Another way of putting it (with limitation as always): are ISP like public roads? If not, then highway owners can block certain brands of cars or limit them to 1 lane. Or free to choose to interface with an undesirable highway competitor by limiting the interconnection to 1 lane on they side vs the 4 lanes that are required (and that the competitor has already built). Which highway will have more leverage, and be able to force their terms on all other highway contractors? And when that happens, the will be a lot of great roads to certain places, and incredible traffic (or no connection at all) to other unfavored locations (like certain cinemas, certain plants, certain cities, certain car dealers, etc).
WOuld that make the economy great? Wow, we'll have great roads to places we wouldn't have gone in the first place, and crappy roads to very promising and desirable places. If you contro, here people can go easily, you control the economy.
>Do you really think that foreign policy should revolve around your ego?
It revolves arround the ego of all people in the US. Manipulated quite a bit, but still your egos drive you policies (or you corporation egos, now that "virtual humans" have more power than humans).
His point was that this guy was just as you until he killed 31. So you can't be sure you are not like him. You simply can't, unless you are so happy, and appreciate your and other people life a lot. And that includes people from Irak, from Africa and the other regions as well. It also means your neighbors, your enemies (in the sense that they are people just like you), and just life in general.
The point is that the vast majority of you should NOT have those impulses in the first place, and you are insane for not think about that for just a millisecond. But you could.
Higher class girls like lower class guys, with an attitude. And the car doesn't mean anything. All it can do is compensate for the idiot you may be, and that means they are after the confort...or the money. I don't like those girls (which ironically, they happen to be the girls that are "nice ass, very low class"). That's my opinion though, based on experience (correlation...I don't care about causation here:-)
> I'm talking about the [few] cases when I've > become very close to the girl, and the next > logical step would be to date.
Eh? You have to date from minute 1 to 10. If you spend more time, you are ruining your chances. And what are you doing talking about religion even BEFORE you had a first date?
- Doom had realtime multiplayer capabilities (maybe the first realtime game with 3D surroundings), and could be played over a modem - Doom had "pseudo realist" visuals and textures (Wolftein looked like a Cartoon). The visual experience was truly different
But it doesn't matter, it was "Id" that did this...so we are talking about what was more merritable.
The list is not about "popular" games per se. Dune II was popular, though. I remember playing with many friends. Warcraft was not orders of magnitude more popular. And decidedly lacking any innovation except for a good implementation mixed with humor and fantasy.
Furthermore, I believe God does not elevate you, doing the right things can get you closer to god or the essense, and it's so great that there you have "heaven". If you do the "wrong things" (whatever are different from the essense) get you further away. Nobody is pushing you or rewarding you, but yourself. The difference being that God does not "help", but merely share you a bit of conciousness, and you go were you want from there.
>My beliefs are shaped by my experiences, and observations.
And so are my experiences and my observations...I think you are not looking hard enough, and that doesn't mean Catholics are right, or Jew, or Mexican Chamanes, but that there _is_ something else you are connected to, and that you can experience. Try medidation, or something that looks inside you, if you do it with a heart, you may notice something.
There is a lot of symbolism in religion. And after time passes people abuse it for power, prestige, money and many other things, just as Coca Cola exploits the fact that we can feel good after drinking that special and unique beverage. That does not mean God exists, but proving abuses does not prove God does not exist, nor that we could not know about "He", "It", "Him", "That" or "This".
Now, nobody has to convince you. If you look inside, you can find a bit. Or if you look hard enough, you can see a smile that is very different from others, which seems so much at peace, that you would like to feel like that person. But if he tries to explain, he will never convince you, and you'll never believe him.
We'd still not understand what conciuosness is then... we'd just be fast machines trying things out...cool, a possible outcome. And many not a likely one (ie: maybe the hard part is not having computing capacity, or, in other words, why software would make a computer "inteligent" supposing you had x100000 the processing power we have now? Do we know such software...a software that takes time, but is like a human?)
Replicating the part that translates an audio stream into text is very hard, but not the intelligent or difficult part. It's like reverse engineering a clumsy protocol. Knowing what the message "MEANS", is the hard part. When we hear a sound, we can identify the source, why the sound was made, what it means, and if it's a person talking, how he is feeling and what is the intent. As long as it produces the desired results. So it is an advance, but the easiest one. The difficult part is making sense of everything.
AI probably requires us to understand what is happening at a deeper level. To produce an intelligent being we'll provably need to understand how consciousness operates. A program monitoring and orchestrating other programs, going to the details, looking at the grand picture, and monitoring itself. You may agree we need to understand ourselves a little better before that happens.
>The reality is this: The population density of the New World was incredibly low compared to Europe.
Only if you believe 19 to 22 million people, in just part of what is now known as Mexico, was low density compared to anything. After 60 years, there where only 2 million natives left.
>We should also not give special privileges to Mexico over China or India or Brazil.
Why not? Who ever said everything was the same? You are simplifing the equation. Mexico and the US are good parts, and in many ways help themselves. They are close, which has advantages. Part's of the border are artificial. Some of the US states were Mexican, and have Mexican traditions. I am only giving some example (which may be not great, but I am not Mexican so...:).
Laws has to make sense and favour the people making those laws. The problem with economics is that reality is much more complex, and while economics can tell you what *will* happen if you do this or that, in a simplified short term way, it should say nothing about what *is best* for the people inside a country.
My dad bought me a computer when I was 8. I used it to play. Afterwards, I become a little more interested. I learned a bit of english (learning to read well), and found a lot of interesting thing to do. Also, having a laptop as a child at 8 means not that much. Having a laptop in a poor country makes a difference. I't will become a status thing. Kids will get interested. And as with books, many will put them to no good use, but the ones that do, will be able to get interested than something else than soap opera, that's the most common content on television, at least in latinamerica.
The only thing that could happen is companies, politicians and some factions of the education syndicates boicoting the effort.
I agree on the usual way the term is used...and also...
>Those who sacrifice, save and work hard should be rewarded.
Believe that there are many people that fall in that category that are extremely poor. And there are many in that category that are rewarded in spite of not falling in the category.
If you believe hard work and willingness to save is the measure, the fight to make it happen, or change your assumptions.
I am all about sexual educations, and choosing to have children. The problem is the developeed countries don't want kids in general, and the poor countries to want. People in the past had childs to survive (famrs, etc).
Having very few opportunities in life is much better that naving none. And yes, it would be cool if one could ask possible future childs "Do you want to be born although you probably will not be able to be very rich"...I would have chosen yes, and might have tryed my best. We cannot ask the question. The "idiots" are putting more children, that may not be good, but smarter, educated, richer people putting no children at all, or less than the input (that is just 1 child), is also stupid. Ok, they don't care? So they don't want to have children, and do not want "idiots" to have children. That's fine, it's their opinion.
Just a side comment, option 1, disaloowing patents does not preclude innnovators for selling a trade secret. if I find a way to make nails 20% cheaper, I can visit each of the nail manufacturers, and do a contract where they have to keep the method secret. The goverment helps in enforcing contract law, and manufacturers that do not want to buy the innovation, are free to try everything in their power to find that and other ways to lower production costs.
If a nail manufacturer itself finds a way to lower costs 10%, they can either keep it secret and not sell the invention (same as issuing a patent and not licensing it, or putting a ridicully high price), or sell it to competitors (for a price between 1%-99% of the expected savings, and the competitors can accept this, or they can reinvent the wheel, if economically feasible or if they want to take the risk).
If the cost of researching the innovation (risk adjusted) is lower than the expected savings against the "buy patent" option, only then they will reasearch it. The market remains free, it still more efficient (will STILL be cheaper, because you only research when it makes sense, or when the secret is kept secret because the competitor wants it to remain a secret). And finally, there would be no less innovation at all, but cheaper innovation. Also, there would be more jobs for innovators, not because of inventing the weel, but because research would be ecouraged anytime a company is selling innovations at a price far higher than reasonable, that not reflect research costs.
As it is now, companies patent part of solutions to block competitors from competing, or to extort manufacturers disproportionaly, because infringing a single patent will force a manufacturer to stop selling the entire solution or pay ridiculous sums of money that bear no relation to research costs. That is, patent holders get to decide what the patent is worth based on the entire benefit the solutions is bringing to society, and it doesn't matter if the manufacturer read the patent beforehand, or figured out the solution themselves.
>What you propose just results is massive duplication of research.
It results in VERY selective duplication. If you want the "innovation" from a competitor, you can negotiate a deal. A better way of seeing these, is turning Patents into a secription of trade secrets that are avaible for sale. For example, "How to make Coca Cola that Tastes 100% like Coca Cola"...If you want to buy the secret information, you have to contact the owner. If you do not, you can try to produce something that tastes the same all that you want.
What you don't realice is that if that trade secrets can be sold and licensed, and that in many cases the "monopoly only for 20 years" many times end up costing the economy several dozen times more money (ie: less wellfare for everyone) than if people where allowed to reinvent the wheel (each and every time a problem is not that hard to solve and that the current price of the information is much higher than that cost).
We do not need to promote companies that base their income in solving problems inneficiently or that want to profit beyond a market driven, "fair" price. If the problem is hard to solve, and the licensing price is right, there would be no incentive to reinvent the wheel. With current patent systems we end up reinventing the wheel, because we cannot use wheels on fair terms (with a patent, you can block ANYONE from using the innovation, just put a ridiculous price for the invention, and you are forced to reinvent the WHEEL, and sometimes you are just barred from using the innovation at all, as there is no alternative implementation...for example, take the wheel...circular shape is the only one that makes sense).
They invest because it saves them money. Trade secrets are better than invent once, monopolize forever for the economy. Patents should be reworked to only allow companies to sell their IP to however wants to use it leaving everyone else free to reinvent the wheel...that is, if someone wants to read the patent/implementation, and only THEN, they will request the patent information / details needed and pay the royalties. If the "invention" is trivial, it's better to not buy the patent and reinvent the wheel (even enhancing it). If it's very hard to guess how to do what the patent achieves, and the patent licensing scheme is right. There could be multiple pantents for one task, all independant, each patent holder having the right to sell the implementation at whatever price they want. Patents public descriptions would describe what the patent solves, and why would you want to buy the patent, but never how the problem is solved at all. If you want more information you could talk to the patent holder for more info or to license the patent. If you, as an inventor, do not like that, then keep it as a trade secret and sell the "innovation" privately. That is, avoid monopolicing innovation, while promoting innovation.
Reverse engineering and implementation should be disallowed, except for means of interoperation or intercommunication. Interoperation must be seen as a way to communicate with another solution or system (that may or may not do the same), as an undocumented "protocol" or a middle layer between your product/solutions and the competitors solution and it's add ons or related subsolutions. APIS, contracts, _formats_ (the advantage of having comapies monopolicing formats far outweights the benefit from having universally accesible formats), protocols (implicit or explicit) and languages themselves should never be patented or even copywritable. We do not need nor want to encourage business models based on monopolicing communications or interoperation.
What we now see is things published many don't need but have to pay for in the case of litigation (which the couldn't even foresee), and engineers being adviced to NOT look at others patents for risk of tainting. Changing it the other way arround, turning patents into standarized "sellable trade-secrets" is one workable solution.
For apparently trivial inventions that can't be keep as secrets (like the wheel), then we are better of without those. These inventions are most of the times just pure luck, so we'll still be having most of these available for all society.
Depends, we humans can detect black stuff from non black. What you can't do is base the detection on a signal (photons) being bounced back. Of course, black paint is limited to what our eye can detect. Black surfaces can't hide temperature diferences.
Slashdot Mirror
Another way of putting it (with limitation as always): are ISP like public roads? If not, then highway owners can block certain brands of cars or limit them to 1 lane. Or free to choose to interface with an undesirable highway competitor by limiting the interconnection to 1 lane on they side vs the 4 lanes that are required (and that the competitor has already built). Which highway will have more leverage, and be able to force their terms on all other highway contractors? And when that happens, the will be a lot of great roads to certain places, and incredible traffic (or no connection at all) to other unfavored locations (like certain cinemas, certain plants, certain cities, certain car dealers, etc).
WOuld that make the economy great? Wow, we'll have great roads to places we wouldn't have gone in the first place, and crappy roads to very promising and desirable places. If you contro, here people can go easily, you control the economy.
>And this is meaningful?
Yes.
>Do you really think that foreign policy should revolve around your ego?
It revolves arround the ego of all people in the US. Manipulated quite a bit, but still your egos drive you policies (or you corporation egos, now that "virtual humans" have more power than humans).
His point was that this guy was just as you until he killed 31. So you can't be sure you are not like him. You simply can't, unless you are so happy, and appreciate your and other people life a lot. And that includes people from Irak, from Africa and the other regions as well. It also means your neighbors, your enemies (in the sense that they are people just like you), and just life in general.
The point is that the vast majority of you should NOT have those impulses in the first place, and you are insane for not think about that for just a millisecond. But you could.
Higher class girls like lower class guys, with an attitude. And the car doesn't mean anything. All it can do is compensate for the idiot you may be, and that means they are after the confort...or the money. I don't like those girls (which ironically, they happen to be the girls that are "nice ass, very low class"). That's my opinion though, based on experience (correlation...I don't care about causation here :-)
> I'm talking about the [few] cases when I've
> become very close to the girl, and the next
> logical step would be to date.
Eh? You have to date from minute 1 to 10. If you
spend more time, you are ruining your chances.
And what are you doing talking about religion
even BEFORE you had a first date?
The differences being:
- Doom had realtime multiplayer capabilities (maybe the first realtime game with 3D surroundings), and could be played over a modem
- Doom had "pseudo realist" visuals and textures (Wolftein looked like a Cartoon). The visual experience was truly different
But it doesn't matter, it was "Id" that did this...so we are talking about what was more merritable.
The list is not about "popular" games per se. Dune II was popular, though. I remember playing with many friends. Warcraft was not orders of magnitude more popular. And decidedly lacking any innovation except for a good implementation mixed with humor and fantasy.
Furthermore, I believe God does not elevate you, doing the right things can get you closer to god or the essense, and it's so great that there you have "heaven". If you do the "wrong things" (whatever are different from the essense) get you further away. Nobody is pushing you or rewarding you, but yourself. The difference being that God does not "help", but merely share you a bit of conciousness, and you go were you want from there.
>My beliefs are shaped by my experiences, and observations.
And so are my experiences and my observations...I think you are not looking hard enough, and that doesn't mean Catholics are right, or Jew, or Mexican Chamanes, but that there _is_ something else you are connected to, and that you can experience. Try medidation, or something that looks inside you, if you do it with a heart, you may notice something.
There is a lot of symbolism in religion. And after time passes people abuse it for power, prestige, money and many other things, just as Coca Cola exploits the fact that we can feel good after drinking that special and unique beverage. That does not mean God exists, but proving abuses does not prove God does not exist, nor that we could not know about "He", "It", "Him", "That" or "This".
Now, nobody has to convince you. If you look inside, you can find a bit. Or if you look hard enough, you can see a smile that is very different from others, which seems so much at peace, that you would like to feel like that person. But if he tries to explain, he will never convince you, and you'll never believe him.
We'd still not understand what conciuosness is then ... we'd just be fast machines trying things out...cool, a possible outcome. And many not a likely one (ie: maybe the hard part is not having computing capacity, or, in other words, why software would make a computer "inteligent" supposing you had x100000 the processing power we have now? Do we know such software...a software that takes time, but is like a human?)
I think we don't know yet
Replicating the part that translates an audio stream into text is very hard, but not the intelligent or difficult part. It's like reverse engineering a clumsy protocol. Knowing what the message "MEANS", is the hard part. When we hear a sound, we can identify the source, why the sound was made, what it means, and if it's a person talking, how he is feeling and what is the intent. As long as it produces the desired results. So it is an advance, but the easiest one. The difficult part is making sense of everything.
AI probably requires us to understand what is happening at a deeper level. To produce an intelligent being we'll provably need to understand how consciousness operates. A program monitoring and orchestrating other programs, going to the details, looking at the grand picture, and monitoring itself. You may agree we need to understand ourselves a little better before that happens.
>The reality is this: The population density of the New World was incredibly low compared to Europe.
Only if you believe 19 to 22 million people, in just part of what is now known as Mexico, was low density compared to anything. After 60 years, there where only 2 million natives left.
>We should also not give special privileges to Mexico over China or India or Brazil.
... :).
Why not? Who ever said everything was the same? You are simplifing the equation. Mexico and the US are good parts, and in many ways help themselves. They are close, which has advantages. Part's of the border are artificial. Some of the US states were Mexican, and have Mexican traditions. I am only giving some example (which may be not great, but I am not Mexican so
Laws has to make sense and favour the people making those laws. The problem with economics is that reality is much more complex, and while economics can tell you what *will* happen if you do this or that, in a simplified short term way, it should say nothing about what *is best* for the people inside a country.
My dad bought me a computer when I was 8. I used it to play. Afterwards, I become a little more interested. I learned a bit of english (learning to read well), and found a lot of interesting thing to do. Also, having a laptop as a child at 8 means not that much. Having a laptop in a poor country makes a difference. I't will become a status thing. Kids will get interested. And as with books, many will put them to no good use, but the ones that do, will be able to get interested than something else than soap opera, that's the most common content on television, at least in latinamerica.
The only thing that could happen is companies, politicians and some factions of the education syndicates boicoting the effort.
Mh, you live in Soviet Rusia?
You can do that math because in "America"...everything has a price.
I agree on the usual way the term is used...and also ...
>Those who sacrifice, save and work hard should be rewarded.
Believe that there are many people that fall in that category that are extremely poor. And there are many in that category that are rewarded in spite of not falling in the category.
If you believe hard work and willingness to save is the measure, the fight to make it happen, or change your assumptions.
I am all about sexual educations, and choosing to have children. The problem is the developeed countries don't want kids in general, and the poor countries to want. People in the past had childs to survive (famrs, etc).
Fede
Having very few opportunities in life is much better that naving none. And yes, it would be cool if one could ask possible future childs "Do you want to be born although you probably will not be able to be very rich"...I would have chosen yes, and might have tryed my best. We cannot ask the question. The "idiots" are putting more children, that may not be good, but smarter, educated, richer people putting no children at all, or less than the input (that is just 1 child), is also stupid. Ok, they don't care? So they don't want to have children, and do not want "idiots" to have children. That's fine, it's their opinion.
Just a side comment, option 1, disaloowing patents does not preclude innnovators for selling a trade secret. if I find a way to make nails 20% cheaper, I can visit each of the nail manufacturers, and do a contract where they have to keep the method secret. The goverment helps in enforcing contract law, and manufacturers that do not want to buy the innovation, are free to try everything in their power to find that and other ways to lower production costs.
If a nail manufacturer itself finds a way to lower costs 10%, they can either keep it secret and not sell the invention (same as issuing a patent and not licensing it, or putting a ridicully high price), or sell it to competitors (for a price between 1%-99% of the expected savings, and the competitors can accept this, or they can reinvent the wheel, if economically feasible or if they want to take the risk).
If the cost of researching the innovation (risk adjusted) is lower than the expected savings against the "buy patent" option, only then they will reasearch it. The market remains free, it still more efficient (will STILL be cheaper, because you only research when it makes sense, or when the secret is kept secret because the competitor wants it to remain a secret). And finally, there would be no less innovation at all, but cheaper innovation. Also, there would be more jobs for innovators, not because of inventing the weel, but because research would be ecouraged anytime a company is selling innovations at a price far higher than reasonable, that not reflect research costs.
As it is now, companies patent part of solutions to block competitors from competing, or to extort manufacturers disproportionaly, because infringing a single patent will force a manufacturer to stop selling the entire solution or pay ridiculous sums of money that bear no relation to research costs. That is, patent holders get to decide what the patent is worth based on the entire benefit the solutions is bringing to society, and it doesn't matter if the manufacturer read the patent beforehand, or figured out the solution themselves.
>What you propose just results is massive duplication of research.
It results in VERY selective duplication. If you want the "innovation" from a competitor, you can negotiate a deal. A better way of seeing these, is turning Patents into a secription of trade secrets that are avaible for sale. For example, "How to make Coca Cola that Tastes 100% like Coca Cola"...If you want to buy the secret information, you have to contact the owner. If you do not, you can try to produce something that tastes the same all that you want.
What you don't realice is that if that trade secrets can be sold and licensed, and that in many cases the "monopoly only for 20 years" many times end up costing the economy several dozen times more money (ie: less wellfare for everyone) than if people where allowed to reinvent the wheel (each and every time a problem is not that hard to solve and that the current price of the information is much higher than that cost).
We do not need to promote companies that base their income in solving problems inneficiently or that want to profit beyond a market driven, "fair" price. If the problem is hard to solve, and the licensing price is right, there would be no incentive to reinvent the wheel. With current patent systems we end up reinventing the wheel, because we cannot use wheels on fair terms (with a patent, you can block ANYONE from using the innovation, just put a ridiculous price for the invention, and you are forced to reinvent the WHEEL, and sometimes you are just barred from using the innovation at all, as there is no alternative implementation...for example, take the wheel...circular shape is the only one that makes sense).
They invest because it saves them money. Trade secrets are better than invent once, monopolize forever for the economy. Patents should be reworked to only allow companies to sell their IP to however wants to use it leaving everyone else free to reinvent the wheel...that is, if someone wants to read the patent/implementation, and only THEN, they will request the patent information / details needed and pay the royalties. If the "invention" is trivial, it's better to not buy the patent and reinvent the wheel (even enhancing it). If it's very hard to guess how to do what the patent achieves, and the patent licensing scheme is right. There could be multiple pantents for one task, all independant, each patent holder having the right to sell the implementation at whatever price they want. Patents public descriptions would describe what the patent solves, and why would you want to buy the patent, but never how the problem is solved at all. If you want more information you could talk to the patent holder for more info or to license the patent. If you, as an inventor, do not like that, then keep it as a trade secret and sell the "innovation" privately. That is, avoid monopolicing innovation, while promoting innovation.
Reverse engineering and implementation should be disallowed, except for means of interoperation or intercommunication. Interoperation must be seen as a way to communicate with another solution or system (that may or may not do the same), as an undocumented "protocol" or a middle layer between your product/solutions and the competitors solution and it's add ons or related subsolutions. APIS, contracts, _formats_ (the advantage of having comapies monopolicing formats far outweights the benefit from having universally accesible formats), protocols (implicit or explicit) and languages themselves should never be patented or even copywritable. We do not need nor want to encourage business models based on monopolicing communications or interoperation.
What we now see is things published many don't need but have to pay for in the case of litigation (which the couldn't even foresee), and engineers being adviced to NOT look at others patents for risk of tainting. Changing it the other way arround, turning patents into standarized "sellable trade-secrets" is one workable solution.
For apparently trivial inventions that can't be keep as secrets (like the wheel), then we are better of without those. These inventions are most of the times just pure luck, so we'll still be having most of these available for all society.
Depends, we humans can detect black stuff from non black. What you can't do is base the detection on a signal (photons) being bounced back. Of course, black paint is limited to what our eye can detect. Black surfaces can't hide temperature diferences.