George Washington's birthday is not determined by whatever day most people think it is...
Yes, it is. All historical, scientific, or other accepted "facts" are only those that the greatest ammount of people agree with.
Science is and always has been very democratic. If it wasn't, it wouldn't work.
It's like the people in certain areas who want "intelligen design" to be taught instead of Darwin's scientifically viable theory of evolution.
It's not that the Theory of Evolution is somehow innatly superior to the Hypothesis of Intelligent Design -- they're not even opposites. It's that Intelligent Design contradicts the hypothesis of random historical evolution, which itself is an extrapolation from the Theory of Evolution, and the latter is a simpler explination that also fits all of the facts.
(And let's not forget that I.D. doesn't rule out the principle of evolution, or even the original random evolution of intelligent life. Treating it like it's a fully fleshed-out "anti-evolution" thinking is purely political, and not scientific at all.)
No, wait. It means that we're going to have to stop lying to ourselves, admit that no communication mechanism can ever be capital-S secure, and listen to the geeks who've been saying that security needs to be convincing people not to try, detecting when they do, and being able to recover from any intrusion.
For patent purposes all software is a "familar part of prior art".
If that were true, then there would be no software development of any kind.
but to have an invention and get a patent you have to have novelty and non-obviousness within some physical object and/or within the harnessing of the physical forces of nature for processing of physical matter.
False. For one thing, not all created physical matter is patentable. For another, there are plenty of things that aren't physical matter that can be and should be patentable.
Re:a solution in search of an application
on
Whereables?
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· Score: 1
Assume that a system to prepare food can do the task of only one person making minimum wage, and that the administrative overhead is equal.
The person still gets minimum wage here in America--McDonald's biggest market. A typical McD is open from 6 until 11 -- seventeen hours, every day of the year.
17 * 365 = 5,110
Minimum wage is $5.15 an hour nationwide. (Some places are higher, some folk are scammed to work for less, but let's take the $5.15.)
If we presume that there are no benefits, the machine only has to cost less than $26,316.50 per year to be worthwhile. (Assuming, again, that it's neutral with respect to the McD's revenue.)
if the thing only lasts five years, it can have a sale price of over $130,000, btw. Well within the realistic range of "mass-produced moderate-effeciency robots."
Re:a solution in search of an application
on
Whereables?
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· Score: 1
Alternatively you can train your staff so they can remember everyone's order without writing down a damn thing. If you've never had this kind of service I suggest you go to a high class restraunt sometime, it really is an enjoyable experience.
It's a wasteful extravagance, and in any case merits a higher wage for the employee. Not to mention that mistakes will still be possible.
In ten years I'll expect that when I sit down at a resturant, the waitstaff will enter my order into the restaurant's system right there at the table. If there is a shortage of something, I will expect to be told right away, not just as my food is prepared.
I have gone to high class restaurants, and "enjoyable" is not the word that I would use to describe the experience. "Pleasant", perhaps, but not "enjoyable" in the same way that dining upon a favorite dish is.
The notion of logic patents is absurd. The notion of patents on a sequence of mental steps is absurd. The notion of patenting a math function is absurd. A math function is not an invention. A serioes of mental steps is not an invention. Logit itself is not an invention.
the standard for patenting something is that it is non-existing prior to the "invention", and novel enough as to be non-obvious before its invention.
Turning a card 90-degress to indicate a different state in a card game was new, relatively novel, and so Wizards of the Coast was awarded a patent.
Patenting other, similarlly minor things just means that we have simple inventions being made.
Re:a solution in search of an application
on
Whereables?
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· Score: 1
For example, what is problematic about waiters maintaining eye contact long enough to listen to the customer and then writing on a pad of paper with a pen?
The waiter then has to go and put the order in. Which often means double-entry. And if you simply have the "pad of paper" replaced with a PDA, you either have an interruption or increased power consumption.
It isn't beyond the ability of a competent waiter to manually calculate the total for a bill, either. But electonics still can speed them up.
Re:a solution in search of an application
on
Whereables?
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· Score: 1
A wearable computer, capable of augmented reality, solves a host of problems.
Done correctly--say, with clear eyeglasses and a thin-color-screen that lets the eye show through--an augmented reality can let someone who's interacting with the public reference information without turning away from the public.
Imagine a restaurant where all the wait staff have glasses. They carry around a small black to "write" on, and as they look each customer in the eye the seating and location of the order is instantly taken down. If the customer assents to the restaurant recording their preferences, the glasses can even flash a customer's name when they walk in with their RFID-restuarant tag.
And then there's supplemental information for other fields.
The simple answer, of course, for why whereables aren't out there is that they aren't powerful enough to do anything worth the hassle. The closest we come is HUDs in fighter jets.
Exepct civilian wearables to follow the military's Future Soldier program by about fifty years. Until then, they're just not worth it.
Funny how GM has been helping to pass around the idea the HYBRID vehicles are more expensive than conventional vehicles and people won't pay the price.
1: They are, and we don't. If we were all willing to pay the price, sometime over the last five years we'd have had more than just four hybrid cars in America.
2: GM (yes, THAT GM) has hybrid city busses that they're trying to sell. Albany's CDTA has one that is subbing for the #11, still with all the ads from the 04 conventions. (And, really, they're a great, GREAT idea.)
Uh, robots are cheaper and can do more in space, go farther and longer. The transit time to Mars is about three months at best, three months with NOTHING to do.
Once those humans get there, they will be able to far more each day than any droid-mission we've ever sent.
It's a question of scale. Sending one probe a year is far beneath the balance point. Sending one probe a week is way, WAY over it.
Humans are a fancy, high-maintencance, VERY USEFUL computer and machine combination. Beyond a certain point of risk/reward, we really are far, far cheaper than any other form of explorer.
If we were willing to let people die, we'd be EVEN CHEAPER.
But, for now--because I know that anyone who could call his own species "meatbags" is going to miss the point--robots are done, because they're only way to get anything at all done with the spending level we have now.
Like at the end it would create just as much pollution.
It would... until you realize that it's orders of magnitude easier to clean a meggawatt of power at one plant than it is to clean that same meggawatt at the hundreds of cars that would otherwise be using it.
... only American's reason... European lorry (sorry, truck) market, such a shame that the USA won't be able to partake - you're far too reliant on petrol (the stuff you normally fill up with). 10 years, and you may be ready, Europe is ready NOW. Let us be your Guinea pig. Do you hear that [insert current UK Home Secretary]???
Who is this person named "American", and how much farmland does he own, anyway?
We know all about biodesel. And it's simply not worth it for us to use our current farming methods to make it, because we wind up spending more gas to harvest than we get from the plants.
MUCH more interesting along the alleyway is the production of crude oil from farm waste--as in, we farm as we do now, pile up the waste, and use THAT to make *CRUDE OIL*, not semi-diesel.
Oh, and most fuel stations stateside have diesel fuel as well. Not all, and certainly not many of them here in the city, but there are plenty if you want to buy a diesel car in the USA.
He hasn't proven any new theorems or developed a new field; why is he being called a genius?
Because it's not generally called "mathematics" once you get past arithmatic, until you get to the sign on the college department's door.
Which means that a majority of us don't think "complex equations" when we think "mathematics." Which means that the word is getting itself re-defined, just like "hacker" or "gay."
Meanwhile, robots don't have these disadvantages, and are becoming increasingly capable of doing anything we might want to do up in space.
No, they're not.
Skip all of the cultural and boundary-pushing arguments, and just go show me a robot used full-time on Earth to walk around and do science.
We don't use robots for biology, geology, or archeology, save for when they're absolutely necessary (such as, going to see if it's safe for humans.)
Robots are used in space because they're cheap and expendable. That's it. If we were to spend 100 trllion on mars exploration, we'd just send a crew over to mars. There's a point where people really are cheaper than interplanetary telepresence.
So Mr. Dragon, before you argue that Hitler would be a republican if he were reincarnated
I didn't. I said that, if the Democrats did swing hard-left and make gay rights a platfrorm issue, the Republicans could literally elect ANYONE THEY CHOOSE.
(And you forgot that Hilter was also for Expansionist warfighting and discrimination based on religion -- two things that made him a villian, and either of which are Democratic [or really Republican] issues.)
If the simple evaluation of his challenge isn't enough for you, why don't you look for folk who critically evalutate and dismiss his challenge. A random assortment of links:
http://www.alternativescience.com/james-randi.ht m http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/controve rsi es/Auerbach_Randi.htm http://psymag.tripod.com/is sue_2/2_loopholes.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wik i/James_Randi
(and a few pro-Randi:) http://members.aol.com/mikecombs/conf irm.htm http://www.skepticreport.com/tools/topjre f.htm
As a final logical rebuttal, consider this: If you offer a million dollars, you're guaranteed to get scams and fools, but you're not guaranteed to actually get people who you're looking for.
Neither are any of the people I've met who claim to have psychic power. They may be suffering from metal problems that make them think they're psychic, or they may have developed mental problems because they're psychic.
But the big difference between them and Randi is that they're not saying "I'll give you a million dollars if you can prove I'm not psychic!", while at the same time running a psychic-proving foundation that seems to pay them a healthy salary.
Randi is simply the best example because he has a huge carrot that he is willing to give to anyone who succeeds, that's why he is always brought up.
My point, to say it again, is that Randi's carrot makes him LESS of a good example of a psychic debunker, not a better one.
(And let's not forget that most of the "psychic" crowd tends to be leftish, pro-homosexual rights types, which means that they may see Randi they same way a homosexual in 1805 would have seen a scientists offering $10,000 to anyone who can prove that they're attracted to men and not women.)
Randi has $10,000 of his personal funds and $990,000 of his "investment" on the line here. His claims of objectivity wouldn't pass muster in any court in the world.
And all the talks about "catapsi" is bullshit. We know that, Randi knows that. You can argue that being tested temporarily disables your skills, but then everyone has the right to say you are a fraud.
News flash: it's possible to argue something without believing it, and to understand something without agreeing with it.
I was merely pointing out that, if you look at Randi's challenge from the opposite side, he looks like every bit as much a scam as they look to him. Add on the fact that he has every reason to have a test fail, regardless of the truth of the matter, and you have a non-scientific rebuttal of psychics.
Randi always agrees on the procedure, test conditions and interpretation beforehand.
And this is the fault. Randi does not have a set guideline, nor does a disinterested party have control of either the funds or the testing procedures.
There have been complaints that Randi cheats, but since they're from "psychics" they're dismissed out of hand.
Consider these two points: 1: most folk who claim to have psychics have either a strong theological belief or other explanation for how they work, or they admit to being unable to control when they see and only see things that happen in the world.
2: Psychic parlance includes the idea of a "catapsi", someone whose natural psychic ability is to dampen other psychics. It's plausible* that, in wanting to test, Randi is essentially psychically shouting "No, no, no no no NO NO!" the whole time, without even realizing it.
And I say "plausible" becuase it only makes sense if you accept psychic phenomina as true. Which requires strong evidence that couldn't even be accepted by Randi's challenge.
(If you sent Randi a letter on September 9, 2001 saying "Something bad will happen on the 11th", he might be shocked, but he wouldn't pay out his million dollars.)
I would like them to tell me "When I see this sequence X it means that Y will happen"
Their hypothesis seems to be threefold:
Humans, by actively thinking, can alter random events
Humanity on the whole, when they actively think about something uncomfortable, affect random events without trying to.
Humans either start thinking about stressful events they happen, or the causality of humanity affecting random events is not strictly foward-moving in time
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George Washington's birthday is not determined by whatever day most people think it is...
Yes, it is. All historical, scientific, or other accepted "facts" are only those that the greatest ammount of people agree with.
Science is and always has been very democratic. If it wasn't, it wouldn't work.
It's like the people in certain areas who want "intelligen design" to be taught instead of Darwin's scientifically viable theory of evolution.
It's not that the Theory of Evolution is somehow innatly superior to the Hypothesis of Intelligent Design -- they're not even opposites. It's that Intelligent Design contradicts the hypothesis of random historical evolution, which itself is an extrapolation from the Theory of Evolution, and the latter is a simpler explination that also fits all of the facts.
(And let's not forget that I.D. doesn't rule out the principle of evolution, or even the original random evolution of intelligent life. Treating it like it's a fully fleshed-out "anti-evolution" thinking is purely political, and not scientific at all.)
Nothing.
No, wait. It means that we're going to have to stop lying to ourselves, admit that no communication mechanism can ever be capital-S secure, and listen to the geeks who've been saying that security needs to be convincing people not to try, detecting when they do, and being able to recover from any intrusion.
For patent purposes all software is a "familar part of prior art".
If that were true, then there would be no software development of any kind.
but to have an invention and get a patent you have to have novelty and non-obviousness within some physical object and/or within the harnessing of the physical forces of nature for processing of physical matter.
False. For one thing, not all created physical matter is patentable. For another, there are plenty of things that aren't physical matter that can be and should be patentable.
Assume that a system to prepare food can do the task of only one person making minimum wage, and that the administrative overhead is equal.
The person still gets minimum wage here in America--McDonald's biggest market. A typical McD is open from 6 until 11 -- seventeen hours, every day of the year.
17 * 365 = 5,110
Minimum wage is $5.15 an hour nationwide. (Some places are higher, some folk are scammed to work for less, but let's take the $5.15.)
If we presume that there are no benefits, the machine only has to cost less than $26,316.50 per year to be worthwhile. (Assuming, again, that it's neutral with respect to the McD's revenue.)
if the thing only lasts five years, it can have a sale price of over $130,000, btw. Well within the realistic range of "mass-produced moderate-effeciency robots."
Alternatively you can train your staff so they can remember everyone's order without writing down a damn thing. If you've never had this kind of service I suggest you go to a high class restraunt sometime, it really is an enjoyable experience.
It's a wasteful extravagance, and in any case merits a higher wage for the employee. Not to mention that mistakes will still be possible.
In ten years I'll expect that when I sit down at a resturant, the waitstaff will enter my order into the restaurant's system right there at the table. If there is a shortage of something, I will expect to be told right away, not just as my food is prepared.
I have gone to high class restaurants, and "enjoyable" is not the word that I would use to describe the experience. "Pleasant", perhaps, but not "enjoyable" in the same way that dining upon a favorite dish is.
The notion of logic patents is absurd. The notion of patents on a sequence of mental steps is absurd. The notion of patenting a math function is absurd. A math function is not an invention. A serioes of mental steps is not an invention. Logit itself is not an invention.
the standard for patenting something is that it is non-existing prior to the "invention", and novel enough as to be non-obvious before its invention.
Turning a card 90-degress to indicate a different state in a card game was new, relatively novel, and so Wizards of the Coast was awarded a patent.
Patenting other, similarlly minor things just means that we have simple inventions being made.
For example, what is problematic about waiters maintaining eye contact long enough to listen to the customer and then writing on a pad of paper with a pen?
The waiter then has to go and put the order in. Which often means double-entry. And if you simply have the "pad of paper" replaced with a PDA, you either have an interruption or increased power consumption.
It isn't beyond the ability of a competent waiter to manually calculate the total for a bill, either. But electonics still can speed them up.
A wearable computer, capable of augmented reality, solves a host of problems.
Done correctly--say, with clear eyeglasses and a thin-color-screen that lets the eye show through--an augmented reality can let someone who's interacting with the public reference information without turning away from the public.
Imagine a restaurant where all the wait staff have glasses. They carry around a small black to "write" on, and as they look each customer in the eye the seating and location of the order is instantly taken down. If the customer assents to the restaurant recording their preferences, the glasses can even flash a customer's name when they walk in with their RFID-restuarant tag.
And then there's supplemental information for other fields.
The simple answer, of course, for why whereables aren't out there is that they aren't powerful enough to do anything worth the hassle. The closest we come is HUDs in fighter jets.
Exepct civilian wearables to follow the military's Future Soldier program by about fifty years. Until then, they're just not worth it.
So, it's beter to be able to suppress political dissent and steal inventions?
Got it. I'll just go adjust my newspeak dictionary.
Funny how GM has been helping to pass around the idea the HYBRID vehicles are more expensive than conventional vehicles and people won't pay the price.
1: They are, and we don't. If we were all willing to pay the price, sometime over the last five years we'd have had more than just four hybrid cars in America.
2: GM (yes, THAT GM) has hybrid city busses that they're trying to sell. Albany's CDTA has one that is subbing for the #11, still with all the ads from the 04 conventions. (And, really, they're a great, GREAT idea.)
Uh, robots are cheaper and can do more in space, go farther and longer. The transit time to Mars is about three months at best, three months with NOTHING to do.
Once those humans get there, they will be able to far more each day than any droid-mission we've ever sent.
It's a question of scale. Sending one probe a year is far beneath the balance point. Sending one probe a week is way, WAY over it.
Humans are a fancy, high-maintencance, VERY USEFUL computer and machine combination. Beyond a certain point of risk/reward, we really are far, far cheaper than any other form of explorer.
If we were willing to let people die, we'd be EVEN CHEAPER.
But, for now--because I know that anyone who could call his own species "meatbags" is going to miss the point--robots are done, because they're only way to get anything at all done with the spending level we have now.
No, doofus.
It would mean to send someone to a spot where earth's gravity is negligible--i.e, they're not themselves nor upon something that rotates our planet.
Mars is a good choice.
Like at the end it would create just as much pollution.
It would... until you realize that it's orders of magnitude easier to clean a meggawatt of power at one plant than it is to clean that same meggawatt at the hundreds of cars that would otherwise be using it.
... only American's reason ... European lorry (sorry, truck) market, such a shame that the USA won't be able to partake - you're far too reliant on petrol (the stuff you normally fill up with). 10 years, and you may be ready, Europe is ready NOW. Let us be your Guinea pig. Do you hear that [insert current UK Home Secretary]???
Who is this person named "American", and how much farmland does he own, anyway?
We know all about biodesel. And it's simply not worth it for us to use our current farming methods to make it, because we wind up spending more gas to harvest than we get from the plants.
MUCH more interesting along the alleyway is the production of crude oil from farm waste--as in, we farm as we do now, pile up the waste, and use THAT to make *CRUDE OIL*, not semi-diesel.
Oh, and most fuel stations stateside have diesel fuel as well. Not all, and certainly not many of them here in the city, but there are plenty if you want to buy a diesel car in the USA.
He hasn't proven any new theorems or developed a new field; why is he being called a genius?
Because it's not generally called "mathematics" once you get past arithmatic, until you get to the sign on the college department's door.
Which means that a majority of us don't think "complex equations" when we think "mathematics." Which means that the word is getting itself re-defined, just like "hacker" or "gay."
Yes, and we've accomplished it already
No, we haven't.
We've sent a few guys into the uppermost atmosphere, and a few more around to our moon. But we have yet to even leave our own planet's gravity-well.
Hubble and do something useful with taxpayer money?
Kindly show me an emperical benefit of Hubble. We learn a lot, yes, but it's not exactly USEFUL.
Space travel, OTOH, is an accomplishment.
(And let's not forget that we may wind up replacing Hubble with a better telescope for cheaper than the repair bill.)
Meanwhile, robots don't have these disadvantages, and are becoming increasingly capable of doing anything we might want to do up in space.
No, they're not.
Skip all of the cultural and boundary-pushing arguments, and just go show me a robot used full-time on Earth to walk around and do science.
We don't use robots for biology, geology, or archeology, save for when they're absolutely necessary (such as, going to see if it's safe for humans.)
Robots are used in space because they're cheap and expendable. That's it. If we were to spend 100 trllion on mars exploration, we'd just send a crew over to mars. There's a point where people really are cheaper than interplanetary telepresence.
Last time I checked American still ate them.
Of course we do. The potato is a native plant.
So Mr. Dragon, before you argue that Hitler would be a republican if he were reincarnated
I didn't. I said that, if the Democrats did swing hard-left and make gay rights a platfrorm issue, the Republicans could literally elect ANYONE THEY CHOOSE.
(And you forgot that Hilter was also for Expansionist warfighting and discrimination based on religion -- two things that made him a villian, and either of which are Democratic [or really Republican] issues.)
May be you should try...
t me rsi es/Auerbach_Randi.htms sue_2/2_loopholes.htmk i/James_Randi
f irm.htme f.htm
If the simple evaluation of his challenge isn't enough for you, why don't you look for folk who critically evalutate and dismiss his challenge. A random assortment of links:
http://www.alternativescience.com/james-randi.h
http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/controv
http://psymag.tripod.com/i
http://en.wikipedia.org/wi
(and a few pro-Randi:)
http://members.aol.com/mikecombs/con
http://www.skepticreport.com/tools/topjr
As a final logical rebuttal, consider this: If you offer a million dollars, you're guaranteed to get scams and fools, but you're not guaranteed to actually get people who you're looking for.
He is not trying to cheat anyone.
Neither are any of the people I've met who claim to have psychic power. They may be suffering from metal problems that make them think they're psychic, or they may have developed mental problems because they're psychic.
But the big difference between them and Randi is that they're not saying "I'll give you a million dollars if you can prove I'm not psychic!", while at the same time running a psychic-proving foundation that seems to pay them a healthy salary.
Randi is simply the best example because he has a huge carrot that he is willing to give to anyone who succeeds, that's why he is always brought up.
My point, to say it again, is that Randi's carrot makes him LESS of a good example of a psychic debunker, not a better one.
(And let's not forget that most of the "psychic" crowd tends to be leftish, pro-homosexual rights types, which means that they may see Randi they same way a homosexual in 1805 would have seen a scientists offering $10,000 to anyone who can prove that they're attracted to men and not women.)
Objective, yes, but Randi is objective.
this is exactly my point.
Randi has $10,000 of his personal funds and $990,000 of his "investment" on the line here. His claims of objectivity wouldn't pass muster in any court in the world.
And all the talks about "catapsi" is bullshit. We know that, Randi knows that. You can argue that being tested temporarily disables your skills, but then everyone has the right to say you are a fraud.
News flash: it's possible to argue something without believing it, and to understand something without agreeing with it.
I was merely pointing out that, if you look at Randi's challenge from the opposite side, he looks like every bit as much a scam as they look to him. Add on the fact that he has every reason to have a test fail, regardless of the truth of the matter, and you have a non-scientific rebuttal of psychics.
Randi always agrees on the procedure, test conditions and interpretation beforehand.
And this is the fault. Randi does not have a set guideline, nor does a disinterested party have control of either the funds or the testing procedures.
There have been complaints that Randi cheats, but since they're from "psychics" they're dismissed out of hand.
Consider these two points: 1: most folk who claim to have psychics have either a strong theological belief or other explanation for how they work, or they admit to being unable to control when they see and only see things that happen in the world.
2: Psychic parlance includes the idea of a "catapsi", someone whose natural psychic ability is to dampen other psychics. It's plausible* that, in wanting to test, Randi is essentially psychically shouting "No, no, no no no NO NO!" the whole time, without even realizing it.
And I say "plausible" becuase it only makes sense if you accept psychic phenomina as true. Which requires strong evidence that couldn't even be accepted by Randi's challenge.
(If you sent Randi a letter on September 9, 2001 saying "Something bad will happen on the 11th", he might be shocked, but he wouldn't pay out his million dollars.)
Their hypothesis seems to be threefold: