Bottom line is that if Facebook spends money researching, developing, and/or devising a technique, they will patent it, regardless of whether or not it will ever see the light of day.
Lawyer: So, what does this patent do?
Technologist: It personifies everything everyone hates about our company in one easy to understand package. Also it may produce the kind of data that the government will then routinely demand we turn over.
Lawyer: Okay, as you know the patent filing procedure, once my fees are paid and we've drafted the white paper, will run around $30,000.00.
Business Analyst: And just think what this will do to our reputation! Oh well, we invented it we have to patent it.
now here comes a machine that can do much of your $400-per-hour job faster, and for a fraction of the cost. What do you do now?'"
Bar them from the practice of law?
Each state's bar association has a monopoly on the practice of law within that state. (Yes, that's the term the courts use, we admit it's a monopoly.) Even LegalZoom is getting bent over in a few states for crossing the line between "offering you forms" and "telling you how to make a will." Anyone can do the former, but only lawyers are allowed to do the latter. We're very good at controlling access to the courts.
I think the new statement is clearer/better, but not understanding the earlier reporting method would be a good reason to stay the hell away from IPOs.
Although this is likely to be another buy-it-then-dump-it IPO. Get in ASAP and then sell after the e-traders come in, before it becomes clear that the stock's value is overstated.
Because relativity starts to break down when things exceed the speed of light.
Wikipedia sez that going faster than the speed of light breaks causality -- so signals can be received before they're sent. However, as you suggest there is plenty of room to rework the theory rather than throwing up our hands and declaring reality broken.
This is not entirely true, or at least there are other motivators as well.
I am passionate about Free and Open Source software and advocate for its use wherever possible. I am not, however, a programer. I'm unable to contribute to the software I use, but I am a major proponent of the concept that the tools I and millions of other people use every day to be productive and creative shouldn't be closed source, expensive, and controlled by anyone with a profit motive.
I think the best example of why we need free and open software is the walled garden of Ipxxx devices created by apple. At first it seems reasonable that they limit and control what can be installed -- hey look, no malware, but then they use that control to also cut down and eliminate competition and deny me access to the full potential of the hardware I paid to own. This is a powerful driver for me -- and I think the people who see the disadvantages of handing control over out ability to create and work with computers are at least as motivated as the designers and coders who put the software together.
It's in the language -- listen for how the discuss the impact of tax code changes on "small business." If the small business were just a small (as in employees) company, then it might or might not pay tax as individual income. However, if it's a "small business" as in S-Corp, then it will pay taxes as an individual.
The GOP gives it all away when they talk about small businesses being harmed by raising taxes on individuals who make over $250,000.00 per year. Corporations don't normally pay taxes as individuals -- they pay on Corporate tax rates -- only S-Corps, LLCs and Partnerships would be hit by that. Moreover, a "small" as in employees business would be able to exempt out the funds it uses to buy material, pay employees and otherwise run the business -- you don't hit the caps on those values until you get well over $250,000.00 in profit Anyway -- whenever speaking about the tax code, in particular, "small" means S-corp.
-GiH
I am a lawyer, but this isn't legal advice. So no, you're not my client. (yes, I have to say that).
See -- you're mixing your terms there. Small, in the political sense, is a reference to "S" class corporations -- businesses with small ownership pools that pay tax like a partnership (owners treat corporate income as personal income). The "S" stands for "small," but many S corporations are anything but small, as in money and employees.
You get a notice when the photo is uploaded and (unlike facebook) that photo isn't out there for the world to see by default. The facebook apps have similar functionality, but unlike G+ immediately share your nudies with your whole friends list. Hi Mom!!
Its a world-view issue. It works like this -- Adam and Eve were created as perfect beings with the ability to make moral choices. They made the wrong choice triggering the fall. Since then, their perfect knowledge of the world and its mechanisms degraded more and more over time. St. Thomas Aquinas, writing in the 1200s, who's works were embraced by the catholic church both during and after his life, lived in a world where Alexander and Rome had come and gone, all the great thinkers worth reading (Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Epicurus,etc and of course the Biblical authors) were long dead and gone.
Aquinas lived in a world looking back at a high water mark of knowledge and culture. Put the religious spin of the origin tale on it, the fall of man, and you have a world where the great texts are great not because the authors were great in and of themselves, but because they were closer to the source of truth -- the time when all men knew what was true and what wasn't because that knowledge was handed down from Adam and Eve, who received it from God.
That is the origin of the distrust for science. The Evangelical right, which still views the text of the bible is revered as the exclusive source of truth, still lives there. More importantly, when they read the bible, the pull out the verses that suggest that world is a place of lies and trickery trying to pull man off the path set forth in the book -- and you have a recipe for outright hostility to science -- which becomes satanic trickster, trying to pull good men off the path of blind faith into all these murky "questions" and "hypothesis."
Or, in short -- The book says you're wrong. You can't trick me. I'll kill you first.
I have to take two one-hour long train rides each day during my commute. Nextflix + Verizon 4GLTE == catching up on my documentaries on the way in and out... okay, well more like catching up on Lie to Me this week, but I have a bunch of documentaries on my Q that I'll get to eventually. L:D
That would mean you don't understand the meaning of the word science. Its a rather common problem.
No, see, the issue is that you cannot distinguish experimentation from the scientific method. Developing a hypothesis and then testing it in a verifiable and repeatable fashion is the scientific method. Experimentation is/one/ way of testing a theory. Experimentation is impossible in any of the global studies -- this includes geology, astronomy, and climate studies. But Experimentation is not the only way to test a theory -- one way to test a theory is to collect data from the field and compare the actual outcomes to the predicted outcomes. If they match your theory persists, if not, your theory fails and must be adjusted and improved.
Notable non-scientists according to your definition: Einstein, Darwin and Locke.
Here's a thought, if you're definition excludes large groups of hard sciences and dismisses famed and acclaimed scientists from "science" your definition may needs some work.
You don't like the smoke, stay out of the damned kitchen.
See, the phrase is "if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen." Conversely, "if there's smoke, there's fire."
Oddly enough, there is both smoke AND fire in the global warming kitchen, and those guys you're telling to STFU and GTFO -- yeah, they're the fire fighters. Sure, its a nice turn of phrase "oh toughen up whiny political scientists" but doing so is both (a) an ad homonym having nothing to do with their arguments, and (b) ignores the fact that the only "political" aspect of their research is that it requires action -- action which certain wealthy individuals DO NOT WANT.
A "laser" is a device that emits light. The product of that device is light, or a "laser beam" -- the process of lasing just (big simplification) gets all the light going in the same direction at the same frequency. That results in a brighter / stronger beam of light, rather than allow the light to do what it is naturally inclined to do -- fly off in every direction.
Today I can see no reason why I would rather have a laser light than... say.. LED or Xenon (which are both pretty damn bright) . . . other than "lasers are neat."
So, the USPS doesn't have enough mail volume to keep things going, but they're not allowed to get rid of excess people on the payroll that aren't needed. This isn't the only issue but it is a huge one and a great example of stupid management agreeing to equally stupid demands by the labor unions.
To be clear, the USPS management is looking to lay off 120,000 employees this month. That's so it can make its pension pre-funding requirement (added in 2006 under Bush) -- to the tune of $5.5B. That happens to be about the size of the shortfall. This is an old fight between the management of USPS and the labor force of the USPS -- management wants to break the union (big surprise), wants to cut healthcare benefits and drastically reduce or eliminate pensions. This crisis has more to do with politics than numbers -- take out the prefunding requirement and the USPS is not only stable, it's cash positive.
Since the USPS is created (and required) by a constitutional mandate, and not an amendment either -- its part of the core document. Other famous "communist plots" the Army and Navy. Let us not forget the super-double-secret socialist brotherhood known as "voters." Damn them and their lenin lovin' ways.
You missed can't fund its pension plan at the same lower level as its private competitors.
In 2006 Bush and the Republicans put a forward funding mandate on the USPS. That payment is due this year, to the tune of $5.5B -- 5,500,000,000.00. Guess how big the shortfall is expected to be in this "crisis."
It's easy to make government fail, just cut revenues below expenditures, then cut expenditures, then repeat -- sooner or later the food isn't safe, the roads fall apart and Medicare can't be sustained any longer. Unfortunately, one party in the U.S. has embraced this as a "policy" of "governance." The other party is full of messaging fail.
Finally, I hope your Chernobyl comment was sarcasm, as the only thing beneficial to the flora and fauna was that it kept people away.
That's not actually true. It did keep the people away, and that was enormously helpful -- but the nature of a nuclear leak from a plant like Chernobyl is one of directed destruction - it takes out a swath of forest where a plume settles, but leaves the surrounding areas more or less untouched. That has a forest-fire like effect, resetting the "burned" zone, but unlike a forest fire, doesn't burn off any of the soil nutrients or plant matter which falls and rots in situ. The result is highly fertile land surrounded by areas of plant-life that can reseed the area. Today, the Chernobyl "dead zones" are among the most diverse and prolific biospheres in Europe. I refer here only to the plant life.
One of the other interesting lessons of Chernobyl is that animal life can adapt over and around radiation . . . particularly smaller animals and non-predators. It was assumed that the Chernobyl dead zone would be uninhabitable by wild animals, due to high rates of cancer and radiation poisoning, etc. In fact, what happened was that the food chain was able to rebuild itself from the ground up. The Chernobyl area is now the only area of Europe with sustainable populations of wolves and wild bears. There are wild horses there as well -- but I don't include that as a benefit since they are not native to the region. Pesky invasive species. Lower down the food chain, is the MOST diverse wild animal population in Europe.
Now -- it is important to note that there are factors here that go beyond keeping humans away -- if that were enough there are parklands in the US that have been closed to visitors for similar long periods of time, but the plant and animal life there has not recovered in the way Chernobyl's has. Also, believe it or not, there are poachers who go into the Chernobyl zone to hunt for meat. Crazy as it sounds, poor is poor and food is food, people take risks.
Think of nuclear fallout as forestfire+, it scours the land clear of old growth plants, resets the food chain, recharges the soil and, as an added benefit, drives off the humans. I mean, if we're going to ruin the land, lets avoid the poisons that take centuries to break down, you know, like the ones used to mine and process all the components in photo-voltaic cells. Now, as for using solar for "heat" if you mean a water heater on your roof -- awesome -- no issue (and no significant energy generation so that's irrelevant), if however you mean big boiled-water reactors -- yes, those pollute, they pollute in production, they pollute by covering acres of land with mirrors that block the light from reaching the ground, and the hot spot they create both (a) creates a hot air column that can have a significant impact on the local environment, and (b) scorches any animal unfortunate enough to cross it.
Let's see...air is cleaner now than it was fifty years ago. Presumably, there will be more clean air when the grand kids come around.
And that happened by... magic. Magic like air scrubbers that were developed with Gov't R&D money, and magic that happened with tech. repurposed out of the Apollo missions. Magic like the EPA and harsh penalties on coal plants that dumped unfiltered fumes into urban environments.
50 Years from now, would you rather have cheaper electricity produced cleanly that is based on expensive R&D from the '10's or more coal plants. That's about the shape of your choices right now. Of course the real winners of the last century, like the TVA -- those are actually government owned and operated. But hey.. I forgot, Gov't can't pick winners -- history and reality be damned.
Slashdot Mirror
Lawyer: So, what does this patent do?
Technologist: It personifies everything everyone hates about our company in one easy to understand package. Also it may produce the kind of data that the government will then routinely demand we turn over.
Lawyer: Okay, as you know the patent filing procedure, once my fees are paid and we've drafted the white paper, will run around $30,000.00.
Business Analyst: And just think what this will do to our reputation! Oh well, we invented it we have to patent it.
Somehow -- I think not.
-GiH
Bar them from the practice of law?
Each state's bar association has a monopoly on the practice of law within that state. (Yes, that's the term the courts use, we admit it's a monopoly.) Even LegalZoom is getting bent over in a few states for crossing the line between "offering you forms" and "telling you how to make a will." Anyone can do the former, but only lawyers are allowed to do the latter. We're very good at controlling access to the courts.
-GiH
Although this is likely to be another buy-it-then-dump-it IPO. Get in ASAP and then sell after the e-traders come in, before it becomes clear that the stock's value is overstated.
-GiH
Because relativity starts to break down when things exceed the speed of light.
Wikipedia sez that going faster than the speed of light breaks causality -- so signals can be received before they're sent. However, as you suggest there is plenty of room to rework the theory rather than throwing up our hands and declaring reality broken.
-GiH
This is not entirely true, or at least there are other motivators as well.
I am passionate about Free and Open Source software and advocate for its use wherever possible. I am not, however, a programer. I'm unable to contribute to the software I use, but I am a major proponent of the concept that the tools I and millions of other people use every day to be productive and creative shouldn't be closed source, expensive, and controlled by anyone with a profit motive.
I think the best example of why we need free and open software is the walled garden of Ipxxx devices created by apple. At first it seems reasonable that they limit and control what can be installed -- hey look, no malware, but then they use that control to also cut down and eliminate competition and deny me access to the full potential of the hardware I paid to own. This is a powerful driver for me -- and I think the people who see the disadvantages of handing control over out ability to create and work with computers are at least as motivated as the designers and coders who put the software together.
-GiH
It's in the language -- listen for how the discuss the impact of tax code changes on "small business." If the small business were just a small (as in employees) company, then it might or might not pay tax as individual income. However, if it's a "small business" as in S-Corp, then it will pay taxes as an individual.
The GOP gives it all away when they talk about small businesses being harmed by raising taxes on individuals who make over $250,000.00 per year. Corporations don't normally pay taxes as individuals -- they pay on Corporate tax rates -- only S-Corps, LLCs and Partnerships would be hit by that. Moreover, a "small" as in employees business would be able to exempt out the funds it uses to buy material, pay employees and otherwise run the business -- you don't hit the caps on those values until you get well over $250,000.00 in profit Anyway -- whenever speaking about the tax code, in particular, "small" means S-corp.
-GiH
I am a lawyer, but this isn't legal advice. So no, you're not my client. (yes, I have to say that).
See -- you're mixing your terms there. Small, in the political sense, is a reference to "S" class corporations -- businesses with small ownership pools that pay tax like a partnership (owners treat corporate income as personal income). The "S" stands for "small," but many S corporations are anything but small, as in money and employees.
-GiH
You're entitled to one.
-GiH
And Xbox only succeeded because Sony had the playstation. . .
.
The Playstation only succeeded because . .
Derivative works are win. There's nothing wrong with taking a mediocre idea, improving on it, and making a profit.
-GiH
And?
You get a notice when the photo is uploaded and (unlike facebook) that photo isn't out there for the world to see by default. The facebook apps have similar functionality, but unlike G+ immediately share your nudies with your whole friends list. Hi Mom!!
-GiH
Seemed appropriate.
Its a world-view issue. It works like this -- Adam and Eve were created as perfect beings with the ability to make moral choices. They made the wrong choice triggering the fall. Since then, their perfect knowledge of the world and its mechanisms degraded more and more over time. St. Thomas Aquinas, writing in the 1200s, who's works were embraced by the catholic church both during and after his life, lived in a world where Alexander and Rome had come and gone, all the great thinkers worth reading (Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Epicurus,etc and of course the Biblical authors) were long dead and gone.
Aquinas lived in a world looking back at a high water mark of knowledge and culture. Put the religious spin of the origin tale on it, the fall of man, and you have a world where the great texts are great not because the authors were great in and of themselves, but because they were closer to the source of truth -- the time when all men knew what was true and what wasn't because that knowledge was handed down from Adam and Eve, who received it from God.
That is the origin of the distrust for science. The Evangelical right, which still views the text of the bible is revered as the exclusive source of truth, still lives there. More importantly, when they read the bible, the pull out the verses that suggest that world is a place of lies and trickery trying to pull man off the path set forth in the book -- and you have a recipe for outright hostility to science -- which becomes satanic trickster, trying to pull good men off the path of blind faith into all these murky "questions" and "hypothesis."
Or, in short -- The book says you're wrong. You can't trick me. I'll kill you first.
-GiH
er.. you can just login to the website and change your credit card information (just verified). Your story seems ... very odd.
-GiH
I have to take two one-hour long train rides each day during my commute. Nextflix + Verizon 4GLTE == catching up on my documentaries on the way in and out... okay, well more like catching up on Lie to Me this week, but I have a bunch of documentaries on my Q that I'll get to eventually. L:D
-GiH
Is witty word play the same thing as a thought?
Just a verbal riposte.
-GiH
No, see, the issue is that you cannot distinguish experimentation from the scientific method. Developing a hypothesis and then testing it in a verifiable and repeatable fashion is the scientific method. Experimentation is /one/ way of testing a theory. Experimentation is impossible in any of the global studies -- this includes geology, astronomy, and climate studies. But Experimentation is not the only way to test a theory -- one way to test a theory is to collect data from the field and compare the actual outcomes to the predicted outcomes. If they match your theory persists, if not, your theory fails and must be adjusted and improved.
Notable non-scientists according to your definition: Einstein, Darwin and Locke.
Here's a thought, if you're definition excludes large groups of hard sciences and dismisses famed and acclaimed scientists from "science" your definition may needs some work.
-GiH
See, the phrase is "if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen." Conversely, "if there's smoke, there's fire."
Oddly enough, there is both smoke AND fire in the global warming kitchen, and those guys you're telling to STFU and GTFO -- yeah, they're the fire fighters. Sure, its a nice turn of phrase "oh toughen up whiny political scientists" but doing so is both (a) an ad homonym having nothing to do with their arguments, and (b) ignores the fact that the only "political" aspect of their research is that it requires action -- action which certain wealthy individuals DO NOT WANT.
-GiH
"Light"
... say.. LED or Xenon (which are both pretty damn bright) . . . other than "lasers are neat."
A "laser" is a device that emits light. The product of that device is light, or a "laser beam" -- the process of lasing just (big simplification) gets all the light going in the same direction at the same frequency. That results in a brighter / stronger beam of light, rather than allow the light to do what it is naturally inclined to do -- fly off in every direction.
Today I can see no reason why I would rather have a laser light than
-GiH
To be clear, the USPS management is looking to lay off 120,000 employees this month. That's so it can make its pension pre-funding requirement (added in 2006 under Bush) -- to the tune of $5.5B. That happens to be about the size of the shortfall. This is an old fight between the management of USPS and the labor force of the USPS -- management wants to break the union (big surprise), wants to cut healthcare benefits and drastically reduce or eliminate pensions. This crisis has more to do with politics than numbers -- take out the prefunding requirement and the USPS is not only stable, it's cash positive.
-GiH
Shh.. facts make the tea-trolls unstable.
-GiH
Since the USPS is created (and required) by a constitutional mandate, and not an amendment either -- its part of the core document. Other famous "communist plots" the Army and Navy. Let us not forget the super-double-secret socialist brotherhood known as "voters." Damn them and their lenin lovin' ways.
-GiH
In 2006 Bush and the Republicans put a forward funding mandate on the USPS. That payment is due this year, to the tune of $5.5B -- 5,500,000,000.00. Guess how big the shortfall is expected to be in this "crisis."
It's easy to make government fail, just cut revenues below expenditures, then cut expenditures, then repeat -- sooner or later the food isn't safe, the roads fall apart and Medicare can't be sustained any longer. Unfortunately, one party in the U.S. has embraced this as a "policy" of "governance." The other party is full of messaging fail.
-GiH
We're going to be hated either way. Our crime is being powerful, the excuse is that we're dicks about it.
That's not actually true. It did keep the people away, and that was enormously helpful -- but the nature of a nuclear leak from a plant like Chernobyl is one of directed destruction - it takes out a swath of forest where a plume settles, but leaves the surrounding areas more or less untouched. That has a forest-fire like effect, resetting the "burned" zone, but unlike a forest fire, doesn't burn off any of the soil nutrients or plant matter which falls and rots in situ. The result is highly fertile land surrounded by areas of plant-life that can reseed the area. Today, the Chernobyl "dead zones" are among the most diverse and prolific biospheres in Europe. I refer here only to the plant life.
One of the other interesting lessons of Chernobyl is that animal life can adapt over and around radiation . . . particularly smaller animals and non-predators. It was assumed that the Chernobyl dead zone would be uninhabitable by wild animals, due to high rates of cancer and radiation poisoning, etc. In fact, what happened was that the food chain was able to rebuild itself from the ground up. The Chernobyl area is now the only area of Europe with sustainable populations of wolves and wild bears. There are wild horses there as well -- but I don't include that as a benefit since they are not native to the region. Pesky invasive species. Lower down the food chain, is the MOST diverse wild animal population in Europe.
Now -- it is important to note that there are factors here that go beyond keeping humans away -- if that were enough there are parklands in the US that have been closed to visitors for similar long periods of time, but the plant and animal life there has not recovered in the way Chernobyl's has. Also, believe it or not, there are poachers who go into the Chernobyl zone to hunt for meat. Crazy as it sounds, poor is poor and food is food, people take risks.
Think of nuclear fallout as forestfire+, it scours the land clear of old growth plants, resets the food chain, recharges the soil and, as an added benefit, drives off the humans. I mean, if we're going to ruin the land, lets avoid the poisons that take centuries to break down, you know, like the ones used to mine and process all the components in photo-voltaic cells. Now, as for using solar for "heat" if you mean a water heater on your roof -- awesome -- no issue (and no significant energy generation so that's irrelevant), if however you mean big boiled-water reactors -- yes, those pollute, they pollute in production, they pollute by covering acres of land with mirrors that block the light from reaching the ground, and the hot spot they create both (a) creates a hot air column that can have a significant impact on the local environment, and (b) scorches any animal unfortunate enough to cross it.
-GiH
And that happened by... magic. Magic like air scrubbers that were developed with Gov't R&D money, and magic that happened with tech. repurposed out of the Apollo missions. Magic like the EPA and harsh penalties on coal plants that dumped unfiltered fumes into urban environments.
50 Years from now, would you rather have cheaper electricity produced cleanly that is based on expensive R&D from the '10's or more coal plants. That's about the shape of your choices right now. Of course the real winners of the last century, like the TVA -- those are actually government owned and operated. But hey.. I forgot, Gov't can't pick winners -- history and reality be damned.
-GiH