You are talking two different things here with this "junk yard" called Norton Sales.
First, there are hobby rocket builders who scrounge through that junk yard for parts because they are building one-off specialized rockets on an extreme budget and are largely garage tinkerers anyway. I know guys who have done that for automobiles, tractors, and other kinds of equipment too for largely the same reason.
As for NASA going through that place to dig up parts, they are either looking for engineering samples to act as a comparison when trying to rebuild old designs, or perhaps they are desperate in terms of looking for a specialized part that has been discontinued from the original equipment manufacturer yet functioning equipment still needs those parts for some reason. Rather than paying a machinist or that original company a huge pile of money for a production run of just one part or a very low number (yes, that sometimes does happen both in NASA and the military for many items), searching through a junk yard like this would be hugely cheaper.
It isn't that people are too stupid today to be able to build this stuff, but that it is simply cheaper to get stuff from a junk yard. Cheaper by orders of magnitude I should add.... as long as you can even find what you are looking for. If they can't find it at that junk yard, they simply are forced to try and make it from scratch instead at considerable cost. Sometimes a production run of one item can be nearly the same cost as producing thousands of that part too.
It depends on how far outside of the law that the individual patrol officer happens to be at the incident. There was one real jerk of a sheriff deputy near where I live that was pulling over attractive women and then raping them under the guise of doing a "drug check" or some other nonsense. That officer finally got his ass nailed and is serving time in the state prison. I also had an officer get chewed out by a supervisor because of some mischief he was doing to me personally.... where he called in his supervisor to whitewash his mischief and the effort backfired on him in a very public way.
While certainly not perfect and yes there is the "blue wall" where officers will tend to back each other up instead of correcting some abuse, in a competent and professional police department you can request that a supervisor show up to review the actions of an individual officer. If it is something more involved than a speeding ticket, that will likely happen anyway but it is nice to be able to do that. It is also an important check on the behavior of police so they don't let their authority go to their head either.
More correctly given the circumstances, request that a sergeant or supervisor comes alone to deal with the issue. It isn't pretty to see a sergeant come along and chew out a patrol officer who is screwing up, but it can be comforting to know that you can fight the system when an officer is being a jackass. Sadly it doesn't happen as much as it should.
Wrong. A policy infraction can result in disciplinary action (termination, leave without pay, etc.). A law can result in legal action (fines, jail, etc.). A policy cannot itself result in legal action, unless the policy reinforces existing law.
There's a policy at my job (in government) that disallows wearing shorts or sandals in the office. I cant be fined or arrested if I fail to comply.
On the other hand, if there is a policy in place against wearing sandals in the office because you need to be in places where there is some sort of danger of some sort like perhaps a need to wear steel toed shoes, by disregarding such a policy you also don't get the protections which come from such employment either like being able to make a workman's compensation claim against your toes being amputated due to a reckless disregard of company policies in that matter.
Yeah, most office jobs the largest danger is perhaps a paper cut, but not for everybody. Police do engage in stuff that is slight more dangerous as a normal part of their day job too. As suggested above, it also personally opens that police officer up to a liability lawsuit when they flagrantly disregard department policies, and not only can they lose employment but also pension benefits. Police also have a higher standard where committing certain acts is not just against policy but also illegal.
Taking property from a citizen at gunpoint in a manner that is contrary to department policy is a bit more of a big deal than wearing shorts into an office as a bureaucrat who mainly pushes paper.
Under criminal law, the most that happens is a hand slap where the evidence is thrown out if it is to be used in a criminal prosecution.
That is also sort of the point of the lawsuit mentioned in the article, where what is being alleged is that the police of Washington DC are routinely confiscating property without due process. They don't necessarily need a judicial order, but they do need probable cause that the property is being used in the commission of a crime, and in order to keep the evidence for any length of time that charges will be filed.
There are legitimate reasons for police to seize property without a judicial order, or do you think that lunatic in Aurora, Colorado should have kept his guns, ammo, and bombs even after being arrested and keeping them inside of his jail cell? The question is where do you draw the line from something painfully obvious like taking the gun from a lunatic who is shooting everybody in sight and then to taking a camera from an otherwise innocent bystander who is merely recording the reaction of the police to a criminal act?
It could be argued in both cases that a judge could still be called upon to issue an order for the items to be collected and that all a police officer could do is to simply "secure" the property to make sure it doesn't get lost or destroyed.
Sorry where is your site with 100s of better videos explaining these concepts? Oh, whats that, you don't have one? Haven't taken the time to do shit besides run your mouth on Slashdot. Shut the fuck up until you actually do something, nay anything, yourself.
I did help get Wikiversity going and I've been involved in trying to help with the translations of the Khan videos. There are many other things I've done as well that are too numerous to list here. I sure as hell have done more than just spouting off about this issue. You asked why haven't I done anything, I would argue I've done a hell of a lot in terms of developing and encouraging on-line educational resources. I would very much be willing to bet I've done more than you have ever done on this topic.
I realize that I'm talking to a troll here who thinks I'm just frothing at the mouth sitting in my mother's basement as a 50 year old virgin, but you are so wrong about everything in your world view that you also need to wake up and smell the roses yourself. Get a life and find out that sometimes legitimate constructive criticism actually matters for something.
What I'm trying to understand is why you can't stand any criticism of Sal Khan and worship at his feet? Sal Khan is just a guy who is doing something interesting, where I do indeed think others could do a better job for some of the stuff he is doing. I've also seen people try to help out Sal Kahn with honest good faith efforts to improve the Khan Academy and get burned in the process. There are some things that Sal Khan is doing right and grabbing some of those ideas certainly would be useful to duplicate as appropriate.
Both of you are idiots. All you are really complaining about is having to sit through the entire video just so you can get the green check mark next to the video and earn your badges.
I come from a background of collaborative editing of documents and content, so perhaps I'm biased here. By that I'm talking open source programming projects and stuff like Wikipedia.
A huge problem with Sal Kahn is that he presumes he is the font of all knowledge and the one and only who can produce the videos for his site. The central control over the content is part of what will eventually kill the site, even though the basic concept is fine. I'm even OK with an editorial review process that would fact check videos, but when Sal goes beyond mathematics he really doesn't know as much as he thinks he knows.
Eventually somebody is going to come up with a real collaborative and interactive way to bump up against Khan Academy, sort of like You Tube but for instruction. There were earlier attempts to do stuff like that such as Diversity University that pre-date even the development of the web. There have been other similar projects over the years, so to say that Sal Kahn even came up with the concept of an on-line school is really stretching the truth too.
There are some things that Sal Kahn is doing that are original and innovative, so I don't want to completely diss the guy either. I have my reservations that the badges are as important as some people think they are, but the instant reward aspect of the learning that happens on the site is appealing to a base instinct of people when they visit the site. The mathematical exercises are in particular quite interesting. Still, the comments above that suggest the videos are lacking has some merit. There are ways that such content could be improved over time as well.
Actually, it was America that targeted Canada in both wars. The first one was started by General Benedict Arnold, of all the strange coincidences that seem to happen in world history.
The War of 1812 really accomplished two significant things: painting the executive mansion of the U.S. President to always be painted white, and ensuring the independence of Canada from the USA. Well it also put Andrew Jackson in the White House, but that was for a battle that happened after the peace treaty was signed.
I would argue the opposite to any sort of encouragement to independent publication as well. My point is also that those other approaches to publication would be used regardless of the patent status or any hope of an exclusive use of the idea.
Okay, do you have any evidence for that?
Absolutely I have evidence for that. The fact is that a great many patentable ideas are indeed published in "open sources" (various uses of that term including pure "public domain") where those ideas are freely shared with anybody who wants to use them. Operating systems like Linux, to give an example, depend upon patentable ideas to explicitly be shared without any kind of monopoly being granted or even explicit expectation of getting monetary compensation for the work they do, at least in the traditional sense of software or equipment manufacturing.
Trade journals of a great many professional journals also include "how to" tips and tricks including schematics, drawings, and other related technical information for things that in theory could be patented but simply aren't.
The fact that it is happening anyway in spite of the patent route happening certainly shows that patents are not necessary for useful ideas to be disseminated that will advance an industry. I'm even going so far to suggest that the patent system is indeed a brake upon that dissemination of information for most industries, and most especially the electronic and computer industries in particular.
Considering that for nearly the first 30-40 years of the computer industry software concepts simply couldn't be patented at all, that hardly stopped the development of innovative software ideas such as the development of real-time computer operating systems, time share terminals, compilers, and the development of thousands of computer programming languages. I would say the onus is on you to demonstrate how the progress of the computer industry has been improved in any way since software patents became widely used and I'd even go so far as to suggest that the exact opposite has happened.
As has been mentioned even earlier, the fashion industry doesn't have patents, and neither does the film industry with the exception of technical aspects like camera designs. If a filming technique could be patented or a performance style, you would see similar kinds of problems plaguing the film industry that current infects the software development industry right now and would be equally silly as well.
You certainly aren't making your point about the usefulness of the patent process itself or why it should be used instead of publishing the idea in an industry trade magazine or journal.
Again, I think you misunderstand. The idea is that these are in addition to, not instead of.
I'm simply stating for the record that it isn't happening for the most part, and that any such publication about patented ideas is in fact heavily discouraged. Certainly no sane engineering manager would let their employees read those magazines without knowingly paying licensing fees for those patents in the first place and likely would be very concerned even then.
For that matter, it doesn't even explain why trade secrets should be shared at all.
Because society benefits from fewer trade secrets and more public domain knowledge. It's odd that someone is arguing against patents, but also for more trade secrets... unless they're really in favor of more secrecy.
I'm arguing for more trade secrets precisely because the patent system is broken, and that even the act of disclosure can backfire where that broken system doesn't even recognize those trade journals as places for patent examiners to even check out as prior art.
Unless such external publication is explicitly required by the patent process, the entir
I'll also note that if any decent engineering manager ever caught an engineer reading a textbook or other publication that knowingly covered a patented process belonging to another company, that engineer would receive the same stern lecture I mentioned above about patent applications. If it continued, that engineer would be fired and those publications would also be shredded or burned as well to prevent other engineers from making the same mistake in that company.
The only possible exception would be if some engineering manager decided to explicitly license some patented process they discovered in some way (likely at some trade show or convention) and then they handed the documentation about the patented idea to one of their engineers after a consultation of the corporate legal department, and likely even some additional waiver forms that would need to be signed by that engineer before they even started to crack open the documentation in the first place. That engineer would also be under strict orders to not divulge anything about that patented idea to any of their co-workers.
If you know of companies who don't follow this kind of paranoia about patented ideas, you likely are looking at a company who is ripe for a lawsuit of the kind that Mojang was just slapped with. I'm simply saying that patents don't disseminate ideas about an industry or technology but rather clamp down on that dissemination and even prevent the spread of that information to people for whom it might even be useful.
Canadians had the good sense to tell the Continental Congress to go to hell, even if they had to fight two wars against America to drive that point home. Good for them too.
You're reading the grandparent post wrong, as well as misunderstanding the point of the Patent Act. As noted above, patents encourage publication of inventions... As in, patents encourage publication elsewhere, such as functional specs, white papers, theses, etc. The documents that would otherwise be kept as trade secrets. It's not that the patent is meant to be the sole library, but that the patent allows the inventor to publish and show the world how the invention works in other documents and at trade shows, without losing their rights.
As you note:
If you want to share information about technology, try a textbook or some technical manual.
And patents encourage publication of those textbooks and manuals.
If the point of sharing the information isn't in the patent application, what is the point? The issue is that you have fully disclosed all of the information about how to make the device through the patent application in exchange for getting the monopoly to use the idea exclusively. If the information isn't being disclosed or never gets disclosed (such as why this particular Uniloc patent is useful in any way) then the information doesn't get shared.
I would argue the opposite to any sort of encouragement to independent publication as well. My point is also that those other approaches to publication would be used regardless of the patent status or any hope of an exclusive use of the idea. You certainly aren't making your point about the usefulness of the patent process itself or why it should be used instead of publishing the idea in an industry trade magazine or journal. For that matter, it doesn't even explain why trade secrets should be shared at all.
Unless such external publication is explicitly required by the patent process, the entire rationale you are giving here is a bunch of meaningless BS.
The FEC has spent a long time tightening the laws.
If the FEC has been tightening the laws, then we have bigger problems than lobbyists bribing elected officials, since the FEC is not part of either branch of Congress and therefore had no business changing laws in any manner.
In fairness, what happened was that some bureaucrats at the FEC proposed legislation that was sent to members of congress that subsequently changed the laws to get rid of stuff like members of congress pocketing the campaign financing. It went through congressional hearings and the full legislative process in Congress including the President's signature in order to become law.
Still, you shouldn't be looking at unelected bureaucrats as the source of protection for a democratic society. No matter how smart a bunch of guys at a federal agency might be, they still aren't perfect and it sort of goes against democratic principles to even have such people "above the law".
In this case the practice of pocketing campaign contributions pissed off more than a few ordinary citizens as well, so it was politically advantageous to be "above the fray" and to get rid of the practice.
Then again, instead of pocketing the campaign contributions they can now move the money to a "Super PAC". Not quite the same thing as being able to pocket the money but they can use the money to try and influence political campaigns of their "heir apparent" to the office they are leaving or be able to continue to have political influence in politics for many years afterward on various issues they care about. The money doesn't just disappear and it certainly doesn't go into the federal treasury in most cases.
I'm not saying it's a perfect system, far from it. But it's not even close to the "legalized bribe" that most people who don't work in Washington imagine it is.
Having been a candidate for public office before, I will say it is hard to turn down campaign donations from groups that offer enough money to finance your campaign. And I've had offers from groups that I most certainly didn't agree with for money I could have desperately used in order to finance my campaign.
While the laws have changed somewhat since this practice was happening, there was in the past an option for federal office holders (Senate & U.S. House) to be able to pocket excess campaign donations after they were defeated in an election or went into retirement. This still is the case for some state and municipal office seekers (and certainly was in my case when running for municipal office). I had to report all of the donations of course and file formal reports on all of the income and expenses (which typically break even if you are being serious about a campaign), but if a "generous donation" was to fall in your lap, it certainly could end up being something very much like a legalized bribe.
I do agree though with the fact that lobbyists do much more than handing out huge piles of money. They do tend to be experts on the topics they advocate about and can be very useful in terms of being able to understand what a particular constituency group or industry group thinks about a particular piece of legislation. As long as you understand the bias that the bring to the table, they can also be useful for obtaining information about that particular topic they are advocating for as well.
America is also the name of the country, in case you haven't got a clue about the place.
Still, sometimes it is useful to thump some people in the head to remind them that the Slashdot readership isn't only from Michigan (the original home of Slashdot).
2. This isn't quite right. The primary purpose of patents is to encourage the publication of inventions and sharing of ideas. Without them, the profit motive would encourage trade secrets and hoarding of information and techniques. Say what you will about patents, obviousness, and longevity of protections, but they have succeeded brilliantly at getting everyone publishing everything in extensive detail.
If that is the goal of patents, it has become an utterly failed goal and the role of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office certainly has not encouraged any actual documentation of the devices or concepts themselves. Sadly, I've read enough patent applications to realize that there is no possible way to glean much of any information at all from those documents in terms of being able to actually build the devices or concepts being described in them. Those applications are so full of legal descriptions that gleaning any technical data on how to do something simply can't be done.
I'll also note that if patents were so excellent as a means to share and distribute information about technical and engineering concepts, most engineers would have a bookshelf and likely even a full library of patent applications (especially expired patents) for them to review and to get ideas from. Instead, most engineers are explicitly encouraged to never read patent applications except in a narrow scope to help out with the legal defense of a company once they have been sued or are supposed to be giving expert legal testimony on the content of the patent. The only patent related items that you will ever see in an engineering office may be some plaques honoring employees who have been granted patents, but you would typically see lawyers who see any other patent applications or grants that belong to other companies taking those materials and throwing them into the shredder or burning them with likely a long talk to any engineer who is caught with them in a joint conference with a human resources exec, the immediate supervisor, and a lawyer along with some sort of form where that employee would have a long and embarrassing "lecture" (it wouldn't even be a conversation) and they would need to sign some paper as a condition of employment to never look at another patent application without direct approval of their supervisor.
I wish patents would work as you claim. It is a noble thought and if patents actually functioned as you claim the world would be a much better place. Sadly, they fail at the thought. The details about how to do what they claim to do is almost never there. If we had to re-create 21st century American technology out of the data base that is the USPTO patent applications, we'd still be stuck trying to figure out how to chop down a tree much less being able to build a fire or even building any of the tools that make America work today.
If you want to share information about technology, try a textbook or some technical manual. They are embarrassingly better at sharing information about technology than any patent ever could think about, and would tell a would-be engineer how to actually accomplish the task rather than the legalese which is a patent application. That by law a patent application is supposed to provide the information is irrelevant that it actually does what it claims to do.
A six pack of beer or even a 12 pack, I can buy that the reason for getting that much beer is to have a couple of cold ones for the evening with a couple of buddies. A hundred cans of beer and hard liquor? The only purpose of doing that is to be plastered stone drunk where I doubt that the hangover in the morning afterward is going to leave you in a condition to go hunting.
Of all of the content on Wikimedia projects, this one is certainly something to really look at. I'd dare you to even try and make an edit on the page as well (although the author likely has moved on to something else.... but you are warned!)
I used to be pretty staunchly in favor of banning all guns. These days, my stance is what I consider a bit more practical and well-thought out. I'm not for banning guns completely, but I am for measures such as requiring training and evaluation that has to be periodically repeated before issuing a permit to allow people to legally have guns, implementing methods of tracking guns, requiring all guns sold adhere to certain standards of safety, and restricting the sale and distribution of the types of assault weapons that are designed for killing massive numbers of people quickly. Because the fact is that I'm MUCH more afraid of well-meaning--but stupid and untrained moron--hurting or killing me with a gun than some nutjob opening fire in a theater.
I come from a very different background, where in general I feel that people should be armed with just about anything they want in terms of weapons (a private tank? Sure, just sign on the line and make sure you pay taxes on it). I also see that the right to bear arms is an important component of protecting our freedoms as it also places an important check on the reach of government when armed citizens can push back against would be government officers if they seriously step out of line. The government should be afraid of an armed citizenry, but the fear is because that government is kept in check by that citizenry from doing stupid things.
On the other hand, I am becoming more and more convinced about the need for firearm training for those who have access to them. Classes that teach firearm training are fairly easy to find if you really want them, and a good firearms instructor can not only show you the proper way to use those devices without hurting yourself in the process, but you also learn very quickly that where you point a gun, regardless of the fact that you may think it is unloaded or even if your hand is nowhere near the trigger, you should expect that the gun will go off at any point with a bullet and strike whatever happens to be in front of that muzzle. NEVER point a gun at somebody unless your goal is to literally kill them in hopefully a self-defense purpose. Don't screw around and joke about such things too and be extremely serious about how you use firearms because they are serious devices that can cause a whole bunch of damage if misused.
Sure, other kinds of equipment (notably automobiles) can also kill people if misused (the accused assailant in the theater could have simply crashed his car into the theater at 70 mph instead of using a gun and caused nearly as much damage). I remember kids that screwed around in shop classes when I was growing up, and ended up injuring themselves on some of the power tools, so I know stupid people do stupid shit with dangerous equipment simply because they want to joke around. Real life isn't a video game and you don't get a second life if you screw up.
All this said, there is even a constitutional provision for the training and enforcement of firearm regulations, and that would be through the use of state-chartered militias. For myself, I would even be fine if the only people who could possess firearms would be regular members of the militias, at least in America. This is not some group of nut jobs who go off to the woods and run around in uniforms of their own design and pretend the end of the world is here or planning for a nuclear holocaust, but rather legitimate groups of ordinary citizens who receive proper training on firearms from skilled instructors and are part of an organization which is formally recognized by a state government.
I'll also note that a state militia does not need to be the National Guard, does not need to have the dual oath loyalties that come from guard service, and in theory doesn't even need to be taxpayer supported. Members of these militias don't even necessarily need to be subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It could be groups like a neighborhood watch or something else similar, but it could b
Fission-based aviation was tried by the U.S. Air Force a couple of decades ago as a platform for a bomber which could stay in the air for long duration flights (a week or more of continuous flying was envisioned). Actual flight worthy test articles were developed as prototypes, including notably the X-6 aircraft that put a working reactor into the air, even though it wasn't directly linked to the propulsion system of the aircraft. The 12-ton lead shielding needed to protect the crew was a major draw back of the project.
I don't know if a Thorium reactor would do any better than the Plutonium reactor used in that aircraft, but I would suspect similar kinds of radiation shielding would be needed and would likely encounter similar kinds of problems in its development. For it to be used for passenger flight seems extremely unlikely.
As for the hyperloop, it will be interesting to see where it will go. Elon Musk announced that he will be releasing a more detailed explanation of the technology in the next few months (sometime in August was a suggested publication date). I'm sure that will be something on Slashdot when the document dump happens.
That "Hyperloop" system is so far out there that most people even trying to comment about it don't even know what it is. I'm not even sure it is a rail system, or if it is that must have as much relationship to current rail transit as monorails have or even more remote than that.
The idea he expressed in the same speech about the electric turbofan seemed interesting though. The problem with an electric airplane, however, is simply getting the energy density needed to make it work. About the only thing that might work for something on that scale would be a fusion energy plant (something Elon Musk also hinted about in that same speech).
Sorry Elon, but unlike the Americans, Toyota has been working on fuel efficient cars for the last 20 years, and they are good at cost control.
Yeah, Toyota is so confident in their ability to produce electric automobiles that they purchased a major stake in Tesla Motors (one of the reasons why Tesla got the NUMMI plant in California BTW). That was pre-IPO investment into Tesla I should add.
Elon Musk has met personally with the Toyoda family, in particular the current CEO of Toyota, Akio Toyoda. I'd say that Elon Musk knows quite a bit about all of the stuff that Toyota Motors is doing with regards to fuel efficient automobiles, hybrids, and other such projects.
The problem with working in the sea for energy production is dealing with sea life, in particular barnacles and even coral (in more tropical areas). Certainly any kind of hydrological system put into place should be a closed system, but I'm sure the engineers involved in building these systems know this or will find out in a real hurry. That has been a plaguing problem with such system in the past, as they've tried to use seawater from the environment and it causes all sorts of problems.
One other promising technology that is related is Ocean thermal energy conversion which relies upon the temperature differential between upper layers of water in oceans and the deeper layers, typically using ammonia or some other similar substance to run turbines using this kind of temperature difference as an energy pump. Sadly, research into such systems is still quite lagging, although active research is still happening with the technology.
That's precisely why the Chevy Volt has a battery temp control system - the only one in the biz. GM did their homework here - the HVAC can control the pack temperature to extend life (and range). I know, I own one.
I'm pretty sure that both the Tesla vehicles (especially the Roadster) as well as the Nissan Leaf also have a temperature control system on their batteries. The Tesla system in particular goes out of its way to maintain nearly constant temperature conditions for the individual Li-ion cells that it uses. For the amount of energy being stored in these systems and the number of cells that they use, such temperature controls are even necessary, at least to keep thermal run away reactions from happening in these vehicles as would be the case if no temperature control system was used.
It may not be the same as what GM is doing, but you can't say it is the only one "in the business", unless somehow GM thinks they are the only American auto manufacturer making electric vehicles. I'm sure Tesla and Fisker would disagree with even that sentiment.
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You are talking two different things here with this "junk yard" called Norton Sales.
First, there are hobby rocket builders who scrounge through that junk yard for parts because they are building one-off specialized rockets on an extreme budget and are largely garage tinkerers anyway. I know guys who have done that for automobiles, tractors, and other kinds of equipment too for largely the same reason.
As for NASA going through that place to dig up parts, they are either looking for engineering samples to act as a comparison when trying to rebuild old designs, or perhaps they are desperate in terms of looking for a specialized part that has been discontinued from the original equipment manufacturer yet functioning equipment still needs those parts for some reason. Rather than paying a machinist or that original company a huge pile of money for a production run of just one part or a very low number (yes, that sometimes does happen both in NASA and the military for many items), searching through a junk yard like this would be hugely cheaper.
It isn't that people are too stupid today to be able to build this stuff, but that it is simply cheaper to get stuff from a junk yard. Cheaper by orders of magnitude I should add.... as long as you can even find what you are looking for. If they can't find it at that junk yard, they simply are forced to try and make it from scratch instead at considerable cost. Sometimes a production run of one item can be nearly the same cost as producing thousands of that part too.
It depends on how far outside of the law that the individual patrol officer happens to be at the incident. There was one real jerk of a sheriff deputy near where I live that was pulling over attractive women and then raping them under the guise of doing a "drug check" or some other nonsense. That officer finally got his ass nailed and is serving time in the state prison. I also had an officer get chewed out by a supervisor because of some mischief he was doing to me personally.... where he called in his supervisor to whitewash his mischief and the effort backfired on him in a very public way.
While certainly not perfect and yes there is the "blue wall" where officers will tend to back each other up instead of correcting some abuse, in a competent and professional police department you can request that a supervisor show up to review the actions of an individual officer. If it is something more involved than a speeding ticket, that will likely happen anyway but it is nice to be able to do that. It is also an important check on the behavior of police so they don't let their authority go to their head either.
More correctly given the circumstances, request that a sergeant or supervisor comes alone to deal with the issue. It isn't pretty to see a sergeant come along and chew out a patrol officer who is screwing up, but it can be comforting to know that you can fight the system when an officer is being a jackass. Sadly it doesn't happen as much as it should.
Wrong. A policy infraction can result in disciplinary action (termination, leave without pay, etc.). A law can result in legal action (fines, jail, etc.). A policy cannot itself result in legal action, unless the policy reinforces existing law.
There's a policy at my job (in government) that disallows wearing shorts or sandals in the office. I cant be fined or arrested if I fail to comply.
On the other hand, if there is a policy in place against wearing sandals in the office because you need to be in places where there is some sort of danger of some sort like perhaps a need to wear steel toed shoes, by disregarding such a policy you also don't get the protections which come from such employment either like being able to make a workman's compensation claim against your toes being amputated due to a reckless disregard of company policies in that matter.
Yeah, most office jobs the largest danger is perhaps a paper cut, but not for everybody. Police do engage in stuff that is slight more dangerous as a normal part of their day job too. As suggested above, it also personally opens that police officer up to a liability lawsuit when they flagrantly disregard department policies, and not only can they lose employment but also pension benefits. Police also have a higher standard where committing certain acts is not just against policy but also illegal.
Taking property from a citizen at gunpoint in a manner that is contrary to department policy is a bit more of a big deal than wearing shorts into an office as a bureaucrat who mainly pushes paper.
Under criminal law, the most that happens is a hand slap where the evidence is thrown out if it is to be used in a criminal prosecution.
That is also sort of the point of the lawsuit mentioned in the article, where what is being alleged is that the police of Washington DC are routinely confiscating property without due process. They don't necessarily need a judicial order, but they do need probable cause that the property is being used in the commission of a crime, and in order to keep the evidence for any length of time that charges will be filed.
There are legitimate reasons for police to seize property without a judicial order, or do you think that lunatic in Aurora, Colorado should have kept his guns, ammo, and bombs even after being arrested and keeping them inside of his jail cell? The question is where do you draw the line from something painfully obvious like taking the gun from a lunatic who is shooting everybody in sight and then to taking a camera from an otherwise innocent bystander who is merely recording the reaction of the police to a criminal act?
It could be argued in both cases that a judge could still be called upon to issue an order for the items to be collected and that all a police officer could do is to simply "secure" the property to make sure it doesn't get lost or destroyed.
Sorry where is your site with 100s of better videos explaining these concepts? Oh, whats that, you don't have one? Haven't taken the time to do shit besides run your mouth on Slashdot. Shut the fuck up until you actually do something, nay anything, yourself.
I did help get Wikiversity going and I've been involved in trying to help with the translations of the Khan videos. There are many other things I've done as well that are too numerous to list here. I sure as hell have done more than just spouting off about this issue. You asked why haven't I done anything, I would argue I've done a hell of a lot in terms of developing and encouraging on-line educational resources. I would very much be willing to bet I've done more than you have ever done on this topic.
I realize that I'm talking to a troll here who thinks I'm just frothing at the mouth sitting in my mother's basement as a 50 year old virgin, but you are so wrong about everything in your world view that you also need to wake up and smell the roses yourself. Get a life and find out that sometimes legitimate constructive criticism actually matters for something.
What I'm trying to understand is why you can't stand any criticism of Sal Khan and worship at his feet? Sal Khan is just a guy who is doing something interesting, where I do indeed think others could do a better job for some of the stuff he is doing. I've also seen people try to help out Sal Kahn with honest good faith efforts to improve the Khan Academy and get burned in the process. There are some things that Sal Khan is doing right and grabbing some of those ideas certainly would be useful to duplicate as appropriate.
Both of you are idiots. All you are really complaining about is having to sit through the entire video just so you can get the green check mark next to the video and earn your badges.
I come from a background of collaborative editing of documents and content, so perhaps I'm biased here. By that I'm talking open source programming projects and stuff like Wikipedia.
A huge problem with Sal Kahn is that he presumes he is the font of all knowledge and the one and only who can produce the videos for his site. The central control over the content is part of what will eventually kill the site, even though the basic concept is fine. I'm even OK with an editorial review process that would fact check videos, but when Sal goes beyond mathematics he really doesn't know as much as he thinks he knows.
Eventually somebody is going to come up with a real collaborative and interactive way to bump up against Khan Academy, sort of like You Tube but for instruction. There were earlier attempts to do stuff like that such as Diversity University that pre-date even the development of the web. There have been other similar projects over the years, so to say that Sal Kahn even came up with the concept of an on-line school is really stretching the truth too.
There are some things that Sal Kahn is doing that are original and innovative, so I don't want to completely diss the guy either. I have my reservations that the badges are as important as some people think they are, but the instant reward aspect of the learning that happens on the site is appealing to a base instinct of people when they visit the site. The mathematical exercises are in particular quite interesting. Still, the comments above that suggest the videos are lacking has some merit. There are ways that such content could be improved over time as well.
Actually, it was America that targeted Canada in both wars. The first one was started by General Benedict Arnold, of all the strange coincidences that seem to happen in world history.
The War of 1812 really accomplished two significant things: painting the executive mansion of the U.S. President to always be painted white, and ensuring the independence of Canada from the USA. Well it also put Andrew Jackson in the White House, but that was for a battle that happened after the peace treaty was signed.
I would argue the opposite to any sort of encouragement to independent publication as well. My point is also that those other approaches to publication would be used regardless of the patent status or any hope of an exclusive use of the idea.
Okay, do you have any evidence for that?
Absolutely I have evidence for that. The fact is that a great many patentable ideas are indeed published in "open sources" (various uses of that term including pure "public domain") where those ideas are freely shared with anybody who wants to use them. Operating systems like Linux, to give an example, depend upon patentable ideas to explicitly be shared without any kind of monopoly being granted or even explicit expectation of getting monetary compensation for the work they do, at least in the traditional sense of software or equipment manufacturing.
Trade journals of a great many professional journals also include "how to" tips and tricks including schematics, drawings, and other related technical information for things that in theory could be patented but simply aren't.
The fact that it is happening anyway in spite of the patent route happening certainly shows that patents are not necessary for useful ideas to be disseminated that will advance an industry. I'm even going so far to suggest that the patent system is indeed a brake upon that dissemination of information for most industries, and most especially the electronic and computer industries in particular.
Considering that for nearly the first 30-40 years of the computer industry software concepts simply couldn't be patented at all, that hardly stopped the development of innovative software ideas such as the development of real-time computer operating systems, time share terminals, compilers, and the development of thousands of computer programming languages. I would say the onus is on you to demonstrate how the progress of the computer industry has been improved in any way since software patents became widely used and I'd even go so far as to suggest that the exact opposite has happened.
As has been mentioned even earlier, the fashion industry doesn't have patents, and neither does the film industry with the exception of technical aspects like camera designs. If a filming technique could be patented or a performance style, you would see similar kinds of problems plaguing the film industry that current infects the software development industry right now and would be equally silly as well.
You certainly aren't making your point about the usefulness of the patent process itself or why it should be used instead of publishing the idea in an industry trade magazine or journal.
Again, I think you misunderstand. The idea is that these are in addition to, not instead of.
I'm simply stating for the record that it isn't happening for the most part, and that any such publication about patented ideas is in fact heavily discouraged. Certainly no sane engineering manager would let their employees read those magazines without knowingly paying licensing fees for those patents in the first place and likely would be very concerned even then.
For that matter, it doesn't even explain why trade secrets should be shared at all.
Because society benefits from fewer trade secrets and more public domain knowledge. It's odd that someone is arguing against patents, but also for more trade secrets... unless they're really in favor of more secrecy.
I'm arguing for more trade secrets precisely because the patent system is broken, and that even the act of disclosure can backfire where that broken system doesn't even recognize those trade journals as places for patent examiners to even check out as prior art.
Unless such external publication is explicitly required by the patent process, the entir
I'll also note that if any decent engineering manager ever caught an engineer reading a textbook or other publication that knowingly covered a patented process belonging to another company, that engineer would receive the same stern lecture I mentioned above about patent applications. If it continued, that engineer would be fired and those publications would also be shredded or burned as well to prevent other engineers from making the same mistake in that company.
The only possible exception would be if some engineering manager decided to explicitly license some patented process they discovered in some way (likely at some trade show or convention) and then they handed the documentation about the patented idea to one of their engineers after a consultation of the corporate legal department, and likely even some additional waiver forms that would need to be signed by that engineer before they even started to crack open the documentation in the first place. That engineer would also be under strict orders to not divulge anything about that patented idea to any of their co-workers.
If you know of companies who don't follow this kind of paranoia about patented ideas, you likely are looking at a company who is ripe for a lawsuit of the kind that Mojang was just slapped with. I'm simply saying that patents don't disseminate ideas about an industry or technology but rather clamp down on that dissemination and even prevent the spread of that information to people for whom it might even be useful.
Canadians had the good sense to tell the Continental Congress to go to hell, even if they had to fight two wars against America to drive that point home. Good for them too.
You're reading the grandparent post wrong, as well as misunderstanding the point of the Patent Act. As noted above, patents encourage publication of inventions... As in, patents encourage publication elsewhere, such as functional specs, white papers, theses, etc. The documents that would otherwise be kept as trade secrets. It's not that the patent is meant to be the sole library, but that the patent allows the inventor to publish and show the world how the invention works in other documents and at trade shows, without losing their rights.
As you note:
If you want to share information about technology, try a textbook or some technical manual.
And patents encourage publication of those textbooks and manuals.
If the point of sharing the information isn't in the patent application, what is the point? The issue is that you have fully disclosed all of the information about how to make the device through the patent application in exchange for getting the monopoly to use the idea exclusively. If the information isn't being disclosed or never gets disclosed (such as why this particular Uniloc patent is useful in any way) then the information doesn't get shared.
I would argue the opposite to any sort of encouragement to independent publication as well. My point is also that those other approaches to publication would be used regardless of the patent status or any hope of an exclusive use of the idea. You certainly aren't making your point about the usefulness of the patent process itself or why it should be used instead of publishing the idea in an industry trade magazine or journal. For that matter, it doesn't even explain why trade secrets should be shared at all.
Unless such external publication is explicitly required by the patent process, the entire rationale you are giving here is a bunch of meaningless BS.
The FEC has spent a long time tightening the laws.
If the FEC has been tightening the laws, then we have bigger problems than lobbyists bribing elected officials, since the FEC is not part of either branch of Congress and therefore had no business changing laws in any manner.
In fairness, what happened was that some bureaucrats at the FEC proposed legislation that was sent to members of congress that subsequently changed the laws to get rid of stuff like members of congress pocketing the campaign financing. It went through congressional hearings and the full legislative process in Congress including the President's signature in order to become law.
Still, you shouldn't be looking at unelected bureaucrats as the source of protection for a democratic society. No matter how smart a bunch of guys at a federal agency might be, they still aren't perfect and it sort of goes against democratic principles to even have such people "above the law".
In this case the practice of pocketing campaign contributions pissed off more than a few ordinary citizens as well, so it was politically advantageous to be "above the fray" and to get rid of the practice.
Then again, instead of pocketing the campaign contributions they can now move the money to a "Super PAC". Not quite the same thing as being able to pocket the money but they can use the money to try and influence political campaigns of their "heir apparent" to the office they are leaving or be able to continue to have political influence in politics for many years afterward on various issues they care about. The money doesn't just disappear and it certainly doesn't go into the federal treasury in most cases.
I'm not saying it's a perfect system, far from it. But it's not even close to the "legalized bribe" that most people who don't work in Washington imagine it is.
Having been a candidate for public office before, I will say it is hard to turn down campaign donations from groups that offer enough money to finance your campaign. And I've had offers from groups that I most certainly didn't agree with for money I could have desperately used in order to finance my campaign.
While the laws have changed somewhat since this practice was happening, there was in the past an option for federal office holders (Senate & U.S. House) to be able to pocket excess campaign donations after they were defeated in an election or went into retirement. This still is the case for some state and municipal office seekers (and certainly was in my case when running for municipal office). I had to report all of the donations of course and file formal reports on all of the income and expenses (which typically break even if you are being serious about a campaign), but if a "generous donation" was to fall in your lap, it certainly could end up being something very much like a legalized bribe.
I do agree though with the fact that lobbyists do much more than handing out huge piles of money. They do tend to be experts on the topics they advocate about and can be very useful in terms of being able to understand what a particular constituency group or industry group thinks about a particular piece of legislation. As long as you understand the bias that the bring to the table, they can also be useful for obtaining information about that particular topic they are advocating for as well.
America is also the name of the country, in case you haven't got a clue about the place.
Still, sometimes it is useful to thump some people in the head to remind them that the Slashdot readership isn't only from Michigan (the original home of Slashdot).
Oddly enough though (in spite of visual appearances from space), Japan is actually a part of North America, from perhaps an unusual point of view.
2. This isn't quite right. The primary purpose of patents is to encourage the publication of inventions and sharing of ideas. Without them, the profit motive would encourage trade secrets and hoarding of information and techniques. Say what you will about patents, obviousness, and longevity of protections, but they have succeeded brilliantly at getting everyone publishing everything in extensive detail.
If that is the goal of patents, it has become an utterly failed goal and the role of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office certainly has not encouraged any actual documentation of the devices or concepts themselves. Sadly, I've read enough patent applications to realize that there is no possible way to glean much of any information at all from those documents in terms of being able to actually build the devices or concepts being described in them. Those applications are so full of legal descriptions that gleaning any technical data on how to do something simply can't be done.
I'll also note that if patents were so excellent as a means to share and distribute information about technical and engineering concepts, most engineers would have a bookshelf and likely even a full library of patent applications (especially expired patents) for them to review and to get ideas from. Instead, most engineers are explicitly encouraged to never read patent applications except in a narrow scope to help out with the legal defense of a company once they have been sued or are supposed to be giving expert legal testimony on the content of the patent. The only patent related items that you will ever see in an engineering office may be some plaques honoring employees who have been granted patents, but you would typically see lawyers who see any other patent applications or grants that belong to other companies taking those materials and throwing them into the shredder or burning them with likely a long talk to any engineer who is caught with them in a joint conference with a human resources exec, the immediate supervisor, and a lawyer along with some sort of form where that employee would have a long and embarrassing "lecture" (it wouldn't even be a conversation) and they would need to sign some paper as a condition of employment to never look at another patent application without direct approval of their supervisor.
I wish patents would work as you claim. It is a noble thought and if patents actually functioned as you claim the world would be a much better place. Sadly, they fail at the thought. The details about how to do what they claim to do is almost never there. If we had to re-create 21st century American technology out of the data base that is the USPTO patent applications, we'd still be stuck trying to figure out how to chop down a tree much less being able to build a fire or even building any of the tools that make America work today.
If you want to share information about technology, try a textbook or some technical manual. They are embarrassingly better at sharing information about technology than any patent ever could think about, and would tell a would-be engineer how to actually accomplish the task rather than the legalese which is a patent application. That by law a patent application is supposed to provide the information is irrelevant that it actually does what it claims to do.
A six pack of beer or even a 12 pack, I can buy that the reason for getting that much beer is to have a couple of cold ones for the evening with a couple of buddies. A hundred cans of beer and hard liquor? The only purpose of doing that is to be plastered stone drunk where I doubt that the hangover in the morning afterward is going to leave you in a condition to go hunting.
Why bother with the postage when you can simply e-mail the guide (or at least the link): http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Aspies_Book
Of all of the content on Wikimedia projects, this one is certainly something to really look at. I'd dare you to even try and make an edit on the page as well (although the author likely has moved on to something else.... but you are warned!)
I used to be pretty staunchly in favor of banning all guns. These days, my stance is what I consider a bit more practical and well-thought out. I'm not for banning guns completely, but I am for measures such as requiring training and evaluation that has to be periodically repeated before issuing a permit to allow people to legally have guns, implementing methods of tracking guns, requiring all guns sold adhere to certain standards of safety, and restricting the sale and distribution of the types of assault weapons that are designed for killing massive numbers of people quickly. Because the fact is that I'm MUCH more afraid of well-meaning--but stupid and untrained moron--hurting or killing me with a gun than some nutjob opening fire in a theater.
I come from a very different background, where in general I feel that people should be armed with just about anything they want in terms of weapons (a private tank? Sure, just sign on the line and make sure you pay taxes on it). I also see that the right to bear arms is an important component of protecting our freedoms as it also places an important check on the reach of government when armed citizens can push back against would be government officers if they seriously step out of line. The government should be afraid of an armed citizenry, but the fear is because that government is kept in check by that citizenry from doing stupid things.
On the other hand, I am becoming more and more convinced about the need for firearm training for those who have access to them. Classes that teach firearm training are fairly easy to find if you really want them, and a good firearms instructor can not only show you the proper way to use those devices without hurting yourself in the process, but you also learn very quickly that where you point a gun, regardless of the fact that you may think it is unloaded or even if your hand is nowhere near the trigger, you should expect that the gun will go off at any point with a bullet and strike whatever happens to be in front of that muzzle. NEVER point a gun at somebody unless your goal is to literally kill them in hopefully a self-defense purpose. Don't screw around and joke about such things too and be extremely serious about how you use firearms because they are serious devices that can cause a whole bunch of damage if misused.
Sure, other kinds of equipment (notably automobiles) can also kill people if misused (the accused assailant in the theater could have simply crashed his car into the theater at 70 mph instead of using a gun and caused nearly as much damage). I remember kids that screwed around in shop classes when I was growing up, and ended up injuring themselves on some of the power tools, so I know stupid people do stupid shit with dangerous equipment simply because they want to joke around. Real life isn't a video game and you don't get a second life if you screw up.
All this said, there is even a constitutional provision for the training and enforcement of firearm regulations, and that would be through the use of state-chartered militias. For myself, I would even be fine if the only people who could possess firearms would be regular members of the militias, at least in America. This is not some group of nut jobs who go off to the woods and run around in uniforms of their own design and pretend the end of the world is here or planning for a nuclear holocaust, but rather legitimate groups of ordinary citizens who receive proper training on firearms from skilled instructors and are part of an organization which is formally recognized by a state government.
I'll also note that a state militia does not need to be the National Guard, does not need to have the dual oath loyalties that come from guard service, and in theory doesn't even need to be taxpayer supported. Members of these militias don't even necessarily need to be subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It could be groups like a neighborhood watch or something else similar, but it could b
Fission-based aviation was tried by the U.S. Air Force a couple of decades ago as a platform for a bomber which could stay in the air for long duration flights (a week or more of continuous flying was envisioned). Actual flight worthy test articles were developed as prototypes, including notably the X-6 aircraft that put a working reactor into the air, even though it wasn't directly linked to the propulsion system of the aircraft. The 12-ton lead shielding needed to protect the crew was a major draw back of the project.
I don't know if a Thorium reactor would do any better than the Plutonium reactor used in that aircraft, but I would suspect similar kinds of radiation shielding would be needed and would likely encounter similar kinds of problems in its development. For it to be used for passenger flight seems extremely unlikely.
As for the hyperloop, it will be interesting to see where it will go. Elon Musk announced that he will be releasing a more detailed explanation of the technology in the next few months (sometime in August was a suggested publication date). I'm sure that will be something on Slashdot when the document dump happens.
That "Hyperloop" system is so far out there that most people even trying to comment about it don't even know what it is. I'm not even sure it is a rail system, or if it is that must have as much relationship to current rail transit as monorails have or even more remote than that.
The idea he expressed in the same speech about the electric turbofan seemed interesting though. The problem with an electric airplane, however, is simply getting the energy density needed to make it work. About the only thing that might work for something on that scale would be a fusion energy plant (something Elon Musk also hinted about in that same speech).
Sorry Elon, but unlike the Americans, Toyota has been working on fuel efficient cars for the last 20 years, and they are good at cost control.
Yeah, Toyota is so confident in their ability to produce electric automobiles that they purchased a major stake in Tesla Motors (one of the reasons why Tesla got the NUMMI plant in California BTW). That was pre-IPO investment into Tesla I should add.
Elon Musk has met personally with the Toyoda family, in particular the current CEO of Toyota, Akio Toyoda. I'd say that Elon Musk knows quite a bit about all of the stuff that Toyota Motors is doing with regards to fuel efficient automobiles, hybrids, and other such projects.
The problem with working in the sea for energy production is dealing with sea life, in particular barnacles and even coral (in more tropical areas). Certainly any kind of hydrological system put into place should be a closed system, but I'm sure the engineers involved in building these systems know this or will find out in a real hurry. That has been a plaguing problem with such system in the past, as they've tried to use seawater from the environment and it causes all sorts of problems.
One other promising technology that is related is Ocean thermal energy conversion which relies upon the temperature differential between upper layers of water in oceans and the deeper layers, typically using ammonia or some other similar substance to run turbines using this kind of temperature difference as an energy pump. Sadly, research into such systems is still quite lagging, although active research is still happening with the technology.
That's precisely why the Chevy Volt has a battery temp control system - the only one in the biz. GM did their homework here - the HVAC can control the pack temperature to extend life (and range). I know, I own one.
I'm pretty sure that both the Tesla vehicles (especially the Roadster) as well as the Nissan Leaf also have a temperature control system on their batteries. The Tesla system in particular goes out of its way to maintain nearly constant temperature conditions for the individual Li-ion cells that it uses. For the amount of energy being stored in these systems and the number of cells that they use, such temperature controls are even necessary, at least to keep thermal run away reactions from happening in these vehicles as would be the case if no temperature control system was used.
It may not be the same as what GM is doing, but you can't say it is the only one "in the business", unless somehow GM thinks they are the only American auto manufacturer making electric vehicles. I'm sure Tesla and Fisker would disagree with even that sentiment.