...and make some sort of Genesis joke but there just isn't anything funny at all about the damn group.
Not even a "the probe failed because it couldn't dance"? Nothing about "Ronald Reagen pushed the wrong button"?
Oh, you were trying to take a potshot at genesis at the same time. How about "The probe would have worked if Phil collins hadn't built it"?
Better yet, "Obviously the probe's problem was that the drummer stopped drumming and started singing. That's when they should've known it was all going downhill"
Aaaa, you're right, there's nothing funny about the group. But designing a switch backwards is funnier than hell.:)
Because NASA screwing up in the fact of many billions of dollars worth of money that people want spent, but with NASA screwing up it won't get spent. So where does it benefit LM?
Private space industry! Someone needs to build all the spaceship components. LM gets to keep building for NASA, screwing up 2 out of 3 missions, making it look like NASA's fault, and then when some private guy with a lot of money looks around and says "I've got a spaceship design, but I need someone to build it," there's LM just in time to say "We've got lots of experience, the tools, and the people."
Instead of a series of high-dollar custom jobs for NASA, LM can start turning out low-dollar mass-produced spacecraft that'll be worth a lot more money on their bottom line than they're getting right now from NASA. LM's hurting. I saw Bowling for Columbine. They need a new market, and turning space over to privateers gives LM a new market, and a market that'll be worth a whole shitload of money.
Of course, this theory breaks down when you consider that LM failed to get the blame pushed onto NASA, and it's actually likely that privateers will just get someone else to build their spaceships.
Not that any of it matters. I don't think it's BS, it makes perfect sense to me that it would be screwed up like this. It's a custom job. If they didn't have to custom-build every single probe they made, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Design flaws show up all the time, and they get worked out with prototypes, limited runs, and so forth before the floodgates are opened on the assembly line. But with a custom job, there's no testing procedure that can even come close to the testing procedures used to catch design flaws in a mass-produced product, so they have to settle with what they can. If they used the same testing procedures, they'd push the costs so far through the roof that NASA would never be able to do anything, it would cost too much.
The NASA platform for space travel is too screwy. Too many opportunities for people to fuck it up. It's obvious, it's been obvious, it's still obvious, it'll always be obvious. Government research needs to piggy-back on private operations. That's the only way they can be cutting-edge and do it successfully. With NASA managing the entire infrastructure to support their space exploration portion of the mission, they've got too much to deal with. Private rockets should be launching private probes, all mass-produced. Then NASA can piggy-back their special sensors and sample collectors onto known good, proven designs. NASA knows it, too!
The writing has been on the walls for years, and luckily for us people have been pursuing the solutions for years. Knocking NASA at this point is similar to beating the dead horse. When we have private space travel, finally, we can cut NASA's funding so low they won't even be a light on the federal budget, and they'll still be multiples more productive than they are now.
That's funny, I've used that exact same command and never had any problems with it. Oh yeah, I don't use that exact same command. I do "rm -f.*", and then delete the directories (if any) with more specific commands, like "rm -rf.a*".
Interestingly, I only do that because I'm a bit concerned anytime I use -Rf, so I make sure the file arguments are explicit enough that it doesn't get anything unintended. Sooner or later I'll screw it up, but I haven't yet.
The way that type of equipment works, it only works ONE way, the output would be messed up if it worked either way, you'd get conflicting input.
I disagree completely. They could have put eight switches in there, 4 installed in opposite directions. In that setup, 4 are designed to fail, because they will never work. Then you have a setup that will work in either case, and you're a bit closer to working up a solution that will work in any position.
Let's assume that only one switch working was required and the rest were backups. (I don't know this for a fact, but the discussion is easier on one switch and then extrapolating to the rest) The switch, when open, means no current is flowing. When closed, current flows. To get the desired result, you need current to flow. You're not asking everybody for their opinion, you're just making sure that if you're in gravity, current flows. So it doesn't matter if only one switch closes or both switches close, it only matters that if you're in gravity, current flows.
So having two switches controlling the same circuit is fine. I have a light in my house that can be turned on by one of two switches. I've seen lights that could only be turned on if both switches were on, but that was just shitty wiring. Any low-grade electrician could have wired that circuit to have two switches.
I concede that it may be somewhat of a matter of walking on thin ice in so much that we wouldn't want a political field saturated with 100 parties; that would be practically impossible to wade through. However, something really needs to be done, we're just one less candidate shy of a dictatorship.
Realistically, it won't happen. I'll tell you why.:)
To get re-elected, the candidate must be partisan. That means your Republican has to do Republican things and your Democrat has to do Democrat things. So they can't run on a platform that says "I'll make these changes so other parties can become just as powerful as my own". That won't get them a nomination, which means they won't get a first term. It won't get them a second term, they'd either lose to the other side or their party would withdraw support and field a different candidate anyway. So the only time we can reasonably say the president can do this is in his second term.
At that point, he would be somewhat betraying the party that put him in power. Some would consider it highly unethical to turn sides like that when you owe your position to these people.
So at what point can a President do something along those lines? When it would weaken the other party and not his own. Since most of the third parties are actually farther right-sided than the Republicans, you'd think it would be the case. However, the two strongest 3rd parties lean to the left, so I tend to think that it would actually weaken the Republicans more than the Democrats. We'd wind up with say 3/4 of our representatives being left-leaning which would make anything the Republicans ever try to do impossible.
I'm afraid that revolution is the only solution left, but things have to get a whole lot worse before it'll become a viable option.
Saddam had chemical weapons. Many of them were destroyed. Not all of them. The question is what happened to the rest? There are three possibilities: 1) They were destroyed without the knowledge of the UN weapons inspectors. 2) They did not, in fact, exist. However, Saddam prevented the UN weapons inspectors from verifying this. 3) They still exist but have not been found. Under which circumstance was removing Saddm Hussein from power a mistake?
1) Bush was talking about going to war with Iraq long before 9/11. 2) Bush told us that there was a link between Iraq and 9/11, which means that either he actually knew something was coming, or he made up a link after 9/11 so he could have his war. 3) The UN didn't say "We won't go to war", they said "let's try some more diplomacy first, and if it doesn't work, then we'll go to war"
The circumstance under which it was wrong for us to go to war is the circumstance under which we didn't have the international support we needed. Iraq was no threat, and as other posters have pointed out, Bush knew it. He could have waited, played along with the UN, and then still had his war in Iraq. This isn't hindsight except in the sense that we can easily look back and see that Bush knew these things before we went to Iraq.
Bush likes to say "Kerry will let Paris decide when America needs defending". But he hasn't been able to show, with facts, how invading Iraq constitutes defending America. He had international support for going into Afghanistan. He also had international support for essentially conquering Pakistan if necessary to make it to Afghanistan. He had facts to back it up, facts that could be and were verified by neutral parties (that is to say, people who are not America). He did not have that for Iraq.
Yes, it's true that Iraq had the weapons at one point and they were never able to show that they were destroyed. Perhaps Saddam had sold them? Maybe they were stolen? Maybe they weren't in Iraq anymore to be found? In that case, the inspectors would never have turned them up, and Bush could invade all he wanted to and still wind up looking like an idiot.
Saddam won the contest. He won because he made Bush look like an idiot. He easily manipulated the man into making this foolish invasion, and what do we have to show for it? Someone else probably has the weapons we were looking for, and we don't know who.
Of course, people think I'm loony because I think Al-qaeda won over 9/11. America is scared shitless of terrorists now, and that's what they wanted. Now we're jumping in the dark at any noise we hear. Our biggest threats are in front of us, and we are now exposed to the most threatening situation we've ever been in: being eaten alive from the inside because we're just too scared. How much longer until the terrorists can claim a complete victory? Will it be under Kerry, Bush, or someone else?
Um, the way I understand it, embyonic stem cell research's biggest potential is in the ability to grow perfect replacement parts. In that case, it would cure a broken spine, provided the surgical techniques are in place to install the new part.
As for Alzheimer's, I don't know enough about it to even guess, but I'm definitely on the "embryonic stem cell research will fix all our problems" bandwagon. The ability to transplant parts has already been demonstrated, and only time is needed before we'll have the ability to install any arbitrary body part. The ability to grow new ones would be the missing link to make this a Truly Useful ability.
Lost your arm in a car accident? We'll grow a new one! (Hand, pick up the ball! Pick up the ball! *whack*)
You know, I wouldn't give a flying fuck if they made a man-sized monument to commandments 3-8.:) The ones I remember, anyway, do a good job of setting a foundation for our legislatures to pursue. I'd modify them, of course, if I were the one making the foundation, but for an already imperfect system where nobody can agree what to do, it's better than nothing.
And having a monument to it wouldn't be such a bad thing.
The parts I object to would be the inclusion of these other commandments that have absolutely nothing to do with government. There is no logical connection between "Thou shalt have no gods before me" and the office of the Presidency.
Aaa, well, I wouldn't be a radical if I didn't think things through.:)
Personally, I think it's perfectly ok to have a penalty that represents ejecting someone from society because they have proven themselves unable to live in it responsibly. It's a little more specific, and actually allows for the death penalty, but reaches for a better solution. The fact is, no matter how dumb someone is, there is a limit on how much we can do to help them. Sooner or later, if they can't exist peacefully in society, they have to be ejected. I'm not interested in making society pay for that ejection, either, so I'm not at all interested in just locking them up in prison for life. OTOH, where in the world can we send them? Sending them out of the country would invite additional problems we don't need. So that leaves execution.
I'd love to see a better solution, but until we have one, I think the death penalty is perfectly ok. As for executing kids? Let's lift the double-standard on recognition of adulthood. You can't drink until you're 21, but you can be executed for crimes before you even have the right to vote on who makes the laws. If we're going ot have a death penalty, it should only be administered to people who have a say in the laws that are passed. I don't mind locking the kid up until he's old enough to vote, then setting him free and telling him "Next time, you'll be eligible for the death penalty".
There's an interesting argument embedded in there. You see, the pre-Christian Gods and Goddesses frequently represented a single concept or phase of a personality. So it makes sense that using symbolism of those gods and goddesses to symbolize the concepts they represented is ok.
Now, the Christian God is all-encompassing and represents every concept and every phase of a personality. So it also makes perfect sense to use His symbolism in our government.
A wrongly convicted person serving a life sentence can be released with an appology, you can't bring someone back from the dead if you execute them for a crime they didn't commit.
C'mon dude, any geek who's worth his salt knows damn well that when you get executed for a crime you didn't commit, you become the execution arm of the supersecret organization CURE.
Contrary to what the other poster said, the other film was another Spielberg film, Gremlins. The reason these two movies were big deals is because they were marketed to kids in many of the previews. For the Temple of Doom, previews featured Indy running around looking cool. Then the kids got to the movie with their parents and saw a film with people eating insects, sexual content (no surprise, that, but Indy does feel up a statue), and the occult ritual with the heart-ripping stuff. My brother and I were kids at the time, and he was scared to death of that movie based on what his friends were telling him.
Gremlins was marketed to kids as being a film with this cute and furry character, and if you do a certain three things to him, trouble happens. But they didn't even give us a hint what the trouble was. So parents packed up their kdis and took them Gremlins, only to find nasty looking green monsters getting cooked in microwaves and doing all sorts of wicked deeds.
PG-13 came about as a suggestion from Spielberg himself, and soon after that moviemakers started targetting PG-13 as their rating rather than PG. Nowadays, PG and G mean almost the same thing, except that G is usually animated while PG is usually live action.
I'd want equipment that had crappy bandwidth but was also nearly bulletproof as opposed to whatever new cuteness was available on launch day that might flake out in the 17th month.
Um, 500/30 is only 16.6... So there's no 17th month problems at all to be expected.
The only problem with this plan really, is that fat astronauts would have all sorts of health problems that would prevent them from being able to even set foot in the launching craft. You see, besides the fact that the food is such a small amount of the mass required (water + oxygen are the big ones, and being fat increases your dependency on these), you take say someone who's 75 pounds overweight, right? They launch under what, 5Gs or so? Say they're ideal weight is 150, so they weigh 225. During launch they'll weigh 1125 pounds until they hit orbit, at which time they'll be in free fall.
Do you know any fat guy whose heart can take that sort of change? Furthermore, do you know of any fat guy who, after going through the training program so that they can take the normal amount of weight during launch, will still be fat?
Or is this some sort of CowboyNeal joke? You know, send HIM to mars so we don't have to deal with his silly polls anymore?
Yeah, this is how I'd like it to work.:) I'd really like to get back to what patent law was originally intended for. It may have been in this thread, or another, that I said it, but I'll say it again. It's become common wisdom that patents are all about making money, and they're not. That's just the mechanism used to secure technology for the benefit of society. Let's get back to patent law being about the benefit of society, using a mechanism that works very well in the free market.
It is my opinion that when you return patent law back to the benefit of society, then software patents will require source code at the very least. If that kills software patents, fine. If it doesn't, fine. It'll at least make software patents a little more practical.
There are numerous problems with the system. Awhile back I interviewed Monty of Xiph on it, it's on my website. I think we covered many of the problems surrounding software patenting pretty thoroughly. Of course, neither of us are lawyers, but we're both interested in the subject so it's not like we know nothing. We just don't know enough to practice law on it, and iirc patent law is one of the only (or the only) specialization in Law, and you get in big trouble if you don't actually know what you're doing.;) In any case, I don't think that just requiring source code for software patents is going to fix anything at all. It might reduce some of the abusive patents filed, but it won't fix the general abuse problem. Software is an area where we see the abuse acutely, but it's hardly the only area where abuse is occuring.:(
My contention, which you didn't disagree with, is that complex programs cannot be broken down. This peephole optimization function would rely on the rest of the compiler to work. It would be possible to make it work on its own, but I remarked that neither the patent attorney nor the inventor would have the time or wherewithal to adapt the function to standalone use.
I don't see why it should have to work on its own. Consider your optimization function is to be used in GCC. GCC is open source, so you merely (heh) have to cite where the function belongs in GCC in your patent application, and provide the code for your function. Now let's say GCC is patented itself. You cite GCC still, but you also provide a patent number. (For simplicity's sake I reduce it to one patent, but you can easily visualize thousands aroujnd GCC alone in this scenario) Now let's say GCC is not patented, proprietary, and kept closed. You *can't* patent your function without providing GCC. If you want to patent your function, the technology needed to run it must already be available for use. The open source GCC is ok (even if there are problems with a patent and the GPL, let's ignore those because it'll only cloud our discussion). The GCC patented is ok. In both cases GCC itself is available for someone to use your patent for research. GCC locked up as a trade secret is not ok, because in order to use your function we need GCC open somehow. If GCC is locked up, there is no benefit to society to grant a patent on your function, therefore no patent can be granted.
Make sense?
A pentium 4 bus is exceedingly complex to design. If the inventor is required to submit Verilog code to make the Pentium 4 go, the only practical way to do that is to submit a good chunk of code for the Pentium 4 itself, most likely all of it.
not necessarily. Let's look at it again the same way we looked at the compiler optimization. If the parts of the Pentium 4 that you need in order to make the bus are open (by open I mean patented is open, the documentation is there), then you can get a patent on the bus. If it's open and not patented, you can still get a patent on the bus. If the P4 is locked up entirely, you can't patent the bus. If the bus patent depends on the P4, then the P4 has to be open, somehow. It can be public domain, it can be patented. Going down the chain we find the motherboard chipset, the board itself, and various other parts all need to be open in order for you to get your patent on the bus, because each part, starting at the bottom and working its way up, has to be open for the next piece to be patented.
The obvious metaphor is the house-building brick-laying thing. Foundation, first layer of bricks, etc. No need to get detailed on a worn-out metaphor, eh?
That will never happen. No patent is worth describing all of the internals of a state-of-the-art compiler or CPU.
The point of a patent being to keep the technology open in the sense that others can build on it, with commercial viability being determined by the market and a commercial edge given to the patent holder. So the only situation where you'd have to describe the internals of the compiler or the CPU is the situation where those internals aren't already available. So you could reference an ISBN number of a book that describes the P4 in such a way someone can build one. How about if the instructions you need to build the bus aren't tied to the P4? So i could build another processor different than the P4, different design, even a different set of patents, but uses the appropriate instructions needed to communicate with the P4 bus. (I think this event has already happened numerous times in the history of Intel and its knock-offs)
I hadn't considered the Copyright aspects of this.
Let's keep in mind that Copyright and Patent represent the same fundamental concepts. Copyright is the concept applied to Creative Works, such as music, works of fiction, and so forth. Patent represents the same concept applied to technological invention. They are not intended to be applied to the same thing.
So in the case of software, according to the intent of the law, it should not be possible to copyright and patent the same part of the software. So where's the split? both the source code and the compiled binary (if there is one, interpreted languages and byte-compiled languages blur the distinction) require a computer to interpret and process, the binary is just closer to the metal than the source code. But software does work, which is what it appears is the difference between a Creative Work and an Invention. A Creative Work doesn't do work, it is the result of work, whereas an invention does work of some sort. Software definitely fits the mold of invention in that regard, insofar as it has the right gear to interpret it. Remove the gear and the software is worthless.
OTOH, source code also represents the design portion of an invention. Or at least part of it. Using the source code directly, reading it, and understanding it is part of building on it to make more software. In the old days you could do the same thing with the binary directly, but it's not so anymore. Furthermore, there are numerous language (Perl, anyone?) that do get interpreted directly, so source code in those languages acts as both the invention itself and the design of the invention. (By "design" I'm generally referring to the position occupied by drawings and so forth in a physical invention) Finally, there are still other languages that use byte-compiling, and at least one of them byte-compiles transparently to the user (Python)! I can't even begin to figure out the relationship between the source code and the part that actually does work there.
The fundamental question shouldn't be "Patent, copyright, or both?" It should be "What is the appropriate mechanism to encourage software development innovation in order to secure the software developed for the benefit of society?" The answer to that question may not even be patent or copyright, but will be an application of the same concept that underlies both patent and copyright to a new platform for invention and creativity.
What about patents on compiler improvements? What about a patent on the Pentium 4 bus? Would Intel have to disclose the Verilog for the entire chip?
A little application of the scientific method works wonders.:)
The proper disclosure should be (and used to be) whatever is needed for a reasonably competent peer in the field to duplicate the invention by their own means. So you would provide designs of a flex-wing used to steer an airplane, but let the reasonably competent peer provide the canvas, frame, cables, and so forth, and build the thing themself. You should be able to take what the patent office has on file, acquire needed supplies, and build the invention.
So for source code you should provide makefiles and so forth that build on the system you developed it. Another programmer should be able to acquire a system identical to yours and build it. To build it on a dissimilar system, it is reasonable that the other programmer should have to modify makefiles and source code, I think. Others may disagree on this specific, but I think it's unreasonable to require an inventor to ensure that their invention can be built on the widest variety of platforms available, and there is room to argue that they should only have coverage on the supported platforms at the time they apply for the patent.
My only point being that for intel to get a patent on the Pentium 4 bus, they should have to disclose whatever information it takes for someone to build a Pentium 4 bus, whatever that information actually is. If building a Pentium 4 bus requires a Pentium 4 which is also patented, there's no problem to build the bus because you just retrieve the information for the Pentium 4 and build it too.
Withholding functional code is at least one small hindrance against secret infringement.
Irrelevant. The idea behind patents is that after the patent expires, the technology covered by the patent goes into the public domain. How can a software patent go into the public domain without source code to support it?
The government granting patents serves the purpose of securing the technology for wider usage. If you want to keep your invention locked up tight as a secret, you have no protection. In exchange for the protection offered by a patent, you agree to give the technology to society by placing it into the public domain upon expiration of the patent.
So why should source code be required? Without the soruce code, you could die, disappear, your house could burn to the ground, whatever, and the patent you have been granted will expire with no way of retrieving the source code so the technology can become public domain. Therefore, you should give up the source code in order to receive the patent, and the USPTO will publish it a million times (or whatever) so that it will be known. What good is technological innovation if nobody can build on it? THAT is the ultimate goal and benefit of patent.
You see, in the meantime, we *can* take the source code and drop it into our programs. We *can* take it and make it do work you didn't even imagine it could do. The fundamental principles behind patent can be found coded in the open source definition provided by the open source initiative. Stand on the shoulders of giants, and so forth.
What we can't do is produce our work commercially in the marketplace without licensing the patented technology we've used. For that we have to negotiate with you, the inventor. And that's where the incentive is to invent. Because what good is the technology if nobody can use it?
So, a patent serves several purposes all at once (it can be said they're all shades of the same purpose). 1. To provide a mechanism for new technology to achieve wider adoption by allowing small-time inventors (the guys that do the real work) to license to big-time manufacturers and distributors and so forth. 2. To secure the technology for the benefit of society. 3. To secure the designs of the technology for the purpose of researching and advancing technology in general.
As you can see, only one of the purposes of patent provides a way for an inventor to make money. The other purposes are about securing the technology for society. We've come to believe, as a society, that the only purpose of a patent is to make money, and that's patently false. The only purpose of a patent is to secure new technology for society. The mechanism is uses is "making money". It could use a different mechanism, but I doubt a different mechanism can be found that would be more effective in the free market.
Actually, the chances of a coin turning up heads 17 times in a row is identical to the chance of it turning up heads once. This is because past performance doesn't influence future performance in any way. So while it may seem at first glance to be unlikely that a coin would turn up heads any number of times in a row, it's not.
The football thing is a little weird, since the odds of a team winning a football game have many variables that affect it, and the odds of a candidate winning an election also have many variables affecting it, and the two sets of variables are unrelated and completely different from one another.
Or are they? Someone who knows more than I want to chime in and start working up the odds of both, piecemeal, so we can see what the variables are?
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Not even a "the probe failed because it couldn't dance"? Nothing about "Ronald Reagen pushed the wrong button"?
Oh, you were trying to take a potshot at genesis at the same time. How about "The probe would have worked if Phil collins hadn't built it"?
Better yet, "Obviously the probe's problem was that the drummer stopped drumming and started singing. That's when they should've known it was all going downhill"
Aaaa, you're right, there's nothing funny about the group. But designing a switch backwards is funnier than hell. :)
Who stands to gain the most from sabotage?
Lockheed-Martin.
Why?
Because NASA screwing up in the fact of many billions of dollars worth of money that people want spent, but with NASA screwing up it won't get spent. So where does it benefit LM?
Private space industry! Someone needs to build all the spaceship components. LM gets to keep building for NASA, screwing up 2 out of 3 missions, making it look like NASA's fault, and then when some private guy with a lot of money looks around and says "I've got a spaceship design, but I need someone to build it," there's LM just in time to say "We've got lots of experience, the tools, and the people."
Instead of a series of high-dollar custom jobs for NASA, LM can start turning out low-dollar mass-produced spacecraft that'll be worth a lot more money on their bottom line than they're getting right now from NASA. LM's hurting. I saw Bowling for Columbine. They need a new market, and turning space over to privateers gives LM a new market, and a market that'll be worth a whole shitload of money.
Of course, this theory breaks down when you consider that LM failed to get the blame pushed onto NASA, and it's actually likely that privateers will just get someone else to build their spaceships.
Not that any of it matters. I don't think it's BS, it makes perfect sense to me that it would be screwed up like this. It's a custom job. If they didn't have to custom-build every single probe they made, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Design flaws show up all the time, and they get worked out with prototypes, limited runs, and so forth before the floodgates are opened on the assembly line. But with a custom job, there's no testing procedure that can even come close to the testing procedures used to catch design flaws in a mass-produced product, so they have to settle with what they can. If they used the same testing procedures, they'd push the costs so far through the roof that NASA would never be able to do anything, it would cost too much.
The NASA platform for space travel is too screwy. Too many opportunities for people to fuck it up. It's obvious, it's been obvious, it's still obvious, it'll always be obvious. Government research needs to piggy-back on private operations. That's the only way they can be cutting-edge and do it successfully. With NASA managing the entire infrastructure to support their space exploration portion of the mission, they've got too much to deal with. Private rockets should be launching private probes, all mass-produced. Then NASA can piggy-back their special sensors and sample collectors onto known good, proven designs. NASA knows it, too!
The writing has been on the walls for years, and luckily for us people have been pursuing the solutions for years. Knocking NASA at this point is similar to beating the dead horse. When we have private space travel, finally, we can cut NASA's funding so low they won't even be a light on the federal budget, and they'll still be multiples more productive than they are now.
Can't wait.
That's funny, I've used that exact same command and never had any problems with it. Oh yeah, I don't use that exact same command. I do "rm -f .*", and then delete the directories (if any) with more specific commands, like "rm -rf .a*".
Interestingly, I only do that because I'm a bit concerned anytime I use -Rf, so I make sure the file arguments are explicit enough that it doesn't get anything unintended. Sooner or later I'll screw it up, but I haven't yet.
The way that type of equipment works, it only works ONE way, the output would be messed up if it worked either way, you'd get conflicting input.
I disagree completely. They could have put eight switches in there, 4 installed in opposite directions. In that setup, 4 are designed to fail, because they will never work. Then you have a setup that will work in either case, and you're a bit closer to working up a solution that will work in any position.
Let's assume that only one switch working was required and the rest were backups. (I don't know this for a fact, but the discussion is easier on one switch and then extrapolating to the rest) The switch, when open, means no current is flowing. When closed, current flows. To get the desired result, you need current to flow. You're not asking everybody for their opinion, you're just making sure that if you're in gravity, current flows. So it doesn't matter if only one switch closes or both switches close, it only matters that if you're in gravity, current flows.
So having two switches controlling the same circuit is fine. I have a light in my house that can be turned on by one of two switches. I've seen lights that could only be turned on if both switches were on, but that was just shitty wiring. Any low-grade electrician could have wired that circuit to have two switches.
I concede that it may be somewhat of a matter of walking on thin ice in so much that we wouldn't want a political field saturated with 100 parties; that would be practically impossible to wade through. However, something really needs to be done, we're just one less candidate shy of a dictatorship.
Realistically, it won't happen. I'll tell you why. :)
To get re-elected, the candidate must be partisan. That means your Republican has to do Republican things and your Democrat has to do Democrat things. So they can't run on a platform that says "I'll make these changes so other parties can become just as powerful as my own". That won't get them a nomination, which means they won't get a first term. It won't get them a second term, they'd either lose to the other side or their party would withdraw support and field a different candidate anyway. So the only time we can reasonably say the president can do this is in his second term.
At that point, he would be somewhat betraying the party that put him in power. Some would consider it highly unethical to turn sides like that when you owe your position to these people.
So at what point can a President do something along those lines? When it would weaken the other party and not his own. Since most of the third parties are actually farther right-sided than the Republicans, you'd think it would be the case. However, the two strongest 3rd parties lean to the left, so I tend to think that it would actually weaken the Republicans more than the Democrats. We'd wind up with say 3/4 of our representatives being left-leaning which would make anything the Republicans ever try to do impossible.
I'm afraid that revolution is the only solution left, but things have to get a whole lot worse before it'll become a viable option.
Saddam had chemical weapons. Many of them were destroyed. Not all of them. The question is what happened to the rest? There are three possibilities: 1) They were destroyed without the knowledge of the UN weapons inspectors. 2) They did not, in fact, exist. However, Saddam prevented the UN weapons inspectors from verifying this. 3) They still exist but have not been found. Under which circumstance was removing Saddm Hussein from power a mistake?
1) Bush was talking about going to war with Iraq long before 9/11. 2) Bush told us that there was a link between Iraq and 9/11, which means that either he actually knew something was coming, or he made up a link after 9/11 so he could have his war. 3) The UN didn't say "We won't go to war", they said "let's try some more diplomacy first, and if it doesn't work, then we'll go to war"
The circumstance under which it was wrong for us to go to war is the circumstance under which we didn't have the international support we needed. Iraq was no threat, and as other posters have pointed out, Bush knew it. He could have waited, played along with the UN, and then still had his war in Iraq. This isn't hindsight except in the sense that we can easily look back and see that Bush knew these things before we went to Iraq.
Bush likes to say "Kerry will let Paris decide when America needs defending". But he hasn't been able to show, with facts, how invading Iraq constitutes defending America. He had international support for going into Afghanistan. He also had international support for essentially conquering Pakistan if necessary to make it to Afghanistan. He had facts to back it up, facts that could be and were verified by neutral parties (that is to say, people who are not America). He did not have that for Iraq.
Yes, it's true that Iraq had the weapons at one point and they were never able to show that they were destroyed. Perhaps Saddam had sold them? Maybe they were stolen? Maybe they weren't in Iraq anymore to be found? In that case, the inspectors would never have turned them up, and Bush could invade all he wanted to and still wind up looking like an idiot.
Saddam won the contest. He won because he made Bush look like an idiot. He easily manipulated the man into making this foolish invasion, and what do we have to show for it? Someone else probably has the weapons we were looking for, and we don't know who.
Of course, people think I'm loony because I think Al-qaeda won over 9/11. America is scared shitless of terrorists now, and that's what they wanted. Now we're jumping in the dark at any noise we hear. Our biggest threats are in front of us, and we are now exposed to the most threatening situation we've ever been in: being eaten alive from the inside because we're just too scared. How much longer until the terrorists can claim a complete victory? Will it be under Kerry, Bush, or someone else?
Bush made a typo:
Nevermind the election, let's impeach the whiny little fuck.
Um, the way I understand it, embyonic stem cell research's biggest potential is in the ability to grow perfect replacement parts. In that case, it would cure a broken spine, provided the surgical techniques are in place to install the new part.
As for Alzheimer's, I don't know enough about it to even guess, but I'm definitely on the "embryonic stem cell research will fix all our problems" bandwagon. The ability to transplant parts has already been demonstrated, and only time is needed before we'll have the ability to install any arbitrary body part. The ability to grow new ones would be the missing link to make this a Truly Useful ability.
Lost your arm in a car accident? We'll grow a new one! (Hand, pick up the ball! Pick up the ball! *whack*)
You know, I wouldn't give a flying fuck if they made a man-sized monument to commandments 3-8. :) The ones I remember, anyway, do a good job of setting a foundation for our legislatures to pursue. I'd modify them, of course, if I were the one making the foundation, but for an already imperfect system where nobody can agree what to do, it's better than nothing.
And having a monument to it wouldn't be such a bad thing.
The parts I object to would be the inclusion of these other commandments that have absolutely nothing to do with government. There is no logical connection between "Thou shalt have no gods before me" and the office of the Presidency.
Aaa, well, I wouldn't be a radical if I didn't think things through. :)
Personally, I think it's perfectly ok to have a penalty that represents ejecting someone from society because they have proven themselves unable to live in it responsibly. It's a little more specific, and actually allows for the death penalty, but reaches for a better solution. The fact is, no matter how dumb someone is, there is a limit on how much we can do to help them. Sooner or later, if they can't exist peacefully in society, they have to be ejected. I'm not interested in making society pay for that ejection, either, so I'm not at all interested in just locking them up in prison for life. OTOH, where in the world can we send them? Sending them out of the country would invite additional problems we don't need. So that leaves execution.
I'd love to see a better solution, but until we have one, I think the death penalty is perfectly ok. As for executing kids? Let's lift the double-standard on recognition of adulthood. You can't drink until you're 21, but you can be executed for crimes before you even have the right to vote on who makes the laws. If we're going ot have a death penalty, it should only be administered to people who have a say in the laws that are passed. I don't mind locking the kid up until he's old enough to vote, then setting him free and telling him "Next time, you'll be eligible for the death penalty".
There's an interesting argument embedded in there. You see, the pre-Christian Gods and Goddesses frequently represented a single concept or phase of a personality. So it makes sense that using symbolism of those gods and goddesses to symbolize the concepts they represented is ok.
Now, the Christian God is all-encompassing and represents every concept and every phase of a personality. So it also makes perfect sense to use His symbolism in our government.
He represents a politician.
A wrongly convicted person serving a life sentence can be released with an appology, you can't bring someone back from the dead if you execute them for a crime they didn't commit.
C'mon dude, any geek who's worth his salt knows damn well that when you get executed for a crime you didn't commit, you become the execution arm of the supersecret organization CURE.
Shah. I thought everyone knew that.
Contrary to what the other poster said, the other film was another Spielberg film, Gremlins. The reason these two movies were big deals is because they were marketed to kids in many of the previews. For the Temple of Doom, previews featured Indy running around looking cool. Then the kids got to the movie with their parents and saw a film with people eating insects, sexual content (no surprise, that, but Indy does feel up a statue), and the occult ritual with the heart-ripping stuff. My brother and I were kids at the time, and he was scared to death of that movie based on what his friends were telling him.
Gremlins was marketed to kids as being a film with this cute and furry character, and if you do a certain three things to him, trouble happens. But they didn't even give us a hint what the trouble was. So parents packed up their kdis and took them Gremlins, only to find nasty looking green monsters getting cooked in microwaves and doing all sorts of wicked deeds.
PG-13 came about as a suggestion from Spielberg himself, and soon after that moviemakers started targetting PG-13 as their rating rather than PG. Nowadays, PG and G mean almost the same thing, except that G is usually animated while PG is usually live action.
I'd want equipment that had crappy bandwidth but was also nearly bulletproof as opposed to whatever new cuteness was available on launch day that might flake out in the 17th month.
Um, 500/30 is only 16.6... So there's no 17th month problems at all to be expected.
They're going to put 6 men in there, and get back 3 couples. :)
The Navy. Where 400 men go out, and 200 couples come back.
I reread the headline several times trying to figure out why the Russians are mocking us.
Yeah, me too. Last I checked, Russia was a powerful industrialized nation that had still failed utterly to develop a sense of humor.
The only problem with this plan really, is that fat astronauts would have all sorts of health problems that would prevent them from being able to even set foot in the launching craft. You see, besides the fact that the food is such a small amount of the mass required (water + oxygen are the big ones, and being fat increases your dependency on these), you take say someone who's 75 pounds overweight, right? They launch under what, 5Gs or so? Say they're ideal weight is 150, so they weigh 225. During launch they'll weigh 1125 pounds until they hit orbit, at which time they'll be in free fall.
Do you know any fat guy whose heart can take that sort of change? Furthermore, do you know of any fat guy who, after going through the training program so that they can take the normal amount of weight during launch, will still be fat?
Or is this some sort of CowboyNeal joke? You know, send HIM to mars so we don't have to deal with his silly polls anymore?
Yeah, this is how I'd like it to work. :) I'd really like to get back to what patent law was originally intended for. It may have been in this thread, or another, that I said it, but I'll say it again. It's become common wisdom that patents are all about making money, and they're not. That's just the mechanism used to secure technology for the benefit of society. Let's get back to patent law being about the benefit of society, using a mechanism that works very well in the free market.
It is my opinion that when you return patent law back to the benefit of society, then software patents will require source code at the very least. If that kills software patents, fine. If it doesn't, fine. It'll at least make software patents a little more practical.
There are numerous problems with the system. Awhile back I interviewed Monty of Xiph on it, it's on my website. I think we covered many of the problems surrounding software patenting pretty thoroughly. Of course, neither of us are lawyers, but we're both interested in the subject so it's not like we know nothing. We just don't know enough to practice law on it, and iirc patent law is one of the only (or the only) specialization in Law, and you get in big trouble if you don't actually know what you're doing. ;) In any case, I don't think that just requiring source code for software patents is going to fix anything at all. It might reduce some of the abusive patents filed, but it won't fix the general abuse problem. Software is an area where we see the abuse acutely, but it's hardly the only area where abuse is occuring. :(
My contention, which you didn't disagree with, is that complex programs cannot be broken down. This peephole optimization function would rely on the rest of the compiler to work. It would be possible to make it work on its own, but I remarked that neither the patent attorney nor the inventor would have the time or wherewithal to adapt the function to standalone use.
I don't see why it should have to work on its own. Consider your optimization function is to be used in GCC. GCC is open source, so you merely (heh) have to cite where the function belongs in GCC in your patent application, and provide the code for your function. Now let's say GCC is patented itself. You cite GCC still, but you also provide a patent number. (For simplicity's sake I reduce it to one patent, but you can easily visualize thousands aroujnd GCC alone in this scenario) Now let's say GCC is not patented, proprietary, and kept closed. You *can't* patent your function without providing GCC. If you want to patent your function, the technology needed to run it must already be available for use. The open source GCC is ok (even if there are problems with a patent and the GPL, let's ignore those because it'll only cloud our discussion). The GCC patented is ok. In both cases GCC itself is available for someone to use your patent for research. GCC locked up as a trade secret is not ok, because in order to use your function we need GCC open somehow. If GCC is locked up, there is no benefit to society to grant a patent on your function, therefore no patent can be granted.
Make sense?
A pentium 4 bus is exceedingly complex to design. If the inventor is required to submit Verilog code to make the Pentium 4 go, the only practical way to do that is to submit a good chunk of code for the Pentium 4 itself, most likely all of it.
not necessarily. Let's look at it again the same way we looked at the compiler optimization. If the parts of the Pentium 4 that you need in order to make the bus are open (by open I mean patented is open, the documentation is there), then you can get a patent on the bus. If it's open and not patented, you can still get a patent on the bus. If the P4 is locked up entirely, you can't patent the bus. If the bus patent depends on the P4, then the P4 has to be open, somehow. It can be public domain, it can be patented. Going down the chain we find the motherboard chipset, the board itself, and various other parts all need to be open in order for you to get your patent on the bus, because each part, starting at the bottom and working its way up, has to be open for the next piece to be patented.
The obvious metaphor is the house-building brick-laying thing. Foundation, first layer of bricks, etc. No need to get detailed on a worn-out metaphor, eh?
That will never happen. No patent is worth describing all of the internals of a state-of-the-art compiler or CPU.
The point of a patent being to keep the technology open in the sense that others can build on it, with commercial viability being determined by the market and a commercial edge given to the patent holder. So the only situation where you'd have to describe the internals of the compiler or the CPU is the situation where those internals aren't already available. So you could reference an ISBN number of a book that describes the P4 in such a way someone can build one. How about if the instructions you need to build the bus aren't tied to the P4? So i could build another processor different than the P4, different design, even a different set of patents, but uses the appropriate instructions needed to communicate with the P4 bus. (I think this event has already happened numerous times in the history of Intel and its knock-offs)
Ack, I'm just repeating myself now. :) Your turn.
I hadn't considered the Copyright aspects of this.
Let's keep in mind that Copyright and Patent represent the same fundamental concepts. Copyright is the concept applied to Creative Works, such as music, works of fiction, and so forth. Patent represents the same concept applied to technological invention. They are not intended to be applied to the same thing.
So in the case of software, according to the intent of the law, it should not be possible to copyright and patent the same part of the software. So where's the split? both the source code and the compiled binary (if there is one, interpreted languages and byte-compiled languages blur the distinction) require a computer to interpret and process, the binary is just closer to the metal than the source code. But software does work, which is what it appears is the difference between a Creative Work and an Invention. A Creative Work doesn't do work, it is the result of work, whereas an invention does work of some sort. Software definitely fits the mold of invention in that regard, insofar as it has the right gear to interpret it. Remove the gear and the software is worthless.
OTOH, source code also represents the design portion of an invention. Or at least part of it. Using the source code directly, reading it, and understanding it is part of building on it to make more software. In the old days you could do the same thing with the binary directly, but it's not so anymore. Furthermore, there are numerous language (Perl, anyone?) that do get interpreted directly, so source code in those languages acts as both the invention itself and the design of the invention. (By "design" I'm generally referring to the position occupied by drawings and so forth in a physical invention) Finally, there are still other languages that use byte-compiling, and at least one of them byte-compiles transparently to the user (Python)! I can't even begin to figure out the relationship between the source code and the part that actually does work there.
The fundamental question shouldn't be "Patent, copyright, or both?" It should be "What is the appropriate mechanism to encourage software development innovation in order to secure the software developed for the benefit of society?" The answer to that question may not even be patent or copyright, but will be an application of the same concept that underlies both patent and copyright to a new platform for invention and creativity.
What about patents on compiler improvements? What about a patent on the Pentium 4 bus? Would Intel have to disclose the Verilog for the entire chip?
A little application of the scientific method works wonders. :)
The proper disclosure should be (and used to be) whatever is needed for a reasonably competent peer in the field to duplicate the invention by their own means. So you would provide designs of a flex-wing used to steer an airplane, but let the reasonably competent peer provide the canvas, frame, cables, and so forth, and build the thing themself. You should be able to take what the patent office has on file, acquire needed supplies, and build the invention.
So for source code you should provide makefiles and so forth that build on the system you developed it. Another programmer should be able to acquire a system identical to yours and build it. To build it on a dissimilar system, it is reasonable that the other programmer should have to modify makefiles and source code, I think. Others may disagree on this specific, but I think it's unreasonable to require an inventor to ensure that their invention can be built on the widest variety of platforms available, and there is room to argue that they should only have coverage on the supported platforms at the time they apply for the patent.
My only point being that for intel to get a patent on the Pentium 4 bus, they should have to disclose whatever information it takes for someone to build a Pentium 4 bus, whatever that information actually is. If building a Pentium 4 bus requires a Pentium 4 which is also patented, there's no problem to build the bus because you just retrieve the information for the Pentium 4 and build it too.
Withholding functional code is at least one small hindrance against secret infringement.
Irrelevant. The idea behind patents is that after the patent expires, the technology covered by the patent goes into the public domain. How can a software patent go into the public domain without source code to support it?
The government granting patents serves the purpose of securing the technology for wider usage. If you want to keep your invention locked up tight as a secret, you have no protection. In exchange for the protection offered by a patent, you agree to give the technology to society by placing it into the public domain upon expiration of the patent.
So why should source code be required? Without the soruce code, you could die, disappear, your house could burn to the ground, whatever, and the patent you have been granted will expire with no way of retrieving the source code so the technology can become public domain. Therefore, you should give up the source code in order to receive the patent, and the USPTO will publish it a million times (or whatever) so that it will be known. What good is technological innovation if nobody can build on it? THAT is the ultimate goal and benefit of patent.
You see, in the meantime, we *can* take the source code and drop it into our programs. We *can* take it and make it do work you didn't even imagine it could do. The fundamental principles behind patent can be found coded in the open source definition provided by the open source initiative. Stand on the shoulders of giants, and so forth.
What we can't do is produce our work commercially in the marketplace without licensing the patented technology we've used. For that we have to negotiate with you, the inventor. And that's where the incentive is to invent. Because what good is the technology if nobody can use it?
So, a patent serves several purposes all at once (it can be said they're all shades of the same purpose). 1. To provide a mechanism for new technology to achieve wider adoption by allowing small-time inventors (the guys that do the real work) to license to big-time manufacturers and distributors and so forth. 2. To secure the technology for the benefit of society. 3. To secure the designs of the technology for the purpose of researching and advancing technology in general.
As you can see, only one of the purposes of patent provides a way for an inventor to make money. The other purposes are about securing the technology for society. We've come to believe, as a society, that the only purpose of a patent is to make money, and that's patently false. The only purpose of a patent is to secure new technology for society. The mechanism is uses is "making money". It could use a different mechanism, but I doubt a different mechanism can be found that would be more effective in the free market.
Actually, the chances of a coin turning up heads 17 times in a row is identical to the chance of it turning up heads once. This is because past performance doesn't influence future performance in any way. So while it may seem at first glance to be unlikely that a coin would turn up heads any number of times in a row, it's not.
The football thing is a little weird, since the odds of a team winning a football game have many variables that affect it, and the odds of a candidate winning an election also have many variables affecting it, and the two sets of variables are unrelated and completely different from one another.
Or are they? Someone who knows more than I want to chime in and start working up the odds of both, piecemeal, so we can see what the variables are?
Ah, some hope at last. Now I can hope that Mt. Rainier will finally blow its top and chase all those damn Seattleites to Canada where they belong.
Gutless wonders, all of them. Heh.
-1, Doesn't Know About Monty Python But Claims He's A Brit