1.5 million people have died as a result of our attack on Iraq. White ones, brown ones, Americans, Iraqis, mostly civilians and many of them not from bombs but from starvation after the infrastructure needed for their water, food, and medical care was destroyed.
I'm pretty sure we didn't lose those kind of numbers in the towers.
Try the civil war when a loose collection of largely independent states were bound into a single state under a central government that was never intended for that purpose.
The central government which was not supposed to maintain a standing army has maintained one ever since.
"They are not at all clear representations with easy to identify anatomy. They are strange ghostly pictures that are recognizable as a human form but little else"
This is false. For the one doctored image there are hundreds of real images you can view and the only thing indistinct about them is color.
"First is because it is not sexual in nature."
That literally varies from one examiner to the next. Unless you are going to claim that $10/hr barely trained employees with no significant qualifications maintain a perfect professional disassociation from the innate instincts in every human. Even doctors only pretend this and some of them poorly.
"If a university is publicly stating that they will allow these idiots to pass"
We aren't talking about idiots we are talking about cheaters. Being a cheater doesn't make you an idiot it makes you a non-conformist. While there are likely many dim bulbs in this group I wouldn't be surprised if the brightest student in the class is among their roster. Conformists obey the rules by default and will do so lacking stimulus to deviate, non-conformists will do what takes the least effort and need stimulus to obey rules that can otherwise be circumvented.
The University is making its stance for obvious reasons, they don't know who the cheaters are. Based on statistics the professor THINKS he knows how many students cheated but not who they are. This is a way for them to find out.
We aren't really talking about what the university should or should not do we are talking about the mental stance of an individual student who doesn't actually have any say and whose grade drops a letter. But if we were your alleged anecdotal evidence does not constitute the citation I requested.
A university that doesn't destroy the lives of 20 people based on something as dicey as statistical analysis does not make for a diploma mill.
This is so true. A comment here has no credibility in and of itself but there WILL be serious physicists posting on a physics story here. The same with any other scientific, technical, or engineering article.
There is plenty of hyperbole posted. When I read a hyperbole headline a glance at the comments will usually reveal how and why the article/summary isn't what it seemed within 5-10 lines.
Please provide a citation showing that people with diplomas from universities that have given people breaks when they discovered mass cheating are paid less by a statistically significant margin. Without said citation this is just idle speculation on your part.
Life is not just. If you choose to be unhappy each time you encounter injustice you are setting yourself up for a miserable life.
We are talking about 30% of a class that maybe 20 lives being destroyed for an action that 30% of the class felt was morally insignificant. Some might feel that justice isn't worth the price. I just think being upset about it isn't worth the price to yourself.
At the end of the day you can choose to view yourself as being in competition with everyone else or being in the competition with everyone else.
If you choose the first you will be miserable no matter what you accomplish if you choose the later you and everyone around you will be much better off.
"It's not fair that I take a GPA hit due to OTHERS cheating"
What is the relevance of fair? Life isn't fair and if you go through life with sour grapes over everything that happens and is unfair you are going to have a hard time being happy.
Getting a B vs an A isn't going to have any significant lasting impact on your life it is doubtful if it will even matter past your first interview and probably won't even matter there. 30% of your peers being thrown out of school is going to have a very significant permanent impact on their lives.
I'm not saying you'd have no right to be upset or that it would make you a bad person. I'm saying that you and the people whose lives were positively impacted by your sacrifice will all be much happier if you CHOOSE to view it differently.
"it doesn't particularly make me feel any better that someone else may have done better because of the retake, let alone the fact that the retake was to allow people who cheated to not get kicked out of school as they should have been"
With this kind of outlook no matter how good your life or how much you have you will always be unhappy if there is someone else with more or with as much who didn't have to work as hard for it.
Can't you be happy when your fellow man catches a break? If it were your daughter, sister, or significant would you still begrudge them?
The only time you should worry about how others were treated is when they were treated unjustly and you may need to intervene. Sometimes, it is worth intervening to prevent justice when the net result is negative.
For instance, even though they cheated and it may be just to kick them out of school according to the rules. The consequences of failing 1/3 of my college sized class not out of the course but out of school altogether, severely impacting the quality of the rest of their lives is such that I would gladly retake a test I had already passed in order to spare them that fate. In fact, I'd do it for just one classmate... and have.
"It's not like anyone capable of using such tools cannot handle tar, make, and make install."
Hopefully not on fedora. You shouldn't install from source on binary based systems the package manager doesn't know about your install and this can lead to library incompatibilities. In the best case this will cause something to break, in the worst case it will lead to application instability and bitrot similar to that seen on windows.
You should always roll up an RPM if there isn't one available.
Ahhhh the broom closet theory. I'm rather fond of that one myself even if it is a creationist theory. It gets especially interesting in the experimentation phase.
"Where exactly is the requirement that everyone in the world makes the same as their "American counterparts"?"
Say what you will but the bottom line is that this an American show created by American talent but the American animators are going hungry while South Koreans work their jobs.
Since we have deviated from talking about the existing system to my system by adding the element of opinion I'll take license and extend it a little further.
I'd venture that Einstein and Newton would certainly WANT a patent even if they might not be as greedy as some in its enforcement. Regardless of their personal wants there is plenty of motive to grant them their patents.
A patent is essentially a grant of wealth that is in principle directly tied to the utility of your invention. People like Einstein and Newton probably would give up much of that wealth by granting free license for the most useful purposes of their inventions. What they keep will assure they can focus all their time and efforts looking for new ideas if they so choose. Which benefits us all.
Additionally, wealth helps to insure the success of your bloodline and your ability to nurture your successor. That is a clear win for mankind regardless of whether you believe nature or nurture is responsible for an Einstein.
If the award of a patent is rare then getting one also amounts to quite a distinction aside from money. Those who aren't motivated by wealth are often motivated by recognition from their peers or society. If you are a potential Einstein or Newton this will drive you.
In MY system patents aren't applied for. Patent examiners search for potential candidates and peer review and consensus decide who wins. This further enforces patents as a reward, pretty much eliminates obviousness, and encourages research, science, and publishing.
As for patents on the newer and better toothbrush. No I don't see any need for them. Progression, especially commercial progression of goods does not need patents. I don't even think patents should be transferable and should not be considered part of work for hire.
"If you fall in the camp that progress is a function of the times and not of individuals, than your system would grant no patents to anyone."
I do but I disagree with your conclusion. Newton and Einstein both developed models that would qualify for patents under my system. Of course they'd be expired by now.
Patents would still be granted they'd just be a lot more rare and usually a lot larger in impact.
Some would argue that Einstein and Newton didn't invent but rather discovered. I would contend that those are people who don't understand what science and physics models are. Science may discover truths along the way but science is the process of developing models aka inventions the produce results that are functionally indistinguishable from truth.
"I'm holding out similar hope for nanotape [technologyreview.com] - sticky tape based on carbon nanotubes modeled after the microscopic hairs on gecko feet. Nature invented it, but it's proving to be an enormous engineering challenge to replicate it."
Simple the patent wouldn't be for the nanotape but the method you find of replicating it. The resulting tape or other methods of producing it would be fair game.
If someone else finds a way to take your already made nanotape and use it to make replicating nanotape easy... well tough titty said the kitty. The purpose of patents is to benefit society not to reward some innate right of the inventor to profit from his invention.
Yes you can. Patents aren't about being fair to the inventor they are about promoting progress. If others working in the field would have eventually come with a solution as part of the normal course of doing their jobs then it in no way benefits society to grant a patent.
Arbitrary? No its not. If patents were granted because 'you have a right to profit from your work' the line might be arbitrary. Is such and such worthy of the innate right to profit? But that isn't the case.
Patents are granted to reward the invention of something truly novel so that you and others like you will be inspired to continue trying to invent truly novel things.
When determining if something is patent worthy we are deciding not if you have some innate right to profit but whether creating an artificial limitation to others will ultimately benefit or harm mankind. If your 'invention' is something that would come about from the routine efforts of any competent individual in your field then it would have come about without patents.
We have iron bars on our back door. We also have a water dish for the cats and it doesn't fit between the bars. Initially we would open the iron bar door to fill the dish. It was not long before my wife discovered it was easier to fill a glass and use the glass to fill the dish.
Is this an invention/discovery? Dunno that depends on the arbitrary distinction you refer to. But we don't grant a patent for this not because it is or isn't an invention or discovery or because of the profit potential but because a patent wouldn't benefit society. This is something that people will develop to make their lives easier when filling water dishes and a patent would only hinder the process.
So you go from a string such as 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 and isolate 4 and then claim you deserve a patent no on the process used to isolate 4 but on 4 itself?
Using your ideas every newly discovered prime is worthy of a patent.
Yes and the resulting fish or plant also wouldn't be covered by a patent for that process. It would not infringe to use good old breeding to replicate the fish.
Also could be an invention is key. If you are using standard processes being used by all experts in the field to accomplish the tasks then it is hardly patent worthy. Your peers would have arrived at the same solution if they worked toward the task. We shouldn't be giving patents for routine progression.
Neither do clean floors. But floors do exist in nature and so do genes therefore neither is patentable. The product or process used to clean the floor or to isolate and/or purify the gene might be the floor or gene itself is not.
And your process of isolating and/or purifying would need to be composed of methods that aren't being used to isolate and/or purify other genes otherwise it isn't non-obvious it is just a progressive improvement that any of your peers could have and would have made eventually if you weren't granted a patent.
"Case law doesn't arise from a jury's finding of fact, because the jury doesn't make or interpret the law, they only decide the facts of the case."
That is incorrect. Juries were tasked with the duty of not only interpreting the law but if its application on a case by case basis serves justice. The courts first decided they didn't have an obligation to inform juries of these rights and obligations. Subsequently they gave themselves the authority to lie to juries and tell them the opposite. Finally the courts decided it was okay to abuse their powers and throw out jurors and juries if they discover the juries are even aware of their rights and obligations.
None of that changes that juries have not only the right but the obligation to act as the direct representation of the people and check the law, the enforcement of the law, and the courts to prevent government injustice one case at a time.
"Read the whole judgement, the farmer found some plants which he knew were herbicide-resistant and selectively bred them to get enough seed to cover a significant portion of is crop."
So? Sorry but I see no reason you should be able to own a plant or genes in the plant that could be bred into subsequent generations.
Monsanto has the only seed you can be certain is resistant and has a patent to guarantee that. Subsequent generations could exhibit the gene only partially or to a lesser extent. That is all the market advantage they need.
Why should someone both get to enjoy an unfair portion of our society's wealth and not have to pay a proportionately unfair portion of the bill required for our society to function?
That would only be true if said person weren't enjoying a disproportionate share of the country's output already. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter who has supposed voting power in the rigged federal elections. The wealthy own all the possible candidates already.
I'll tell you a secret. There is no such thing as a person who produces billion dollar output. There are only people who are skimming a billion dollars worth of cream off the top of the output of others and claiming they are entitled to it. And after taking the credit and rewards of a billion dollars worth of other peoples work they will complain about having to pay a proportionate share relative to pennies they left the actual workers.
Slashdot Mirror
1.5 million people have died as a result of our attack on Iraq. White ones, brown ones, Americans, Iraqis, mostly civilians and many of them not from bombs but from starvation after the infrastructure needed for their water, food, and medical care was destroyed.
I'm pretty sure we didn't lose those kind of numbers in the towers.
Try the civil war when a loose collection of largely independent states were bound into a single state under a central government that was never intended for that purpose.
The central government which was not supposed to maintain a standing army has maintained one ever since.
"They are not at all clear representations with easy to identify anatomy. They are strange ghostly pictures that are recognizable as a human form but little else"
This is false. For the one doctored image there are hundreds of real images you can view and the only thing indistinct about them is color.
"First is because it is not sexual in nature."
That literally varies from one examiner to the next. Unless you are going to claim that $10/hr barely trained employees with no significant qualifications maintain a perfect professional disassociation from the innate instincts in every human. Even doctors only pretend this and some of them poorly.
"If a university is publicly stating that they will allow these idiots to pass"
We aren't talking about idiots we are talking about cheaters. Being a cheater doesn't make you an idiot it makes you a non-conformist. While there are likely many dim bulbs in this group I wouldn't be surprised if the brightest student in the class is among their roster. Conformists obey the rules by default and will do so lacking stimulus to deviate, non-conformists will do what takes the least effort and need stimulus to obey rules that can otherwise be circumvented.
The University is making its stance for obvious reasons, they don't know who the cheaters are. Based on statistics the professor THINKS he knows how many students cheated but not who they are. This is a way for them to find out.
We aren't really talking about what the university should or should not do we are talking about the mental stance of an individual student who doesn't actually have any say and whose grade drops a letter. But if we were your alleged anecdotal evidence does not constitute the citation I requested.
A university that doesn't destroy the lives of 20 people based on something as dicey as statistical analysis does not make for a diploma mill.
This is so true. A comment here has no credibility in and of itself but there WILL be serious physicists posting on a physics story here. The same with any other scientific, technical, or engineering article.
There is plenty of hyperbole posted. When I read a hyperbole headline a glance at the comments will usually reveal how and why the article/summary isn't what it seemed within 5-10 lines.
Please provide a citation showing that people with diplomas from universities that have given people breaks when they discovered mass cheating are paid less by a statistically significant margin. Without said citation this is just idle speculation on your part.
Life is not just. If you choose to be unhappy each time you encounter injustice you are setting yourself up for a miserable life.
We are talking about 30% of a class that maybe 20 lives being destroyed for an action that 30% of the class felt was morally insignificant. Some might feel that justice isn't worth the price. I just think being upset about it isn't worth the price to yourself.
At the end of the day you can choose to view yourself as being in competition with everyone else or being in the competition with everyone else.
If you choose the first you will be miserable no matter what you accomplish if you choose the later you and everyone around you will be much better off.
"It's not fair that I take a GPA hit due to OTHERS cheating"
What is the relevance of fair? Life isn't fair and if you go through life with sour grapes over everything that happens and is unfair you are going to have a hard time being happy.
Getting a B vs an A isn't going to have any significant lasting impact on your life it is doubtful if it will even matter past your first interview and probably won't even matter there. 30% of your peers being thrown out of school is going to have a very significant permanent impact on their lives.
I'm not saying you'd have no right to be upset or that it would make you a bad person. I'm saying that you and the people whose lives were positively impacted by your sacrifice will all be much happier if you CHOOSE to view it differently.
"it doesn't particularly make me feel any better that someone else may have done better because of the retake, let alone the fact that the retake was to allow people who cheated to not get kicked out of school as they should have been"
With this kind of outlook no matter how good your life or how much you have you will always be unhappy if there is someone else with more or with as much who didn't have to work as hard for it.
Can't you be happy when your fellow man catches a break? If it were your daughter, sister, or significant would you still begrudge them?
The only time you should worry about how others were treated is when they were treated unjustly and you may need to intervene. Sometimes, it is worth intervening to prevent justice when the net result is negative.
For instance, even though they cheated and it may be just to kick them out of school according to the rules. The consequences of failing 1/3 of my college sized class not out of the course but out of school altogether, severely impacting the quality of the rest of their lives is such that I would gladly retake a test I had already passed in order to spare them that fate. In fact, I'd do it for just one classmate... and have.
"If a drug baron is making millions, and donates 10% of his profit to charity.. does that make him a good person?"
Drugs are not actually bad m'kay. Bill is evil, a drug baron may or may not be evil.
"It's not like anyone capable of using such tools cannot handle tar, make, and make install."
Hopefully not on fedora. You shouldn't install from source on binary based systems the package manager doesn't know about your install and this can lead to library incompatibilities. In the best case this will cause something to break, in the worst case it will lead to application instability and bitrot similar to that seen on windows.
You should always roll up an RPM if there isn't one available.
Ahhhh the broom closet theory. I'm rather fond of that one myself even if it is a creationist theory. It gets especially interesting in the experimentation phase.
"Where exactly is the requirement that everyone in the world makes the same as their "American counterparts"?"
Say what you will but the bottom line is that this an American show created by American talent but the American animators are going hungry while South Koreans work their jobs.
Why is this being marked troll?
Since we have deviated from talking about the existing system to my system by adding the element of opinion I'll take license and extend it a little further.
I'd venture that Einstein and Newton would certainly WANT a patent even if they might not be as greedy as some in its enforcement. Regardless of their personal wants there is plenty of motive to grant them their patents.
A patent is essentially a grant of wealth that is in principle directly tied to the utility of your invention. People like Einstein and Newton probably would give up much of that wealth by granting free license for the most useful purposes of their inventions. What they keep will assure they can focus all their time and efforts looking for new ideas if they so choose. Which benefits us all.
Additionally, wealth helps to insure the success of your bloodline and your ability to nurture your successor. That is a clear win for mankind regardless of whether you believe nature or nurture is responsible for an Einstein.
If the award of a patent is rare then getting one also amounts to quite a distinction aside from money. Those who aren't motivated by wealth are often motivated by recognition from their peers or society. If you are a potential Einstein or Newton this will drive you.
In MY system patents aren't applied for. Patent examiners search for potential candidates and peer review and consensus decide who wins. This further enforces patents as a reward, pretty much eliminates obviousness, and encourages research, science, and publishing.
As for patents on the newer and better toothbrush. No I don't see any need for them. Progression, especially commercial progression of goods does not need patents. I don't even think patents should be transferable and should not be considered part of work for hire.
"If you fall in the camp that progress is a function of the times and not of individuals, than your system would grant no patents to anyone."
I do but I disagree with your conclusion. Newton and Einstein both developed models that would qualify for patents under my system. Of course they'd be expired by now.
Patents would still be granted they'd just be a lot more rare and usually a lot larger in impact.
Some would argue that Einstein and Newton didn't invent but rather discovered. I would contend that those are people who don't understand what science and physics models are. Science may discover truths along the way but science is the process of developing models aka inventions the produce results that are functionally indistinguishable from truth.
"I'm holding out similar hope for nanotape [technologyreview.com] - sticky tape based on carbon nanotubes modeled after the microscopic hairs on gecko feet. Nature invented it, but it's proving to be an enormous engineering challenge to replicate it."
Simple the patent wouldn't be for the nanotape but the method you find of replicating it. The resulting tape or other methods of producing it would be fair game.
If someone else finds a way to take your already made nanotape and use it to make replicating nanotape easy... well tough titty said the kitty. The purpose of patents is to benefit society not to reward some innate right of the inventor to profit from his invention.
Yes you can. Patents aren't about being fair to the inventor they are about promoting progress. If others working in the field would have eventually come with a solution as part of the normal course of doing their jobs then it in no way benefits society to grant a patent.
Arbitrary? No its not. If patents were granted because 'you have a right to profit from your work' the line might be arbitrary. Is such and such worthy of the innate right to profit? But that isn't the case.
Patents are granted to reward the invention of something truly novel so that you and others like you will be inspired to continue trying to invent truly novel things.
When determining if something is patent worthy we are deciding not if you have some innate right to profit but whether creating an artificial limitation to others will ultimately benefit or harm mankind. If your 'invention' is something that would come about from the routine efforts of any competent individual in your field then it would have come about without patents.
We have iron bars on our back door. We also have a water dish for the cats and it doesn't fit between the bars. Initially we would open the iron bar door to fill the dish. It was not long before my wife discovered it was easier to fill a glass and use the glass to fill the dish.
Is this an invention/discovery? Dunno that depends on the arbitrary distinction you refer to. But we don't grant a patent for this not because it is or isn't an invention or discovery or because of the profit potential but because a patent wouldn't benefit society. This is something that people will develop to make their lives easier when filling water dishes and a patent would only hinder the process.
So you go from a string such as 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 and isolate 4 and then claim you deserve a patent no on the process used to isolate 4 but on 4 itself?
Using your ideas every newly discovered prime is worthy of a patent.
Yes and the resulting fish or plant also wouldn't be covered by a patent for that process. It would not infringe to use good old breeding to replicate the fish.
Also could be an invention is key. If you are using standard processes being used by all experts in the field to accomplish the tasks then it is hardly patent worthy. Your peers would have arrived at the same solution if they worked toward the task. We shouldn't be giving patents for routine progression.
"Isolated, purified genes do not occur in nature"
Neither do clean floors. But floors do exist in nature and so do genes therefore neither is patentable. The product or process used to clean the floor or to isolate and/or purify the gene might be the floor or gene itself is not.
And your process of isolating and/or purifying would need to be composed of methods that aren't being used to isolate and/or purify other genes otherwise it isn't non-obvious it is just a progressive improvement that any of your peers could have and would have made eventually if you weren't granted a patent.
"Case law doesn't arise from a jury's finding of fact, because the jury doesn't make or interpret the law, they only decide the facts of the case."
That is incorrect. Juries were tasked with the duty of not only interpreting the law but if its application on a case by case basis serves justice. The courts first decided they didn't have an obligation to inform juries of these rights and obligations. Subsequently they gave themselves the authority to lie to juries and tell them the opposite. Finally the courts decided it was okay to abuse their powers and throw out jurors and juries if they discover the juries are even aware of their rights and obligations.
None of that changes that juries have not only the right but the obligation to act as the direct representation of the people and check the law, the enforcement of the law, and the courts to prevent government injustice one case at a time.
"Read the whole judgement, the farmer found some plants which he knew were herbicide-resistant and selectively bred them to get enough seed to cover a significant portion of is crop."
So? Sorry but I see no reason you should be able to own a plant or genes in the plant that could be bred into subsequent generations.
Monsanto has the only seed you can be certain is resistant and has a patent to guarantee that. Subsequent generations could exhibit the gene only partially or to a lesser extent. That is all the market advantage they need.
Why should someone both get to enjoy an unfair portion of our society's wealth and not have to pay a proportionately unfair portion of the bill required for our society to function?
That would only be true if said person weren't enjoying a disproportionate share of the country's output already. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter who has supposed voting power in the rigged federal elections. The wealthy own all the possible candidates already.
I'll tell you a secret. There is no such thing as a person who produces billion dollar output. There are only people who are skimming a billion dollars worth of cream off the top of the output of others and claiming they are entitled to it. And after taking the credit and rewards of a billion dollars worth of other peoples work they will complain about having to pay a proportionate share relative to pennies they left the actual workers.