Not at all. Whenever the ACLU or the EFF defends someone pro bono, they are not thrown into the lawsuit with the defendant. It's certainly not criminal to donate money to defend a cause you believe in and, thanks to the SCOTUS, these donations by WikiLeaks and others are actually just an expression of free speech.
And if that were the extent of their involvement with him, you'd be right. However, his relationship with Leaks goes well beyond what you describe. As a point of distinction, the ACLU and EFF generally don't publish illegally obtained materials from the people they defend.
I don't like how short these product generations are.
C'mon Grumpy, it should remind you of the halcyon days of the Detroit automotive industry, right down to the built-in obsolescence. After all, if you make the right product the first time, how the hell do you sell them once a year to rich kids?
I'll be on the side of "screw your video, gimmie the transcript"
'course, I'd be on that side regardless of what format the video is encoded in.
OK, here you go:
"In, out, in, out, in, out, in, out......OOOOhhh....aaaaaaah....(smokes cigarette)"
Sure you don't want the video?
Be mindful of certain industries that will cast significant weight in any online video format war. And their customers ain't settling for the transcript.
Yeah, but it's old enough to be irrelevant. Lots of changes in available tech between then and now.
At this point, with the touch sensitivity in the iPad, it's not a whole different product anyway. But the manner in which one's fingers interact with the software seems pretty limited right now. It just seems logical that it would gain some tablet-like capabilities.
Stylus input "tablets" have been around for over a decade - and they've mostly died off. The same can mostly be said for tablets with a so-called "full blown" OS (e.g. Windows tablets). The market has spoken, and it's pretty much disproven everything you said. Whether you choose to recognize that fact is an entirely different matter.
Just because a particular product failed doesn't mean that the idea in general is bad. Otherwise, I'd have turned gay after breaking up with my first girlfriend.
Here's a prediction for you - there will be an Apple stylus tablet within 3 years. Until about 6 months before launch, it will continue to be the dumbest idea ever. Then, Steve will proclaim it to be brilliant.
I don't have to get a credential if I don't want to,' says Schmidt.
Oh sure. Just like I don't have to get a state-issued ID card if I don't want either, right? Except once these gov-sanctioned IDs come into play, they do become standards (even when it's explicitly against the law, like with SSN).
And they know it. Hey, tell me which candidate it was again who was going to stand up for the little guy?
Are you saying the censors at Amazon have no official capacity at Amazon? That's strange, I thought they were employees of Amazon, acting on behalf of Amazon in an official capacity.
If the definition of 'official' is that general, it becomes both circular and meaningless. Amazon's decision carries no weight or effectiveness in the real world outside their own choice to sell or not sell something.
And I repeat my goat porn test - every business is now a censor under your definition since they won't carry my book. The definition becomes meaningless and almost existential if you say that not selling any given work is an act of censorship of that work.
And no, an "Official" does not have to have anything to do with government.
True. But Amazon certainly has no 'official' capacity in any sense that doesn't render the word meaningless.
The current context fails your definitions as follows:
def #1 because A) Amazon has no official capacity in any way, and B) Amazon isn't extracting portions (interestingly, a much better case can be made for Walmart, as a prior poster mentioned).
Def #2 fails except in the vaguest sense that would make everyone on earth a censor and render the word meaningless.
Again, let's say I'm a creator of man-goat pornography - are you contending that every business on earth is in the act of censorship because they won't sell my book? If we expand the definition of 'censorship' that widely, it loses its meaning.
And, frankly, it cheapens the meaning of real censorship that people have had to deal with.
Sigh... for the millionth time, yes, it is censorship, it's just not government censorship and therefore not illegal censorship (in the US). It's still censorship. That's what the fucking word means, for Christ's sake.
Actually, I checked and was unable to find a dictionary or legal definition to support your contention. Based on what I was able to find online, definitions of 'censorhip' require active suppression of content by some sort of authority. That authority bit is important - webster, oxford, and various legal sites all seemed to use a similar word ('authority', 'official', etc). This is in keeping with the history of the word from its Roman roots.
So we have two requirements for censorship - some sort of authority, and restricted speech. You'd be hard-pressed to prove either here - Amazon has no official capacity, and they have no ability to suppress anyone's communication since there are many other avenues of selling books,
In short, Amazon doesn't 'censor' anyone by simply choosing not to sell someone's book, even if that reason is due to objectionable content. If they are, then every business on Earth is also guilty of censorship since they won't sell my goat-porn picture book.
You can't make a word mean something it doesn't simply at your own whim. If you can cite a dictionary definition that supports your much expanded definition of the word, I'd like to see it.
I read the patent but I'm not a lawyer, and it seems easily avoided. He makes specific claims. All the claims 2-? seem to be defined in combination with claim #1. None of them seemed to have any novelty aside from combination with claim #1, so claim #1 is probably what really matters.
Claim #1 specifies two things: a way of combining polls, and a playoff of 3 or more teams. From my non-lawyerly standpoint, I'd say that he's proposing exactly what they're doing now for 2 teams and extending it to 3+. For the non-Americans in the audience, the NCAA has a system of combining multiple polls, choosing the top 2 teams, and letting them play for the championship. So he turns that 2 into 3+.
First problem is that indeed it seems obvious. This idea probably occurred to anyone with a pulse who watched college football over the last few decades. What's more, the NCAA has more lawyers than he does. So does Mark Cuban.
If 'death by lawyer' is not enough, tons of journalists have been clamoring for exactly what's patented - namely, form a playoff from the final rankings basically as described. Go find somebody who published an article prior to the patent describing the same basic thing.
Other than that, just avoid claim one and the whole thing seems to fall apart. One might use a method of combining polls to seed the teams as he describes. Absent that, I don't know what's left besides a single-elimination tournament as you mention, for which ample prior art exists going back, oh, thousands of years probably.
I don't think it should be hard to avoid stepping on this patent. Currently, the NCAA uses a committee to select the (at large) teams that play in the basketball tournament, which they've been doing for many decades.
So despite Mr. Patent Troll's assertions, there are probably a number of ways around this patent, in my non-professional opinion.
but the fact that quantum computing breaks RSA is pretty standard knowledge (among people who have heard of quantum computing)
Yep - and given how well it's currently working, you're screwed if you're using 4-bit RSA (to steal a famous quote from Schneier).
We've been hearing this story for long enough that the 'quantum computing breaks crypto' crowd ought to stop broadcasting that claim until they can break keys of arbitrary length.
But this says nothing about how the meaning of a word should be determined at the time when the definition is being fixed. Do you see what I mean by that?
Of course. However, the term 'broadband' is not new and predates the internet era. The definition was established by signal processing people. The 'band' portion refers to spectrum, and the 'broad' part means you take up a lot of it. You'll also note that there is no inherent notion of speed.
The term was ultimately adopted by the technical illiterate to be a measure of connection speed, which is incorrect. It can correlate with speed in that using a lot of spectrum can effectively create more tubes (thanks Ted) through which to pour traffic, but it's not a given.
We are now in the position where one can use a term in a manner that is technically correct and, what, ruled to be falsely advertising if the bitrate isn't high enough?
Considering that there are legal ramifications for use of words, having people who don't understand them determining their legal definitions is bad.
Aha, words mean what people want them to mean. That may have been the origin of the term, but for the majority of people, that is not the primary meaning.
Considering the subject of this article is providers advertising a service that does not meet a shifting definition of a word defined by the FCC in a manner inconsistent with its technical nature...I think we need to do better than ad-hoc operational definitions.
however my main point stands: Everyone of us gets to choose what trade-off he accepts for the services he uses.
Ah, but do we? Can I turn on cookies but prevent sites from using each others' cookies? I'm fine with that trade-off on a company-by-company basis. I'm not fine with every website knowing everywhere I've ever been. And I don't want to make a decision between giving every site my full identity *or* turning off cookies altogether, making the web a pain in the ass to use.
If someone goes on Facebook and writes everything they do, including their name, social status and underwear color - surprise, someone will collect this info.
Correct, which is why my facebook profile is very generic. That's also not my beef. My issue is that if I go to xyz.com and look at widgets, then when I go to abc.org, I see ads for the same widgets. I don't like that.
Google also collects which sites I visit from their search results, etc. I personally don't mind it.
I don't either. Again, I don't mind you using what you learn about me from my interaction with your service. What I don't want is a site scanning my hard drive and opening every cookie they find.
What you mean is: "Get a business model that allows me to get free content, without advertisement and even if there are ads, do not target them in order to maximize your profits".
Actually I don't, and if you don't mind I'll write my own lines.
I also do not like being tracked online. OTOH, I understand that in order for me to get so much for no money, I have to pay with something else.
Yep. Very much like ad-driven content on TV. Critical difference: *My TV doesn't spy on me.*
I'm fine with ads. Counter to your incorrect assertion, I don't even use ad block. I'm fine with targeted ads based on what a company is able to learn about me from my interactions *with them*. What I don't want them doing is spying on what I do online when I'm not using their service.
Put simply, I don't want any organization - commercial, governmental, etc - being able to put together a cohesive dossier covering the entirety of my online activity.
Is it just me, or is the author completely confusing the notions of privacy online with the open source movement? He mentions the comparison many times, yet the only relevant factor I can see is that Firefox happens to be open-source.
In any event, if Mozilla is caving to the tracking mafia, I will cease to use it. And if Google is behind it, I'll have to rethink their services as well. The notion that I have to tell them everything I do to use online services is preposterous. Get a business model that doesn't depend on spying.
I don't know what kind of academic curriculum a student could choose these days that would permit them to pursue a career in medical research without ever having learned basic calculus at SOME point.
I think you waaaaay overestimate medicine, doctors, and pre-med. My training is in chemistry, and it was shocking when I was an undergrad the lengths that the pre-meds would go to avoid actually learning anything. They worked their asses off at *memorizing*, but actual learning seemed to be something they weren't interested in. They also had a pathological fear and loathing of hard classes that weren't especially prone to being memorized. You know, like Calculus. I think the doctor who is well-versed in mathematical techniques to be the exception, not the rule.
Worse, they also seem to punt on difficult classes in the sciences, as well. They are essentially required to take the big-boy version of Organic Chemistry, as it is used as a weed-out class by med school admissions. And they memorize their way through that, by and large. However, they will do anything in their power to avoid classes like Physical Chemistry. At my college, nearly all of them opted to take a dumbed-down semester version of it that was nearly devoid of math instead of the full-year course that required Calculus.
So the next time you see an article published that claims an effect that would violate some basic tenet of physics, just remember - the ones publishing are probably the brains of the bunch. The real idiots are the ones working on you.
A desire to have an OPEN SOURCE government where everything is visible (except during declared wars) does not mean I am anti-free trade or anti-negotiation
No, but it means that others with whom you might hope to negotiate will be opposed to negotiating with you. Unless you can force your "open" attitude to others by fiat. That's why it amounts to the same thing.
Also, waiting until a declared war to start paying attention to potential enemies leads to Pearl Harbor like situations.
Stop thinking like a little kid where everything is "all" or "nothing".
If your stance is "secrets are bad" then the "nothing" stance is yours. My stance is "sometimes secrets are necessary". In this particular case, it's "You need to protect the confidence of others or they won't talk to you".
I don't give a fuck about what happens outside US territory.
Makes sense, so long as you're A-OK with the US:
*Having no exports
*Having no imports
*Being completely prone to a Pearl Harbor type surprise attack at any time
Also, this stance requires that the rest of the world respect your decision and leave you completely alone.
You're proposing that the US be the crazy hermit who moves into the woods and doesn't talk to anybody. Unfortunately, isolationism as you describe never works, because the real world always intrudes. We tried it a few times, if you recall from history class.
The fact is, we need treaties, for trade and defense. Those treaties require confidentiality, at a minimum so we can respect the confidences of others with respect to other countries they don't like. While I certainly don't approve negotiations designed to keep the people in the dark (ACTA), it's a false dichotomy to suggest that *all* secrets are bad.
However, the hard sciences' Nobel prizes are highly credible and are taken quite seriously.
In my opinion, these have also slipped in recent years. Certainly they haven't sunk to the "homecoming queen" level of voting that the peace and economic prizes have seen. But there's still been a shift away from fundamental, amazing science to science that may have applications that happen to appeal to the committee. Graphene's a pretty good example - fundamentally very related to other things that have already gotten the prize, and awarded primarily for possible applications that haven't happened yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Not at all. Whenever the ACLU or the EFF defends someone pro bono, they are not thrown into the lawsuit with the defendant. It's certainly not criminal to donate money to defend a cause you believe in and, thanks to the SCOTUS, these donations by WikiLeaks and others are actually just an expression of free speech.
And if that were the extent of their involvement with him, you'd be right. However, his relationship with Leaks goes well beyond what you describe. As a point of distinction, the ACLU and EFF generally don't publish illegally obtained materials from the people they defend.
I don't like how short these product generations are.
C'mon Grumpy, it should remind you of the halcyon days of the Detroit automotive industry, right down to the built-in obsolescence. After all, if you make the right product the first time, how the hell do you sell them once a year to rich kids?
And get the hell off my lawn.
I'll be on the side of "screw your video, gimmie the transcript"
'course, I'd be on that side regardless of what format the video is encoded in.
OK, here you go:
"In, out, in, out, in, out, in, out......OOOOhhh....aaaaaaah....(smokes cigarette)"
Sure you don't want the video?
Be mindful of certain industries that will cast significant weight in any online video format war. And their customers ain't settling for the transcript.
False dichotomy for the loss!
Yeah, but it's old enough to be irrelevant. Lots of changes in available tech between then and now.
At this point, with the touch sensitivity in the iPad, it's not a whole different product anyway. But the manner in which one's fingers interact with the software seems pretty limited right now. It just seems logical that it would gain some tablet-like capabilities.
Stylus input "tablets" have been around for over a decade - and they've mostly died off. The same can mostly be said for tablets with a so-called "full blown" OS (e.g. Windows tablets). The market has spoken, and it's pretty much disproven everything you said. Whether you choose to recognize that fact is an entirely different matter.
Just because a particular product failed doesn't mean that the idea in general is bad. Otherwise, I'd have turned gay after breaking up with my first girlfriend.
Here's a prediction for you - there will be an Apple stylus tablet within 3 years. Until about 6 months before launch, it will continue to be the dumbest idea ever. Then, Steve will proclaim it to be brilliant.
I don't have to get a credential if I don't want to,' says Schmidt.
Oh sure. Just like I don't have to get a state-issued ID card if I don't want either, right? Except once these gov-sanctioned IDs come into play, they do become standards (even when it's explicitly against the law, like with SSN).
And they know it. Hey, tell me which candidate it was again who was going to stand up for the little guy?
Are you saying the censors at Amazon have no official capacity at Amazon? That's strange, I thought they were employees of Amazon, acting on behalf of Amazon in an official capacity.
If the definition of 'official' is that general, it becomes both circular and meaningless. Amazon's decision carries no weight or effectiveness in the real world outside their own choice to sell or not sell something.
And I repeat my goat porn test - every business is now a censor under your definition since they won't carry my book. The definition becomes meaningless and almost existential if you say that not selling any given work is an act of censorship of that work.
And no, an "Official" does not have to have anything to do with government.
True. But Amazon certainly has no 'official' capacity in any sense that doesn't render the word meaningless.
The current context fails your definitions as follows:
def #1 because A) Amazon has no official capacity in any way, and B) Amazon isn't extracting portions (interestingly, a much better case can be made for Walmart, as a prior poster mentioned).
Def #2 fails except in the vaguest sense that would make everyone on earth a censor and render the word meaningless.
Def #7 fails because, again, Amazon isn't removing offending portions of text.
Again, let's say I'm a creator of man-goat pornography - are you contending that every business on earth is in the act of censorship because they won't sell my book? If we expand the definition of 'censorship' that widely, it loses its meaning.
And, frankly, it cheapens the meaning of real censorship that people have had to deal with.
Sigh... for the millionth time, yes, it is censorship, it's just not government censorship and therefore not illegal censorship (in the US). It's still censorship. That's what the fucking word means, for Christ's sake.
Actually, I checked and was unable to find a dictionary or legal definition to support your contention. Based on what I was able to find online, definitions of 'censorhip' require active suppression of content by some sort of authority. That authority bit is important - webster, oxford, and various legal sites all seemed to use a similar word ('authority', 'official', etc). This is in keeping with the history of the word from its Roman roots.
So we have two requirements for censorship - some sort of authority, and restricted speech. You'd be hard-pressed to prove either here - Amazon has no official capacity, and they have no ability to suppress anyone's communication since there are many other avenues of selling books,
In short, Amazon doesn't 'censor' anyone by simply choosing not to sell someone's book, even if that reason is due to objectionable content. If they are, then every business on Earth is also guilty of censorship since they won't sell my goat-porn picture book.
You can't make a word mean something it doesn't simply at your own whim. If you can cite a dictionary definition that supports your much expanded definition of the word, I'd like to see it.
I read the patent but I'm not a lawyer, and it seems easily avoided. He makes specific claims. All the claims 2-? seem to be defined in combination with claim #1. None of them seemed to have any novelty aside from combination with claim #1, so claim #1 is probably what really matters.
Claim #1 specifies two things: a way of combining polls, and a playoff of 3 or more teams. From my non-lawyerly standpoint, I'd say that he's proposing exactly what they're doing now for 2 teams and extending it to 3+. For the non-Americans in the audience, the NCAA has a system of combining multiple polls, choosing the top 2 teams, and letting them play for the championship. So he turns that 2 into 3+.
First problem is that indeed it seems obvious. This idea probably occurred to anyone with a pulse who watched college football over the last few decades. What's more, the NCAA has more lawyers than he does. So does Mark Cuban.
If 'death by lawyer' is not enough, tons of journalists have been clamoring for exactly what's patented - namely, form a playoff from the final rankings basically as described. Go find somebody who published an article prior to the patent describing the same basic thing.
Other than that, just avoid claim one and the whole thing seems to fall apart. One might use a method of combining polls to seed the teams as he describes. Absent that, I don't know what's left besides a single-elimination tournament as you mention, for which ample prior art exists going back, oh, thousands of years probably.
I don't think it should be hard to avoid stepping on this patent. Currently, the NCAA uses a committee to select the (at large) teams that play in the basketball tournament, which they've been doing for many decades.
So despite Mr. Patent Troll's assertions, there are probably a number of ways around this patent, in my non-professional opinion.
Seriously, I thought the religious ninnies in the USA were bad. When did the British become more uptight about sex than the USA?
I dunno, always? Hell, it was the Victorians who thought it was scandalous to refer to the things that keep your table off the floor as 'legs.'
Don't mean to start a fight with my friends from across the pond, but neither US nor Britain is a country I think of in terms of being open about sex.
I'd think more along the lines of Brazil, myself.
but the fact that quantum computing breaks RSA is pretty standard knowledge (among people who have heard of quantum computing)
Yep - and given how well it's currently working, you're screwed if you're using 4-bit RSA (to steal a famous quote from Schneier).
We've been hearing this story for long enough that the 'quantum computing breaks crypto' crowd ought to stop broadcasting that claim until they can break keys of arbitrary length.
In a shock to nobody, Googling for 'Kanye West' clocks in with 94% basic and 1% advanced. Beat that, slashdot!
But this says nothing about how the meaning of a word should be determined at the time when the definition is being fixed. Do you see what I mean by that?
Of course. However, the term 'broadband' is not new and predates the internet era. The definition was established by signal processing people. The 'band' portion refers to spectrum, and the 'broad' part means you take up a lot of it. You'll also note that there is no inherent notion of speed.
The term was ultimately adopted by the technical illiterate to be a measure of connection speed, which is incorrect. It can correlate with speed in that using a lot of spectrum can effectively create more tubes (thanks Ted) through which to pour traffic, but it's not a given.
We are now in the position where one can use a term in a manner that is technically correct and, what, ruled to be falsely advertising if the bitrate isn't high enough?
Considering that there are legal ramifications for use of words, having people who don't understand them determining their legal definitions is bad.
Aha, words mean what people want them to mean. That may have been the origin of the term, but for the majority of people, that is not the primary meaning.
Considering the subject of this article is providers advertising a service that does not meet a shifting definition of a word defined by the FCC in a manner inconsistent with its technical nature...I think we need to do better than ad-hoc operational definitions.
If I came out a bit condescending, my apologies.
No worries.
however my main point stands: Everyone of us gets to choose what trade-off he accepts for the services he uses.
Ah, but do we? Can I turn on cookies but prevent sites from using each others' cookies? I'm fine with that trade-off on a company-by-company basis. I'm not fine with every website knowing everywhere I've ever been. And I don't want to make a decision between giving every site my full identity *or* turning off cookies altogether, making the web a pain in the ass to use.
If someone goes on Facebook and writes everything they do, including their name, social status and underwear color - surprise, someone will collect this info.
Correct, which is why my facebook profile is very generic. That's also not my beef. My issue is that if I go to xyz.com and look at widgets, then when I go to abc.org, I see ads for the same widgets. I don't like that.
Google also collects which sites I visit from their search results, etc. I personally don't mind it.
I don't either. Again, I don't mind you using what you learn about me from my interaction with your service. What I don't want is a site scanning my hard drive and opening every cookie they find.
What you mean is: "Get a business model that allows me to get free content, without advertisement and even if there are ads, do not target them in order to maximize your profits".
Actually I don't, and if you don't mind I'll write my own lines.
I also do not like being tracked online. OTOH, I understand that in order for me to get so much for no money, I have to pay with something else.
Yep. Very much like ad-driven content on TV. Critical difference: *My TV doesn't spy on me.*
I'm fine with ads. Counter to your incorrect assertion, I don't even use ad block. I'm fine with targeted ads based on what a company is able to learn about me from my interactions *with them*. What I don't want them doing is spying on what I do online when I'm not using their service.
Put simply, I don't want any organization - commercial, governmental, etc - being able to put together a cohesive dossier covering the entirety of my online activity.
Is it just me, or is the author completely confusing the notions of privacy online with the open source movement? He mentions the comparison many times, yet the only relevant factor I can see is that Firefox happens to be open-source.
In any event, if Mozilla is caving to the tracking mafia, I will cease to use it. And if Google is behind it, I'll have to rethink their services as well. The notion that I have to tell them everything I do to use online services is preposterous. Get a business model that doesn't depend on spying.
I don't know what kind of academic curriculum a student could choose these days that would permit them to pursue a career in medical research without ever having learned basic calculus at SOME point.
I think you waaaaay overestimate medicine, doctors, and pre-med. My training is in chemistry, and it was shocking when I was an undergrad the lengths that the pre-meds would go to avoid actually learning anything. They worked their asses off at *memorizing*, but actual learning seemed to be something they weren't interested in. They also had a pathological fear and loathing of hard classes that weren't especially prone to being memorized. You know, like Calculus. I think the doctor who is well-versed in mathematical techniques to be the exception, not the rule.
Worse, they also seem to punt on difficult classes in the sciences, as well. They are essentially required to take the big-boy version of Organic Chemistry, as it is used as a weed-out class by med school admissions. And they memorize their way through that, by and large. However, they will do anything in their power to avoid classes like Physical Chemistry. At my college, nearly all of them opted to take a dumbed-down semester version of it that was nearly devoid of math instead of the full-year course that required Calculus.
So the next time you see an article published that claims an effect that would violate some basic tenet of physics, just remember - the ones publishing are probably the brains of the bunch. The real idiots are the ones working on you.
A desire to have an OPEN SOURCE government where everything is visible (except during declared wars) does not mean I am anti-free trade or anti-negotiation
No, but it means that others with whom you might hope to negotiate will be opposed to negotiating with you. Unless you can force your "open" attitude to others by fiat. That's why it amounts to the same thing.
Also, waiting until a declared war to start paying attention to potential enemies leads to Pearl Harbor like situations.
Stop thinking like a little kid where everything is "all" or "nothing".
If your stance is "secrets are bad" then the "nothing" stance is yours. My stance is "sometimes secrets are necessary". In this particular case, it's "You need to protect the confidence of others or they won't talk to you".
So no, not black and white.
I don't give a fuck about what happens outside US territory.
Makes sense, so long as you're A-OK with the US:
*Having no exports
*Having no imports
*Being completely prone to a Pearl Harbor type surprise attack at any time
Also, this stance requires that the rest of the world respect your decision and leave you completely alone.
You're proposing that the US be the crazy hermit who moves into the woods and doesn't talk to anybody. Unfortunately, isolationism as you describe never works, because the real world always intrudes. We tried it a few times, if you recall from history class.
The fact is, we need treaties, for trade and defense. Those treaties require confidentiality, at a minimum so we can respect the confidences of others with respect to other countries they don't like. While I certainly don't approve negotiations designed to keep the people in the dark (ACTA), it's a false dichotomy to suggest that *all* secrets are bad.
We could also cite how USA and Russia innovated rocket technology, thanks to the Germans.
I wasn't aware we were at war with China.
Any married man can tell you the fallacy in your logic.
However, the hard sciences' Nobel prizes are highly credible and are taken quite seriously.
In my opinion, these have also slipped in recent years. Certainly they haven't sunk to the "homecoming queen" level of voting that the peace and economic prizes have seen. But there's still been a shift away from fundamental, amazing science to science that may have applications that happen to appeal to the committee. Graphene's a pretty good example - fundamentally very related to other things that have already gotten the prize, and awarded primarily for possible applications that haven't happened yet.