I collected mussels from different elevations in the salt marsh, and I looked at how those predation rates affected mussels, and then I saw that mussels who were in lower elevations (where predation was the greatest), they exhibited heavier and denser, thicker shells, and then I took this idea and I introduced it into the lab setting, and I exposed the same mussels to invasive species ([crabs]). At the end of the 2 months, I saw that the mussels did exhibit heavier shells, just like those in the marsh.
Because 2 months is a pretty short time, it does seem quite unlikely that my explanation is of any consequence. You are correct that it was silly of me to discount some other, more complex interaction.
I like that explanation, too. Even a failed attempt to eat a mussel could indeed induce that very mussel to grow its shell thicker in case of a future attempt.
What I didn't intially consider is the life cycle of the mussel in question; if it's too long to witness within at least a few years the change in shells by means of culling and reproduction, then I imagine my explanation does pretty much go directly out the window as the dominant reasoning behind this student's research.
In any case, I hope you noticed my careful use of language to suggest that my comment isn't at all meant to be considered as a confident appraisal.
I seriously doubt that crabs change the thickness of their shells in the presence of predators. Rather, I bet the predators change the kind of shell that is dominant in the population of crabs.
It is likely the case that the predators are more easily able to eat the crabs with thinner shells, thereby increasing the percentage of crabs with thicker shells in the remaining population, and those remaining crabs with thicker shells produce offspring that also have the same kind of shells (or perhaps even thicker shells in a few cases).
A pure democracy would only lead to a tyranny of the majority if centralized power is still at play.
All governments represent violence; all governments represent compliance by force to the will of the powerful.
The key is the decentralization and localization of power; to illustrate the principle by extremes, anarchists, for instance, would take it to the limit: There should be only a constituency of one: The individual representing himself.
As an aside, this is one of the prime motivations for the right to bear arms: The gun is called the great equalizer, because at one point in time, a man knew that if he fscked with another man, he just might get a bullet through his body in return. I'm not advocating violence, but I'm instead trying to emphasize the utter importance of efficient justice for the individual, something which is certainly not capable under contemporary social and political organization.
Efficient lawsuits and arbitration SHOULD be the modern equalizer. Unfortunately, big, slothful, centralized, corrupt government has given the individual a pea-shooter rather than a Colt.45.
Fundamentally, the role of government should probably just be to provide the forum (i.e., courts) in which an individual may air his grievances and seek compensation (i.e., enforcement of rulings). In this way, there is no need for intricate laws with all manner of unintended consequences and hidden loopholes. For instance, the matter of pollution can be framed as an issue of property rights: Polluting a man's air and land is no different than smashing in his car's windows. Lawsuits for lost wages and repair of land would put offending businesses with polluting practices out of business quickly and scare competitors into morality.
I don't think that what I've said has anything to do with either capitalism or communism.
Specifically, even under capitalism, what I've stated is valid.
Let's say a factory owner makes widgets. It costs $10 to make a widget, and he sells a widget for $11, so he records what would normally be called a $1 profit for himself. The factory owner is very happy about that, and the consumers are very happy about that.
Now, let's say the factory owner makes a simple adjustment to his factory, such that now it's actually possible to make a widget for $1. At this point, the factory owner has some interesting choices. For instance, he can sell his product for the same $11; in this case, his own situation has been much improved, but the situation of the consumers remains just as happy as it was before (unchanged). Alternatively, he can sell his product for $2, thereby still making a $1 profit; in this case, his own situation remains just as happy as it was before (unchanged, except that now he also enjoys a significantly cheaper widget!), but the situation of the consumers has been much improved.
Perhaps you notice an imbalance in the two choices above: Under the first choice, only the factory owner benefits. Under the second choice, everybody benefits; in fact, under the second choice, if the $1 profit that he makes is meant for unfortunate events like a fire in the factory, then the factory owner makes no profit and receives exactly the same benefit as everybody else: A cheaper widget.
Perhaps this is where some kind of marxist idea comes in: The factory is a means by which to make widgets, and everybody is a consumer of widgets (including the factory owner). Thus, consider abstracting this conceptual world into two entities: The Factory and the Consumers. In this view, if the Factory can be made more efficient, then it would be logical for all of the Consumers to benefit equally; it makes sense for widgets to be priced at $2.
What I've written about does not detract from free markets; it simply points out that there is a kind of moral choice to be made about how products and services should be priced.
A company may boost it's profits for any number of reasons, not all of which are driven by pure greed - bankrolling some money for future growth being the obvious one.
In my opinion, future growth like that falls into the category of 'risk'; if there is a desired goal (such as providing a new kind of product or service), then the projected cost of achieving that goal may well be factored into the price of existing products and services. Once risks and future projections like this have been factored into the calculations, a company should be considered "breaking even".
If there are no such projections that can be factored into the calculations (if there is no such plan for future growth or the like), then profit is theft.
If revenue has no purpose other than to report a growth in profit, then that revenue is theft.
Is Intel still making a profit? Is Intel at least breaking even?
Ideally, if a company is breaking even, then who cares what its revenue is.
Profit beyond that which is necessary to cover risk (unfortunate troubles) is theft; it represents an imbalance of energy/value/worth in an exchange (one party to the exchange is taking advantage of the other party).
Even if science can come up with models of an eternal universe with no prime cause, it makes an assumption when it says: a transcendent plane is unneeded therefore it's not there.
If phenomena can be explained (that is, predicted) without the aid of a 'transcendent plane', then that 'transcendent plane' is by definition completely useless to our existence with regard to those phenomena.
If you can't propose any phenomena whose explanation requires a 'transcendent plane', then by definition, a 'transcendent plane' is completely useless to our existence.
If something is useless to our existence, then it's useless (and possibly harmful) to incorporate it into a world view.
If a monopoly no longer competes on price and/or service, then it should be easy to start a competing business. On the other hand, let's say that the barrier to entry is a matter of economies of scale: If society really is upset about being mistreated by a monopoly, then society won't mind protesting by paying extra at a competing store.
I should add that while it's certainly possible for a monopoly to develop in a free market, it's not necessarily an inherently bad thing; as long as Walmart is putting every "Mom & Pop" shop out of business because Walmart can deliver the same/better service for cheaper/same price, then that's a good thing (Mom and Pop should find some other way to contribute to society).
What is this bizarre fetish people have for insisting that the centralized banking system (and the world's economy, for that matter) is in any way based on a free market?
Big Banks, Big Business, and Government are intricately intertwined; that makes what the world has a corporatist market. Capitalism is about lowering barriers to entry, but the powers that be do everything that they can to regulate competitors out of existence.
One man's freedom is always another man's tyranny.
It's rational to support explicitly the freedom of the little guy, because chances are great that your loved ones (if not you) are going to be the little guy.
How is it relevant that most people cannot fix a bug? The distinction is inherent; open-source and closed-source ANYTHING are indistinguishable except for the fact that improvements to the open-source variant are much more readily available.
One man's freedom is always another man's tyranny.
It's rational to support the freedom of the little guy, because chances are great that your loved ones (if not you) are going to be the little guy.
All closed-source applications I've ever used have problems I'd like to fix; I can't fix them. All open-source applications I've ever used have problems I'd like to fix; sometimes I do fix them.
The BSD license is more permissive for only the upstream.
In fact, the downstream ('end-users') may ultimately get a license that is more restrictive on further developments—possibly even restrictions that might hinder the development of your own upstream work should you find yourself in some sort of downstream position relative to a fork.
Because everyone is ultimately an end-user eventually, the BSD license is quite dangerous.
Everything that you like about open source BSD-licensed projects is simply encoded for legal enforcement in the GPL. When you espouse the merits of open source, you are actually espousing the merits of the GPL.
Actually, we have 30 years of history demonstrating that centrally-managed economies and monetary policy produce horrendous boom/bust business cycles; the system is entirely too complex for humans (at their present stage) to attempt to turn their forcasts into policy (it's as if the weatherman gets to pick your clothes for you everyday, and the weatherman has a corrupt relationship with various clothing companies).
Ron Paul's view of government is extremely practical in that it makes government well-defined: The government should be as local to communities as possible and enforce property rights and the contracts to which parties agree.
On a similar note, much of a government's power derives from the government's supply of money. This is why the U.S. Constitution specifically mandates that state and federal GOVERNMENTS (to say nothing of citizens) use only gold and silver as legal tender; the government runs unchecked if it is able to print money whenever it likes, and that is exactly what we've seen happen to the U.S. over the last HUNDRED years (since the introduction of the Federal Reserve banking system).
There are nothing but descriptions. Everything is a description. Everything is information.
While 'F=ma' describes a facet of 'a jet engine', that same facet of 'a jet engine' describes 'F=ma'.
The Universe is just a manifestation of a particular set of laws---some mathematical theory, which we happen to call 'physics'. They are one and the same: There is no fundamental difference between the symbols we write on paper and the phenomena that occur in the Universe; they are manifestations of the same thing (of course, our symbols and such are really good approximations within certain conditions, because it is difficult to make an exact copy of the Universe's information).
What is your proposed "objective measurement for entitlement"?
I didn't say I have the answer; I said that is what people should be thinking about: The fact that we still need to ask that question is the crux of the problems, and the answer to that question is the crux of the solution.
In other words, that's a very good question. I hope that a Mathematician will one day take the time to characterize the issue and prepare a decent formula.
So what you're saying is that you want to redefine what patent and copyright mean so that they mean something other than what everybody knows them to be under the existing law...
No.
For the 3rd time, I'm illustrating that there are 2 issues at play (transmission and usage), and that the legal definitions of copyright and patent are inspired by those 2 issues, respectively.
Furthermore, I am saying that due to human error and lobbying, the legal definitions of patent and especially copyright have been smudged. However, that is simply an aside; it does not in any way detract from the point that there is no inherent reason why software (and mathematics, etc.) shouldn't be patentable.
The reason that mathematics is not patentable is simply because too many of the ideas that are construed as being "mathematics" do not warrant the usage entitlement that patents grant. You are basically making that claim about software: No software warrants the usage entitlement that patents grant. I don't think that is true for patents and even mathematics, and I think that one (see below) of the solutions to the patenting debacle is coming up with an objective measurement for entitlement; hence, my initial question: "should the inventor of rounded GUI elements be compensated in the same ways as the inventor of the LCD screen? The contemporary patent problem has to do with preposterously disproportionate entitlement."
by redefining what a patent is so that it is something more akin to the right to make derivative works under copyright you can then say that software ought to be patentable.
By not defining patents this way, you get one of the major problems with today's patent system: Patents written with laughably general language; patent holders need such laughable generality because there is currently no concept of a derivative work in patent law.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. In the video here, she states:
Because 2 months is a pretty short time, it does seem quite unlikely that my explanation is of any consequence. You are correct that it was silly of me to discount some other, more complex interaction.
I like that explanation, too. Even a failed attempt to eat a mussel could indeed induce that very mussel to grow its shell thicker in case of a future attempt.
What I didn't intially consider is the life cycle of the mussel in question; if it's too long to witness within at least a few years the change in shells by means of culling and reproduction, then I imagine my explanation does pretty much go directly out the window as the dominant reasoning behind this student's research.
In any case, I hope you noticed my careful use of language to suggest that my comment isn't at all meant to be considered as a confident appraisal.
Woops! s/crab/mussel/g
I seriously doubt that crabs change the thickness of their shells in the presence of predators. Rather, I bet the predators change the kind of shell that is dominant in the population of crabs.
It is likely the case that the predators are more easily able to eat the crabs with thinner shells, thereby increasing the percentage of crabs with thicker shells in the remaining population, and those remaining crabs with thicker shells produce offspring that also have the same kind of shells (or perhaps even thicker shells in a few cases).
Evolution, folks. Variation. Selection.
A pure democracy would only lead to a tyranny of the majority if centralized power is still at play.
All governments represent violence; all governments represent compliance by force to the will of the powerful.
The key is the decentralization and localization of power; to illustrate the principle by extremes, anarchists, for instance, would take it to the limit: There should be only a constituency of one: The individual representing himself.
As an aside, this is one of the prime motivations for the right to bear arms: The gun is called the great equalizer, because at one point in time, a man knew that if he fscked with another man, he just might get a bullet through his body in return. I'm not advocating violence, but I'm instead trying to emphasize the utter importance of efficient justice for the individual, something which is certainly not capable under contemporary social and political organization.
Efficient lawsuits and arbitration SHOULD be the modern equalizer. Unfortunately, big, slothful, centralized, corrupt government has given the individual a pea-shooter rather than a Colt .45.
Fundamentally, the role of government should probably just be to provide the forum (i.e., courts) in which an individual may air his grievances and seek compensation (i.e., enforcement of rulings). In this way, there is no need for intricate laws with all manner of unintended consequences and hidden loopholes. For instance, the matter of pollution can be framed as an issue of property rights: Polluting a man's air and land is no different than smashing in his car's windows. Lawsuits for lost wages and repair of land would put offending businesses with polluting practices out of business quickly and scare competitors into morality.
I don't think that what I've said has anything to do with either capitalism or communism.
Specifically, even under capitalism, what I've stated is valid.
Let's say a factory owner makes widgets. It costs $10 to make a widget, and he sells a widget for $11, so he records what would normally be called a $1 profit for himself. The factory owner is very happy about that, and the consumers are very happy about that.
Now, let's say the factory owner makes a simple adjustment to his factory, such that now it's actually possible to make a widget for $1. At this point, the factory owner has some interesting choices. For instance, he can sell his product for the same $11; in this case, his own situation has been much improved, but the situation of the consumers remains just as happy as it was before (unchanged). Alternatively, he can sell his product for $2, thereby still making a $1 profit; in this case, his own situation remains just as happy as it was before (unchanged, except that now he also enjoys a significantly cheaper widget!), but the situation of the consumers has been much improved.
Perhaps you notice an imbalance in the two choices above: Under the first choice, only the factory owner benefits. Under the second choice, everybody benefits; in fact, under the second choice, if the $1 profit that he makes is meant for unfortunate events like a fire in the factory, then the factory owner makes no profit and receives exactly the same benefit as everybody else: A cheaper widget.
Perhaps this is where some kind of marxist idea comes in: The factory is a means by which to make widgets, and everybody is a consumer of widgets (including the factory owner). Thus, consider abstracting this conceptual world into two entities: The Factory and the Consumers. In this view, if the Factory can be made more efficient, then it would be logical for all of the Consumers to benefit equally; it makes sense for widgets to be priced at $2.
What I've written about does not detract from free markets; it simply points out that there is a kind of moral choice to be made about how products and services should be priced.
I was waiting for this:
A company may boost it's profits for any number of reasons, not all of which are driven by pure greed - bankrolling some money for future growth being the obvious one.
In my opinion, future growth like that falls into the category of 'risk'; if there is a desired goal (such as providing a new kind of product or service), then the projected cost of achieving that goal may well be factored into the price of existing products and services. Once risks and future projections like this have been factored into the calculations, a company should be considered "breaking even".
If there are no such projections that can be factored into the calculations (if there is no such plan for future growth or the like), then profit is theft.
If revenue has no purpose other than to report a growth in profit, then that revenue is theft.
Is Intel still making a profit? Is Intel at least breaking even?
Ideally, if a company is breaking even, then who cares what its revenue is.
Profit beyond that which is necessary to cover risk (unfortunate troubles) is theft; it represents an imbalance of energy/value/worth in an exchange (one party to the exchange is taking advantage of the other party).
Even if science can come up with models of an eternal universe with no prime cause, it makes an assumption when it says: a transcendent plane is unneeded therefore it's not there.
If phenomena can be explained (that is, predicted) without the aid of a 'transcendent plane', then that 'transcendent plane' is by definition completely useless to our existence with regard to those phenomena.
If you can't propose any phenomena whose explanation requires a 'transcendent plane', then by definition, a 'transcendent plane' is completely useless to our existence.
If something is useless to our existence, then it's useless (and possibly harmful) to incorporate it into a world view.
Have the Slashdot story logos gone banal all of a sudden?
What happened to The Borg Gates?
Even the story about Gates's reinvention of the toilet uses some boring stock photo.
If a monopoly no longer competes on price and/or service, then it should be easy to start a competing business. On the other hand, let's say that the barrier to entry is a matter of economies of scale: If society really is upset about being mistreated by a monopoly, then society won't mind protesting by paying extra at a competing store.
I should add that while it's certainly possible for a monopoly to develop in a free market, it's not necessarily an inherently bad thing; as long as Walmart is putting every "Mom & Pop" shop out of business because Walmart can deliver the same/better service for cheaper/same price, then that's a good thing (Mom and Pop should find some other way to contribute to society).
What is this bizarre fetish people have for insisting that the centralized banking system (and the world's economy, for that matter) is in any way based on a free market?
Big Banks, Big Business, and Government are intricately intertwined; that makes what the world has a corporatist market. Capitalism is about lowering barriers to entry, but the powers that be do everything that they can to regulate competitors out of existence.
One man's freedom is always another man's tyranny.
It's rational to support explicitly the freedom of the little guy, because chances are great that your loved ones (if not you) are going to be the little guy.
How is it relevant that most people cannot fix a bug? The distinction is inherent; open-source and closed-source ANYTHING are indistinguishable except for the fact that improvements to the open-source variant are much more readily available.
One man's freedom is always another man's tyranny.
It's rational to support the freedom of the little guy, because chances are great that your loved ones (if not you) are going to be the little guy.
Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.
Heard of it?
All closed-source applications I've ever used have problems I'd like to fix; I can't fix them.
All open-source applications I've ever used have problems I'd like to fix; sometimes I do fix them.
BSD is more free than GPL
The BSD license is more permissive for only the upstream.
In fact, the downstream ('end-users') may ultimately get a license that is more restrictive on further developments—possibly even restrictions that might hinder the development of your own upstream work should you find yourself in some sort of downstream position relative to a fork.
Because everyone is ultimately an end-user eventually, the BSD license is quite dangerous.
Everything that you like about open source BSD-licensed projects is simply encoded for legal enforcement in the GPL. When you espouse the merits of open source, you are actually espousing the merits of the GPL.
Actually, we have 30 years of history demonstrating that centrally-managed economies and monetary policy produce horrendous boom/bust business cycles; the system is entirely too complex for humans (at their present stage) to attempt to turn their forcasts into policy (it's as if the weatherman gets to pick your clothes for you everyday, and the weatherman has a corrupt relationship with various clothing companies).
Ron Paul's view of government is extremely practical in that it makes government well-defined: The government should be as local to communities as possible and enforce property rights and the contracts to which parties agree.
On a similar note, much of a government's power derives from the government's supply of money. This is why the U.S. Constitution specifically mandates that state and federal GOVERNMENTS (to say nothing of citizens) use only gold and silver as legal tender; the government runs unchecked if it is able to print money whenever it likes, and that is exactly what we've seen happen to the U.S. over the last HUNDRED years (since the introduction of the Federal Reserve banking system).
I think it would be better to say that [most of] the data are already present; the data just happen to be initially in an unwanted form.
I'm sorry that you don't understand.
Your thinking is based on poor abstractions.
There are nothing but descriptions. Everything is a description. Everything is information.
While 'F=ma' describes a facet of 'a jet engine', that same facet of 'a jet engine' describes 'F=ma'.
The Universe is just a manifestation of a particular set of laws---some mathematical theory, which we happen to call 'physics'. They are one and the same: There is no fundamental difference between the symbols we write on paper and the phenomena that occur in the Universe; they are manifestations of the same thing (of course, our symbols and such are really good approximations within certain conditions, because it is difficult to make an exact copy of the Universe's information).
What is your proposed "objective measurement for entitlement"?
I didn't say I have the answer; I said that is what people should be thinking about: The fact that we still need to ask that question is the crux of the problems, and the answer to that question is the crux of the solution.
In other words, that's a very good question. I hope that a Mathematician will one day take the time to characterize the issue and prepare a decent formula.
You obviously don't understand what I'm saying, and perhaps I don't understand what you are saying.
Good Day!
So what you're saying is that you want to redefine what patent and copyright mean so that they mean something other than what everybody knows them to be under the existing law...
No.
For the 3rd time, I'm illustrating that there are 2 issues at play (transmission and usage), and that the legal definitions of copyright and patent are inspired by those 2 issues, respectively.
Furthermore, I am saying that due to human error and lobbying, the legal definitions of patent and especially copyright have been smudged. However, that is simply an aside; it does not in any way detract from the point that there is no inherent reason why software (and mathematics, etc.) shouldn't be patentable.
The reason that mathematics is not patentable is simply because too many of the ideas that are construed as being "mathematics" do not warrant the usage entitlement that patents grant. You are basically making that claim about software: No software warrants the usage entitlement that patents grant. I don't think that is true for patents and even mathematics, and I think that one (see below) of the solutions to the patenting debacle is coming up with an objective measurement for entitlement; hence, my initial question: "should the inventor of rounded GUI elements be compensated in the same ways as the inventor of the LCD screen? The contemporary patent problem has to do with preposterously disproportionate entitlement."
by redefining what a patent is so that it is something more akin to the right to make derivative works under copyright you can then say that software ought to be patentable.
By not defining patents this way, you get one of the major problems with today's patent system: Patents written with laughably general language; patent holders need such laughable generality because there is currently no concept of a derivative work in patent law.