Copyright is what protects you for that algorithm. For many years longer than patent will.
If it takes some other guy 2 days to come up with the same algorithm independently, it just means you were slow, not that you deserved a patent, and he should have to pay you.
The 'hydrogen economy' is ideally built on fusion/wind/solar/geothermal (clean) power sources. The hydrogen is just a storage medium (battery) for the power that has been generated in some other way.
However, even if you use oil/coal to generate it, generating power at centralized facilities and distributing clean hydrogen enables efficiencies of scale and superior disposal methods for your ugly by-products, so it can still be a big win.
You can get a local transmitting GPS radio in the $10 range now. In 5 years they should be a buck each. The hardware to recieve and track all those signals will run you in the $10k range. It's not too much for most suburbs, and certainly affordable to any city.
Well, rather than binoculars, the comparable case would be planting a camera in your clothing without your permission.
Re:Engineering within limits brings great results
on
Where's My 10 Ghz PC?
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, that was my probably overly pedantic point, but it did sound to me like the grandparent was trying to claim that some problems were proven to require slow solutions.
Live in fear of the future! If you don't constantly pay attention to the ethical quandaries of possible future inventions, then one day people will all own cars, drive them at outrageous speeds, and huge numbers of us will be dying in automobile accidents!
Robots will kill a certain fraction of the population, just like cars. In fact, they already do (factories with robots have accidents). We live with it. When people make a defective machine that causes a death or other loss, the companies involved get lawsuits and insurance.
Yes, if it is useful. Perhaps they meant to ask can it be unethical to create humanoid robots. The answer there is also yes, if you do it for harm.
2. Should humans become robots?
If we want to. Should humans be allowed to become robots? Yes. Should humans be required to become robots? No.
3. Should robots excrete byproducts?
That's just unavoidable. If nothing else you produce entropy as a byproduct of existing, so why even ask the question? Obviously, releasing as few harmful byproducts as possible is more ethical than not doing so.
4. Should robots eat (implied: eat biomass for energy)?
This is not more ethical or unethical than any other way of gaining needed energy.
5. Should telerobotic labor be regulated?
Yes. It is in our best interest to universalize humanitarian labor laws.
6. Should robots carry weapons?
No. But then ideally no humans should either. Practically it may be quite useful to have robots carry weapons.
7. Should machines be awarded patents?
No. They should be awarded to the owner of the machine. If robots become recognized as life forms, they should no longer be regarded as machines.
I claim it is foundational. As a foundational premise, I claim that the fundamental rights are the set of rights necessary for a free rational agent to name the fundamental rights. This part is just definition. You can agree or disagree with my definition. I claim it is a good definition which leads to a pretty reasonable looking list of rights as you explore the definition. However, if you accept the definition, then certain rights do necessarily flow immediately. Freedom, for example, seems fairly obviously necessary for the free agent to exist. I'll even make the further claim that if you try to reduce the foundation by either attribute, that the resulting set of rights is pretty much non existant and uninteresting.
So that is the answer (in my opinion) to your 'a': if you remove either of the above attributes, the resulting set of fundamental rights is devolved and uninteresting.
As to 'b' the important thing that you are slightly off on is that the rational free agent doesn't actually get to define the set of rights. The set of rights he actually defines are unimportant to the argument. The question is what rights are necessary for him to exist in the first place. Those are the fundamental rights. If we cannot be rational free agents, striving to define our rights, then there's really no point in discussing our rights (ie striving to define them), is there? If we can't discuss/attempt to define our rights, there's no point having the conversation. Therefore I claim that we must:
Be free: if we're not free, the discussion is pointless, as we can't possibly influence the other's position.
Be rational: if we're not capable of thinking and reaching conclusions based on logic, then again, no point in having the discussion, there's no meaningful way to affect the other's position.
As a side note, I added you to my friend's list. This has been by far the: longest, most reasonable, and most interesting conversation I've ever had on slashdot. Thank you.
1. Two or more connected cells that produce a direct current by converting chemical energy to electrical energy.
2. A single cell, such as a dry cell, that produces an electric current.
Yes, the basic assumption is that rational/free are necessary attributes, and there's a further assumption that anything that is necessary equates with a 'right'. So if god is a rational free agent and declares no free will he's depriving us of our rights. Again, it is _definitely_ possible to deprive people of their rights. I personally just found this to be one of the most effective ways to try to define what those rights are.
Re:Engineering within limits brings great results
on
Where's My 10 Ghz PC?
·
· Score: 1
I'd be fascinated to hear in what cases the best algorithm can be proven to be slow.
Thankfully, I don't think most of us rely on slashdot for breaking news. Slashdot is more of a news discussion site, collecting news from a wide variety of sources where the general subject matters are interesting to nerds.
Slashdot Mirror
60k is wealthy. It's in the top 1% of world earnings. It's a working life take home of well over a million dollars.
Copyright is what protects you for that algorithm. For many years longer than patent will.
If it takes some other guy 2 days to come up with the same algorithm independently, it just means you were slow, not that you deserved a patent, and he should have to pay you.
Yes, much harder than natural gas.
Hydrogen is hard to ship and to store. Those are two of the main sticking points preventing rapid adoption of hydrogen for energy storage.
The 'hydrogen economy' is ideally built on fusion/wind/solar/geothermal (clean) power sources. The hydrogen is just a storage medium (battery) for the power that has been generated in some other way.
However, even if you use oil/coal to generate it, generating power at centralized facilities and distributing clean hydrogen enables efficiencies of scale and superior disposal methods for your ugly by-products, so it can still be a big win.
More importantly, you need a bigger gun!
Yes, if only there was some way. Sadly, it seems i'm doomed to be outvoted by the 60% of the voting public who are morons at every election.
They weight about a quarter ton. It'll cut into your gas mileage.
It's not legal to videotape people without their knowledge on federal property, such as the highways and many other roads.
You can get a local transmitting GPS radio in the $10 range now. In 5 years they should be a buck each. The hardware to recieve and track all those signals will run you in the $10k range. It's not too much for most suburbs, and certainly affordable to any city.
Well, rather than binoculars, the comparable case would be planting a camera in your clothing without your permission.
Yeah, that was my probably overly pedantic point, but it did sound to me like the grandparent was trying to claim that some problems were proven to require slow solutions.
Live in fear of the future! If you don't constantly pay attention to the ethical quandaries of possible future inventions, then one day people will all own cars, drive them at outrageous speeds, and huge numbers of us will be dying in automobile accidents!
Robots will kill a certain fraction of the population, just like cars. In fact, they already do (factories with robots have accidents). We live with it. When people make a defective machine that causes a death or other loss, the companies involved get lawsuits and insurance.
1. Should robots be humanoid?
Yes, if it is useful. Perhaps they meant to ask can it be unethical to create humanoid robots. The answer there is also yes, if you do it for harm.
2. Should humans become robots?
If we want to. Should humans be allowed to become robots? Yes. Should humans be required to become robots? No.
3. Should robots excrete byproducts?
That's just unavoidable. If nothing else you produce entropy as a byproduct of existing, so why even ask the question? Obviously, releasing as few harmful byproducts as possible is more ethical than not doing so.
4. Should robots eat (implied: eat biomass for energy)?
This is not more ethical or unethical than any other way of gaining needed energy.
5. Should telerobotic labor be regulated?
Yes. It is in our best interest to universalize humanitarian labor laws.
6. Should robots carry weapons?
No. But then ideally no humans should either. Practically it may be quite useful to have robots carry weapons.
7. Should machines be awarded patents?
No. They should be awarded to the owner of the machine. If robots become recognized as life forms, they should no longer be regarded as machines.
I do disagree that it is circular.
I claim it is foundational. As a foundational premise, I claim that the fundamental rights are the set of rights necessary for a free rational agent to name the fundamental rights. This part is just definition. You can agree or disagree with my definition. I claim it is a good definition which leads to a pretty reasonable looking list of rights as you explore the definition. However, if you accept the definition, then certain rights do necessarily flow immediately. Freedom, for example, seems fairly obviously necessary for the free agent to exist. I'll even make the further claim that if you try to reduce the foundation by either attribute, that the resulting set of rights is pretty much non existant and uninteresting.
So that is the answer (in my opinion) to your 'a': if you remove either of the above attributes, the resulting set of fundamental rights is devolved and uninteresting.
As to 'b' the important thing that you are slightly off on is that the rational free agent doesn't actually get to define the set of rights. The set of rights he actually defines are unimportant to the argument. The question is what rights are necessary for him to exist in the first place. Those are the fundamental rights. If we cannot be rational free agents, striving to define our rights, then there's really no point in discussing our rights (ie striving to define them), is there? If we can't discuss/attempt to define our rights, there's no point having the conversation. Therefore I claim that we must:
Be free: if we're not free, the discussion is pointless, as we can't possibly influence the other's position.
Be rational: if we're not capable of thinking and reaching conclusions based on logic, then again, no point in having the discussion, there's no meaningful way to affect the other's position.
As a side note, I added you to my friend's list. This has been by far the: longest, most reasonable, and most interesting conversation I've ever had on slashdot. Thank you.
From dictionary.com lookup for battery:
# Electricity.
1. Two or more connected cells that produce a direct current by converting chemical energy to electrical energy.
2. A single cell, such as a dry cell, that produces an electric current.
Hence, a hydrogen fuel cell is a battery.
There's this clever thing called power storage. You use your power to reform some hydrogen, and it makes this fascinating device called a battery.
The battery drives your house power needs over night.
Really, you have a proof of this?
Yes, the basic assumption is that rational/free are necessary attributes, and there's a further assumption that anything that is necessary equates with a 'right'. So if god is a rational free agent and declares no free will he's depriving us of our rights. Again, it is _definitely_ possible to deprive people of their rights. I personally just found this to be one of the most effective ways to try to define what those rights are.
I'd be fascinated to hear in what cases the best algorithm can be proven to be slow.
Echelon alert! Echelon Alert! Deploying FBI!
It makes for more interesting reading.
Thankfully, I don't think most of us rely on slashdot for breaking news. Slashdot is more of a news discussion site, collecting news from a wide variety of sources where the general subject matters are interesting to nerds.
That's pretty much the banner heading for slashdot.
The real advantage to me of owning an 84" television is that is makes the size of my penis seem more reasonable and less intimidating by comparison.