "too cheap to meter" was actually said in support of nuclear power, but only once, during a speech, by one person who wasn't an expert about it. That's not the same as nuclear engineers generally believing that nuclear power would be "too cheap to meter".
That may be true, but the kind of meltdown which happened at Chernobyl really isn't possible at a negative void coefficient plant. Of course, other kinds of accidents and meltdowns are possible.
Oh crap, that's terrible. I didn't know it was like that in England. Whatever happened to presumption of innocence? Didn't you guys come up with that idea?
You said "why is it necessary to own OR RENT" a house, but in that case you contradict your own point. Renting a house is not owning the means of occupancy. The question is: why must everyone own his house? Why should renting be illegal?
It's not required to own the means of production in order to exercise one's skills. Many people work in professions like programming, engineering, science, etc, and exercise their skills without owning the means of production. You might say "well what prevents the owner from just firing him" but remember that the owner is harmed by firing a productive or talented employee, which is why the owner paid him in the first place. However, in the case that an employee is fired, he can easily exercise his skills somewhere else if those skills are needed. I work as a programmer now, and I've noticed that nobody in this field who has any talent finds himself unable to exercise his skills.
Even if the employees were owners of the factory where they worked, it still wouldn't accomplish your goal. An employee could still be fired by the other employees or by whatever management the other employees had nominated. The other employees would still have to care about profits and losses, as much as a businessman, because otherwise the factory would not make enough revenues to cover its expenses. Nothing would change unless each employee owned his own factory. Nor would it change anything to eliminate the system of profits and losses because that would only mean that others would have to pay to supplement the workers at the factory, or there wouldn't be enough money/credits/goods/capital equipment/etc coming in to the factory for it to function.
Of course, anyone who feels that he must own his means of production is perfectly welcome to work for his own consultancy, or start his own small business, or work in an agricultural commune, etc. This is legal, at present, in capitalism, and should definitely remain so. The problem is that some people wish to make illegal anything else, or wish to take the property which others gained through their work or investment. That is simply a theft, and a kind of parasitism.
I'll confess that I find your morals to be truly disgusting. They make me want to vomit. Anyone who deprecates ordinary self-interest, and finds appealing the notion of selflessness or self-dissolution or the "greater good", frightens me.
I'm definitely not trying to insult you, and I imagine that you find my own view (self-interest) to be disgusting, which is fine. You should live as you wish, and if you wish to devote yourself to giving away your labor or not being paid, then you should do so. You should also start a small business if you really feel you must work for yourself.
The problem is that your morality necessarily involves force. Presumably you don't just mean that you wish to start your own company or join a commune, because those options have always been available to you. You have a vision for society and for others.
Personally, I would rather have 3rd degree burns than spend ten minutes in any kind of leftist utopia. What's more, I find the idealized descriptions of leftist utopias (such as are found in utopian novels etc) to be even more horrifying and disgusting than the actual practice. I find horrifying these claims that socialism was a great idea "in theory" but the practice fell short. Socialism was horrifying in theory, and the practice thankfully fell short. The only redeeming feature of any socialist society is that it's unable to exert
I liked your troll ;-) ... it ought to provoke lots of responses.
I'm sure you know that unemployment is not currently a criminal offense. I was once unemployed for 2 years (although by choice, living off my meager savings) and I wasn't imprisoned.
Pissing on your own bush is not a felony.
There aren't debtor prisions. Also, being unable to pay child support is legal; it's refusing to pay despite being able which is a problem. Also, child support is not a debt.
I know many people who have no skills and who inherited nothing but avoided prison their entire lives.
Arrests without convictions are not included on your criminal record, and have no effect on your employment prospects.
Three strikes refers to three convictions, not three arrests.
Dude, your troll was awesome. You skillfully navigated the boundary between genuine hysteria and sarcasm.
Why is it necessary to own the means of production in order to apply one's skills? The two are totally unrelated.
In capitalism normally everyone who wants to have a job is employed, except during recessions which are temporary. Although there is a 4% unemployment rate normally, this is because some workers quit their old job in order to search for a new one, and will soon be employed again. In normal circumstances we have nearly full employment in capitalism. Is this the height of advancement? No, because what matters is not employment, but the amount produced, which is the purpose of employment. If we wanted more employment then we could just have everyone dig ditches.
The reward of employment is money, otherwise it would be charity work and not employment. Of course charity work is highly commendable, but let's not confuse the two.
I'm not saying I agree entirely with the parent poster. However he came across as smarter than you; you appear to be throwing a tantrum.
This is the traditional/Marxist definition of the term socialism, which is not how the word is generally used now. If we used this definition of socialism, then very few people advocate it anymore, since it was such a stellar catastrophe.
These days, the word socialism more often means that the state runs medical billing and pays medical bills equally for everyone out of taxes. The word socialism also sometimes refers to progressive income taxes and income redistribution, or some other form of welfare statism.
If consumers pay $1 for a book when they used to pay $10, then they will have $9 extra left over, per consumer, which they can spend on something else. Which means that some other industry will expand, and the mediocre author can go there (as well as the printer employees, paper employees, etc).
The end result of all this, is the same level of employment, but more is produced, which is economic growth. Previously, it took many employees to produce books, but now it takes fewer, and there are more people producing other things, which means that we as a society are richer.
The common answer is "Not my problem". But isn't it?
No, it isn't. It will work itself out without any effort from you. Society has already undergone many episodes where vast numbers of people became unemployed and new industries took up the slack, returning employment to normal. In previous eras, 95% of the population worked in agriculture. Almost all of them got laid off; and something similar has happened repeatedly as the economy has advanced. Are 95% of people unemployed? Have conditions grown worse? No, the level of employment is still near full employment (except during recessions, which are temporary) and the per-capita income has increased by about 40x.
I see your point. However, you're claiming that many patents would be unenforceable or worthless in various ways. In which case, the patents have no force to them and don't deter invention. Others could simply challenge the patent in court, or use an alternative, or manufacture somewhere that the patent isn't enforced, as you mentioned. If, on the other hand, the patent is enforced, then it increases the incentive for the owner to develop it.
This is a different issue. This involves patenting things which are obvious, which has nothing to do with burying breakthroughs in alternative energy. I'm not saying that the patent system is ideal; I'm saying that breakthrough energy inventions haven't been buried.
Click the first link in parentheses then read the article. I was responding to both the first link and the second.
Actually I do know what I'm talking about, unlike you. The conspiracy theories which you maintain are held in contempt among anyone who really does know what he's talking about (not you). I have frequently worked with high-tech patents and patent attorneys. Furthermore, my professors in upper level econ courses would giggle at your astounding ignorance, and they frequently do giggle at the kinds of claims you've made.
You're saying that an invention can have benefits which are so trivial that they don't justify the risk and cost of development. In that case, the invention is being ignored because it's not worth it. In which case, the invention is even less likely to be developed without a patent, because the invention certainly wouldn't justify the risk and investment you mentioned without any hope of exclusive marketing.
You're using the wrong terminology here. Intellectual property can't be "stripped" as if it were a factory or something.
If an invention is minor, and it gets patented as a hedge, then the patented invention is not viable at current prices. Otherwise it wouldn't hedge anything.
In this case, the existence of a patent doesn't deter the development of the invention. It was prices which had deterred the development (thus the hedge). The invention wouldn't have been developed with or without the patent.
That's not even the point here. The original poster claimed that patents were being purchased and held in order to prevent a transition to alternative energy. His claims were incorrect regardless of the original intent of the patent system. Nor should the original intent have any bearing on whether we choose to retain the patent system now.
If some company didn't realize the value of a patent it held, why wouldn't someone else offer money for it? If some other entity offered a lot of money, wouldn't the holder of the patent either 1) sell it; or 2) realize that it's in his own self-interest to pursue it? Wouldn't the owner sell it for a lot of money, if he thought it was worthless and had no intention of doing anything with it? If nobody realized the value of the invention, then what difference did the patent make? How would the invention have been developed in the absence of any realization of its value?
If the owner thought the patent had some value, but was waiting, or using it as a hedge, and someone else recognized its revolutionary nature although the owner did not, wouldn't the outside party offer enough money for the patent to outweigh its benefit as a mere hedge? Wouldn't many outsiders recognize the value of it, and bid for it? Wouldn't the owner sell it to bidders while the price was increasing, since he remained convinced the patent was worth no money? If he changed his mind, and realized the patent was worth a lot, wouldn't he develop it, rather than throwing that money away?
If the owner were a misanthropist or wanted to hinder development just for the sake of it, neither developing nor selling the patent despite profit for himself, then he would be unable to invest in the future and would be weeded out.
I'm not sure you know what "straw man" means. Straw man means refuti
The article just repeats a bunch of silly leftist conspiracy theories. These theories crop up over and over again, and tbey're refuted over and over again, but they never seem to die.
First, with regard to NIMH batteries. GM did not kill the electric car, nor did they buy nimh patents in order to bury them. GM discovered that electric cars costed $40k for a subcompact which was uncompetitive when gas costed $2 per gal.
Second, companies never buy or develop patents in order to bury them. The reason some patents never show up in products is because most patents turn out to be non-viable or difficult to commercialize at current prices. Thus the company drops the patent. Just ebcause a patent languishes doesn't mean it's a conspiracy! Any company which had monopoly rights (through patent) to some revolutionary energy source would MARKET IT. Burying the patent would be throwing away something worth hundreds of billions to them. They could ALWAYS make more from the revolutionary patent than they could from selling gasoline because they don't have a monopoly on gasoline. Of course, genuine revolutionary breakthroughs in energy are VERY RARE, which is why we still use gasoline (not conspiracy!).
With regard to the "patent trolling" allegation. The linked article says that this is the first patent lawsuit over biofuels from big oil EVER. That is not patent trolling. Also, the patent appears to be very narrow, precise, and un-obvious. Maybe it's a valid patent that was a product of their research. The orig poster provided no evidence for his claim that it was trolling.
One important point (which I haven't seen raised yet) is that Nokia can demand concessions out of Microsoft in order to make this deal happen. Without Nokia, Windows Phone 7 was certainly dead. Nokia was the only way of saving WP7. As a result, Nokia could dictate terms to Microsoft in a way it couldn't do to Google. Android doesn't need Nokia, but WP7 definitely does.
I strongly suspect that Nokia arranged favorable terms in long-term contracts with Microsoft before agreeing to this. Nokia probably negiotiated very low licensing fees for WP7, which are locked in using long-term contracts. Nokia also required Microsoft to bundle Nokia's maps software in WP7, which Microsoft will have to pay Nokia for, every time they sell a copy of WP7 to any vendor.
This strategy could give Nokia a competitive advantage compared to other phone makers. This strategy revives WP7 from being a dead platform, and at the same time makes Nokia the preferred vendor of that platform. Although this strategy allows other vendors to offer WP7 phones, those vendors would have to pay royalties which are higher than those Nokia pays, and they would even have to pay some royalties to Nokia (indirectly) for the maps software which will be bundled with WP7.
Elop is taking a very big risk with WP7. It could blow up in his face. However, Elop's decision appears to be a rational one.
Did you read the message you're responding to? It said: "You could at least look up Q4 2010 numbers before starting to spew bullshit." In response, you provided a link to data from Q1, which by now is obviously extremely outdated since Android grew by something like 700% last year.
On top of that, the link you provided doesn't even support your claim that "Nokia is way, way ahead", not even for Q1. The article says that Nokia sold 35% of all units, but the chart is broken down by vendor (like Samsung, etc), not by OS, so it doesn't say if Nokia outsells all Android phones or not.
Ahem...
IMO this version of slashdot is vastly better than the last one. I'm surprised that you liked slash 2.0 which (IMO) was far worse than any other version.