You're 100% correct about entropy and growth(*). Some other things are simply incorrect. But what I really don't like is your POV on these things:
The executive summary version of this fact is that if the entire population of the earth were consuming energy at the same rate as Americans, the atmosphere would be incandescent with waste heat.
Pure BS. As other posters pointed out, the extra energy is tiny and the radiation heat transfer into space still works very good (despite all the greenhouse gases). In the night, it gets cold!
Simply put, the USA have a sizeable share of the world's population (1/25?), so the waste heat won't grow more than this factor 25 if everyone started to burn fuel like the average US citizen does.
The obvious consequence of this [...] is that producing more energy is not a viable long term goal; only conserving energy is. Even were this not the case, the current growth rates for energy consumption would lead to the exhaustion of even uranium for fission in a relatively small number of generations.
Give numbers. And remember that tens of generations (a small number?) still equate many hundred to thousands of years. IMHO, the 'year' is the more honest unit here.
Arguably, the worst thing that could happent to the human race would be the practical availability of an effectively unlimited source of power like fusion. If fusion power proved to be anywhere near as cheap as its proponents claim it would be, all economic incentive to reduce consumption (and therefore waste heat production) would be eliminated.
Sigh. Here you show your fundamentalistic green attitude. I'm still convinced that technical progress (i.e. making available cheap and clean energy) is good. After all, your same argument could be made for any other energy source. Why don't we still live on trees?! What the heck, even by living and breathing you conserve precious chemical energy! Let us start a global scale nuclear war to escape this horrible state!!
--- (*)-I'd like to point out here, too, that exponential economic growth forever is physically impossible. The maximum possible growth (if growth is something like [size-of-economy/time] is quadratic, since if the economy would expand with light speed like a shell around earth, you'd have a quadratically growing economy:-))
Of course fusion power would use Hydrogen as power source, but that's a totally different issue, and it happening is probably much farther in the future than "Hydrogen Economy"... I don't think so. Yes, everyone knows that physicists make promises about fusion power available in the next few years since 50+ years...
BUT: If fusion power is finally working (someone famous (forgot the name) once said something like 'fusion will be ready if mankind needs it') it will be trivial to inject the generated fusion energy into the existing electrical grid.
For hydrogen, the whole infrastructure has to be modernized. And everyone knows when people really think about changing things (i.e. switching to hydrogen) - when it is just too late (i.e. the economy is in shambles and there's nothing left to build such a hydrogen grid).
Hydrogen is [...] simply an energy transfer medium, like a driveshaft or an electric power line.
Mr. Pig Hogger, thank you alot for this insightful comment. I hereby call for the development of neccessary all tools for driveshaft economy. A shaft into everyones home!
Just imagine how energy efficient carousels will get!
[...] Recht auf eine Privatkopie [...] [...] [...] As somebody who has lived in Germany [...]
How long ago did you left? In the meantime, things got worse regarding copyrights... you know, corruption by lobbies, masked as 'international pressure', 'germany has to stay competitive' (wtf!) etc...
The right to a 'Privatkopie' only exists on paper now. The new copyright law implemented a few years ago specifically forbids cracking copy ''protections''. What if you want to make an allowed copy of such media?
Germany's attorney general Brigitte Zypries said that there is no right to personal copies in copyright law ("Das Urheberrecht kennt kein Recht auf Privatkopie", see e.g. this German c't computer magazine article).
IMHO, such laws show how corrupt our goverment became. Interesting opininions on slashdot (comparing copyright violation to drugs and to rape) let me strongly suspect, as another poster in a previous thread said very well: 'meme injection by *AA astroturfing agents'.
Re:Relativity In Words of Four Letters or Less
on
100 Years of Einstein
·
· Score: 1
Very good!
This is presumably what every physics student has in mind as the visualisation of SR/GR (as least I have...). Now I'll show this to friends if they ask me about special/general relativity. I couldn't have said it better!
I would immediately assume per day or maybe per day/(2*PI) (but this doesn't really change the order of magnitude). Of course, measuring speed changes in "microseconds" is rather sloppy...
Why? Because angular frequency omega=2*PI*f is measured in "per second". And, often s^(-1) or Hz makes the distinction between angular frequency and frequency. So they could mean
a) Delta T=Delta (1/f)=3 microsecond b) or Delta (1/omega)=Delta (1/(2*pi*f))=3/(2*pi) microsecond
IMHO, the most reasonable would be a). But that is purely subjective:)
Your first premise here is, that society, seen as something like an organism, is more important than the individual. I strongly disagree, although there are of course cases where you have to carefully compare the importance of both things. For example, there are better forms of goverment than a republic if you only care about that.
Your second premise is that "Someone unlawfully distributing software" is harming society. This is arguable, especially if stated in this general way.
Finally, you seem to defend harsh penalties for unlawful software distribution. IMHO, you need better justification for those. After all you don't really know if much lesser sentences suffice!
Lasershoppe.com Laser: >100mW (one tested was 191!) Thinkgeek.com Laser: 5mW
Yes... there is a 20x difference in power here (about 38x with the tested one). While lasers in general can be harmful, the one this guy is selling should really be considered a weapon.
Except that the green Thinkgeek.com one is very probably a DPSS laser (diode pumped solid state laser), where the energy goes like this:
Battery -> POWERFUL IR Diode -> Nd:YAG crystal -> rather inefficient frequency doubling crystal -> IR filter -> Lens -> Air
And it's the IR diode, in the 10-100mW range, that's the problem. If one removes the IR filter, all the IR light goes out of the laser pointer and it would be possible to burn things with that.
I have seen auctions on ebay where someone explicetely stated that it is possible to remove this filter and showed that is possible to burn plastic foils with the modified pointer (including pictures(!))
As there are already too many assholes with red laser pointers running around in public (trying to point into your eyes) and green ones constantly drop in price, I'd rather like it if manufacturers of such pointers would be obliged to glue the diode onto the YAG crystal onto the filter. In a way that it would be impossible to remove the filter without destroying the laser.
This would probably also prevent too harsh laws for powerful lasers used for research and other legitimate purposes. The first 'accidents' which happen with modified green pointers will give the word to those activist politicians who state 'Oh my god, let's do something about it! Think of the children! BAN ALL LASERS!!'
> sometime in the long-term future? If long-term is measured in years or decades, I'm not so sure..
'The (whichever) government' is made up of people, too. Certainly, many of these 'evil goverment people' have the will to fight for their life, as nearly everyone does.
And because it seems really feasible to deflect such things nowadays, people will be motivated to try that. _Very_ motivated, I think.
I wonder how they accomplish this... since a material which is transparent for optical photons should have a very high bandgap (>4eV), i.e. should behave much like an isolator at room temperature. Has anyone more information about that?
No, but you should at least hear or read such arguments by those responsible for software decisions. But that'd be embarassing for these politicians, because it would show that they are not as "computer savvy" as they like to be. (Not that running linux is any sign of being competent:)
Instead, you hear "microsoft is a big company, it creeates many jobs", "microsoft is modern", etc.pp.
Very close to the arguments brought up by MS marketing droids.
Here in germany, mr. Stoiber, premier in bavaria, talked about "not using software by 'leisure-time programmers'". Many FLOSS people got really angry about this, because it clearly shows his undemocratic arrogance.
Not to be cynical, but it seems what civilisation is all about is.. Bureaucracy. It is not like evolution or liberalism etc. has removed it. We have as much as the Romans did and even more.
Excuse me if I'm wrong here, but isn't this rather corruption (probably not in the legal sense, but who knows what will be discovered?) than bureacracy?
It seems that no rational argument (TCO/liabilty etc, or at least an argument like "I'm used to MS software, I want MS software) has been offered by those responsible for the excluse negotiations.
AFAIK, bureaucracy (in government) is merely the existence of long way with many hierachical levels for each decision. But does bureaucracy imply that decisions only go top-down?
English is not my mother tongue though, so maybe I'm applying the wrong definition here...:)
I'm a digital packrat because...
on
Digital Packrats
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· Score: 1
... I'm really afraid that the net/society/computing will possibly change to the worse in the future. Possibly - I'm not a tin foil hat or pessimist.
Really, if I look at how bad DRM (I'd better be a hardware packrat, too:( ) could be or the EU swpat lawyers effectively trying to kill FLOSS here... And if I look at the people around me and how much they agree to DRM, patents (hey, they're good for the small inventor) and even the abolishment of fundamental things like civil rights, I'm a bit 'worried'...
Yes, maybe this way 'feels technically different', but if you have an RSS aggregator/news ticker applet whatever on your desktop, it usually hides the implementation details completely from the user. Do you really think of "ok, now my client makes a http request, that travels through the call hierarchy of the libraries, gets a tcp socket open, gets a kernel call of the driver to send a SYN packet??". Even if I may have detailed knowledge about the inner workings of an application, I usually don't care about it.
BTW, it's the same about eMail and another good reason why the SMTP/POP suite should be replaced soon (besides spam).
Your obesity comparison is a bit funny... but to add something to this:
IMHO such things are the reason why there are no free markets and why there never will be really "free markets". Good that they got caught doing this, but this is only the tip of the iceberg.
People lament over and over again how 'the free market will fix every problem and is the most efficient solution there is...'. Problem is that somehow the feedback of the corporations back onto the government to change the rules and/or the violation of rules (to not abandon competition in this case) removes all oversight and fairness.
In this 'no-oversight' free market, every participant has to agree to somehow 1. be very greedy in a rational way to stay competitive but also 2. to strictly obey all rules and not to try to use money to influence those rules.
This is a highly unstable condition and mostly the experiment goes awry well before this condition is ever met.
It is an utopia and I'd be glad if more of those market-fans would recognize this and stop bashing the left for their utopias... we all have dreams. With this I'm also not trying to say that utopias are bad. But one has to remind oneself that in reality, the best you can make are approximations.
Thanks ALOT! I can't stand all these free market fans "it is proven that it works better and will give the most efficient solution". BS. Nothing is proven, except maybe in some chosen economic theory with some chosen premises. The free market is a damn, often a damn good *tool*, but not more than that.
Of course, to have a government that provides good services, it needs oversight by the citizens but that's, well, the purpose of a democracy/republic...
Then there is reverse influence of corporations on the government. I suspect this will be the case with private EM spectrum in a few years, too... and I don't think that the result will be pretty.
Patents are absolutely necessary to protect small companies from having their ideas taken without any credit or compensation to the original source. I don't think so(*). Because
1.) (Software)Patents are very expensive which is a much higher burden for a small company than a big one (in relative terms)
2.) Defending patents is expensive. In the ideal world, it would be simple yes/no outcome of a log(n)-searchtree if a patent applies or not. In the real world, it very much depends on how you pay your lawyers...
3.) Corruption. Yes, it happens.
And if a patent application of a 10000+ employees company is considered, the name is probably well known to the evaluating person etc.pp. Not so with 5-people garage inc.
IMHO, SWPATs are just an addition to the immune system of the big companys, to squash the smaller ones and in the end to stifle innovation. Yes, this is a rant.
(*) - I don't even think that ordinary patents do any good to small companies, but that's another issue...
I think your problem (and the problem of people thinking like you) is that your fear science or the implications of it. OR that you simply reject some scientific facts because they contradict the words in your bible/quran/whatever.
People just do not want to be descendants of apes and/or a bag full of various chemicals. Many feel somehow "controlled" by science and flee into pseudoscience, esoterics or religion which forbids reasoning. IMHO very understandable but still VERY stupid and dangerous for society.
First of all, you have to realize that all the people who dig out these facts are also simply such meat bags. And second, and much more important, there are too many scientists today who mix their opinion with their findings. I think this is one of the major reasons why people get dragged into the silliest of cults.
Examples: Take a biologist, his/her job may be to find about the evolotunary dependencies between various species (for example), NOT TO endorse social darwinism.
Take a neurologist, his/her job may be to find about some thought processes, NOT to promote enslaving because "it is a scientific fact that noone has a free will".
Of course these examples are exaggerated, but I hope you'll understand what I'm trying to say. Also, this list can be further extended.
Both opinions (and they are sadly very widespread) result from silently pouring personal premises into the equations. And telling it in the way "I'm know, because I'm a scientist in that field.".
IMHO, as a scientist, you have to remind yourself that you are describing the "objective" part of reality. Additional to pure philosophy which only uses rational thought (note that I didn't say "brain" here:-), you rely on your senses. You have to keep that in mind.
If I say "time started with the big bang some 13.7 billion of years ago and it doesn't make sense to speak about 'the time before'", I'm extrapolating and interpreting scientific facts with my rational mind and therefore using my senses (or those of other people) to give that answer.
I hear you saying now: But in the end, I can't really be sure that everything works according to the laws of nature, that there is 'really no god'. IMHO you're right. - And, for some of those atheistic nerds here: It's dishonest to oneself to strongly deny the existence of any GOD but to think OTOH "Maybe I'm just a brain with electrodes connected to it or I'm just a a simulation running on someones computer".
I don't know for sure and maybe I'll never know, but why should I believe -> therefore I'm agnostic( and thinking that I have a free will). Yes, this is probably my own twisted religion. But at least I try to distinguish between reasoning and belief.
I'll try to say it in yet another way: By letting in astrology/religion/... into your *everyday life* and by believing in 'religous facts' which contradict scientific facts(*), you're either a) denying that your senses give the proper output, so to say:) b) abandoning rational thought, i.e. logic reasoning.
--------------- (*) - There are of course, (too) many scientific "theories" which do not deserve that title because they are just called that by the more influental people in the community. And, theories have borders, i.e. newtons law is good enough to describe the motions of the planets around the sun but not a black hole. But, please, this is not the case with evolution.
There are several types of holograms. The traditional one, AFAIK the first one produced by Gabor, the inventor of holography (BTW... he originally invented holography to make better electron microscopes and not pretty 3D "pictures":) was a transmission hologram.
For a transmission type hologram, you split your laser light into two beams, one directly hits the holographic plate and the other one bounces off the object and hits the plate afterwards. To reconstruct this type of hologram, you need laser light (or light with similar coherence features).
The white light hologram (? "Weisslichthologramm" in german) is even simpler to make and can be reconstructed in white light from a point source. By positioning the object behind the plate, the part of the beam that is transmitted through the plate hits the object and interferes with the incoming wave in the plate. This type of hologram can be reconstructed in white light because parallel interference stripes form in the plate which act as a colour filter. "The hologram makes the light the way it wants it to be...;)"
Slashdot Mirror
And this argument is circular, if it was meant as an argument for science.
Because Occam's Razor is a part, maybe even a premise of the philosophy of science. But theology couldn't care less about this.
No, I'm not religious. I consider myself agnostic for reasons like this.
You're 100% correct about entropy and growth(*). Some other things are simply incorrect. But what I really don't like is your POV on these things:
:-))
The executive summary version of this fact is that if the entire population of the earth were consuming energy at the same rate as Americans, the atmosphere would be incandescent with waste heat.
Pure BS. As other posters pointed out, the extra energy is tiny and the radiation heat transfer into space still works very good (despite all the greenhouse gases). In the night, it gets cold!
Simply put, the USA have a sizeable share of the world's population (1/25?), so the waste heat won't grow more than this factor 25 if everyone started to burn fuel like the average US citizen does.
The obvious consequence of this [...] is that producing more energy is not a viable long term goal; only conserving energy is. Even were this not the case, the current growth rates for energy consumption would lead to the exhaustion of even uranium for fission in a relatively small number of generations.
Give numbers. And remember that tens of generations (a small number?) still equate many hundred to thousands of years. IMHO, the 'year' is the more honest unit here.
Arguably, the worst thing that could happent to the human race would be the practical availability of an effectively unlimited source of power like fusion. If fusion power proved to be anywhere near as cheap as its proponents claim it would be, all economic incentive to reduce consumption (and therefore waste heat production) would be eliminated.
Sigh. Here you show your fundamentalistic green attitude.
I'm still convinced that technical progress (i.e. making available cheap and clean energy) is good.
After all, your same argument could be made for any other energy source. Why don't we still live on trees?! What the heck, even by living and breathing you conserve precious chemical energy! Let us start a global scale nuclear war to escape this horrible state!!
---
(*)-I'd like to point out here, too, that exponential economic growth forever is physically impossible. The maximum possible growth (if growth is something like [size-of-economy/time] is quadratic, since if the economy would expand with light speed like a shell around earth, you'd have a quadratically growing economy
Of course fusion power would use Hydrogen as power source, but that's a totally different issue, and it happening is probably much farther in the future than "Hydrogen Economy"...
I don't think so. Yes, everyone knows that physicists make promises about fusion power available in the next few years since 50+ years...
BUT: If fusion power is finally working (someone famous (forgot the name) once said something like 'fusion will be ready if mankind needs it') it will be trivial to inject the generated fusion energy into the existing electrical grid.
For hydrogen, the whole infrastructure has to be modernized. And everyone knows when people really think about changing things (i.e. switching to hydrogen) - when it is just too late (i.e. the economy is in shambles and there's nothing left to build such a hydrogen grid).
Hydrogen is [...] simply an energy transfer medium, like a driveshaft or an electric power line.
Mr. Pig Hogger, thank you alot for this insightful comment. I hereby call for the development of neccessary all tools for driveshaft economy. A shaft into everyones home!
Just imagine how energy efficient carousels will get!
Hey, and you forgot the baltic sea, with cities such as Lübeck, Kiel and Flensburg, you insensitive clod! :)
[...] Recht auf eine Privatkopie [...]
[...]
[...] As somebody who has lived in Germany [...]
How long ago did you left? In the meantime, things got worse regarding copyrights... you know, corruption by lobbies, masked as 'international pressure', 'germany has to stay competitive' (wtf!) etc...
The right to a 'Privatkopie' only exists on paper now. The new copyright law implemented a few years ago specifically forbids cracking copy ''protections''. What if you want to make an allowed copy of such media?
Germany's attorney general Brigitte Zypries said that there is no right to personal copies in copyright law ("Das Urheberrecht kennt kein Recht auf Privatkopie", see e.g. this German c't computer magazine article).
IMHO, such laws show how corrupt our goverment became.
Interesting opininions on slashdot (comparing copyright violation to drugs and to rape) let me strongly suspect, as another poster in a previous thread said very well: 'meme injection by *AA astroturfing agents'.
Very good!
This is presumably what every physics student has in mind as the visualisation of SR/GR (as least I have...).
Now I'll show this to friends if they ask me about special/general relativity. I couldn't have said it better!
I would immediately assume per day or maybe per day/(2*PI) (but this doesn't really change the order of magnitude). Of course, measuring speed changes in "microseconds" is rather sloppy...
:)
Why?
Because angular frequency omega=2*PI*f is measured in "per second". And, often s^(-1) or Hz makes the distinction between angular frequency and frequency. So they could mean
a) Delta T=Delta (1/f)=3 microsecond
b) or Delta (1/omega)=Delta (1/(2*pi*f))=3/(2*pi) microsecond
IMHO, the most reasonable would be a). But that is purely subjective
IANAG (geophysicist), though.
Your first premise here is, that society, seen as something like an organism, is more important than the individual. I strongly disagree, although there are of course cases where you have to carefully compare the importance of both things.
For example, there are better forms of goverment than a republic if you only care about that.
Your second premise is that "Someone unlawfully distributing software" is harming society. This is arguable, especially if stated in this general way.
Finally, you seem to defend harsh penalties for unlawful software distribution. IMHO, you need better justification for those. After all you don't really know if much lesser sentences suffice!
Lasershoppe.com Laser: >100mW (one tested was 191!)
Thinkgeek.com Laser: 5mW
Yes... there is a 20x difference in power here (about 38x with the tested one). While lasers in general can be harmful, the one this guy is selling should really be considered a weapon.
Except that the green Thinkgeek.com one is very probably a DPSS laser (diode pumped solid state laser), where the energy goes like this:
Battery -> POWERFUL IR Diode -> Nd:YAG crystal -> rather inefficient frequency doubling crystal -> IR filter -> Lens -> Air
And it's the IR diode, in the 10-100mW range, that's the problem. If one removes the IR filter, all the IR light goes out of the laser pointer and it would be possible to burn things with that.
I have seen auctions on ebay where someone explicetely stated that it is possible to remove this filter and showed that is possible to burn plastic foils with the modified pointer (including pictures(!))
As there are already too many assholes with red laser pointers running around in public (trying to point into your eyes) and green ones constantly drop in price, I'd rather like it if manufacturers of such pointers would be obliged to glue the diode onto the YAG crystal onto the filter. In a way that it would be impossible to remove the filter without destroying the laser.
This would probably also prevent too harsh laws for powerful lasers used for research and other legitimate purposes.
The first 'accidents' which happen with modified green pointers will give the word to those activist politicians who state 'Oh my god, let's do something about it! Think of the children! BAN ALL LASERS!!'
> sometime in the long-term future?
If long-term is measured in years or decades, I'm not so sure..
'The (whichever) government' is made up of people, too. Certainly, many of these 'evil goverment people' have the will to fight for their life, as nearly everyone does.
And because it seems really feasible to deflect such things nowadays, people will be motivated to try that. _Very_ motivated, I think.
I wonder how they accomplish this... since a material which is transparent for optical photons should have a very high bandgap (>4eV), i.e. should behave much like an isolator at room temperature.
Has anyone more information about that?
No, but you should at least hear or read such arguments by those responsible for software decisions. But that'd be embarassing for these politicians, because it would show that they are not as "computer savvy" as they like to be. (Not that running linux is any sign of being competent :)
Instead, you hear "microsoft is a big company, it creeates many jobs", "microsoft is modern", etc.pp.
Very close to the arguments brought up by MS marketing droids.
Here in germany, mr. Stoiber, premier in bavaria, talked about "not using software by 'leisure-time programmers'". Many FLOSS people got really angry about this, because it clearly shows his undemocratic arrogance.
Not to be cynical, but it seems what civilisation is all about is.. Bureaucracy. It is not like evolution or liberalism etc. has removed it. We have as much as the Romans did and even more.
:)
Excuse me if I'm wrong here, but isn't this rather corruption (probably not in the legal sense, but who knows what will be discovered?) than bureacracy?
It seems that no rational argument (TCO/liabilty etc, or at least an argument like "I'm used to MS software, I want MS software) has been offered by those responsible for the excluse negotiations.
AFAIK, bureaucracy (in government) is merely the existence of long way with many hierachical levels for each decision. But does bureaucracy imply that decisions only go top-down?
English is not my mother tongue though, so maybe I'm applying the wrong definition here...
... I'm really afraid that the net/society/computing will possibly change to the worse in the future. Possibly - I'm not a tin foil hat or pessimist.
:( ) could be or the EU swpat lawyers effectively trying to kill FLOSS here...
Really, if I look at how bad DRM (I'd better be a hardware packrat, too
And if I look at the people around me and how much they agree to DRM, patents (hey, they're good for the small inventor) and even the abolishment of fundamental things like civil rights, I'm a bit 'worried'...
Ahh, and I forgot: Multicast is also a very nice idea for such applications.
:-)
And, did I forget to mention that IPv6 should be implemented ASAP?
There are sometimes reasons besides DRM and user control for new protocols, standards and formats
Yes, maybe this way 'feels technically different', but if you have an RSS aggregator/news ticker applet whatever on your desktop, it usually hides the implementation details completely from the user. Do you really think of "ok, now my client makes a http request, that travels through the call hierarchy of the libraries, gets a tcp socket open, gets a kernel call of the driver to send a SYN packet??". Even if I may have detailed knowledge about the inner workings of an application, I usually don't care about it.
BTW, it's the same about eMail and another good reason why the SMTP/POP suite should be replaced soon (besides spam).
Oops, yeah, it's mentioned in the TFA, which I obviously didn't read :)
Heh, that's funny, just yesterday I browsed around on arxiv.org (the famous repository of physics/math/cs papers) and saw the
original paper.
Your obesity comparison is a bit funny... but
to add something to this:
IMHO such things are the reason why there are no free markets and why there never will be really "free markets". Good that they got caught doing this, but this is only the tip of the iceberg.
People lament over and over again how 'the free market will fix every problem and is the most efficient solution there is...'. Problem is that somehow the feedback of the corporations back onto the government to change the rules and/or the violation of rules (to not abandon competition in this case) removes all oversight and fairness.
In this 'no-oversight' free market, every participant has to agree to somehow
1. be very greedy in a rational way to stay competitive
but also 2. to strictly obey all rules and not to try to use money to influence those rules.
This is a highly unstable condition and mostly the experiment goes awry well before this condition is ever met.
It is an utopia and I'd be glad if more of those market-fans would recognize this and stop bashing the left for their utopias... we all have dreams.
With this I'm also not trying to say that utopias are bad. But one has to remind oneself that in reality, the best you can make are approximations.
Thanks ALOT!
I can't stand all these free market fans "it is proven that it works better and will give the most efficient solution". BS. Nothing is proven, except maybe in some chosen economic theory with some chosen premises.
The free market is a damn, often a damn good *tool*, but not more than that.
Of course, to have a government that provides good services, it needs oversight by the citizens but that's, well, the purpose of a democracy/republic...
Then there is reverse influence of corporations on the government. I suspect this will be the case with private EM spectrum in a few years, too... and I don't think that the result will be pretty.
Oops, forgot to preview. Place an after "...original source" :)
Patents are absolutely necessary to protect small companies from having their ideas taken without any credit or compensation to the original source.
I don't think so(*). Because
1.) (Software)Patents are very expensive which is a much higher burden for a small company than a big one (in relative terms)
2.) Defending patents is expensive. In the ideal world, it would be simple yes/no outcome of a log(n)-searchtree if a patent applies or not. In the real world, it very much depends on how you pay your lawyers...
3.) Corruption. Yes, it happens.
And if a patent application of a 10000+ employees company is considered, the name is probably well known to the evaluating person etc.pp. Not so with 5-people garage inc.
IMHO, SWPATs are just an addition to the immune system of the big companys, to squash the smaller ones and in the end to stifle innovation. Yes, this is a rant.
(*) - I don't even think that ordinary patents do any good to small companies, but that's another issue...
I think your problem (and the problem of people thinking like you) is that your fear science or the implications of it. OR that you simply reject some scientific facts because they contradict the words in your bible/quran/whatever.
:-), you rely on your senses. You have to keep that in mind.
:)
People just do not want to be descendants of apes and/or a bag full of various chemicals. Many feel somehow "controlled" by science and flee into pseudoscience, esoterics or religion which forbids reasoning. IMHO very understandable but still VERY stupid and dangerous for society.
First of all, you have to realize that all the people who dig out these facts are also simply such meat bags.
And second, and much more important, there are too many scientists today who mix their opinion with their findings. I think this is one of the major reasons why people get dragged into the silliest of cults.
Examples:
Take a biologist, his/her job may be to find about the evolotunary dependencies between various species (for example), NOT TO endorse social darwinism.
Take a neurologist, his/her job may be to find about some thought processes, NOT to promote enslaving because "it is a scientific fact that noone has a free will".
Of course these examples are exaggerated, but I hope you'll understand what I'm trying to say. Also, this list can be further extended.
Both opinions (and they are sadly very widespread) result from silently pouring personal premises into the equations. And telling it in the way "I'm know, because I'm a scientist in that field.".
IMHO, as a scientist, you have to remind yourself that you are describing the "objective" part of reality. Additional to pure philosophy which only uses rational thought (note that I didn't say "brain" here
If I say "time started with the big bang some 13.7 billion of years ago and it doesn't make sense to speak about 'the time before'", I'm extrapolating and interpreting scientific facts with my rational mind and therefore using my senses (or those of other people) to give that answer.
I hear you saying now: But in the end, I can't really be sure that everything works according to the laws of nature, that there is 'really no god'. IMHO you're right.
- And, for some of those atheistic nerds here: It's dishonest to oneself to strongly deny the existence of any GOD but to think OTOH "Maybe I'm just a brain with electrodes connected to it or I'm just a a simulation running on someones computer".
I don't know for sure and maybe I'll never know, but why should I believe -> therefore I'm agnostic( and thinking that I have a free will). Yes, this is probably my own twisted religion. But at least I try to distinguish between reasoning and belief.
I'll try to say it in yet another way: By letting in astrology/religion/... into your *everyday life* and by believing in 'religous facts' which contradict scientific facts(*), you're either
a) denying that your senses give the proper output, so to say
b) abandoning rational thought, i.e. logic reasoning.
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(*) - There are of course, (too) many scientific "theories" which do not deserve that title because they are just called that by the more influental people in the community. And, theories have borders, i.e. newtons law is good enough to describe the motions of the planets around the sun but not a black hole.
But, please, this is not the case with evolution.
There are several types of holograms. The traditional one, AFAIK the first one produced by Gabor, the inventor of holography (BTW... he originally invented holography to make better electron microscopes and not pretty 3D "pictures" :) was a transmission hologram.
;)"
For a transmission type hologram, you split your laser light into two beams, one directly hits the holographic plate and the other one bounces off the object and hits the plate afterwards.
To reconstruct this type of hologram, you need laser light (or light with similar coherence features).
The white light hologram (? "Weisslichthologramm" in german) is even simpler to make and can be reconstructed in white light from a point source.
By positioning the object behind the plate, the part of the beam that is transmitted through the plate hits the object and interferes with the incoming wave in the plate. This type of hologram can be reconstructed in white light because parallel interference stripes form in the plate which act as a colour filter. "The hologram makes the light the way it wants it to be...