Maybe it isn't what patents are SUPPOSED to be about, but out of the mouth of a notable IP enthusiast we have the evidence that the REAL use of patents is to SUPPRESS innovation.
Whenever anything technological captures some significant public attention there will be some learned nincompoop coming forth to blow it all out of proportions. Probably when the safety pin was introduced, (before my time), sombody was declaring it the dawning of a new age.
I didn't claim that employers *like* unions, (there is much about capitalism that employers don't like); neither did I claim that union organizers didn't like socialism, (politicans and bureaucrats everywhere, including those in unions, have a natural affinitiy for socialism). I only claim that honest collective bargaining hardly ever occurs outside of a capitalist context and if an employer's private security forces are shooting union organizers that is a failure of government, not capitalism.
More than just a few years ago, but I still remember it, there was an article in Scientific American according to which the Electoral College vote had the effect of attracting candidates to both the largest and smallest states at the expence of the mid-sized states.
Funny, I thought the the voters being discouraged from voting are discouraged because they *do* understand the numbers.
In any case, my real problem with the Electoral College is that it constitutes an accidental gerrymander. In a close race, (by popular vote), the outcome depends on where state lines happen to have been drawn. Someday an election will have been different than what it could have been only because Oklahoma got the panhandle instead of Texas. Is this any way to elect a President?
You left out the "threat of force" part and that is crucial. Under capitalism workers trade the products of thier labor away in return for a wage, no force involved. Unions, (collective bargaining), are more an institutuion of capitalism than socialism. In most socialist regimes unions are either suppressed of allowed to exist only as appendages of the state. Only capitalist unions are real.
The movie "The Thirteenth Floor" was about human simulacrums who were conscious but unaware that they lived in a computer
created virtual reality. In the Star Trek series some Holodeck entities are like that too. That our universe is someone
else's simulation is my preferred answer to the puzzle of the improbabability of our universe. These someones need not have anything to do with our theories of Divinity.
I do not like the multiverse theory because there is, at present, no evidence for it and no reason to consider it except that it offers an answer to the improbable universe problem. It is as ad hoc as it could be.
Does my preferred solution merely push the problem up a level so that we have to account for the existence of the simulation creators? Yes, except we are not obliged to contend with low probabilities. The over-reality may have nothing like protons and neutrons or gravity or any physical basis remotely like our own existence. By the physics that govern there, life may not be improbable at all.
In The Thirteenth Floor an inhabitant could discover the artificial nature of his world by traveling in a straight line until encountering the strange boundary of his universe where detail and substance seemed to fade away. Our boundary may exist too although not as a location in three dimensional space. Quantum theory describes how detail and substance seem to
fade away for us on very small scales of space-time.
Under the electoral college, (plus winner-take-all), system the exact same votes cast by the exact same voters can easily
have different outcomes were the boundaries of states drawn differently. The map of the states as it actually exists constitutes a kind of accidental gerrymander. It is hard to see how accidents of geography playing a role in choosing our
highest elected officials can be a good thing.
Let us consider whether the winner-take-all component is a positive or negative aspect of the system.
If it is good then its effect could be magnified by replacing the existing states with a few large regions, such as New England, Atlantic, South, Midwest, Southeast, Rocky Mountain and Pacific. These would cast, as a block, the electoral votes previously owned by the states within their regions - enhancing the winner-take-all effect.
If it is bad, however, we could slice at least the bigger states into smaller parts, for example, New York into New Youk City, Long Island and Upstate. Each part would get to cast, as a block, a portion of the electoral votes previously cast by the state. This reduces the winner-take-all effect.
But in each case we could go farther: If winner-take-all is good, we combine the whole country into ONE region with ALL the electoral votes going to the candidate with the most voter votes. If winner-take-all is bad we reduce its influence to zero by drawing an electoral district around each voter. Then the majority in the district, (neccessarily 1 to nothing), determines who gets the one electoral vote for the district.
Therefore, if winner-take-all is good and should be maximized the best system would be: POPULAR MAJORITY VOTE.
If, however, winner-take-all is bad and should be minimized then the best system would be: POPULAR MAJORITY VOTE.
XRX management let PARCS's accomplishments wither on the vine.
If Lucent was smart, and not currently busy with spin-offs and watching their stock dive, they would buy PARC and merge in into Bell Labs.
Not for definition by common(?) usage
on
Is UNIX An OS?
·
· Score: 1
"Many people consider a Web browser, media player (like QuickTime), e-mail, file manager (like the Finder or Windows Explorer
) and the like all part of the OS. The OS is all the stuff that companies like Sun or Apple add to make a computer usable."
Abe Lincoln used have fun asking people "If we call a tail a leg then how many legs does a dog have?" Whenever anyone replied
"five" he would say "No. Only four because calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one."
Perhaps this could be applied to the traveling salesman problem, (TSP).
The solution to that problem would be a crinkled polygon that we now
know could be blown-up like a baloon into a convex polygon.
Suppose we start with the points in the TSP surrounded by a convex
polygon consisting of segments of the n-1 shortest distances among
the points. We now attempt to run the Carpenter's ruler procedure
in reverse, sucking in the polygon and trying to fit the joints to
the points as we go. I think we would have to slide the polgon around
some. If we seem stuck we may have to replace a link with a longer
link from the distances greater than the shortest n-1.
This is, of course very vague, but I wanted to get it posted in case
somebody could see some merit in it.
I don't know if DCMA addresses this or not, but suppose it was a DVD, (not a palmcorder tape) that was trnsmitted but only an analog copy made. The issue is; does that circum-whatever the DCMA?
This could get interesting. If D2A, (digital to analog), converters are taken to do exactly what the name implies, then the output signal is analog and can be recorded without being subject to DMCA rules. At the crudest level, (sound quality not considered), one could stick a microphone in front os a PC speaker. Moving up 1 level, run the speaker wire into an impedence matched analog input.
I have not read "Shadows of the Mind", but I have read "The Emperors New Mind". It is a wonderful book with much to say about cosmology, general relativity, black holes, entropy, the big bang, quantum theory, complexity, computability, etc, etc. Penrose is very careful to point out, however, that his theories on conciousness are very speculative and not widely accepted, (he thinks conciousness has something to do with quantum gravity). Read his theory with a grain of salt.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe it isn't what patents are SUPPOSED to be about, but out of the mouth of a notable IP enthusiast we have the evidence that the REAL use of patents is to SUPPRESS innovation.
Whenever anything technological captures some significant public attention there will be some learned nincompoop coming forth to blow it all out of proportions. Probably when the safety pin was introduced, (before my time), sombody was declaring it the dawning of a new age.
More than just a few years ago, but I still remember it, there was an article in Scientific American according to which the Electoral College vote had the effect of attracting candidates to both the largest and smallest states at the expence of the mid-sized states.
Funny, I thought the the voters being discouraged from voting are discouraged because they *do* understand the numbers.
In any case, my real problem with the Electoral College is that it constitutes an accidental gerrymander. In a close race, (by popular vote), the outcome depends on where state lines happen to have been drawn. Someday an election will have been different than what it could have been only because Oklahoma got the panhandle instead of Texas. Is this any way to elect a President?
You left out the "threat of force" part and that is crucial. Under capitalism workers trade the products of thier labor away in return for a wage, no force involved. Unions, (collective bargaining), are more an institutuion of capitalism than socialism. In most socialist regimes unions are either suppressed of allowed to exist only as appendages of the state. Only capitalist unions are real.
I do not like the multiverse theory because there is, at present, no evidence for it and no reason to consider it except that it offers an answer to the improbable universe problem. It is as ad hoc as it could be.
Does my preferred solution merely push the problem up a level so that we have to account for the existence of the simulation creators? Yes, except we are not obliged to contend with low probabilities. The over-reality may have nothing like protons and neutrons or gravity or any physical basis remotely like our own existence. By the physics that govern there, life may not be improbable at all.
In The Thirteenth Floor an inhabitant could discover the artificial nature of his world by traveling in a straight line until encountering the strange boundary of his universe where detail and substance seemed to fade away. Our boundary may exist too although not as a location in three dimensional space. Quantum theory describes how detail and substance seem to fade away for us on very small scales of space-time.
Under the electoral college, (plus winner-take-all), system the exact same votes cast by the exact same voters can easily have different outcomes were the boundaries of states drawn differently. The map of the states as it actually exists constitutes a kind of accidental gerrymander. It is hard to see how accidents of geography playing a role in choosing our highest elected officials can be a good thing.
Let us consider whether the winner-take-all component is a positive or negative aspect of the system.
If it is good then its effect could be magnified by replacing the existing states with a few large regions, such as New England, Atlantic, South, Midwest, Southeast, Rocky Mountain and Pacific. These would cast, as a block, the electoral votes previously owned by the states within their regions - enhancing the winner-take-all effect.
If it is bad, however, we could slice at least the bigger states into smaller parts, for example, New York into New Youk City, Long Island and Upstate. Each part would get to cast, as a block, a portion of the electoral votes previously cast by the state. This reduces the winner-take-all effect.
But in each case we could go farther: If winner-take-all is good, we combine the whole country into ONE region with ALL the electoral votes going to the candidate with the most voter votes. If winner-take-all is bad we reduce its influence to zero by drawing an electoral district around each voter. Then the majority in the district, (neccessarily 1 to nothing), determines who gets the one electoral vote for the district.
Therefore, if winner-take-all is good and should be maximized the best system would be: POPULAR MAJORITY VOTE.
If, however, winner-take-all is bad and should be minimized then the best system would be: POPULAR MAJORITY VOTE.
Well, what do you know?
XRX management let PARCS's accomplishments wither on the vine. If Lucent was smart, and not currently busy with spin-offs and watching their stock dive, they would buy PARC and merge in into Bell Labs.
Abe Lincoln used have fun asking people "If we call a tail a leg then how many legs does a dog have?" Whenever anyone replied "five" he would say "No. Only four because calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one."
Perhaps this could be applied to the traveling salesman problem, (TSP). The solution to that problem would be a crinkled polygon that we now know could be blown-up like a baloon into a convex polygon. Suppose we start with the points in the TSP surrounded by a convex polygon consisting of segments of the n-1 shortest distances among the points. We now attempt to run the Carpenter's ruler procedure in reverse, sucking in the polygon and trying to fit the joints to the points as we go. I think we would have to slide the polgon around some. If we seem stuck we may have to replace a link with a longer link from the distances greater than the shortest n-1. This is, of course very vague, but I wanted to get it posted in case somebody could see some merit in it.
Another /. topic today is "Force-Feedback Devices Provide Virtual Texture". put these stories together for a new concept of phone sex.
This could add a whole new dimension to on-line porn.
http://inside.bell-labs.com/headlines/2000/august/ 1/bln1.html is the url
I don't know if DCMA addresses this or not, but suppose it was a DVD, (not a palmcorder tape) that was trnsmitted but only an analog copy made. The issue is; does that circum-whatever the DCMA?
This could get interesting. If D2A, (digital to analog), converters are taken to do exactly what the name implies, then the output signal is analog and can be recorded without being subject to DMCA rules. At the crudest level, (sound quality not considered), one could stick a microphone in front os a PC speaker. Moving up 1 level, run the speaker wire into an impedence matched analog input.
I have not read "Shadows of the Mind", but I have read "The Emperors New Mind". It is a wonderful book with much to say about cosmology, general relativity, black holes, entropy, the big bang, quantum theory, complexity, computability, etc, etc. Penrose is very careful to point out, however, that his theories on conciousness are very speculative and not widely accepted, (he thinks conciousness has something to do with quantum gravity). Read his theory with a grain of salt.