I believe there are solutions worthy of a patent. Things that provide society with enough benefit that it is worth limited exclusivity (certainly not 20yrs worth!) in order to keep that inventor content and at home.
Examples (not US examples, global ones) are the printing press, the automobile, the turning machine, the steam engine, the time machine... wait, you guys don't know about that one yet. I believe the kinds of things that are worthy of a patent come along maybe once or twice a generation. I also believe that every 20 years or so when a 3-5yr patent IS granted it should go to the inventor(s) and not the company, even if it is a work for hire. The inventor should be protected from being bound to any prior agreement or obligation that would cost him/them his/their rights including employment agreements, outstanding loans, and tax debts. If it was a work for hire the company will have to settle for most likely having first dibs on licensing.
Patents don't inspire loyalty in companies because companies lack human values. It's the people with brilliant ideas we need to cultivate. Not the companies.
To give further clarification. The first engine is patent worthy, a new engine is not.
And no, software is not patent worthy unless it is an AI on a level it eliminates mankind of all menial thought. Then the inventor should be able to enjoy the benefits for the short transition phase in which money has meaning.
Small correction if you presented 5 engineers with a problem and ANY of them came up with the same or similar solutions, that solution shouldn't be patentable.
Patents are given out way too easily. I used to think patents should be eliminated altogether but I've finally settled on the belief that we simply give out too many and for too little.
Progressive inventions will be made without patents. Patents should be reserved for solutions that aren't reached by 1 in a thousand peers let alone five out of five random peers.
Tax dollars are scraped of the profits of the wealthy in far greater proportion than everyone else. The wealthy as a rule take in more wealth than they spend and therefore any profit you take from them and put in the hands of the middle class IS a boost to the economy.
which half do you want to cut the DARPA research half or the DARPA research + everything else half?
Most of the DOD (peacetime) budget umbrella pays for science. Science that has the potential to be used in a defense capacity or to lead to something that does but science just the same.
"Your idea is, of course, possible, but Occam's razor says it's more likely they'll just push the dust aside."
Actually regardless of efficiency I'd say Occam's razor supports moving aside since it requires only the technology they are already demonstrating with faster than light travel. Absorbing the impact or moving the dust aside would require this race to develop a second technology. As for being inefficient, it isn't particularly efficient to expend the massive energy required to move the dust or absorb it. How inefficient dodging would be would depend on the FTL technology they've come up with. It isn't safe to assume that technology works like ours in that you expend a great deal of energy accelerating and a small amount keeping speed.
"If you spend $100 gambling that the existence of aliens won't be announced in the next year, and the betting market odds are 100-to-1 against you losing, and the bookmaker requires you to deposit that $100 in advance (so they can be certain to have the money in case you lose), then a year later even if you win you'll have $101."
If you win the payout is 100 times your bet not a 100th fraction of it. It is the 'bookie' who is risking a hundred dollars for a potential profit of $1. If your bet was $100 and you won the payout would be $10000 + your hundred dollars back not $101.
I think what he is getting at is that just because the aliens can do something we can't doesn't automatically make them super smart. They could have found the secret to this technology by making poor assumptions. It is quite possible that for this one thing they can do and we thought impossible there are dozens of things we can do that they thought impossible.
Maybe they are insects that evolved a biological way to travel space?
"If they hit so much as a dust mote they'd be vaporized unless they've developed technology to knock the dust out of their way (which could easily be used as a weapon), or shielding capable of withstanding the impact (in which case, their shield could withstand anything we shot at them)."
This is a false dichotomy. There is at least one more possibility, they could have developed technology that allows them to detect and dodge the dust mote.
"So no matter what assumptive path you travel, you end up with the conclusion that any species that is so far advanced beyond our own as to achieve faster than light travel, even if 100% peaceful, has the capability to crush us"
Not true. At least two of the three possibilities covered would only allow them to resist our own efforts to crush them. You can't crush anyone with a shield. Defense can't be used to conquer, it can be used to support a crushing offense but that's it.
"Only when they're operating under ridiculous - in the context of outright conquest - constraints on what they can and can't do. "
This is a nice implied theory but it doesn't hold up under scrutiny. The US isn't the only industrial nation to battle third world nations. The soviets were bound by no such constraints, enjoy at least the same level of military sophistication and training quality as the US (the majority of the world considers their special forces to be number one for instance, the US is hard pressed to rank in the top ten). Yet the soviets had their asses handed to them by third world nations as well.
Unless the constraints you refer to is simply being barred from nuking the opposition into oblivion in which case the constraint is perfectly reasonable. It doesn't make sense to destroy the land you are conquering and strong enemies who would destroy you in return is a valid and practical constraint.
Again. This doesn't matter. The concentration camps had nothing to with Germany vs US. They had to do with Germany vs Jews. There is nothing pro or anti-american about aiding concentration camps.
"The Nazis didn't randomly execute people in the camps. They had a complex punch card based system. A system that could help you find jews. A system that determined value and worth. A system that decided in what order people would die. An IBM system."
Irrelevant. The death camps were neutral a neutral operation with regard to the US. Actually, if anything the death camps required resources that could have been leveraged in the war to US disadvantage.
Given the stated goal it is probably a way to slip in some form of government control of the internet.
Much like the can spam act here in the states. Supposedly it was to make spam mail illegal. But before the bill all spam was illegal. What the bill did was establish a set of rules under which one could legally spam people.
Only if it isn't left in its out of the box configuration.
What I had in mind was sitting the windows box behind a linux or bsd firewall running embedded on a device. Which is a pretty typical deployment.
There is also a difference between a hardened Windows and a completely out of the box windows.
I wasn't accepting the challenge. I'm normally the guy defending the system not attacking it. I was just clarifying the terms.
His test still gives him an advantage over most installations. AFAIK the most common attack vectors for windows these days target clients and not the server OS and utilize holes in client apps (browser, media player, etc) and then priv escalation exploits. The people paying for 0-days are spyware firms so thats what people are looking for.
"As the number of systems scales up, you have to trust the OS to take care of itself. A handful of admins can't keep up with all of the hundreds of servers they're often tasked with babysitting. Most places don't even have a comprehensive list of all of them."
As an Enterprise security guy I have to disagree. The gp is on the right track and his idea can be implemented at the firewall.
An Juniper SRX/SSG firewall can easily isolate everything from everything else and perform IDS/IDP checks for known malicious traffic on everything else that is allowed. Fscking fast for what it is too.*
Where enterprise fails is paying closer attention. First this was patched before you ever heard about it (duh, its a revert, the patch was written a long time ago). Enterprise environments will be painfully slow about applying it. Especially since its a kernel patch.
Second Enterprise assumes that simply having fancy intrusion detection and firewalls means they don't have to actually manually look at anything when there are signs of an attack.
* Yes, that was a juniper device I just recommended. But by all means, keep paying $40k to get a switch that can run at true wirespeed. I'll stick with recommending $2k juniper devices that can do the same.
With a functional network connection and in its default state... and not behind the protection of added hardware and/or software like a nat router/firewall.
Ah OK. Apparently it can happen here (in the US) but it is normally only done with a very very large debt and against someone with sizable assets. I can't imagine how much it would cost in legal fees to force someone into bankruptcy! Property rights are held as pretty sacred here. In the normal course of things only a federal/state debt would ever result in an individual having his assets seized (unless said assets were used to guarantee the debt)!
Also a modest dwelling and your car are protected in bankruptcy (assuming they are really yours and not the banks). Normally they are the largest assets someone has. After those many people have no assets that could realistically be tracked and sold especially if they don't use credit cards. They certainly don't come in and grab everything you own and sell it off at auction only sizable on paper assets.
Any debt that isn't covered by selling off your qualifying assets is discharged and you no longer owe it. Even the bankruptcy is off your credit report after 7yrs.
Here people (even companies) normally enter into bankruptcy voluntarily. They might have $2000 worth of assets and $50,000 worth of debt. There is another type of bankruptcy where you convince the court that if the creditors lay off for awhile you can reorganize your finances and be in a better position to pay your debts.
Then I'm told that in some other places you can be put in jail for not paying debts.
As for not having ownership I'm going to have to agree that having property subject to the whims of someone else who enforces their will via physical force is not ownership. In the days of yore there were kings, they granted lands and titles to lesser lords who owned them to a greater degree than we own lands or other property here in the US. Yet then nobody minced words, the king owned those lands not the lesser lords and the king could take them away.
"How about when you don't pay your private debts; one of your creditors gets you made bankrupt and your stuff gets liquidated? did you not own any of that either?"
A creditor can't 'get you made bankrupt'. Bankruptcy is something you initiate to discharge your debts and it is the last thing a creditor wants you to do because they probably won't get paid.
"While I only asked 3 of them, 2 of them had a difficult time with it, possibly they thought it was a trick question."
That isn't the same thing as not knowing the answer. Actually, that is knowing the answer and not understanding why someone would ask a question that everyone knows the answer to.
It's also a much more obscure piece of American history than the revolutionary war.
Try asking 2+2. You will still get confused answers. Not because people don't know the answer but because people can't grasp that you might genuinely be asking something so simple as a straight question.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe there are solutions worthy of a patent. Things that provide society with enough benefit that it is worth limited exclusivity (certainly not 20yrs worth!) in order to keep that inventor content and at home.
Examples (not US examples, global ones) are the printing press, the automobile, the turning machine, the steam engine, the time machine... wait, you guys don't know about that one yet. I believe the kinds of things that are worthy of a patent come along maybe once or twice a generation. I also believe that every 20 years or so when a 3-5yr patent IS granted it should go to the inventor(s) and not the company, even if it is a work for hire. The inventor should be protected from being bound to any prior agreement or obligation that would cost him/them his/their rights including employment agreements, outstanding loans, and tax debts. If it was a work for hire the company will have to settle for most likely having first dibs on licensing.
Patents don't inspire loyalty in companies because companies lack human values. It's the people with brilliant ideas we need to cultivate. Not the companies.
To give further clarification. The first engine is patent worthy, a new engine is not.
And no, software is not patent worthy unless it is an AI on a level it eliminates mankind of all menial thought. Then the inventor should be able to enjoy the benefits for the short transition phase in which money has meaning.
By default rm asks for confirmation before deleting a file. You have to override this behavior with the -f flag.
Small correction if you presented 5 engineers with a problem and ANY of them came up with the same or similar solutions, that solution shouldn't be patentable.
Patents are given out way too easily. I used to think patents should be eliminated altogether but I've finally settled on the belief that we simply give out too many and for too little.
Progressive inventions will be made without patents. Patents should be reserved for solutions that aren't reached by 1 in a thousand peers let alone five out of five random peers.
Tax dollars are scraped of the profits of the wealthy in far greater proportion than everyone else. The wealthy as a rule take in more wealth than they spend and therefore any profit you take from them and put in the hands of the middle class IS a boost to the economy.
which half do you want to cut the DARPA research half or the DARPA research + everything else half?
Most of the DOD (peacetime) budget umbrella pays for science. Science that has the potential to be used in a defense capacity or to lead to something that does but science just the same.
"Your idea is, of course, possible, but Occam's razor says it's more likely they'll just push the dust aside."
Actually regardless of efficiency I'd say Occam's razor supports moving aside since it requires only the technology they are already demonstrating with faster than light travel. Absorbing the impact or moving the dust aside would require this race to develop a second technology. As for being inefficient, it isn't particularly efficient to expend the massive energy required to move the dust or absorb it. How inefficient dodging would be would depend on the FTL technology they've come up with. It isn't safe to assume that technology works like ours in that you expend a great deal of energy accelerating and a small amount keeping speed.
Its not impossible. Nevada casinos are required to keep enough cash on hand to cover all bets on the floor.
"If you spend $100 gambling that the existence of aliens won't be announced in the next year, and the betting market odds are 100-to-1 against you losing, and the bookmaker requires you to deposit that $100 in advance (so they can be certain to have the money in case you lose), then a year later even if you win you'll have $101."
If you win the payout is 100 times your bet not a 100th fraction of it. It is the 'bookie' who is risking a hundred dollars for a potential profit of $1. If your bet was $100 and you won the payout would be $10000 + your hundred dollars back not $101.
I think what he is getting at is that just because the aliens can do something we can't doesn't automatically make them super smart. They could have found the secret to this technology by making poor assumptions. It is quite possible that for this one thing they can do and we thought impossible there are dozens of things we can do that they thought impossible.
Maybe they are insects that evolved a biological way to travel space?
"If they hit so much as a dust mote they'd be vaporized unless they've developed technology to knock the dust out of their way (which could easily be used as a weapon), or shielding capable of withstanding the impact (in which case, their shield could withstand anything we shot at them)."
This is a false dichotomy. There is at least one more possibility, they could have developed technology that allows them to detect and dodge the dust mote.
"So no matter what assumptive path you travel, you end up with the conclusion that any species that is so far advanced beyond our own as to achieve faster than light travel, even if 100% peaceful, has the capability to crush us"
Not true. At least two of the three possibilities covered would only allow them to resist our own efforts to crush them. You can't crush anyone with a shield. Defense can't be used to conquer, it can be used to support a crushing offense but that's it.
"Only when they're operating under ridiculous - in the context of outright conquest - constraints on what they can and can't do. "
This is a nice implied theory but it doesn't hold up under scrutiny. The US isn't the only industrial nation to battle third world nations. The soviets were bound by no such constraints, enjoy at least the same level of military sophistication and training quality as the US (the majority of the world considers their special forces to be number one for instance, the US is hard pressed to rank in the top ten). Yet the soviets had their asses handed to them by third world nations as well.
Unless the constraints you refer to is simply being barred from nuking the opposition into oblivion in which case the constraint is perfectly reasonable. It doesn't make sense to destroy the land you are conquering and strong enemies who would destroy you in return is a valid and practical constraint.
Again. This doesn't matter. The concentration camps had nothing to with Germany vs US. They had to do with Germany vs Jews. There is nothing pro or anti-american about aiding concentration camps.
"The Nazis didn't randomly execute people in the camps. They had a complex punch card based system. A system that could help you find jews. A system that determined value and worth. A system that decided in what order people would die. An IBM system."
Irrelevant. The death camps were neutral a neutral operation with regard to the US. Actually, if anything the death camps required resources that could have been leveraged in the war to US disadvantage.
"managing the Holocaust via their their Brazilian unit"
The Holocaust was not an attack against America.
Given the stated goal it is probably a way to slip in some form of government control of the internet.
Much like the can spam act here in the states. Supposedly it was to make spam mail illegal. But before the bill all spam was illegal. What the bill did was establish a set of rules under which one could legally spam people.
Censorship applies to all communications. Not just facts and opinions. If I want to say something, ANYTHING, and you prevent me. You are censoring me.
Censorship applies to all communication. However you can't communicate hate. It can only influence the opinions you form and express.
Hate speech controls are censorship. Period.
Only if it isn't left in its out of the box configuration.
What I had in mind was sitting the windows box behind a linux or bsd firewall running embedded on a device. Which is a pretty typical deployment.
There is also a difference between a hardened Windows and a completely out of the box windows.
I wasn't accepting the challenge. I'm normally the guy defending the system not attacking it. I was just clarifying the terms.
His test still gives him an advantage over most installations. AFAIK the most common attack vectors for windows these days target clients and not the server OS and utilize holes in client apps (browser, media player, etc) and then priv escalation exploits. The people paying for 0-days are spyware firms so thats what people are looking for.
"As the number of systems scales up, you have to trust the OS to take care of itself. A handful of admins can't keep up with all of the hundreds of servers they're often tasked with babysitting. Most places don't even have a comprehensive list of all of them."
As an Enterprise security guy I have to disagree. The gp is on the right track and his idea can be implemented at the firewall.
An Juniper SRX/SSG firewall can easily isolate everything from everything else and perform IDS/IDP checks for known malicious traffic on everything else that is allowed. Fscking fast for what it is too.*
Where enterprise fails is paying closer attention. First this was patched before you ever heard about it (duh, its a revert, the patch was written a long time ago). Enterprise environments will be painfully slow about applying it. Especially since its a kernel patch.
Second Enterprise assumes that simply having fancy intrusion detection and firewalls means they don't have to actually manually look at anything when there are signs of an attack.
* Yes, that was a juniper device I just recommended. But by all means, keep paying $40k to get a switch that can run at true wirespeed. I'll stick with recommending $2k juniper devices that can do the same.
Mod parent up
With a functional network connection and in its default state... and not behind the protection of added hardware and/or software like a nat router/firewall.
Ah OK. Apparently it can happen here (in the US) but it is normally only done with a very very large debt and against someone with sizable assets. I can't imagine how much it would cost in legal fees to force someone into bankruptcy! Property rights are held as pretty sacred here. In the normal course of things only a federal/state debt would ever result in an individual having his assets seized (unless said assets were used to guarantee the debt)!
Also a modest dwelling and your car are protected in bankruptcy (assuming they are really yours and not the banks). Normally they are the largest assets someone has. After those many people have no assets that could realistically be tracked and sold especially if they don't use credit cards. They certainly don't come in and grab everything you own and sell it off at auction only sizable on paper assets.
Any debt that isn't covered by selling off your qualifying assets is discharged and you no longer owe it. Even the bankruptcy is off your credit report after 7yrs.
Here people (even companies) normally enter into bankruptcy voluntarily. They might have $2000 worth of assets and $50,000 worth of debt. There is another type of bankruptcy where you convince the court that if the creditors lay off for awhile you can reorganize your finances and be in a better position to pay your debts.
Then I'm told that in some other places you can be put in jail for not paying debts.
As for not having ownership I'm going to have to agree that having property subject to the whims of someone else who enforces their will via physical force is not ownership. In the days of yore there were kings, they granted lands and titles to lesser lords who owned them to a greater degree than we own lands or other property here in the US. Yet then nobody minced words, the king owned those lands not the lesser lords and the king could take them away.
a drop but not much of one for ten year old obsolete technology.
"How about when you don't pay your private debts; one of your creditors gets you made bankrupt and your stuff gets liquidated? did you not own any of that either?"
A creditor can't 'get you made bankrupt'. Bankruptcy is something you initiate to discharge your debts and it is the last thing a creditor wants you to do because they probably won't get paid.
"While I only asked 3 of them, 2 of them had a difficult time with it, possibly they thought it was a trick question."
That isn't the same thing as not knowing the answer. Actually, that is knowing the answer and not understanding why someone would ask a question that everyone knows the answer to.
As for the war in 1812, there was one involving the French: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_invasion_of_Russia
It's also a much more obscure piece of American history than the revolutionary war.
Try asking 2+2. You will still get confused answers. Not because people don't know the answer but because people can't grasp that you might genuinely be asking something so simple as a straight question.