If the government were truly representative of the People, you wouldn't have trouble with openness. As it stands, though, the People care more about their Big Macs and SUVs than voting.
The government *is* representative of the people: as you say yourself, the people doesn't give a fuck about the government, so it's no surprise the government doesn't give a fuck about the people either.
People have the government they deserve: if all they can do is groan a little during tax time, but otherwise trust the administration to run things, what do you expect? The government will (and does) run amok eventually.
Guys with a talent for oration, performing magic tricks on a scene, with accomplices in wheelchairs suddenly rising up when the guy touches their foreheads and shouting "miracle", subjugating their audiences and usually asking for money at the end, are called crooks. They are called prophets by the followers, yet they're crooks. History is rife with them.
There were also numerous madmen starting cults and preaching this and that, sometimes asking followers to commit mass suicide, or dress in plain white robes to go beg in airport terminals. Those are usually not considered prophets either, apart by their followers. They're madmen. There has been plenty of them too.
Crooks and madmen don't go to crook-and-madmen school. They just are.
Now, ignoring whatever faith you may have in him, based solely on a neutral reading of the scriptures, even considering most accounts of his life are paraboles and not actual fact, what honestly makes you think Jesus wasn't either a crook or a madman? honestly? I can't see much difference myself, try as I might (and believe me, I tried)...
You have bad logic. You say that since false prophets exist, you can't believe there were true ones.
No, I say that there has been so many certified false prophets, and so few reasons to believe accounts of events that took place 2000 years ago (formally chronicled in writing 300 years after the facts, on top of that) that there are precious few reasons to believe the few great prophets of the past have any more credibility.
It's like in a court of law, you can condemn someone solely on indirect evidences, if they overwhelmingly converge towards accusing the defendent. You don't necessarily have to have real evidences to form a judgement.
Yes, but he diverged enough from jewish orthodoxy in his ministry that you could say he had in actuality founded a new religion without a name, without even really knowing it. The jewish authorities rejected and opposed him for exactly that reason. The apostles took care of formalizing the split from the jewish religion, that's all.
A certain famous one claims to have produced fish out of thin air, and also cured paralysis and blindness amongst other unprovable, highly dubious things.
By the way, I can't help noticing that verified religious crooks of recent centuries past have claimed to be able to perform those very things, only they were exposed as fraud.
So for me, claiming to believe in a Jedi creed is no more ludicrous than being a Christian. Also, watch this post be modded down promptly as a troll, which should tell you something of the power of long entrenched religions.
The trouble of course with wiki-hardware is that the system adminstration is left to the community.
That worries me sometimes too. I mean, I've yet to see this in the Britannica yet, and that's why I use the Britannica more often than Wikipedia for serious work.
Besides, if they keep growing at the rate they are as a service, it they don't need all that now, they will soon. Just look at Google: they started as a dinky little service, and now they require tens of thousands of servers for what is, essentially, just a search engine.
It's a noble idea, I will give you that. However, it sounds far too complicated to work well.
Well, I'm just some Slashdotter and it's just some vague idea I have:-)
Many of the problems with the patent system are due to the fact that it's a complicated beast. Complicating such a system even more will only result in further exploitation of the inherent flaws.
The patent system is perhaps too complex, yes. But I don't think that's what prevents it from performing its function. I think the main problem is that the number of applications, and their growing complexities (due to the advances in the modern world) put way too much pressure on the reviewers: they're too few, and their fields are too general, to process each application adequately.
Ideally, the USPTO should have specialists on the payroll, one per field of expertise, with enough time and money to review a patent well. This never happens, for lack of funds. They were adequate to review Edison's electric bulb, and they're still adequate to reject the many free energey machines, but they can't possibly review fairly some complex ADN analysis method that relies on other bleeding edge genetics for example.
That's why I think asking professionals in the field to easily and freely criticise a granted patent would help them get real expertise for free.
No, NOT even for software patents, because software is already protected by copyright!
Why not? first off, copyright regulates the right to copy (hence the name), so it's another issue altogether. But imagine this: suppose I spend a lot of time and money developing some computing method that drastically reduce, say, the number of transistors in a CPU and its power consumption: why wouldn't I be able to patent my software method and make money out of it, if only to recoup my initial investment?
I think you're making a judgement on the experience of current software patents (one-click, XOR, http...) which are beyond ridiculous. But complex, innovative, revolutionary methods can arguably be patentable to foster research and allow inventors to live off their inventions, just like mechanical or electronic discoveries.
The whole issue here is being able to reject (or contest) stupid patents, and grant patents only to fundamental and important discoveries, which the USPTO isn't doing.
You don't think authors get to patent their stories, do you?!
A piece of software isn't a story. It's a computational method. More like a recipe.
Well, but remember, such a system applied at the USPTO wouldn't have to be the same. Here, any old cretin can metamoderate (any old cretin can moderate too, in fact) since the system is entirely automatic.
At the USPTO, they could implement a system where one or two persons max. per company, or per consumer lobbying group, can be registered as spokesperson for their own interest group. These people can then act as the counterweight the office needs. The USPTO would also have to review the criticism these guys form, and balance them against the opinion of the initial patent reviewer, to determine whether it is judicious to revoke a patent. Finally, there could be a rule that people who file too many appeals, just to serve their own interest, will be dismissed for unfairness.
I mean, whatever the system can be, but surely not exactly like Slashdot:-) What I really meant is, the USPTO should tap into the resources of real professionals who know their trades to counteract the sole opinion of reviewers who, as we all know, don't always know everything and often grant patents at random.
Their patent application infringes on my patented way of inducing sleep in children with a text containing over 100 consecutive words without a period.
It's illegal if you're caught. I doubt anybody will catch you using a low-power FM transmitter in your car. For many illegal things, when you don't have the right, take the left...
How about some patent reform? I thought these things need to be non-obvious...
The patent system works. Yes, even for software patent. What the world needs however is patent reviewers that aren't orang-utang, actually verify the claims and the prior arts, and are given enough time to get familiarized with whatever the patent application is dealing with, and accept or reject said application fairly.
With good reviewers, the one-click patent and the XOR patent would never have happened. With monkeys, they do, as well as silly obvious banalities like an FM transmitter.
Perhaps adding a "patent meta-moderation" system like that of Slashdot, where professionals of the industry can deem a granted patent fair or unfair, and post additional comments, and allow a special USPTO committee to retroactively reject patents, would do the trick. An applicant would then apply for a patent, and know that for maybe 6 months or a year, the patent can be revoked.
The ease to get into it depends on the presentation of the story. Nothing more.
There's more to it than that: if you tackle a SF work featuring many alien races, with different levels of technology, and complex interactions between then, and/or with a convoluted storyline, then it can get quite hard to get into it, simply because it's too departed from normal reality. But otherwise you're right.
I guess the real difference between sci-fi and SF is how consistent and plausible the futuristic environment is. For example, in Star Trek, when the characters are stuck in a plot, they just throw in a new laser-photon-superduper-something, without any explanation, asking the viewer to believe it just works, and that's it. In 2001, nothing the protagonists do go against the laws of nature (or as close to what Kubrick knew of them in space at the time).
Also, in Star Trek, you hear things in the void of space, the ship is always presented upright, all aliens breathe oxygen/nitrogen like we do, at 1 atmosphere, and seem to live at 1G. In 2001, no sound during spacewalks, save for Dave's breathing, and views are free.
That's the sort of thing that make sci-fi light and fun to watch, as it's the plot that counts, and SF more complex and interesting. In that light, Star Wars is sci-fi, since it doesn't require the viewer to concentrate on anything but the plot.
Slashdot Mirror
If the government were truly representative of the People, you wouldn't have trouble with openness. As it stands, though, the People care more about their Big Macs and SUVs than voting.
The government *is* representative of the people: as you say yourself, the people doesn't give a fuck about the government, so it's no surprise the government doesn't give a fuck about the people either.
People have the government they deserve: if all they can do is groan a little during tax time, but otherwise trust the administration to run things, what do you expect? The government will (and does) run amok eventually.
Guys with a talent for oration, performing magic tricks on a scene, with accomplices in wheelchairs suddenly rising up when the guy touches their foreheads and shouting "miracle", subjugating their audiences and usually asking for money at the end, are called crooks. They are called prophets by the followers, yet they're crooks. History is rife with them.
There were also numerous madmen starting cults and preaching this and that, sometimes asking followers to commit mass suicide, or dress in plain white robes to go beg in airport terminals. Those are usually not considered prophets either, apart by their followers. They're madmen. There has been plenty of them too.
Crooks and madmen don't go to crook-and-madmen school. They just are.
Now, ignoring whatever faith you may have in him, based solely on a neutral reading of the scriptures, even considering most accounts of his life are paraboles and not actual fact, what honestly makes you think Jesus wasn't either a crook or a madman? honestly? I can't see much difference myself, try as I might (and believe me, I tried)...
You have bad logic. You say that since false prophets exist, you can't believe there were true ones.
No, I say that there has been so many certified false prophets, and so few reasons to believe accounts of events that took place 2000 years ago (formally chronicled in writing 300 years after the facts, on top of that) that there are precious few reasons to believe the few great prophets of the past have any more credibility.
It's like in a court of law, you can condemn someone solely on indirect evidences, if they overwhelmingly converge towards accusing the defendent. You don't necessarily have to have real evidences to form a judgement.
Yes, but he diverged enough from jewish orthodoxy in his ministry that you could say he had in actuality founded a new religion without a name, without even really knowing it. The jewish authorities rejected and opposed him for exactly that reason. The apostles took care of formalizing the split from the jewish religion, that's all.
Most Christians, if not all, do not believe they are Christ. On the other hand most Jedi think they are Luke Skywalker.
Well, as long as they're not claiming to be Yoda, there's hope...
A certain famous one claims to have produced fish out of thin air, and also cured paralysis and blindness amongst other unprovable, highly dubious things.
By the way, I can't help noticing that verified religious crooks of recent centuries past have claimed to be able to perform those very things, only they were exposed as fraud.
So for me, claiming to believe in a Jedi creed is no more ludicrous than being a Christian. Also, watch this post be modded down promptly as a troll, which should tell you something of the power of long entrenched religions.
He's not blind, or else he wouldn't tell you about how bright it is at 4:30am and the crazy cat about to fall into the pool. He works with other developers to make blind-enabled software.
blinux.
This is where they'll produce the world's largest white flag.
No, that's where they'll be producing crispy fusion fries.
Pakistan's main bourse was unaffected as it had its own internal trading system. Pigeons!
Mules actually. And they're more than sufficient to carry up to AFA 50,000 in used afghani banknotes on each trip.
There may be an internal trading system, but how can they say that there would be no effect on the local stock market/trading system?
The local stock/trading system can be found downtown Karashi. Just go to the the third street seller in the market and ask for Ali.
The Norwegian Minister of Modernization today at a press conference in Oslo declared that proprietary formats will no longer be acceptable
and he added: my sister was bitten by a prøprietary førmat ønce...
I know people in Germany who are able to work in Italy, and only have a 45 minute train commute each way!
Pff, big deal. I know people in Buffalo, NY who are able to work in Canada and it's only a 10 minute bike ride each way!
The trouble of course with wiki-hardware is that the system adminstration is left to the community.
That worries me sometimes too. I mean, I've yet to see this in the Britannica yet, and that's why I use the Britannica more often than Wikipedia for serious work.
They're not going to refuse are they? :-)
Besides, if they keep growing at the rate they are as a service, it they don't need all that now, they will soon. Just look at Google: they started as a dinky little service, and now they require tens of thousands of servers for what is, essentially, just a search engine.
a me-too move. Good for the Wikipedia guys tho...
It's a noble idea, I will give you that. However, it sounds far too complicated to work well.
:-)
Well, I'm just some Slashdotter and it's just some vague idea I have
Many of the problems with the patent system are due to the fact that it's a complicated beast. Complicating such a system even more will only result in further exploitation of the inherent flaws.
The patent system is perhaps too complex, yes. But I don't think that's what prevents it from performing its function. I think the main problem is that the number of applications, and their growing complexities (due to the advances in the modern world) put way too much pressure on the reviewers: they're too few, and their fields are too general, to process each application adequately.
Ideally, the USPTO should have specialists on the payroll, one per field of expertise, with enough time and money to review a patent well. This never happens, for lack of funds. They were adequate to review Edison's electric bulb, and they're still adequate to reject the many free energey machines, but they can't possibly review fairly some complex ADN analysis method that relies on other bleeding edge genetics for example.
That's why I think asking professionals in the field to easily and freely criticise a granted patent would help them get real expertise for free.
No, NOT even for software patents, because software is already protected by copyright!
Why not? first off, copyright regulates the right to copy (hence the name), so it's another issue altogether. But imagine this: suppose I spend a lot of time and money developing some computing method that drastically reduce, say, the number of transistors in a CPU and its power consumption: why wouldn't I be able to patent my software method and make money out of it, if only to recoup my initial investment?
I think you're making a judgement on the experience of current software patents (one-click, XOR, http...) which are beyond ridiculous. But complex, innovative, revolutionary methods can arguably be patentable to foster research and allow inventors to live off their inventions, just like mechanical or electronic discoveries.
The whole issue here is being able to reject (or contest) stupid patents, and grant patents only to fundamental and important discoveries, which the USPTO isn't doing.
You don't think authors get to patent their stories, do you?!
A piece of software isn't a story. It's a computational method. More like a recipe.
Well, but remember, such a system applied at the USPTO wouldn't have to be the same. Here, any old cretin can metamoderate (any old cretin can moderate too, in fact) since the system is entirely automatic.
:-) What I really meant is, the USPTO should tap into the resources of real professionals who know their trades to counteract the sole opinion of reviewers who, as we all know, don't always know everything and often grant patents at random.
At the USPTO, they could implement a system where one or two persons max. per company, or per consumer lobbying group, can be registered as spokesperson for their own interest group. These people can then act as the counterweight the office needs. The USPTO would also have to review the criticism these guys form, and balance them against the opinion of the initial patent reviewer, to determine whether it is judicious to revoke a patent. Finally, there could be a rule that people who file too many appeals, just to serve their own interest, will be dismissed for unfairness.
I mean, whatever the system can be, but surely not exactly like Slashdot
Their patent application infringes on my patented way of inducing sleep in children with a text containing over 100 consecutive words without a period.
Your patent is invalid due to prior art.
It's illegal if you're caught. I doubt anybody will catch you using a low-power FM transmitter in your car. For many illegal things, when you don't have the right, take the left...
How about some patent reform? I thought these things need to be non-obvious...
The patent system works. Yes, even for software patent. What the world needs however is patent reviewers that aren't orang-utang, actually verify the claims and the prior arts, and are given enough time to get familiarized with whatever the patent application is dealing with, and accept or reject said application fairly.
With good reviewers, the one-click patent and the XOR patent would never have happened. With monkeys, they do, as well as silly obvious banalities like an FM transmitter.
Perhaps adding a "patent meta-moderation" system like that of Slashdot, where professionals of the industry can deem a granted patent fair or unfair, and post additional comments, and allow a special USPTO committee to retroactively reject patents, would do the trick. An applicant would then apply for a patent, and know that for maybe 6 months or a year, the patent can be revoked.
I handed over a working script to them, which they...promptly deployed into production, right?
Heh, I wish. As far as I know, they ended up not even using it. Still paid us for the work, but didn't use even one line of it
Don't be silly, I'm sure they reused at least #!/usr/bin/perl
Yes, it's classic: a student oversmarting his teacher...
I'm assuming you didn't outsmart your english teacher as a student, right?
The ease to get into it depends on the presentation of the story. Nothing more.
There's more to it than that: if you tackle a SF work featuring many alien races, with different levels of technology, and complex interactions between then, and/or with a convoluted storyline, then it can get quite hard to get into it, simply because it's too departed from normal reality. But otherwise you're right.
I guess the real difference between sci-fi and SF is how consistent and plausible the futuristic environment is. For example, in Star Trek, when the characters are stuck in a plot, they just throw in a new laser-photon-superduper-something, without any explanation, asking the viewer to believe it just works, and that's it. In 2001, nothing the protagonists do go against the laws of nature (or as close to what Kubrick knew of them in space at the time).
Also, in Star Trek, you hear things in the void of space, the ship is always presented upright, all aliens breathe oxygen/nitrogen like we do, at 1 atmosphere, and seem to live at 1G. In 2001, no sound during spacewalks, save for Dave's breathing, and views are free.
That's the sort of thing that make sci-fi light and fun to watch, as it's the plot that counts, and SF more complex and interesting. In that light, Star Wars is sci-fi, since it doesn't require the viewer to concentrate on anything but the plot.