"Not to mention that as age increases so do earnings and theoretically time value."..that's why elsewhere in my replies in the thread I made the point of geezers who might be the target market buy 250 grand RVs as toys whereas younger folks who can't see the utility of a voice activated system yet because their hands don't hurt buy 250$ ipods.
It's a lucrative niche market, along with adult sized designed for geezers cellphones. Cellphones with a good screen and big buttons and a really good audio interface.
Do they have public takings under any sort of eminent domain-like laws there? I would think they must have something similar. Using that, they could just seize the codecs for the public good and just use them as they saw fit. Then, no laws broken.
Not really. Well, that whole notion is just rather silly. Everyone gets older, including you. And the human species has gone through population fluctuations before just fine. And "boomers" as a group are just as diverse and varied in social outlook and accomplishments as any other generation. In other words, some good, some bad, a lot mediocre, same as the generation before us, and the generations to follow. Hey, we got the draft ended, by getting n the street and not sitting around playing games, we got civil rights beyond the theoretical into actual practice, and there's a ton of some really fine rock came out of the boomer generation, don't forget that, hahaha! Boomers now are leading the way to alternative energy and have been in the forefront of getting organic growing from a fringe business to now mainstream. Boomers wrote a lot of the code you use, and started all the open source stuff you might like, got the ball rolling in other words. Boomers got us to the moon, and developed most of the really good satellite remote sensing that we use now for climate research. And so on.
Sure, a lot are fucktards, I won't deny that at all, but try to name a generation that doesn't have its own proportional share of fucktards. You can't. Show me a generation that was composed of all "nice guys". Go ahead, double dog dare ya.
thanks for the advice. She roughly follows similar to what you say, but it's gettng to be pretty bad in her case just for a variety of day to day tasks beyond using a computer. We just work around limitations we both have (my back goes wonky fairly regular and I can't do much then), and help each other out. We aree both early boomers and I think you'll be seeing a lot of similar as our population ages.
She does use linux, but not very much now. If she really needs to look something up, I just do it for her now, that has worked the best. I'm the audio interface! haha!
Orly? Blind folks have the magic cure for arthritis? Got a link? Or do you mean to say, "blind folks who's hands and fingers are still in good shape can type just as well or poorly or better than average sighted folks, but if/when/once they get arthritis bad they can't type really well at all and it just sucks rubber donkey dong to use the computer then"
Which is the more accurate statement?
longer answer
Sure, some can,and I am sorry if I didn't take the time to note that previously, but how do they know what is on the page to reply to or about, or is all they do one way typing?? And blind people don't get arthritis in their fingers, making it hard or impossible to type, back to my original point?
Let me say it again to be precisely clear, some people have a hard time typing, especially as they get older, because arthritis is a painful and *incredibly common* affliction, and that applies to the fully sighted, the blind, folks who can walk and people in wheelchairs,and etc., eventually your dang fingers don't work as well or at all like they did when you were younger and healthier. You need alternatives for day to day stuff then. Which sort of makes keyboards not very useful at all, despite someone else on the intartubes being able to type 120 WPM with perfect accuracy, so they assume everyone should or can. We are all different. I know I in no way can type as well as I could when I was younger and by the end of the evening, like right now, I fat finger things and my hands ache a scosh. And using new tiny cellphones is such a TOTAL PITA with those stoopid lilliputian keys that I won't even consider one now, I'll stick with my old bricks as long as they work, new features be damned. And it's worse for my GF, can barely use any of them at all if she has to rely on the lame one micron sized buttons.
A certain large segment of the above named population could find good audio interface to be useful and a practical replacement for the keyboard, at least in some situations. And how about folks, younger folks who program or write for a living, who get carpal tunnel bad and need a rest for a few weeks or months but still need to go to work? Whaddyado then? If they had the ability to switch to an audio interface, at least for awhile, it might help, yes?
Anyway, big biz has noticed and will take it from there, the market potential is just way too huge and you have to look at it this way, from that marketing angle, rough general demographics and current reality, the older folks who might want an audio interface because their hands get stiff buy 250 grand RVs as toys, while the younger folks who can still type like a big dog and don't currently give a crap about an audio interface because their hands are fine and they aren't thinking about it buy 250 buck ipod toys.
Very broadly speaking and plenty of exceptions to the rule, etc, but I think you know what I mean there.
I'll say it again, the first group that really *nails* a pure audio interface that works, I mean really works,beyond what is out there now, is gonna be swimming in loot because the market is there. And tip to webmasters, "accessibility" coding for your commercial websites will do you no harm whatsoever, now and into the future.
You appear very fast to judge things, but I think you might be missing a big piece of the action there, or the potential action, most likely because you are younger and still fit. I am guessing on that though.
In a perfect world what you said makes some sense, but think on this: In the US the population is aging. Younger folks are a minority, and guess what? You'll get old, too. With aging comes afflictions like arthritis. Once you get it, even a twinge, you'll understand how incredibly $valuable$ and how incredibly useful a voice activated system could be. The first company to really nail it will be rich beyond the dreams of avarice as the expression goes.
MY GF has it in her hands, sometimes she just sits and cries because her hands are on fire,that's how she describes it, like being on fire, and then she can't do anything, nothing that requires any dexterity at all. She used to do fine painting, a lot of intense sewing, etc, stuff like that, but can't anymore. Typing is just out, and there are many many millions like her out there now. It's like having no fingers at all, but it hurts. She can only type very slowly and painfully and because of that hardly uses her computer anymore.
Now, how abvout blind folks? Think it might be a handy option for them as well? How about folks with anything like palsy? Heck, I am thinking for me, say I am out working on some vehicle and I want to look something up. Spend 5 minutes with the degreaser before I go touch the keyboard, or just yammer at it to get to where I want to get, and print it out? Useful there too.
Maybe I saw it on the sidebar at freshmeat or something. I think it was the sco-diebold truthiness generator v. 0.95 beta! Good stuff! Posix compliant!
most likely it is both, just depends on the city in question. I will readily admit I haven't travelled to every large urban area, but would wager it is still easy to find various pockets of urban decay areas with a lot of social non-niceties.
Kyoto was a really bad idea, and is exactly why it was soundly rejected by our senate, going across both parties even from those who would normally automatically vote aything remotely to do with conservation. Perhaps something like kyoto is needed, but not that.
with this -> "I don't think this country cares much about pollution"..and etc.
We cared enough to establish an EPA a long time ago, mandate the strictest vehicle emissions standards, require new generating plants to establish smokestack scrubbers, mandated cleaner fuels, set limits on crap in the drinking water, and so on, a lot of things that the vast bulk of the planet still almost completely ignores. Granted, we could do more, but really....that was too broad of a brush there. Hybrids are the US hottest selling vehicles now and I predict that plugins will be even hotter once they arrive in numbers, and personal and corporate adoption of green energy is advancing at a fast rate. Green is in at all the latest car shows, the fed government and various states have a wide range of tax deductions, incentives and credits for alternative power, and several lenders now offer full 20-30 year financing on installs for homeowners and a lot of builders are offering alternative energy options on new homes. Buying organic at the store and biofuels production reflect the fastest growing segment of our agricultural output. And so on and so forth, I could go on. I think we've had a big turn around, especially in the last ten years or so.
And all of that came about because enough people do care,because it makes environmental and health and economic sense all at the same time.
yep, pretty close, he's been my fav for nailing the future. Look at major cities, areas akin to the AAs, abandoned areas, offset by guarded gated compounds or "communities". Look at the war in iraq, there are now almost as many "private security contractors"-mercenaries- as there are official US government military people.
And we saw what happend in NOLA after katrina, it got infested with rifle totin Blackwater goons immediately, while non-corporate regular plain vanilla citizens got their self protection tools confiscated, just when they needed them the most.
Yep, I'd say corporate fascism is taking over quite rapidly. Our so called vote is now all privately run where it really counts. They may stick their voting boxes in a public building, but after that point it's for-profit corporate closed source voting. And the rest of government is run as an extension of various multinational corporations via their sock puppets-who got there from the previous closed source corporate voting and propoganda build up from the controlled corporate press.
I put up a linked article about this just last saturday, you might be interested in it, they are producing biofuel with algae from a commercial power plant by using the CO2.
The only ethical reviewing is done by a system such as Consumer Reports uses. They pay full price retail at a random store for the product under review, then conduct extensive real-world tests, and they also do not accept ads for their magazine or website. This applies to released products. That some game or software or entertainment companies do the opposite, just give away stuff, doesn't matter, it is still completely sleazy from sleazy people then and unethical as all get out and you won't get an honest opinion, it is tainted, or has a high probability of being tainted. This is similar to scientific peer review, they have to be scrupulous to disclose industry ties/conflicts, and that's because the community recognizes that the potential for bias is there.
Unreleased products where they can be considered betas, no problem getting a sample loaner model, I have done it myself in a biz I was in before, critiquing proposed products. But, no money was received, nor were any products transferred for ownership, just a normal review process that both the product and the written review went back only to the manufacturer and wasn't for publication.
If you want to go emminent domain, you could just as easily disallow the patent in the first place, they would have little incentive to go for it. If you are going to threaten them with seizure of their work under e.d. and a token payment that has no recurring royalties, how is this any different? Really? All you are doing is relabeling what you are doing. It's still working towards a one time big payout. The whole idea is we are trying to eliminate the recuring years long costs to get the costs down for as many people as possible, the idea is we don't care about maximizing profits for chemical companies becase we as society think that the medical care is more important. We are going to do something about it, I guarantee you as the boomer population ages we are going to rein in these folks. We might even eliminate all medical patents, which I think is a good idea. something is gonna give. If you want to just call an emininet domain seizure that, swell, no problems, but it still isn't any different from telling them they will never totally own the product, that they won't have any IP, but they will get paid for developing it. The public will own it, not a private company, but they can still make a buck. that's it in a nutshell. I don't care the label, the potential customers/patients don't care the label. a taking is a taking, the ownership goes to the state and people whether it is under e.d. or they work towards a prize. The 5th amendment mandates that they get paid fair market value, to be detyermined by the government, it doesn't maintain that the government pay rent on it forever, it just doesn't work that way in past practice. You get one check, then buh bye. If that ain't enough for them someone else will go for it. And frankly, I don't care about those companies (I have worked for the ones on your list actually doing tradeshows,I am, on retrospection, totally ashamed of every nickel I ever took doing that, but it can't be helped now, I am a different person who is older and looked at reality harder. They waste cash hand over fist, they drive up the price of medical care to insane levels. I could care less about them, if the corporations dissolved tomorrow, not one smart human who does research for them evaporates. They can go on and do what they were doing, with a different payout. Probably make even more than what they are doing now. The middle man busywork shufflers make less. I don't see any problem there. I call this a good thing over all, and for the consumer it would be great.
The x-prize system completely eliminates all the marketing and advertising costs (this is not insignificant either), gets rid of the bulk of the overhead and administration costs (again a huge cost), and eliminates the overly high cost to the consumer because of royalties. Society already drops a certain amount there, this way, near all of it goes to ACTUAL RESEARCH. This is BAD? You'd rather it stays the way it is now where research costs are way down the list?
And they couldn't keep employees if they had no products to sell, so if they want to keep making some money as opposed to no money, that should be inducement enough. If it isn't, who care? The brains-the scientists- could quit, perhaps band together, even involve some investors to fund them as they work,not boss investors, just plain vanilla investors who take a risk looking for the payouit. That's a possibility. Good teams with verifiable past good track records would attract them then. Knowing that they had to push hard to get the prize money which would then be split up along whatever they as the brains thought proper, would be their call. And there is no size limit on the teams, no boundaries on which way they could go. Results get paid, get rewarded handsomely, half ass results get zip. And that's because medicine is *important*, this isn't who has the best MP3 player or which sports team wins first place.
People in the clinical trials would be addressed the same way it is now, they take a risk in order to maybe get c
Because it pays for practical results, not just looking for results, and said rersults then go to benefit all of humanity as cheaply as possible. I just agree with the article and the smart guy who wrote it, we can expand how innovation is carried out by taking the patent situation out of the scene especially when it comes to medicine. Look up in the thread, one AC claims to work for a pharmco and confirms this, they don't care a rat's ass about medicine, they are just a chemical company looking for profits.
An x-prize situation or bounty system are the only practical alternatives to the situation we have now. Heck, you can't even *read* about a lot of publically funded (partially or total) research now without paying for the article, let alone do anything with the information once it becomes trapped in the patent minefield. I'd say that is at least a partially broken system that needs some rethinking.
Public funding for successful cures. Not treatments, cures. No cure, no loot, and that makes it perfectly clear what should or should not be tried for, by public pressure. Winner take all. Smartest guys win. Make the cash payout large enough, you'll get teams trying, and they won't have to waste money on advertising/marketing/fancy offices/corporate jets/lobbying/bribing, any of that crap they do now, just the lab and the brains... No suits or skimming needed or even applicable. The winners take their payout and try for the next prize or whatever else they want to do, because the winning formula gets public domained,it gets the anti-patent treatment in other words, then any generic company can offer it so the cost will be low over all and instant competition to keep it low.
An alternative from the private sector (this is wild but might work and I think millions of people would participate) would be a 50/50 split, using a lottery. 50% for lottery prizes, the other 50% going to the medical x-prize. No tax money needed that way, no institutional money, and it's been proven that lotteries attract cash. Again,let the people, the potential customers for medical "stuff" we are talking about, determine what gets funded or not based on their own self interest.
Another way is just a private bounty system to fund the x-prize, interested people, other businesses (I have mentioned insurance companies before in this regard as one such business), etc. are free to donate to the winners purse, these monies also possibly coming from what is normally donated for "research" anyway, you see them now, this society, that society, this medical foundation, that one, jerry's kids, etc. Cut to the chase and fund only cures,and things will change. Keep it the way it is now where we give patents for mostly treatments-and it will stay the way it is now. Nothing will change. You can't get different results until you first change the way you go about what you are doing, doing the same thing over and over again will just get you..the same thing.
..you make some good points, can't argue with them much. I think common packaging and getting rid of shared libraries would be a good thing although it isn't the old school unix guru way because...uhh..because everyone is running a ten meg hard drive with 64k RAM on a 300 baud modem I guess..*snort*.
I come from an old mac classic background, about the easiest it gets for packages, download, run, and that's it. Stick it wherever you want to, still works. Have multiple copies and different versions-it doesn't matter.
Good luck on getting the linux devs and enthusiasts to agree on any of that though, I think the best advice if you want to support some linux is just shoot for what YOU think is the best packaging way and best distro and just be done with it, let others sort out how to make it work on others. For most practical purposes,.deb is probably on more desktops and debian derivatives have probably the most exposure. And like you said, lin-freespire is really hitting the OEM installs (and they have the easiest for-pay after market applications in their click n run service, that should be of interest to you), they are debian derived, and ubuntu is now the current top dog, also a debian. Go that way for the most exposure for your niche, you aren't trying to get on biz desktops with games, but home users, so there ya go. Now I personally run fedora, but it really doesn't matter to me either, I am just as happy using knoppix live cd for instance, or even a mini distro (I love those things!), just more familiar with redhat stuff because it is what I started with and it works pretty well for the most part.
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"Not to mention that as age increases so do earnings and theoretically time value."..that's why elsewhere in my replies in the thread I made the point of geezers who might be the target market buy 250 grand RVs as toys whereas younger folks who can't see the utility of a voice activated system yet because their hands don't hurt buy 250$ ipods.
It's a lucrative niche market, along with adult sized designed for geezers cellphones. Cellphones with a good screen and big buttons and a really good audio interface.
59 F right now in north georgia, 10 PM. The bugs have been out,and we have dandelions blooming in the lawn and we have daffodils coming up!
Usually when this happens we get nailed hard later on in the season. It will most likely hurt the fruit crop (apples and peaches) some as well.
Do they have public takings under any sort of eminent domain-like laws there? I would think they must have something similar. Using that, they could just seize the codecs for the public good and just use them as they saw fit. Then, no laws broken.
Not really. Well, that whole notion is just rather silly. Everyone gets older, including you. And the human species has gone through population fluctuations before just fine. And "boomers" as a group are just as diverse and varied in social outlook and accomplishments as any other generation. In other words, some good, some bad, a lot mediocre, same as the generation before us, and the generations to follow. Hey, we got the draft ended, by getting n the street and not sitting around playing games, we got civil rights beyond the theoretical into actual practice, and there's a ton of some really fine rock came out of the boomer generation, don't forget that, hahaha! Boomers now are leading the way to alternative energy and have been in the forefront of getting organic growing from a fringe business to now mainstream. Boomers wrote a lot of the code you use, and started all the open source stuff you might like, got the ball rolling in other words. Boomers got us to the moon, and developed most of the really good satellite remote sensing that we use now for climate research. And so on.
Sure, a lot are fucktards, I won't deny that at all, but try to name a generation that doesn't have its own proportional share of fucktards. You can't. Show me a generation that was composed of all "nice guys". Go ahead, double dog dare ya.
Thanks! I'll check it out, just told her that palms touching technique.
thanks for the advice. She roughly follows similar to what you say, but it's gettng to be pretty bad in her case just for a variety of day to day tasks beyond using a computer. We just work around limitations we both have (my back goes wonky fairly regular and I can't do much then), and help each other out. We aree both early boomers and I think you'll be seeing a lot of similar as our population ages.
She does use linux, but not very much now. If she really needs to look something up, I just do it for her now, that has worked the best. I'm the audio interface! haha!
"Blind folks can type just fine"
Short answer
Orly? Blind folks have the magic cure for arthritis? Got a link? Or do you mean to say, "blind folks who's hands and fingers are still in good shape can type just as well or poorly or better than average sighted folks, but if/when/once they get arthritis bad they can't type really well at all and it just sucks rubber donkey dong to use the computer then"
Which is the more accurate statement?
longer answer
Sure, some can,and I am sorry if I didn't take the time to note that previously, but how do they know what is on the page to reply to or about, or is all they do one way typing?? And blind people don't get arthritis in their fingers, making it hard or impossible to type, back to my original point?
Let me say it again to be precisely clear, some people have a hard time typing, especially as they get older, because arthritis is a painful and *incredibly common* affliction, and that applies to the fully sighted, the blind, folks who can walk and people in wheelchairs,and etc., eventually your dang fingers don't work as well or at all like they did when you were younger and healthier. You need alternatives for day to day stuff then. Which sort of makes keyboards not very useful at all, despite someone else on the intartubes being able to type 120 WPM with perfect accuracy, so they assume everyone should or can. We are all different. I know I in no way can type as well as I could when I was younger and by the end of the evening, like right now, I fat finger things and my hands ache a scosh. And using new tiny cellphones is such a TOTAL PITA with those stoopid lilliputian keys that I won't even consider one now, I'll stick with my old bricks as long as they work, new features be damned. And it's worse for my GF, can barely use any of them at all if she has to rely on the lame one micron sized buttons.
A certain large segment of the above named population could find good audio interface to be useful and a practical replacement for the keyboard, at least in some situations. And how about folks, younger folks who program or write for a living, who get carpal tunnel bad and need a rest for a few weeks or months but still need to go to work? Whaddyado then? If they had the ability to switch to an audio interface, at least for awhile, it might help, yes?
Anyway, big biz has noticed and will take it from there, the market potential is just way too huge and you have to look at it this way, from that marketing angle, rough general demographics and current reality, the older folks who might want an audio interface because their hands get stiff buy 250 grand RVs as toys, while the younger folks who can still type like a big dog and don't currently give a crap about an audio interface because their hands are fine and they aren't thinking about it buy 250 buck ipod toys.
Very broadly speaking and plenty of exceptions to the rule, etc, but I think you know what I mean there.
I'll say it again, the first group that really *nails* a pure audio interface that works, I mean really works,beyond what is out there now, is gonna be swimming in loot because the market is there. And tip to webmasters, "accessibility" coding for your commercial websites will do you no harm whatsoever, now and into the future.
You appear very fast to judge things, but I think you might be missing a big piece of the action there, or the potential action, most likely because you are younger and still fit. I am guessing on that though.
In a perfect world what you said makes some sense, but think on this: In the US the population is aging. Younger folks are a minority, and guess what? You'll get old, too. With aging comes afflictions like arthritis. Once you get it, even a twinge, you'll understand how incredibly $valuable$ and how incredibly useful a voice activated system could be. The first company to really nail it will be rich beyond the dreams of avarice as the expression goes.
MY GF has it in her hands, sometimes she just sits and cries because her hands are on fire,that's how she describes it, like being on fire, and then she can't do anything, nothing that requires any dexterity at all. She used to do fine painting, a lot of intense sewing, etc, stuff like that, but can't anymore. Typing is just out, and there are many many millions like her out there now. It's like having no fingers at all, but it hurts. She can only type very slowly and painfully and because of that hardly uses her computer anymore.
Now, how abvout blind folks? Think it might be a handy option for them as well? How about folks with anything like palsy? Heck, I am thinking for me, say I am out working on some vehicle and I want to look something up. Spend 5 minutes with the degreaser before I go touch the keyboard, or just yammer at it to get to where I want to get, and print it out? Useful there too.
Maybe I saw it on the sidebar at freshmeat or something. I think it was the sco-diebold truthiness generator v. 0.95 beta! Good stuff! Posix compliant!
most likely it is both, just depends on the city in question. I will readily admit I haven't travelled to every large urban area, but would wager it is still easy to find various pockets of urban decay areas with a lot of social non-niceties.
Kyoto was a really bad idea, and is exactly why it was soundly rejected by our senate, going across both parties even from those who would normally automatically vote aything remotely to do with conservation. Perhaps something like kyoto is needed, but not that.
with this -> "I don't think this country cares much about pollution"..and etc.
We cared enough to establish an EPA a long time ago, mandate the strictest vehicle emissions standards, require new generating plants to establish smokestack scrubbers, mandated cleaner fuels, set limits on crap in the drinking water, and so on, a lot of things that the vast bulk of the planet still almost completely ignores. Granted, we could do more, but really....that was too broad of a brush there. Hybrids are the US hottest selling vehicles now and I predict that plugins will be even hotter once they arrive in numbers, and personal and corporate adoption of green energy is advancing at a fast rate. Green is in at all the latest car shows, the fed government and various states have a wide range of tax deductions, incentives and credits for alternative power, and several lenders now offer full 20-30 year financing on installs for homeowners and a lot of builders are offering alternative energy options on new homes. Buying organic at the store and biofuels production reflect the fastest growing segment of our agricultural output. And so on and so forth, I could go on. I think we've had a big turn around, especially in the last ten years or so.
And all of that came about because enough people do care,because it makes environmental and health and economic sense all at the same time.
yep, pretty close, he's been my fav for nailing the future. Look at major cities, areas akin to the AAs, abandoned areas, offset by guarded gated compounds or "communities". Look at the war in iraq, there are now almost as many "private security contractors"-mercenaries- as there are official US government military people.
c le/2006/12/04/AR2006120401311_pf.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
And we saw what happend in NOLA after katrina, it got infested with rifle totin Blackwater goons immediately, while non-corporate regular plain vanilla citizens got their self protection tools confiscated, just when they needed them the most.
Yep, I'd say corporate fascism is taking over quite rapidly. Our so called vote is now all privately run where it really counts. They may stick their voting boxes in a public building, but after that point it's for-profit corporate closed source voting. And the rest of government is run as an extension of various multinational corporations via their sock puppets-who got there from the previous closed source corporate voting and propoganda build up from the controlled corporate press.
I put up a linked article about this just last saturday, you might be interested in it, they are producing biofuel with algae from a commercial power plant by using the CO2.
http://technocrat.net/d/2006/12/23/12545
The only ethical reviewing is done by a system such as Consumer Reports uses. They pay full price retail at a random store for the product under review, then conduct extensive real-world tests, and they also do not accept ads for their magazine or website. This applies to released products. That some game or software or entertainment companies do the opposite, just give away stuff, doesn't matter, it is still completely sleazy from sleazy people then and unethical as all get out and you won't get an honest opinion, it is tainted, or has a high probability of being tainted. This is similar to scientific peer review, they have to be scrupulous to disclose industry ties/conflicts, and that's because the community recognizes that the potential for bias is there.
Unreleased products where they can be considered betas, no problem getting a sample loaner model, I have done it myself in a biz I was in before, critiquing proposed products. But, no money was received, nor were any products transferred for ownership, just a normal review process that both the product and the written review went back only to the manufacturer and wasn't for publication.
http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/torrents/Zod-live cd-1-i386.torrent
HAHAHAHAHA! Cosmic Truths!
..this: "forced induction"(turbo|supercharger|both)-> being applied to a hugemongous displacement engine.
2 liter, naturally aspirated and fueled, no boost=x bhp and torque
2 liter,efi, turbo, supercharger, high boost=x+2 (whatever)bhp and torque
6 liter (see above)
8 liter (see above)
See, it still works!
"there is no replacement for displacement"
If you want to go emminent domain, you could just as easily disallow the patent in the first place, they would have little incentive to go for it. If you are going to threaten them with seizure of their work under e.d. and a token payment that has no recurring royalties, how is this any different? Really? All you are doing is relabeling what you are doing. It's still working towards a one time big payout. The whole idea is we are trying to eliminate the recuring years long costs to get the costs down for as many people as possible, the idea is we don't care about maximizing profits for chemical companies becase we as society think that the medical care is more important. We are going to do something about it, I guarantee you as the boomer population ages we are going to rein in these folks. We might even eliminate all medical patents, which I think is a good idea. something is gonna give. If you want to just call an emininet domain seizure that, swell, no problems, but it still isn't any different from telling them they will never totally own the product, that they won't have any IP, but they will get paid for developing it. The public will own it, not a private company, but they can still make a buck. that's it in a nutshell. I don't care the label, the potential customers/patients don't care the label. a taking is a taking, the ownership goes to the state and people whether it is under e.d. or they work towards a prize. The 5th amendment mandates that they get paid fair market value, to be detyermined by the government, it doesn't maintain that the government pay rent on it forever, it just doesn't work that way in past practice. You get one check, then buh bye. If that ain't enough for them someone else will go for it. And frankly, I don't care about those companies (I have worked for the ones on your list actually doing tradeshows,I am, on retrospection, totally ashamed of every nickel I ever took doing that, but it can't be helped now, I am a different person who is older and looked at reality harder. They waste cash hand over fist, they drive up the price of medical care to insane levels. I could care less about them, if the corporations dissolved tomorrow, not one smart human who does research for them evaporates. They can go on and do what they were doing, with a different payout. Probably make even more than what they are doing now. The middle man busywork shufflers make less. I don't see any problem there. I call this a good thing over all, and for the consumer it would be great.
The x-prize system completely eliminates all the marketing and advertising costs (this is not insignificant either), gets rid of the bulk of the overhead and administration costs (again a huge cost), and eliminates the overly high cost to the consumer because of royalties. Society already drops a certain amount there, this way, near all of it goes to ACTUAL RESEARCH. This is BAD? You'd rather it stays the way it is now where research costs are way down the list?
And they couldn't keep employees if they had no products to sell, so if they want to keep making some money as opposed to no money, that should be inducement enough. If it isn't, who care? The brains-the scientists- could quit, perhaps band together, even involve some investors to fund them as they work,not boss investors, just plain vanilla investors who take a risk looking for the payouit. That's a possibility. Good teams with verifiable past good track records would attract them then. Knowing that they had to push hard to get the prize money which would then be split up along whatever they as the brains thought proper, would be their call. And there is no size limit on the teams, no boundaries on which way they could go. Results get paid, get rewarded handsomely, half ass results get zip. And that's because medicine is *important*, this isn't who has the best MP3 player or which sports team wins first place.
People in the clinical trials would be addressed the same way it is now, they take a risk in order to maybe get c
Because it pays for practical results, not just looking for results, and said rersults then go to benefit all of humanity as cheaply as possible. I just agree with the article and the smart guy who wrote it, we can expand how innovation is carried out by taking the patent situation out of the scene especially when it comes to medicine. Look up in the thread, one AC claims to work for a pharmco and confirms this, they don't care a rat's ass about medicine, they are just a chemical company looking for profits.
An x-prize situation or bounty system are the only practical alternatives to the situation we have now. Heck, you can't even *read* about a lot of publically funded (partially or total) research now without paying for the article, let alone do anything with the information once it becomes trapped in the patent minefield. I'd say that is at least a partially broken system that needs some rethinking.
Public funding for successful cures. Not treatments, cures. No cure, no loot, and that makes it perfectly clear what should or should not be tried for, by public pressure. Winner take all. Smartest guys win. Make the cash payout large enough, you'll get teams trying, and they won't have to waste money on advertising/marketing/fancy offices/corporate jets/lobbying/bribing, any of that crap they do now, just the lab and the brains... No suits or skimming needed or even applicable. The winners take their payout and try for the next prize or whatever else they want to do, because the winning formula gets public domained,it gets the anti-patent treatment in other words, then any generic company can offer it so the cost will be low over all and instant competition to keep it low.
An alternative from the private sector (this is wild but might work and I think millions of people would participate) would be a 50/50 split, using a lottery. 50% for lottery prizes, the other 50% going to the medical x-prize. No tax money needed that way, no institutional money, and it's been proven that lotteries attract cash. Again,let the people, the potential customers for medical "stuff" we are talking about, determine what gets funded or not based on their own self interest.
Another way is just a private bounty system to fund the x-prize, interested people, other businesses (I have mentioned insurance companies before in this regard as one such business), etc. are free to donate to the winners purse, these monies also possibly coming from what is normally donated for "research" anyway, you see them now, this society, that society, this medical foundation, that one, jerry's kids, etc. Cut to the chase and fund only cures,and things will change. Keep it the way it is now where we give patents for mostly treatments-and it will stay the way it is now. Nothing will change. You can't get different results until you first change the way you go about what you are doing, doing the same thing over and over again will just get you..the same thing.
A quick google tells me the sun reverses magnetic field every 22 years. 11 is in the middle, guess that is why but not fully. So we shift that question upstream one notch as to the "why?" part. source : http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/sun/activit y/solar_cycle.html
t ml
I also just found out this NASA solar division lost funding
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.sh
..you make some good points, can't argue with them much. I think common packaging and getting rid of shared libraries would be a good thing although it isn't the old school unix guru way because...uhh..because everyone is running a ten meg hard drive with 64k RAM on a 300 baud modem I guess..*snort*.
.deb is probably on more desktops and debian derivatives have probably the most exposure. And like you said, lin-freespire is really hitting the OEM installs (and they have the easiest for-pay after market applications in their click n run service, that should be of interest to you), they are debian derived, and ubuntu is now the current top dog, also a debian. Go that way for the most exposure for your niche, you aren't trying to get on biz desktops with games, but home users, so there ya go. Now I personally run fedora, but it really doesn't matter to me either, I am just as happy using knoppix live cd for instance, or even a mini distro (I love those things!), just more familiar with redhat stuff because it is what I started with and it works pretty well for the most part.
I come from an old mac classic background, about the easiest it gets for packages, download, run, and that's it. Stick it wherever you want to, still works. Have multiple copies and different versions-it doesn't matter.
Good luck on getting the linux devs and enthusiasts to agree on any of that though, I think the best advice if you want to support some linux is just shoot for what YOU think is the best packaging way and best distro and just be done with it, let others sort out how to make it work on others. For most practical purposes,