It's already happened, when electric refrigeration replaced the tremendous worldwide industry that harvested, stored, transported, and delivered ice. It was not necessary to break the laws of physics. We got more fresh food, and people found other jobs.
The problem with infinite cheap direct energy is entropy. Energy inevitably becomes heat pollution. But good solar isn't infinite energy, and the heat is already getting here.
There isn't anything more sure than the laws of thermodynamics. As long as you live, you will never see them broken.
A coupling between light and magnetic moment would have corrolaries like light from magnetic moment - perhaps synchrotron radiation. When you see both of these things explained at the same time, then it's time to start to take this seriously. The time hasn't arrived yet.
The U.S. supported Mubarak, Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, etc. justifying that this was to keep them from allying with communists. We probably caused more evil than we cured. And then we suddenly dropped the war on communism in the '80's and made our country an economic slave of China, which still does all of the things we didn't like the communists for. But we're moving toward corporate totalitarianism ourselves, so we don't mind so much.
In retrospect, protecting ourselves from the plutocracy that has given the military its marching orders since Vietnam might have been a good idea.
The problem with Fast Breeder reactors is that they make plutonium. Great for atomic bombs, and if you don't want to develop the technology, it's still an extremely powerful chemical poison.
Where is the wikileaks release about what Libya has done to their own people and how many people in Libya read it?
Just google for "wikileaks libya" and there are several articles about it. The stuff in there might not seem such a big deal to an old-style Westerner, but it's almost as if it was calculated to incent a conservative Islamic.
All I can imagine is that this stuff gets passed around.
What the U.S. did with Egypt, and Europe did for Tunisia, was enrich the upper class and create a larger middle class, not eliminate poverty. The interesting thing is that the poor would not be coordinating the revolt through their Internet-connected smartphones. The enfranchised, well-fed, upper classes revolted, and before they became so poor that they had to choose between food and their net connection.
People who are having trouble affording food would already have dropped off of Facebook and Twitter. They would not be making heavy use of the Internet from their smartphones.
I've been to Tunisia. The folks who had social networking were in Carthage and Tunis, and lived at the French standard. The hungry folks haven't just become hungry recently.
There always has to be someone to throw the first stone, and that often is a suicidal action. But, unfortunately, there isn't a shortage of people who kill themselves or others in colorful ways because there is nothing else they can think to do when they feel wronged. The 200 before him didn't have the desired effect. That he did does not mean that his action was different in some way, it means that people were ready.
Lots of people have been killed in the various revolts, too. I am not saying he was at all strategic or understood potential outcomes. But the world might be a better place, as long as these countries don't get fundamentalist governments.
Why is the whole Islamic world up in arms against their own governments now? Because Wikileaks showed them what their governments were really up to, and it pushed a long-fermenting resentment over the top. A few people associated with Wikileaks did what the U.S. could not with the trillions of dollars they've put into their attempts to influence policy in the region. So, now we're going to simultaneously give Wikileaks its victory by taking advantage of the unrest it fermented, and prosecute the folks who brought us that victory.
I had an eye exam today, and would test positive for cocaine from the eye dilation drops. I eat poppy seed bagels and thus might test positive for opiates. And so on. People who are subject to those tests must live in constant fear.
If you were an animator or technical director at Pixar, you could expect to live there during production. The film has to be done on time, you can't miss the Christmas season, etc. I saw many families bring dinner to Pixar almost every evening so that they could eat together, as mommy or daddy wasn't coming home until really late. I was in studio tools, not production, and thus was allowed to have a normal life - and seeing what happened to the production folks, I never wanted to be a technical director.
The pay was OK, but not great, and for technical folks the attribution was something you might have to slo-mo your VCR to see. There were 20 people who wanted a job standing behind every one that actually had a job in film, so there was no incentive for studios to pay better.
At the time (it may be better now) the tools were the result of 30 years of evolution, and you had to know about 30 languages to be a TD.
I've found my involvement in Open Source to be a lot more fulfilling.
Well, I felt that in the 80's we should have changed to testing them on ASCII:-) But in the spirit of the Morse Code test, the FCC would probably have required EBCDIC.
It's not dying out any longer. We're heading toward having 700,000 U.S. hams due to the final elimination of the code test (you're welcome) and the fact that it's technically getting more fun due to software radio, etc. That's more than we've had in a very long time.
We've seen time and time again that the public-safety services are not themselves able to provide sufficient communications operators to handle an emergency, and that they aren't able to improvise communications systems to meet the needs of an emergency that takes out infrastructure. That's what hams are for. One of the things they do with that spectrum is build and practice their own systems, so that in an emergency they are ready.
And let's not forget all of the technical advances that come from Amateur Radio, and its unique uses in education - how else can individuals work with space communications, software-defined-radio, etc. All of the other options are company-controlled.
In California, we already have a problem on those frequencies due to the PAVE-PAWS system at Beale Air Force Base out by Yuba City. Surprisingly, it can receive hams in the San Francisco Bay area - on a UHF band where I wouldn't expect that distance - and we have had to reduce power on most of the repeaters in that band to protect the military's space-warning services. If the band were to be sold, it would not be available for commercial users in much of California.
But we have a right to be sick of all of the folks who look at our frequencies with dollar signs in their eyes.
Yes, but that's perjuring themselves to the court rather than the patent office, and judges are very much more likely to bring perjury charges and the peril to the perjurer is substantial. Also, it puts the burden of proof on the patent holder. And the patent holder would have to show that the material was not published, but was made available to that particular party in some way.
I don't think so, because this way you have much better proof of prior art that can be used to invalidate the patent. Before, it was much harder than just comparing dates.
So, since the rest of the world already does it this way, I'd say you'll have to look elsewhere for your troll problem.
There are many problems with non-practicing entities. But this particular problem is not unique to non-practicing entities. One example is in Jacobsen v. Katzer, where the patent-holder, a practicing business, was alleged to have filed a continuation application using information from an Open Source project, and disclaimed his patent when it came time for the court to examine it.
Sure, Europe has its trolls, but this particular bad law made the situation even worse in the U.S.
Saying that losing the patent is a penalty for a perjurious filing is like saying that having to return a stolen good is a penalty for theft. Crimes are deterred by the peril to the criminal, which must be more than simple redress. 18 USC 1001 offers a fine and 5 years imprisonment. It's on the books, just not enforced for a generation.
I don't think you are considering the cost and difficulty of arguing precedence over a pre-dated application in a first-to-invent regime. Most Open Source projects and many standards committees simply don't have the funds to bring that to court. First-to-file removes the opportunity for the applicant to perjure in this way, and makes it so much less likely that the question would have to be litigated.
They can do everything you are afraid of today, but they can pre-date their invention by 364 days, so that it is even harder for you to prove that you sent an email disclosing this particular invention before they "invented" it.
So, I think it's better for the system to make them file their invention with a date concurrent with or after your email, rather than a year before you. You have a better chance of killing that patent.
It would be nice if public disclosure was enough to prevent someone from filing a patent, but that ignores the fact of patent thickets, in which someone patents many different (and possibly trivial) variations of what you invented. If you want to stop that, sit down and think of the variations yourself, and make a protective disclosure of them.
IMO, the system is still set up so that most of the incentives are for the bad guys, and there are little penalties for being a bad guy. This isn't the last reform bill needed.
Currently, a patent applicant can pre-date their application by 364 days and claim that they made the invention before the Open Source project, standards committee, or whatever they are eavesdropping. With first-to-file, there is no more pre-dating of inventions, so this loophole is closed and the Open Source project, standards work, etc. is more defensibly prior art.
There has been no prosecution for lying on a patent application under perjury laws since 1974, when the patent office closed its enforcement department. Lawyers sometimes get penalties if they are caught in inequitable conduct, but not the lying applicants. Thus, there was no penalty for pre-dating your invention.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps it's the opposite of synchrotron radiation?
It's already happened, when electric refrigeration replaced the tremendous worldwide industry that harvested, stored, transported, and delivered ice. It was not necessary to break the laws of physics. We got more fresh food, and people found other jobs.
The problem with infinite cheap direct energy is entropy. Energy inevitably becomes heat pollution. But good solar isn't infinite energy, and the heat is already getting here.
There isn't anything more sure than the laws of thermodynamics. As long as you live, you will never see them broken.
A coupling between light and magnetic moment would have corrolaries like light from magnetic moment - perhaps synchrotron radiation. When you see both of these things explained at the same time, then it's time to start to take this seriously. The time hasn't arrived yet.
The U.S. supported Mubarak, Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, etc. justifying that this was to keep them from allying with communists. We probably caused more evil than we cured. And then we suddenly dropped the war on communism in the '80's and made our country an economic slave of China, which still does all of the things we didn't like the communists for. But we're moving toward corporate totalitarianism ourselves, so we don't mind so much.
In retrospect, protecting ourselves from the plutocracy that has given the military its marching orders since Vietnam might have been a good idea.
The problem with Fast Breeder reactors is that they make plutonium. Great for atomic bombs, and if you don't want to develop the technology, it's still an extremely powerful chemical poison.
But it doesn't look, from here, as if Bouazizi was of the same social class as the people you're talking about.
Just google for "wikileaks libya" and there are several articles about it. The stuff in there might not seem such a big deal to an old-style Westerner, but it's almost as if it was calculated to incent a conservative Islamic.
All I can imagine is that this stuff gets passed around.
What the U.S. did with Egypt, and Europe did for Tunisia, was enrich the upper class and create a larger middle class, not eliminate poverty. The interesting thing is that the poor would not be coordinating the revolt through their Internet-connected smartphones. The enfranchised, well-fed, upper classes revolted, and before they became so poor that they had to choose between food and their net connection.
People who are having trouble affording food would already have dropped off of Facebook and Twitter. They would not be making heavy use of the Internet from their smartphones.
I've been to Tunisia. The folks who had social networking were in Carthage and Tunis, and lived at the French standard. The hungry folks haven't just become hungry recently.
There always has to be someone to throw the first stone, and that often is a suicidal action. But, unfortunately, there isn't a shortage of people who kill themselves or others in colorful ways because there is nothing else they can think to do when they feel wronged. The 200 before him didn't have the desired effect. That he did does not mean that his action was different in some way, it means that people were ready.
Lots of people have been killed in the various revolts, too. I am not saying he was at all strategic or understood potential outcomes. But the world might be a better place, as long as these countries don't get fundamentalist governments.
It just doesn't seem fair.
I had an eye exam today, and would test positive for cocaine from the eye dilation drops. I eat poppy seed bagels and thus might test positive for opiates. And so on. People who are subject to those tests must live in constant fear.
If you were an animator or technical director at Pixar, you could expect to live there during production. The film has to be done on time, you can't miss the Christmas season, etc. I saw many families bring dinner to Pixar almost every evening so that they could eat together, as mommy or daddy wasn't coming home until really late. I was in studio tools, not production, and thus was allowed to have a normal life - and seeing what happened to the production folks, I never wanted to be a technical director.
The pay was OK, but not great, and for technical folks the attribution was something you might have to slo-mo your VCR to see. There were 20 people who wanted a job standing behind every one that actually had a job in film, so there was no incentive for studios to pay better.
At the time (it may be better now) the tools were the result of 30 years of evolution, and you had to know about 30 languages to be a TD.
I've found my involvement in Open Source to be a lot more fulfilling.
Bruce
Well, I felt that in the 80's we should have changed to testing them on ASCII :-) But in the spirit of the Morse Code test, the FCC would probably have required EBCDIC.
It's not dying out any longer. We're heading toward having 700,000 U.S. hams due to the final elimination of the code test (you're welcome) and the fact that it's technically getting more fun due to software radio, etc. That's more than we've had in a very long time.
it's here.
We've seen time and time again that the public-safety services are not themselves able to provide sufficient communications operators to handle an emergency, and that they aren't able to improvise communications systems to meet the needs of an emergency that takes out infrastructure. That's what hams are for. One of the things they do with that spectrum is build and practice their own systems, so that in an emergency they are ready.
And let's not forget all of the technical advances that come from Amateur Radio, and its unique uses in education - how else can individuals work with space communications, software-defined-radio, etc. All of the other options are company-controlled.
In California, we already have a problem on those frequencies due to the PAVE-PAWS system at Beale Air Force Base out by Yuba City. Surprisingly, it can receive hams in the San Francisco Bay area - on a UHF band where I wouldn't expect that distance - and we have had to reduce power on most of the repeaters in that band to protect the military's space-warning services. If the band were to be sold, it would not be available for commercial users in much of California.
But we have a right to be sick of all of the folks who look at our frequencies with dollar signs in their eyes.
Yes, but that's perjuring themselves to the court rather than the patent office, and judges are very much more likely to bring perjury charges and the peril to the perjurer is substantial. Also, it puts the burden of proof on the patent holder. And the patent holder would have to show that the material was not published, but was made available to that particular party in some way.
I don't think so, because this way you have much better proof of prior art that can be used to invalidate the patent. Before, it was much harder than just comparing dates.
There are many problems with non-practicing entities. But this particular problem is not unique to non-practicing entities. One example is in Jacobsen v. Katzer, where the patent-holder, a practicing business, was alleged to have filed a continuation application using information from an Open Source project, and disclaimed his patent when it came time for the court to examine it.
Sure, Europe has its trolls, but this particular bad law made the situation even worse in the U.S.
Yes. But unfortunately that doesn't help to defend Open Source from patents.
Saying that losing the patent is a penalty for a perjurious filing is like saying that having to return a stolen good is a penalty for theft. Crimes are deterred by the peril to the criminal, which must be more than simple redress. 18 USC 1001 offers a fine and 5 years imprisonment. It's on the books, just not enforced for a generation.
I don't think you are considering the cost and difficulty of arguing precedence over a pre-dated application in a first-to-invent regime. Most Open Source projects and many standards committees simply don't have the funds to bring that to court. First-to-file removes the opportunity for the applicant to perjure in this way, and makes it so much less likely that the question would have to be litigated.
They can do everything you are afraid of today, but they can pre-date their invention by 364 days, so that it is even harder for you to prove that you sent an email disclosing this particular invention before they "invented" it.
So, I think it's better for the system to make them file their invention with a date concurrent with or after your email, rather than a year before you. You have a better chance of killing that patent.
It would be nice if public disclosure was enough to prevent someone from filing a patent, but that ignores the fact of patent thickets, in which someone patents many different (and possibly trivial) variations of what you invented. If you want to stop that, sit down and think of the variations yourself, and make a protective disclosure of them.
IMO, the system is still set up so that most of the incentives are for the bad guys, and there are little penalties for being a bad guy. This isn't the last reform bill needed.
Currently, a patent applicant can pre-date their application by 364 days and claim that they made the invention before the Open Source project, standards committee, or whatever they are eavesdropping. With first-to-file, there is no more pre-dating of inventions, so this loophole is closed and the Open Source project, standards work, etc. is more defensibly prior art.
There has been no prosecution for lying on a patent application under perjury laws since 1974, when the patent office closed its enforcement department. Lawyers sometimes get penalties if they are caught in inequitable conduct, but not the lying applicants. Thus, there was no penalty for pre-dating your invention.