I can't even begin to tell how many ways this comment is a brain fart, but here are some of the high points;
1. Get your facts straight, the oldest U.S. patent is from 1790, but that only because of the age of the U.S. central government. The oldest patent in North America goes back to 1641 and there are Greek writings of registered disclosure of invention going back to about 500 B.C., so yes, patents have been here for a wee bit.
2. Nobody said get rid of patents. At least in this culture, the original purpose of patents was to spur invention by protecting an inventors rights to his own creation for some fair period of time, allowing to benefit from his creativity and productivity. These laws were instrumental to the explosion of ideas and technologies that made the United States an industrial and economic force in the 19th century.
3. Since then, the patent has been hijacked to build ever larger and higher fortifications from which to control greater bodies of IP, and the free flow of ideas and invention. Existing patent law is antithetical to its original purpose and is becoming an increasing impediment to invention, innovation and technological advance.
4. Therefore, when extremely bright, articulate and educated people discuss the dilemmas facing society and speculate on possible solutions that address the needs and wants of corporate America vs. the needs and wants of the human race, you might want to refrain from painting everyone with the idiot brush. The only one who actually ends up looking stupid is the guy holding the brush.
5. Microsoft paying the patent trolls with what amounts to folding money for Bill Gates, functions out of simple expedience, its easier feeding the trolls than spending ten times as much on the court costs. The trolls only ask for what they know they can get way with... think of mosquitoes.
6. Minecraft may or may not have a superb chance of wining their case, the point here is that they will not be bullied or threatened by a blood sucking parasite, and I for one hope the troll get's it head stomp.
I don't know if you get any of this, it may be beyond you. There is a time when the right thing transcends the easy thing, I applaud the makers of Minecraft for doing the right thing, and I would love to see permanent changes written to the body of patent law to remove the growing flood of idiot patents plaguing society.
Add to that, cultures which trend to hold grudges for... I dunno, two or three thousand years... duh. None of the nationalities you mention above have anything that even vaguely resembles "Jihad". These folks aren't fighting for resources... they are fighting because they think their God is telling them to. On top of the astute observation in the parent post. You can't intelligently make these generalizations.
And you can trace that money straight back through the Bin Laden family, and oil money paid from your and my pockets at the gas pumps. If we were so all fired committed to ending all this nastiness, someone would actually address the fact that our friends in the middle east are at the root of these problems. Instead we get this multimedia passion play of smoke and mirrors designed to confuse and distract us all, while our collective pockets are emptied and our rights are eliminated. Welcome to the 21rst century.
Go watch the movie "Charlie Wilson's War", (yes its fictionalized, but surprisingly accurate in its portrayal of the historical events) we spent over a billion dollars arming "The Mujaheddin" to smack Russia upside the head (and line the pockets of our war industries), and all we had to do, to ensure a lasting stability in the region was follow up with 10-20 million dollars to provide schools and infrastructure for the displaces Afghani freedom fighters. The people of Afghanistan would have been forever in our debt and with modern schools the country would have transformed over night into a democratic ally. Instead, we said "Fsck Off" Saudi Arabia provided support and religious schools through the Bin Laden family and indoctrinated a generation of Afghani leaders into the strictest and most radical of Muslim orthodoxies. Travel 25 years, and we have the world as it exists today. You do know, the only planes flying on 9/11 were the planes transporting the Bin Laden family out of the country, and that they are very close friends of the entire Bush family? Does nobody even bother to fact check any more? Jeez. They just bald faced lie to us, and for the most-part, the nation just swallows, rubs its collective tummies and asks for more... really sad.
WOW, repeat after me... Too much coffee... I'm not going to even touch the bigotry... like there aren't several million peaceful and productive Muslim's in the U.S. living theirs lives and not bothering ANYBODY. So let's just address the corporate thing. Can't speak for the guy before you, but if you knew anything about the region and its people, you could pretty much trace this whole mess back through a century and a half of corporations (mostly British in the beginning) screwing up the cultural development of the middle east for industrial and colonial purposes. I can tell reading isn't your first choice of entertainment or information (sorry, FOX News doesn't count as a source of information)... Let's try this, ever see the movie "Lawrence of Arabia" you know, arguable one of the best film ever made? Remember Larry is English? If you had any hint of history under your belt, you wouldn't even be making the statement above.
The entire mess with Islam, is a logical progression of disasters that blossoms fully with oil companies succeeded in exploiting the inhabitants of the middle-east. The social and religious impacts of sudden wealth, the conflicts arising from the invention of the State of Israel, and the protracted use of wealth by Saudi Arabia (our good buddies in the region) to export the most violent and radical of Islamic faiths around the world (and we let them, because they give us oil), has lead to the geopolitical landscape you see today. Both Gulf wars were about oil. The failed attempt to turn Iraq into an American satellite was about oil. Our current support of the infant democracy in Libya... is about, repeat after me... OIL. don't get me wrong. If we can do something genuinely decent, we absolutely will, as long as we can get the goodies while we're at it. So, let's recap. If you're talking about American foreign policy, and you can't see the exchange of currency or corporate interest, you're not looking hard enough. Thanks for playing, please take a parting gift on the way out.
Store your data on ROMs. Include a VERY simple ROM Reading device that emits a serial signal. Include a small paper document that explains the ROMs, the ROM Reader, and how to properly hook it up to a serial data input line on any digital device. Provide basic information of data format, start with an ASCII character table, then simple text files describing in technical detail whatever other file types are on the ROMs including images, video and or sound files. Your ROMs could be electronic, laser etched glass with a metal coating, hell, cuneiform on clay tablets, choose a technology that's nonvolatile and sports the data density you like and have at it. Oh, yeah, mark your ROMs so that they're read in proper order... don't make future readers have to guess about anything.
You know, seeing as this question crops up repeatedly every so often, it would be a great idea to have someone come up with a nonvolatile storage medium that is high density, standard, and registered among a number of international governments and standards agencies, so future generations can access these things at some future time without scratching their heads and asking WTF. Of course if as a species, considering we have a bugger all hard time ensuring the future air is fit to breath and water fit to drink, we probably aren't gong to make sure that future generations get the pleasure of seeing reruns of "Gun Smoke".
You may also want to include a paper document that explains human based data starting with our math. Just in case we extinct ourselves, and the folks who open the capsule have zero human context. Just a thought. Don't forget to use acid free paper.
Actually, it should be possible to reduce 3-D to a simple symbolic description that would be easily transmitted over a thin client, and let all the heavy processing happen on the local machine. If you think about it, all human perceived 3D is just two simultaneous 2D images. With sufficient bandwidth it wouldn't even matter what side the rendering was taking place, and by the time HTML6 rolls around... virtual processor will be cheap and plentiful indeed.
You seem to be missing the strong likelihood that, by the time there's an HTML6 (if current trends continue), the computing device of choice will be a phone, it'll use a multi-terabyte micro-SD card, have 8 cores and outperform your current desktop, do real-time speech recognition for data entry, and have an HD projector on it side, for when you aren't using your HD-Real-media glasses. The only folks with PCs, will be gamers and researchers running on monitored fixed service lines (when the phone companies have squished all the ISPs and all network access looks like today's phone contracts), and government oversight will be the order of the day.
How much you wanna bet my crystal ball is closer than yours?
I think the specific definition of "Living Standard" in this context represents a standard that can effectively duck and weave as they throw assorted crap at it. The idea of a more passive "Dead" standard just taking it in the face (as it were) seems unsportsman-like and vaguely cruel (certainly less entertaining!)
One interesting possibility, once machines like Watson coalesce into something resembling a functional intelligence, we can task them with keeping our privacy from other human beings. Since most of the stupid stuff would be done by other human beings, we can say to the machine, only pop someone out of anonymity if there is a greater than 95% probability that they are committing a violent crime. That way, for the rest of us folks, though we live in a transparent society, idiot corporations and governments can't use us indiscriminately.
The alternative is to adopt draconian laws protecting privacy, that will certainly have a cooling effect on a great deal of technological advancement. We can have our cake and eat it too. We just need to take the incentive to power and wealth out of controlling and manipulating the herd.
Its even worse. If you didn't opt to have Google delete your history recently, they have every search you've ever done, every item you stored in Google Docs, Every email sent through Gmail. Their terms and agreements allows them to scan and extract all useful information from everything they touch, and that means everything you've bought through Gmail, all your friends and family through your correspondences, a dossier of information that makes what the IRS, FBI, and CIA combined, look like a supermarket throwaway.
You want to search without becoming another data point, try startpage.com. Its a completely anonymized front end for Google searches that makes trace back to you physically impossible. It also asks if you want your searches through its secure interface... by all means, yes. The time to begin protecting your data from prying corporations and governments is long past. Preserve what little privacy you have left, or stand naked before people who would use you poorly.
Did you somehow miss the point that he was particularly talking about restricting this behavior from the government and corporations? It would appear, he already read your book. And listened.
You know you're absolutely right... its not like there are any guys out there stalking women, or that someone fresh out on parole for rape charge wouldn't want to be able to find out where that pretty girl he just got a shot of on his cell phone lives. Please engage your brain before opening your mouth. Just because you don't care if everyone on the planet knows where you live and what you do, doesn't mean that we shouldn't be protecting people's privacy for a whole host of good reasons. Most of all, the government, shouldn't be able to surveille you at a whim. The one place where regulations are a damn good thing... regulations on government power. So I tend to agree... Senator Frankin has a point whether your fer'im or agin'im.
I think I see your problem. He was on PAROLE for having committed a robbery armed with two weapons. He fled because he was drunk, because he knew that being caught driving under the influence would be a breach of his parole agreement. Though he did reach speeds of 115 mph, he was in fact unarmed (not counting the car he drove recklessly.) The LAPD reported that he was under the influences of PCP, that he was violent, aggressive and that they needed to taser him after he viciously attacked them. The video on the other hand showed that the officers tased him immediately on leaving the car, once on the ground, they kicked him in the head repeatedly, beat him with batons for over a minute, then tackled and cuffed him when he stopped moving. Later when his blood work came back there were no traces of PCP. Its an easy mistake to make, the way the story is written in some sources, the Parole Violation and chase get combined.
There's an old conversation about the word "Yankee". If you're in Mexico, anybody north of the border is a Yankee. If you're over the border, its someone from above the Mason-Dixon line. If you're above the Mason-Dixon line a Yankee is someone from New England. If you live in New England, you know a Yankee is some one from Maine. You go to Maine looking for a Yankee and they'll tell you its an old hard tack farmer out in the country. Finally, if you go up to Maine, find yourself an old hard-tack farmer, and ask him where you can find a Yankee? He'll tell you "Well, yuh take thet ruhd theh, noth 'bout 12 miles, till yuh come tuh the fok, n'beh right, go 'nother 8 miles till yuh get t'the end. When the ol gent with the shotgun comes out t'meetchuh, why thet's a Yankee. Eyuh."
Don't bother... your not talking to someone who even understands why science is superior to superstition. Why "Faith Based" by definition is living on fantasy island. Which isn't to say there are a whole lot of questions science ain't ever gonna answer, and for those eternal questions, Faith is absolutely the right tool. I'm just saying FAITH vs Carbon 14 is a stupid place to go. Y'all have a verse... "None are so blind..." heed it.
I broke my right ankle in a car accident in 2002. It went over $100,000. I don't know what country you live in, but a ride in an ambulance can set you back $4000 and a day in the hospital can cost up around $25,000. You don't need much more than an infected blister today to smoke a $100,000 so fast it'll give you whiplash (the cost of which to medicate, they'll add to your bill.) A frigging TUMS, antacid tablet will cost you $10 if your butt is in a semiprivate bed. A ten hour wait, get's you a 1 minute visit with an emergency room doctor, and you get a $400 bill for the privilege. Please tell the system isn't full on broken. What the heck do call an extreme case? Nosebleeds? My friend, you need to come back down onto this planet. Wherever you're living doesn't seem to be getting cable from reality.
Right, because the guys that gave you gravity and cell phones are such lying bastards and the guys burning down the planet and painting the gulf black with spilled oil have such a spotless record of honesty, responsibility and personal integrity. Scuse me, but me thinks you should address the tin foil you're sporting, before pointing at the stuff on other people's heads.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry... prior art... see the Larch
I can't even begin to tell how many ways this comment is a brain fart, but here are some of the high points;
1. Get your facts straight, the oldest U.S. patent is from 1790, but that only because of the age of the U.S. central government. The oldest patent in North America goes back to 1641 and there are Greek writings of registered disclosure of invention going back to about 500 B.C., so yes, patents have been here for a wee bit.
2. Nobody said get rid of patents. At least in this culture, the original purpose of patents was to spur invention by protecting an inventors rights to his own creation for some fair period of time, allowing to benefit from his creativity and productivity. These laws were instrumental to the explosion of ideas and technologies that made the United States an industrial and economic force in the 19th century.
3. Since then, the patent has been hijacked to build ever larger and higher fortifications from which to control greater bodies of IP, and the free flow of ideas and invention. Existing patent law is antithetical to its original purpose and is becoming an increasing impediment to invention, innovation and technological advance.
4. Therefore, when extremely bright, articulate and educated people discuss the dilemmas facing society and speculate on possible solutions that address the needs and wants of corporate America vs. the needs and wants of the human race, you might want to refrain from painting everyone with the idiot brush. The only one who actually ends up looking stupid is the guy holding the brush.
5. Microsoft paying the patent trolls with what amounts to folding money for Bill Gates, functions out of simple expedience, its easier feeding the trolls than spending ten times as much on the court costs. The trolls only ask for what they know they can get way with... think of mosquitoes.
6. Minecraft may or may not have a superb chance of wining their case, the point here is that they will not be bullied or threatened by a blood sucking parasite, and I for one hope the troll get's it head stomp.
I don't know if you get any of this, it may be beyond you. There is a time when the right thing transcends the easy thing, I applaud the makers of Minecraft for doing the right thing, and I would love to see permanent changes written to the body of patent law to remove the growing flood of idiot patents plaguing society.
Add to that, cultures which trend to hold grudges for... I dunno, two or three thousand years... duh. None of the nationalities you mention above have anything that even vaguely resembles "Jihad". These folks aren't fighting for resources... they are fighting because they think their God is telling them to. On top of the astute observation in the parent post. You can't intelligently make these generalizations.
And you can trace that money straight back through the Bin Laden family, and oil money paid from your and my pockets at the gas pumps. If we were so all fired committed to ending all this nastiness, someone would actually address the fact that our friends in the middle east are at the root of these problems. Instead we get this multimedia passion play of smoke and mirrors designed to confuse and distract us all, while our collective pockets are emptied and our rights are eliminated. Welcome to the 21rst century.
Go watch the movie "Charlie Wilson's War", (yes its fictionalized, but surprisingly accurate in its portrayal of the historical events) we spent over a billion dollars arming "The Mujaheddin" to smack Russia upside the head (and line the pockets of our war industries), and all we had to do, to ensure a lasting stability in the region was follow up with 10-20 million dollars to provide schools and infrastructure for the displaces Afghani freedom fighters. The people of Afghanistan would have been forever in our debt and with modern schools the country would have transformed over night into a democratic ally. Instead, we said "Fsck Off" Saudi Arabia provided support and religious schools through the Bin Laden family and indoctrinated a generation of Afghani leaders into the strictest and most radical of Muslim orthodoxies. Travel 25 years, and we have the world as it exists today. You do know, the only planes flying on 9/11 were the planes transporting the Bin Laden family out of the country, and that they are very close friends of the entire Bush family? Does nobody even bother to fact check any more? Jeez. They just bald faced lie to us, and for the most-part, the nation just swallows, rubs its collective tummies and asks for more... really sad.
WOW, repeat after me... Too much coffee... I'm not going to even touch the bigotry... like there aren't several million peaceful and productive Muslim's in the U.S. living theirs lives and not bothering ANYBODY. So let's just address the corporate thing. Can't speak for the guy before you, but if you knew anything about the region and its people, you could pretty much trace this whole mess back through a century and a half of corporations (mostly British in the beginning) screwing up the cultural development of the middle east for industrial and colonial purposes. I can tell reading isn't your first choice of entertainment or information (sorry, FOX News doesn't count as a source of information)... Let's try this, ever see the movie "Lawrence of Arabia" you know, arguable one of the best film ever made? Remember Larry is English? If you had any hint of history under your belt, you wouldn't even be making the statement above.
The entire mess with Islam, is a logical progression of disasters that blossoms fully with oil companies succeeded in exploiting the inhabitants of the middle-east. The social and religious impacts of sudden wealth, the conflicts arising from the invention of the State of Israel, and the protracted use of wealth by Saudi Arabia (our good buddies in the region) to export the most violent and radical of Islamic faiths around the world (and we let them, because they give us oil), has lead to the geopolitical landscape you see today. Both Gulf wars were about oil. The failed attempt to turn Iraq into an American satellite was about oil. Our current support of the infant democracy in Libya... is about, repeat after me... OIL. don't get me wrong. If we can do something genuinely decent, we absolutely will, as long as we can get the goodies while we're at it. So, let's recap. If you're talking about American foreign policy, and you can't see the exchange of currency or corporate interest, you're not looking hard enough. Thanks for playing, please take a parting gift on the way out.
Store your data on ROMs. Include a VERY simple ROM Reading device that emits a serial signal. Include a small paper document that explains the ROMs, the ROM Reader, and how to properly hook it up to a serial data input line on any digital device. Provide basic information of data format, start with an ASCII character table, then simple text files describing in technical detail whatever other file types are on the ROMs including images, video and or sound files. Your ROMs could be electronic, laser etched glass with a metal coating, hell, cuneiform on clay tablets, choose a technology that's nonvolatile and sports the data density you like and have at it. Oh, yeah, mark your ROMs so that they're read in proper order... don't make future readers have to guess about anything.
You know, seeing as this question crops up repeatedly every so often, it would be a great idea to have someone come up with a nonvolatile storage medium that is high density, standard, and registered among a number of international governments and standards agencies, so future generations can access these things at some future time without scratching their heads and asking WTF. Of course if as a species, considering we have a bugger all hard time ensuring the future air is fit to breath and water fit to drink, we probably aren't gong to make sure that future generations get the pleasure of seeing reruns of "Gun Smoke".
You may also want to include a paper document that explains human based data starting with our math. Just in case we extinct ourselves, and the folks who open the capsule have zero human context. Just a thought. Don't forget to use acid free paper.
That a tactical nuke can disrupt a picnic... this is news?
Actually, it should be possible to reduce 3-D to a simple symbolic description that would be easily transmitted over a thin client, and let all the heavy processing happen on the local machine. If you think about it, all human perceived 3D is just two simultaneous 2D images. With sufficient bandwidth it wouldn't even matter what side the rendering was taking place, and by the time HTML6 rolls around... virtual processor will be cheap and plentiful indeed.
You seem to be missing the strong likelihood that, by the time there's an HTML6 (if current trends continue), the computing device of choice will be a phone, it'll use a multi-terabyte micro-SD card, have 8 cores and outperform your current desktop, do real-time speech recognition for data entry, and have an HD projector on it side, for when you aren't using your HD-Real-media glasses. The only folks with PCs, will be gamers and researchers running on monitored fixed service lines (when the phone companies have squished all the ISPs and all network access looks like today's phone contracts), and government oversight will be the order of the day.
How much you wanna bet my crystal ball is closer than yours?
In HTML23 you'll have tags for elective genital origami or macrame! Oh, the unadulterated power!
I think the specific definition of "Living Standard" in this context represents a standard that can effectively duck and weave as they throw assorted crap at it. The idea of a more passive "Dead" standard just taking it in the face (as it were) seems unsportsman-like and vaguely cruel (certainly less entertaining!)
The standard is living and the users die... I here a soviet Russia joke coming on...
One interesting possibility, once machines like Watson coalesce into something resembling a functional intelligence, we can task them with keeping our privacy from other human beings. Since most of the stupid stuff would be done by other human beings, we can say to the machine, only pop someone out of anonymity if there is a greater than 95% probability that they are committing a violent crime. That way, for the rest of us folks, though we live in a transparent society, idiot corporations and governments can't use us indiscriminately.
The alternative is to adopt draconian laws protecting privacy, that will certainly have a cooling effect on a great deal of technological advancement. We can have our cake and eat it too. We just need to take the incentive to power and wealth out of controlling and manipulating the herd.
Good try, with terahertz scanners, they can still tell you have a mole on your left hip... at least its keeping you warm.
Its even worse. If you didn't opt to have Google delete your history recently, they have every search you've ever done, every item you stored in Google Docs, Every email sent through Gmail. Their terms and agreements allows them to scan and extract all useful information from everything they touch, and that means everything you've bought through Gmail, all your friends and family through your correspondences, a dossier of information that makes what the IRS, FBI, and CIA combined, look like a supermarket throwaway.
You want to search without becoming another data point, try startpage.com. Its a completely anonymized front end for Google searches that makes trace back to you physically impossible. It also asks if you want your searches through its secure interface... by all means, yes. The time to begin protecting your data from prying corporations and governments is long past. Preserve what little privacy you have left, or stand naked before people who would use you poorly.
Did you somehow miss the point that he was particularly talking about restricting this behavior from the government and corporations? It would appear, he already read your book. And listened.
You know you're absolutely right... its not like there are any guys out there stalking women, or that someone fresh out on parole for rape charge wouldn't want to be able to find out where that pretty girl he just got a shot of on his cell phone lives. Please engage your brain before opening your mouth. Just because you don't care if everyone on the planet knows where you live and what you do, doesn't mean that we shouldn't be protecting people's privacy for a whole host of good reasons. Most of all, the government, shouldn't be able to surveille you at a whim. The one place where regulations are a damn good thing... regulations on government power. So I tend to agree... Senator Frankin has a point whether your fer'im or agin'im.
Mostly it's hot, noisy and slippery when wet.
It's a lovely place to work.
Yes I work in one.
I don't think I've ever seen lines more begging to be taken out of context... Alex, I'll take "Brothel Worker" for 400
I think I see your problem. He was on PAROLE for having committed a robbery armed with two weapons. He fled because he was drunk, because he knew that being caught driving under the influence would be a breach of his parole agreement. Though he did reach speeds of 115 mph, he was in fact unarmed (not counting the car he drove recklessly.) The LAPD reported that he was under the influences of PCP, that he was violent, aggressive and that they needed to taser him after he viciously attacked them. The video on the other hand showed that the officers tased him immediately on leaving the car, once on the ground, they kicked him in the head repeatedly, beat him with batons for over a minute, then tackled and cuffed him when he stopped moving. Later when his blood work came back there were no traces of PCP. Its an easy mistake to make, the way the story is written in some sources, the Parole Violation and chase get combined.
There's an old conversation about the word "Yankee". If you're in Mexico, anybody north of the border is a Yankee. If you're over the border, its someone from above the Mason-Dixon line. If you're above the Mason-Dixon line a Yankee is someone from New England. If you live in New England, you know a Yankee is some one from Maine. You go to Maine looking for a Yankee and they'll tell you its an old hard tack farmer out in the country. Finally, if you go up to Maine, find yourself an old hard-tack farmer, and ask him where you can find a Yankee? He'll tell you "Well, yuh take thet ruhd theh, noth 'bout 12 miles, till yuh come tuh the fok, n'beh right, go 'nother 8 miles till yuh get t'the end. When the ol gent with the shotgun comes out t'meetchuh, why thet's a Yankee. Eyuh."
Now that would bump up the Olympic viewership... competitive team fucking, Who wants to be a judge?
Don't bother... your not talking to someone who even understands why science is superior to superstition. Why "Faith Based" by definition is living on fantasy island. Which isn't to say there are a whole lot of questions science ain't ever gonna answer, and for those eternal questions, Faith is absolutely the right tool. I'm just saying FAITH vs Carbon 14 is a stupid place to go. Y'all have a verse... "None are so blind..." heed it.
I broke my right ankle in a car accident in 2002. It went over $100,000. I don't know what country you live in, but a ride in an ambulance can set you back $4000 and a day in the hospital can cost up around $25,000. You don't need much more than an infected blister today to smoke a $100,000 so fast it'll give you whiplash (the cost of which to medicate, they'll add to your bill.) A frigging TUMS, antacid tablet will cost you $10 if your butt is in a semiprivate bed. A ten hour wait, get's you a 1 minute visit with an emergency room doctor, and you get a $400 bill for the privilege. Please tell the system isn't full on broken. What the heck do call an extreme case? Nosebleeds? My friend, you need to come back down onto this planet. Wherever you're living doesn't seem to be getting cable from reality.
Right, because the guys that gave you gravity and cell phones are such lying bastards and the guys burning down the planet and painting the gulf black with spilled oil have such a spotless record of honesty, responsibility and personal integrity. Scuse me, but me thinks you should address the tin foil you're sporting, before pointing at the stuff on other people's heads.