The stats they teach in intro stats classes is arguably worse than useless. You can teach a pure here's-the-button-you-push stats class without it, but if you want to actually understand some of what's going on, you need at least basic calculus, and multidimensional is very useful.
I doubt you're a computer scientist then. You might be a coder, or a systems analyst or an IT guy, but if you're a computer scientist you're in some kind of weird niche and you're doing a crappy job of keeping up with your field.
You might also be a software engineer, in which case you're just doing a crappy job of keeping up with your field.
That's not the issue. The VCs don't want to put money into something that isn't patentable, because they're not as likely to get their money back out again. If you don't have a patent and can't get one, that's bad. If you don't have a patent and might not be able to get one, that's almost as bad. If you've got a patent, clearly it's patentable, and that's good.
Haven't you ever watched Dragon's Den / Shark Tank / Soul Sucking VC Rage II?
Not that the success of early computing has much to do with the patentability of business ideas. Computers consist of nice, concrete, physical components, which were patented up the ying yang.
You're talking about scientists or their pre-science equivalent - crazy people driven by the joy of discovery who can't wait to tell everyone when they figure something out. I'm one of those. Patents are essentially irrelevant to those people anyway.
Patents work when there are people who are driven by commercial motivations. Blacksmiths, iron mongers, stone masons, Microsoft.
Of course, most of the people you mention did have patrons anyway. You don't think Darwin sailed around the world looking at pretty birds on his own dime, do you? One of Isaac Newton's principle patrons was Charles Montagu, the founder of the Bank of England. Patrons didn't necessarily direct people's inquiries (although they certainly did sometimes), but they did pay for them.
I disagree. It's crucial that patents NOT be analysed per domain. It's crucial that that basic requirements for a patent be applied consistently and as objectively as possible.
The problem in the software domain is that most "innovation" is trivially easy and stupid things get patented. If you applied the non-obvious requirement consistently you'd find that only a few software patents, the ones that are actually deserving, would be allowed. You don't have an idea for a new drug in the shower and run out and patent it. New drugs are the result of a considerable investment in time and research by skilled practitioners. One-click and "on the Internet" are in-the-shower inventions. Things like marching cubes, SIFT and the FFT are not, and probably deserve patents.
The problem is, how do you do it? The likely answer is, patent peer review.
It doesn't. Protection encourages dissemination. With no intellectual property protection, many innovations and creations are kept as trade secrets. For every Newton you can cite, there were thousands of minstrels who didn't share their songs and blacksmiths, bakers, cobblers, stone masons, swordsmiths, etc. who didn't share their secrets. You used to have to be initiated into a guild to learn any of those things. Some of those guilds became extremely powerful because of it.
Overbearing protection discourages application, not dissemination. Since you can't use an idea you don't know about, there's a balance between the two.
If I buy a book, crack the DRM, and send it to you, no publisher is going to have any idea I did it, watermark or not.
If I'm even a moderately serious pirate, I'm not going to balk at buying (or acquiring) an extra copy to do a diff with.
The only situation this addresses is the casual user who breaks the DRM and then uploads his copy for widespread distribution. That scenario seems to be very rare. If it wasn't, there'd be lots of copies of everything already available anyway.
Yeah, because a whole watt of power is completely irrelevant when you're running on a battery.
Submitter was in such a rush to bash MS he just sounded like an idiot (along with half the posters). I enjoy some good old fashioned Slashdot MS bashing, but let's make it good old fashioned MS bashing, okay?
You could say the same thing about motion. Yet we think about things moving in a classical way all the time.
The classical idea of spin works very well so long as you're talking about a reasonable number of particles. If you're not, you have to keep in mind that spin is quantized. In magnetic resonance imaging, for example, unless you're doing something obscure, classical spin is just fine, and it's what everyone uses. It's certainly good enough for a popular science article.
Lots of people don't like it. Nevertheless, that's the usual interpretation of quantum field theory. All the other interpretations are at least as weird.
Imagine rotating a globe around the N-S axis AND the E-W axis at the same time, but only half as fast on the E-W axis. After a 360 degree rotation around the N-S axis you'll be looking at the same hemisphere you started with, but it will be upside down. Only after a 720 degree rotation around the N-S axis will it look the same as when you started.
What do you mean by "physically spin"? They have angular momentum and behave in a way that is almost always consistent with them physically spinning. The classical description of nuclear spin is as useful as the Newtonian description of motion.
If you want to be pedantic, go all the way. There aren't really atoms, particularly not in a Bose-Einstein condensate, just excitations of particular fields.
The brain culls more connections than it makes during childhood and adolescence. But long range axons do increase in calibre, which takes up space and accounts for some of the growth of the brain. It probably accounts for some of the behavioural development as well because bigger axons carry signals long distances more effectively (even more so when they're myelinated).
Very little is known about the functional development, as it relates to the physical development, but we know quite a bit about both behavioural development AND physical development of the brain. Both of them you can, you know, watch.
Storing memories is adequately explained by reconfiguring existing connections. That doesn't mean that's all that's going on, but there doesn't have to be something else happening. The poster I replied to said that obviously the brain is growing new neurons because it develops after birth and we're able to learn. Neither of those things need to involve new neurons.
"Prices are the same for food and clothing are the same across euroland."
Unless things have changed drastically in the last couple of years, that's not even close to true. A few euros that buys you lunch and a beer in rural Greece or Spain doesn't even get you a bottle of water in downtown Berlin.
The majority of the development of the brain after birth is myelination and growth of axons, not new neurons. In fact, neurons are drastically pruned in young children so their numbers decrease.
Storing memories can also be adequately explained by existing neurons growing new and reconfiguring existing connections among themselves.
That must be fairly new. They certainly didn't last time I talked to them. Ditto with Rogers. Last time I tried to negotiate a plan without a contract I had the option of about four incredibly crappy (and expensive) plans. The others were contract only.
It has been a few years since I've looked into plans. I made a complaint to the telecommunications commissioner and Rogers/Fido coughed up a "special" plan.
Slashdot Mirror
The stats they teach in intro stats classes is arguably worse than useless. You can teach a pure here's-the-button-you-push stats class without it, but if you want to actually understand some of what's going on, you need at least basic calculus, and multidimensional is very useful.
I doubt you're a computer scientist then. You might be a coder, or a systems analyst or an IT guy, but if you're a computer scientist you're in some kind of weird niche and you're doing a crappy job of keeping up with your field.
You might also be a software engineer, in which case you're just doing a crappy job of keeping up with your field.
That's not the issue. The VCs don't want to put money into something that isn't patentable, because they're not as likely to get their money back out again. If you don't have a patent and can't get one, that's bad. If you don't have a patent and might not be able to get one, that's almost as bad. If you've got a patent, clearly it's patentable, and that's good.
Haven't you ever watched Dragon's Den / Shark Tank / Soul Sucking VC Rage II?
WWII.
Not that the success of early computing has much to do with the patentability of business ideas. Computers consist of nice, concrete, physical components, which were patented up the ying yang.
Beware things that people name after themselves.
You're talking about scientists or their pre-science equivalent - crazy people driven by the joy of discovery who can't wait to tell everyone when they figure something out. I'm one of those. Patents are essentially irrelevant to those people anyway.
Patents work when there are people who are driven by commercial motivations. Blacksmiths, iron mongers, stone masons, Microsoft.
Of course, most of the people you mention did have patrons anyway. You don't think Darwin sailed around the world looking at pretty birds on his own dime, do you? One of Isaac Newton's principle patrons was Charles Montagu, the founder of the Bank of England. Patrons didn't necessarily direct people's inquiries (although they certainly did sometimes), but they did pay for them.
I disagree. It's crucial that patents NOT be analysed per domain. It's crucial that that basic requirements for a patent be applied consistently and as objectively as possible.
The problem in the software domain is that most "innovation" is trivially easy and stupid things get patented. If you applied the non-obvious requirement consistently you'd find that only a few software patents, the ones that are actually deserving, would be allowed. You don't have an idea for a new drug in the shower and run out and patent it. New drugs are the result of a considerable investment in time and research by skilled practitioners. One-click and "on the Internet" are in-the-shower inventions. Things like marching cubes, SIFT and the FFT are not, and probably deserve patents.
The problem is, how do you do it? The likely answer is, patent peer review.
It doesn't. Protection encourages dissemination. With no intellectual property protection, many innovations and creations are kept as trade secrets. For every Newton you can cite, there were thousands of minstrels who didn't share their songs and blacksmiths, bakers, cobblers, stone masons, swordsmiths, etc. who didn't share their secrets. You used to have to be initiated into a guild to learn any of those things. Some of those guilds became extremely powerful because of it.
Overbearing protection discourages application, not dissemination. Since you can't use an idea you don't know about, there's a balance between the two.
Nature News isn't peer reviewed. Unless you consider the editor reading the journalist's article peer review because they're both journalists.
If I buy a book, crack the DRM, and send it to you, no publisher is going to have any idea I did it, watermark or not.
If I'm even a moderately serious pirate, I'm not going to balk at buying (or acquiring) an extra copy to do a diff with.
The only situation this addresses is the casual user who breaks the DRM and then uploads his copy for widespread distribution. That scenario seems to be very rare. If it wasn't, there'd be lots of copies of everything already available anyway.
I wouldn't either. Mostly because "amoral" doesn't mean what you think it means.
How can you have 40% of a user?
In Canada I never pass up the chance to give my postal code as H0H0H0, which is a real code that belongs to Santa, of course.
Insert before "nuke the safe from orbit":
"make sure your targeting is more accurate than +- a couple of miles".
Yeah, because a whole watt of power is completely irrelevant when you're running on a battery.
Submitter was in such a rush to bash MS he just sounded like an idiot (along with half the posters). I enjoy some good old fashioned Slashdot MS bashing, but let's make it good old fashioned MS bashing, okay?
You could say the same thing about motion. Yet we think about things moving in a classical way all the time.
The classical idea of spin works very well so long as you're talking about a reasonable number of particles. If you're not, you have to keep in mind that spin is quantized. In magnetic resonance imaging, for example, unless you're doing something obscure, classical spin is just fine, and it's what everyone uses. It's certainly good enough for a popular science article.
Lots of people don't like it. Nevertheless, that's the usual interpretation of quantum field theory. All the other interpretations are at least as weird.
Imagine rotating a globe around the N-S axis AND the E-W axis at the same time, but only half as fast on the E-W axis. After a 360 degree rotation around the N-S axis you'll be looking at the same hemisphere you started with, but it will be upside down. Only after a 720 degree rotation around the N-S axis will it look the same as when you started.
What do you mean by "physically spin"? They have angular momentum and behave in a way that is almost always consistent with them physically spinning. The classical description of nuclear spin is as useful as the Newtonian description of motion.
If you want to be pedantic, go all the way. There aren't really atoms, particularly not in a Bose-Einstein condensate, just excitations of particular fields.
Sure there is. Steve Jobs was such a visionary he could see the future!
The brain culls more connections than it makes during childhood and adolescence. But long range axons do increase in calibre, which takes up space and accounts for some of the growth of the brain. It probably accounts for some of the behavioural development as well because bigger axons carry signals long distances more effectively (even more so when they're myelinated).
Very little is known about the functional development, as it relates to the physical development, but we know quite a bit about both behavioural development AND physical development of the brain. Both of them you can, you know, watch.
Storing memories is adequately explained by reconfiguring existing connections. That doesn't mean that's all that's going on, but there doesn't have to be something else happening. The poster I replied to said that obviously the brain is growing new neurons because it develops after birth and we're able to learn. Neither of those things need to involve new neurons.
"Prices are the same for food and clothing are the same across euroland."
Unless things have changed drastically in the last couple of years, that's not even close to true. A few euros that buys you lunch and a beer in rural Greece or Spain doesn't even get you a bottle of water in downtown Berlin.
I suppose the summary doesn't actually lie because it's incoherent.
The majority of the development of the brain after birth is myelination and growth of axons, not new neurons. In fact, neurons are drastically pruned in young children so their numbers decrease.
Storing memories can also be adequately explained by existing neurons growing new and reconfiguring existing connections among themselves.
That must be fairly new. They certainly didn't last time I talked to them. Ditto with Rogers. Last time I tried to negotiate a plan without a contract I had the option of about four incredibly crappy (and expensive) plans. The others were contract only.
It has been a few years since I've looked into plans. I made a complaint to the telecommunications commissioner and Rogers/Fido coughed up a "special" plan.