You have hit on the true problem here: "logically it does not follow..." The problem (at least in US society) is that people do not have a fundamental understanding of basic logic, so anything scientific or philosophical has no foundation on which to stand.
The first thing to address in order to help "society at large" deal with "tough issues" is to first get them to understand simple logic, which I think this audience appreciates. The thing which disturbs me most about modern thought is that, at least in popular culture, there is no such thing as 'true' and 'false'. If there is no such thing, then there is no sense even discussing science or philosophy, because those things are dedicated to understanding truth.
My assertion comes from the observation that most people (you have to go outside/. for "most"; this audience is sadly in the minority) disagree with the statement that there are such things as mutually exclusive ideas. Consider the politically popular idea of tolerance. This means at its core accepting multiple possibly conflicting ideas as valid (actually it's worse than that, it says that any idea which claims exclusivity is inherently invalid - which amuses me because it is a statement of exclusivity itself).
Anyway, I ramble: suffice it to say, all discussions of science and philosophy without a first discussion on "what happened to logic?" are all doomed to failure.
It's just a moralizing term, like when people talk about blocking ads as "stealing" or about abortion as "murder".
This has got to be a troll...but it raises some interesting points.
The definitions of "stealing", "abortion" and "murder" are not moral definitions anyway. The acceptability of stealing, murder, and abortion, however, is indeed moral.
What's really interesting is that people don't realize that the definition of murder has the caveat that killing another person is murder only if specifically defined by law as murder. All murder (in this sense) is killing, but not all killing is murder.
Similarly, "stealing" has the same caveat - all stealing is taking something, but not all taking something is stealing. Nowhere can I find a definition that refusing to accept something (e.g., blocking an advertisement) constitutes stealing though.
Let's be pragmatic here and not ideological. What counts is how to have the best internet connection at the lowest global cost.
The problem with your example of 30 Euros/month for that service is that is only the out-of-pocket fee. To compare with the $99/month for the service in the US, you have to look at the total cost. Some of the cost of the service in the EU is covered by taxes, and some of the cost of the service in the US is probably also covered by taxes. So who really pays more? I have no information sufficient to make a judgment.
I would also argue that any time the cost of something is spread among a larger number of people or over a longer period of time the total cost is always higher than if it was paid up front. Consider the simple case of the typical way to purchase a house or car (at least in the US), or health care (also US): people often purchase things based on the payment amount, not the total price. This means the total cost of things is much higher than if they were just purchased directly. (I had to explain to a friend how their $25,000 car was really going to cost them $35,000 the way they had it financed.)
The only time "spreading the cost" makes things less expensive is if the activity enjoys economies of scale. Government activity, health care, and things like insurance are activities which do not really benefit from economies of scale in the economic sense - they only benefit from scale in the amount of clout the entity has, which is not the same as economies of scale (which is where overhead costs increase slower than increase in production.)
The problem here is your post proved that ideas aren't "all that's left." What good are the designs without the Fabbers (wealth) or raw materials (wealth)? The OP was right: without realization, ideas are just potential energy. So there is some value in having the potential for work around, but that's not nearly as much value as actually performing the work.
(Even if you consider the "automation" of mining and resource gathering, you still need real, manufactured wealth to perform that automation.)
The fundamental problem with basing an economy on ideas is that ideas are not economically scarce resources. If you made the subtle change to an economy based on the ability to create ideas, then I'd say you have a sustainable economy, because the ability to create ideas is a scarce resource. This is actually why software can bring in income, because the ability to create the software is scarce and you have to compensate the people who make it - yes, even those that make "free" software get compensation in some form, albeit mostly indirectly.
However, it's not clear whether most mobile phones in developing countries can support these technologies, or if local healthcare infrastructures can effectively use the data generated by mobile phones.
These "devices" simply collect data; they don't administer treatment or make diagnoses. Speeding up the diagnosis is indeed helpful, but if there's no infrastructure to use that information the information is pretty useless. Consider the blueprints to a car - they don't help me get from point A to point B unless I have a factory and materials and labor to construct the vehicle.
Like others, I'd rather see money spent on infrastructure as well as these other catalytic technologies. I use that word quite purposefully too: just like a catalyst, this mobile technology requires reagents on which to act; otherwise it sits inert.
The dumb thing is their argument is "people are driving less miles, so we don't get the revenue we need." Instead of increasing the gas tax in proportion to the increase in fuel efficiency (effectively keeping the same revenue per mile) they are going to reduce freedom of citizens by requiring tracking of driving.
It's really kind of sad that people are so opposed to fuel tax that they are going to pay for it with their freedom instead.
The car: As a whole, not patentable. Various components in the car: patentable (for instance, differential gear).
Lightbulb: patentable - the combination of electricity and filament producing light was not an obvious result at the time of invention.
Refrigerator: As a whole, not patentable (the principles of refrigeration were already known at the time). Various components to make the refrigeration system work - patentable.
Washing Machine: again, as a whole, not patentable, though various components inside might be.
There is a subtle distinction in there. The idea "a machine that automatically agitates clothes in soapy water" is an obvious extension of what people did by hand. Particular components that make that work, though, should be patentable. And I mean things like "use a crank mechanism to cyclically agitate the clothes inside a rotating drum that can centrifugally get rid of the water", not things like "use an electric motor to turn the crank". Basically specific, unique solutions to a problem space, not the problem space itself.
That, in my mind, is the delineation of a good patent opposed to a dubious one.
I would argue that if in 5 years we're all using electric cars, then there's most likely been a patentable advance in electric car technology, bringing down costs and increasing efficiency.
And I wouldn't have a problem with that type of patent at all. I agree that sometimes commercial success is an indicator of non-obviousness. Most of the time commercial success a better indicator of changing values though.
I'd be willing to bet that the credit-card accepting POS is patented.
Probably, but note I put "on the basis of combining a credit-card reader with a POS terminal" in there. I wouldn't have a problem with a patent if there was some trick to get a POS terminal and a credit-card reader to work together and the patent covered that invention. If the patent is "let's put these two things in the same box" then it's kind of ridiculous. The "at the table POS" thing that it sounds like the IBM patent represents, while it is a piece of hardware, probably shouldn't be patented on that basis alone (legal ability to obtain a patent aside).
In general I don't have a problem with patents that provide new technologies; patents which just cover novel applications of existing technology are the ones that concern me: I don't believe that you should be able to patent a particular use of a technology, just a particular technology. It is a subtle distinction, and I appreciate that sometimes it is indeed difficult to differentiate between new technologies and new uses of technology.
Sure... but I'd bet you within 5 years, we see these at a decent number of restaurants. If so, there's your proof of nonobviousness.
I'm not sure I'd equate "changes in what is and is not profitable" with "proof of obviousness" though. It's like saying that if in 5 years we all use electric cars instead of ones that burn hydrocarbon fuel it is because electric cars are not obvious. I just don't see it in this example.
Your 5-year scenario results because once enough restaurants adopt such a device, not having it will lose you business. Kind of like credit cards at fast-food places: they got along forever without this, but now you couldn't survive as a fast-food place without accepting credit cards. Does this mean the credit-card accepting POS at fast-food places is patent-worthy (based on the combination of credit-card reader and traditional POS)?
But why didn't a POS product like this exist before?
The simple answer: customer's wont pay for it because it doesn't save them money. Establishments weren't paying for it because they wouldn't see enough increase in revenue or decrease in cost to pay for it.
Products and services - be they inventions or just good engineering/marketing/whatever - are only developed, as far as I can tell, for two or three reasons: A) someone is interested in making new things because they like creating stuff, B) there is something that someone thinks is too difficult so creates something to make it simpler for themselves, C) (closely related to B) someone sees something that could be done better and thinks others would be interested in a different solution.
So, basically, while people invented the "million" payment/tip calculators because they were tired of thinking, nobody is yet tired enough of splitting checks manually to automate the process. Heck, I'd pay good money for devices that would perform certain everyday household tasks and nobody's put one together yet... so what does that mean?
That's the problem; this isn't an invention at all. It's an agglomeration (or conglomeration, or perhaps both) of existing technologies to obtain the expected result of combining those technologies. Inventions are things that either involve new technology or combine technology to achieve results that are not obvious from the constituent parts. Anything else is just an engineering exercise. Consider: when Ford, GM, Toyota, or whomever create a new car model, they don't say they "invented" a new car even though they have a different combination of engine, interior, amenities, etc. than they had before. (Yes, they may have inventions inside that car, say a new type of emissions control or something, but that's a different thing entirely.)
That said, at least this patent is a machine - the claims explicitly refer to circuits and other hardware.
The bigger issue isn't so much the tools and weapons, but the whole "modern" concept of war. You cannot accept the concept of war without the concept of causing destruction, even destruction of humans. To send people into a warzone and tell them not to cause destruction is actually more immoral and unethical, in my mind, than sending them in and allowing them to cause destruction.
My stress tests have shown it to be 10-50% faster than...
<pedantic> Do you mean it completes tasks in 50% to 90% of the time of other things, or do you mean that it performs 10% to 50% more tasks per unit time? There is a significant difference there (especially with the 50% number; 10% is close enough to be irrelevant). That difference is why I hate the use of the phrases "times faster" and similar. </pedantic>
This exactly. Either there is some hidden common-cause failure* in the ADIRUs that was missed in development (bad), or someone did not really perform hazard analysis/FTA/FMEA (bad), or this was a multiple-point failure (against which it is usually impossible to engineer).
In any event, it sounds most likely that the system architects made some assumptions that were incorrect, resulting in the use of invalid data. One philosophy that should be used in critical controls is "if you don't trust your inputs, don't use them." This means that you *must* have a contingency for missing required parameters. In this example, angle of attack is either a) absolutely critical for flight which means that you must guarantee redundancy or b) it is not absolutely critical so if that input is missing or suspect, you just stop controlling off it.
The other way to look at this is to compare the failure rate of these devices to the expected failure rate: how many million flight hours have been logged? Yes this is one failure and it resulted in some injuries, but if the failure rate is one in 10 million flight hours, is that acceptable? Or do we expect to increase the cost of developing aircraft an order of magnitude just to increase that failure rate to one in 20 million hours? Like all things, flying is about economic, social, and engineering tradeoffs. No form of travel will ever be "failure free", and while we need to ensure diligence, if we do see failures at very low rates we should be reasonable about it. (Of course, I would personally include "failure to use seatbelts" as part of the failure in this particular instance, but I'm ornery.)
* With three independent devices, if they all have the same software then they are not really independent - there is a potential common failure mode in the software in that instance.
It's almost like the collapse of a company or country, with the property being the hyperinflated currency or worthless bonds. Does the company or country owe the bondholders anything beside the paper they're printed on? Derived value be damned, they got what they bought. Does the MMORPG owe the player anything besides screenshots and memories?
I think this is quite insightful actually. I would agree that "items" in "virtual worlds" are really more like a form of unofficial currency than a form of property. "Virtual property" has no intrinsic value from what I have observed: it cannot be used to increase crops, keep out the rain, store energy, etc. It's more like a piece of currency: you can use it to gain entertainment, but it's useless without some context; which in this case as FLEB noted is the construct of the virtual world. When that world is gone, the virtual goods have no meaning, just as currency has no meaning for nations which no longer exist.
This is vastly different than real property, which has intrinsic value: a hammer is always a hammer regardless of what nations exist. A house is always a house; a piece of land is always a piece of land. I will even admit that intellectual "property" has some intrinsic value, because an idea always contains some bit of information which allows the transformation of physical goods and so enables the creation of wealth.
As far as "rights" go, just like currency, the "rights" should mostly be controlled by the nation whose currency it is: the game companies. The US government, for instance, does not really guarantee anything about the Euro, so why should it (or any national government) be involved with the "rights" associated with the foreign currency of a virtual world? If anything, all I could see happening is something like rules associated with the foreign exchange market - not property rights.
Personally I think we should start lobbying to get vehicle economy listed in miles per kW-h or some other unit that doesn't erroneously grant massive miles-per-gallon figures when that metric is meaningless. It will also show relative efficiencies between fuels much more easily, as well as between US and UK gallons, liters, etc.
Talking about moving costs is tricky. Think about it in terms of investment: If I spend X resources now on cleaning up CO2, how many resources will I have after N years? Now, if I don't spend X on cleaning up CO2 and spend it on activity Q instead, how many resources will I have after N years? Even accounting for having to move in the future, you may still be better off spending resources on Q now instead of reducing CO2 even if you have to move in the future. This is the point I think most people forget - yes, you may have to move, but it may not really cost as much as you think.
I would argue that it would be more cost effective to invest in technologies which allow large numbers of people to relocate more easily. That way, you're protected against many more situations than those associated only with atmospheric CO2.
It is impossible for a device like this to be cost efficient in the present. It is unknown if it is cost efficient in the long run. Here's what I mean (caveat: I'm focusing wholly on economics here, not politics):
These devices require a fixed cost to produce (in terms of materials not available for other machines, labor not available for other activities, cost of required associated infrastructure, etc.) and a recurring cost to operate (energy not available for other things, maintenance labor and parts not available for other activities, transportation of reclaimed CO2 to other locations, etc.). They do not, however, produce an immediately obvious economic benefit. By that I mean the creation and operation of this device does not make it easier to perform some other activity - unless that the CO2 produced by this device is less expensive than current methods of industrial CO2 production. It is not really even clear that there is a future benefit to this device.
Now, I agree that reducing atmospheric CO2 will have an effect on average temperature. What I am not convinced of is the relative impact of climate change on world economic activity compared to other factors such as sheer population, politics, and other non-technical factors. But the fundamental unanswerable except in hindsight question is this: for each ton of CO2 removed per year from the atmosphere, what is the labor/material savings (if any) in the future, and does the rate of return on the "investment" of the CO2 reduction activities make this worthwhile? Put another way: Say today it takes me 1 hour to do activity X. If I spend 1+C hours on reducing CO2, will it then take me 1-q hours to perform activity X from that point onward so I have a good return on my investment? If the answer is no, then the "reduction" activity is a waste of resources from an economic standpoint.
(By the way, there is no such thing as free/open source hardware - you can have free and open designs, but the hardware itself will always have an associated cost.)
Most of the vehicles have a single battery *pack*. Within that pack are somewhere around two hundred individual NiMH cells* which are each about the size of a D-cell battery. So you could break open the pack and steal the individual batteries, but that would probably entail more effort than just hauling the pack around (the pack contains things like the battery cooling and battery control computer. And you thought batteries were simple...
* Sometimes the cells are bundled together like in RC vehicle packs, so you can't actually get at the individual cells without even more effort.
Unless his invention did something other than get the expected result of combining solid-state storage, digitally encoded audio information, and a means to convert that information back into pressure waves in a compressible medium, then there is nothing to be patented. If he got a design patent, that would not bother me. If he invented a new configuration of transistors to make the storage affordable, that would be patentable. But simply the idea of combining solid state storage with speakers should not pass the obviousness test in my opinion.
That said, it's unfortunate that the product wasn't marketable at the time, but part of smart inventing isn't just coming up with a product, but coming up with a product at the right time.
At the end of the day, somebody has to produce the goods that will be consumed each year. If too many people try to make "investments" for an extended retirement, they'll find that when they try to redeem them that the investments will be devalued until it matches the available goods produced by active workers.
Why oh why is it that the folks who try and set up retirement plans seem to ignore this fact? I think what happens is that they look at an individual who is able to save up a lot and retire free - this works great for a single person, but when everyone tries it must fail. Just an example of the principle for which my econ profs would be disappointed to know I forgot the name where "what is good for one, is bad when everyone tries it".
In my opinion, the best "investment" is not in things which yield currency units, but in things which increase production (or increase robustness of production to environmental shocks) so that in the future there will be enough goods to go around.
Yeah, this was my thought as well. TFA is, as usual, slim on the technical details...
UI != "widgets on the screen"
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OSCON 2008 Roundup
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· Score: 1, Informative
I think the bigger issue with Linux isn't the UI consisting of the widgets on the screen. I think it's the UI related to how software is installed and updated. For instance, which of the three installation methods would the general public most readily accept:
Click and installer, then go through a wizard clicking "Next" on each screen just to get things to finish
Drag an icon from one place to another
Type strange commands into a text box
I know I've simplified these things, but by and large, the installation wizard and things like apt-get or RPM managers are cumbersome. I know that there have been instances on Linux (can't recall any on Windows) but almost all OS X installs are "drag this icon into your Applications folder and you are done." (Very rarely do OS X apps have a wizard, and those are mostly for power-user grade applications like Xcode or applications ported from the Windows world - I point my finger at companies like MS and EA here).
The other bit about Linux application installation issues is the concept of dependencies - unless things have changed significantly, trying to get applications to work on Linux is a chore to find out if you have the right dependencies, or to learn the package managers to try and make sure the dependencies are met. I would posit that if you fix the software installation process on Linux, you'll go a long way - longer than if you just make the widgets look different - to making Linux "desktop ready".
The other aspect that should be addressed is the "don't pander to the computer savvy mentality." For instance, Ubuntu is hailed as being one of the prime targets for the desktop, but it asks users to suddenly redefine kilo-, mega- and gigabyte by using different terminology (MiB vs MB); change concepts like drive mounting "where's my C drive!?!" and other things which, while yes they are just education topics, are things that are never really presented to the users when they first step into a non-Windows world.
Simply stated, the problems are not technical but social, and that's probably why the majority of the Linux crowd - which is focused on technical issues - is not where they want to be in terms of general public acceptance.
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You have hit on the true problem here: "logically it does not follow..." The problem (at least in US society) is that people do not have a fundamental understanding of basic logic, so anything scientific or philosophical has no foundation on which to stand.
The first thing to address in order to help "society at large" deal with "tough issues" is to first get them to understand simple logic, which I think this audience appreciates. The thing which disturbs me most about modern thought is that, at least in popular culture, there is no such thing as 'true' and 'false'. If there is no such thing, then there is no sense even discussing science or philosophy, because those things are dedicated to understanding truth.
My assertion comes from the observation that most people (you have to go outside /. for "most"; this audience is sadly in the minority) disagree with the statement that there are such things as mutually exclusive ideas. Consider the politically popular idea of tolerance. This means at its core accepting multiple possibly conflicting ideas as valid (actually it's worse than that, it says that any idea which claims exclusivity is inherently invalid - which amuses me because it is a statement of exclusivity itself).
Anyway, I ramble: suffice it to say, all discussions of science and philosophy without a first discussion on "what happened to logic?" are all doomed to failure.
The grid has a whole has enough capacity to be sure. The question is, does your neighborhood substation have the capacity to handle charging?
This has got to be a troll...but it raises some interesting points.
The definitions of "stealing", "abortion" and "murder" are not moral definitions anyway. The acceptability of stealing, murder, and abortion, however, is indeed moral.
What's really interesting is that people don't realize that the definition of murder has the caveat that killing another person is murder only if specifically defined by law as murder. All murder (in this sense) is killing, but not all killing is murder.
Similarly, "stealing" has the same caveat - all stealing is taking something, but not all taking something is stealing. Nowhere can I find a definition that refusing to accept something (e.g., blocking an advertisement) constitutes stealing though.
The problem with your example of 30 Euros/month for that service is that is only the out-of-pocket fee. To compare with the $99/month for the service in the US, you have to look at the total cost. Some of the cost of the service in the EU is covered by taxes, and some of the cost of the service in the US is probably also covered by taxes. So who really pays more? I have no information sufficient to make a judgment.
I would also argue that any time the cost of something is spread among a larger number of people or over a longer period of time the total cost is always higher than if it was paid up front. Consider the simple case of the typical way to purchase a house or car (at least in the US), or health care (also US): people often purchase things based on the payment amount, not the total price. This means the total cost of things is much higher than if they were just purchased directly. (I had to explain to a friend how their $25,000 car was really going to cost them $35,000 the way they had it financed.)
The only time "spreading the cost" makes things less expensive is if the activity enjoys economies of scale. Government activity, health care, and things like insurance are activities which do not really benefit from economies of scale in the economic sense - they only benefit from scale in the amount of clout the entity has, which is not the same as economies of scale (which is where overhead costs increase slower than increase in production.)
The problem here is your post proved that ideas aren't "all that's left." What good are the designs without the Fabbers (wealth) or raw materials (wealth)? The OP was right: without realization, ideas are just potential energy. So there is some value in having the potential for work around, but that's not nearly as much value as actually performing the work.
(Even if you consider the "automation" of mining and resource gathering, you still need real, manufactured wealth to perform that automation.)
The fundamental problem with basing an economy on ideas is that ideas are not economically scarce resources. If you made the subtle change to an economy based on the ability to create ideas, then I'd say you have a sustainable economy, because the ability to create ideas is a scarce resource. This is actually why software can bring in income, because the ability to create the software is scarce and you have to compensate the people who make it - yes, even those that make "free" software get compensation in some form, albeit mostly indirectly.
Yes, but here's this key quote from the summary:
These "devices" simply collect data; they don't administer treatment or make diagnoses. Speeding up the diagnosis is indeed helpful, but if there's no infrastructure to use that information the information is pretty useless. Consider the blueprints to a car - they don't help me get from point A to point B unless I have a factory and materials and labor to construct the vehicle.
Like others, I'd rather see money spent on infrastructure as well as these other catalytic technologies. I use that word quite purposefully too: just like a catalyst, this mobile technology requires reagents on which to act; otherwise it sits inert.
The dumb thing is their argument is "people are driving less miles, so we don't get the revenue we need." Instead of increasing the gas tax in proportion to the increase in fuel efficiency (effectively keeping the same revenue per mile) they are going to reduce freedom of citizens by requiring tracking of driving. It's really kind of sad that people are so opposed to fuel tax that they are going to pay for it with their freedom instead.
The car: As a whole, not patentable. Various components in the car: patentable (for instance, differential gear).
Lightbulb: patentable - the combination of electricity and filament producing light was not an obvious result at the time of invention.
Refrigerator: As a whole, not patentable (the principles of refrigeration were already known at the time). Various components to make the refrigeration system work - patentable.
Washing Machine: again, as a whole, not patentable, though various components inside might be.
There is a subtle distinction in there. The idea "a machine that automatically agitates clothes in soapy water" is an obvious extension of what people did by hand. Particular components that make that work, though, should be patentable. And I mean things like "use a crank mechanism to cyclically agitate the clothes inside a rotating drum that can centrifugally get rid of the water", not things like "use an electric motor to turn the crank". Basically specific, unique solutions to a problem space, not the problem space itself.
That, in my mind, is the delineation of a good patent opposed to a dubious one.
And I wouldn't have a problem with that type of patent at all. I agree that sometimes commercial success is an indicator of non-obviousness. Most of the time commercial success a better indicator of changing values though.
Probably, but note I put "on the basis of combining a credit-card reader with a POS terminal" in there. I wouldn't have a problem with a patent if there was some trick to get a POS terminal and a credit-card reader to work together and the patent covered that invention. If the patent is "let's put these two things in the same box" then it's kind of ridiculous. The "at the table POS" thing that it sounds like the IBM patent represents, while it is a piece of hardware, probably shouldn't be patented on that basis alone (legal ability to obtain a patent aside).
In general I don't have a problem with patents that provide new technologies; patents which just cover novel applications of existing technology are the ones that concern me: I don't believe that you should be able to patent a particular use of a technology, just a particular technology. It is a subtle distinction, and I appreciate that sometimes it is indeed difficult to differentiate between new technologies and new uses of technology.
I'm not sure I'd equate "changes in what is and is not profitable" with "proof of obviousness" though. It's like saying that if in 5 years we all use electric cars instead of ones that burn hydrocarbon fuel it is because electric cars are not obvious. I just don't see it in this example.
Your 5-year scenario results because once enough restaurants adopt such a device, not having it will lose you business. Kind of like credit cards at fast-food places: they got along forever without this, but now you couldn't survive as a fast-food place without accepting credit cards. Does this mean the credit-card accepting POS at fast-food places is patent-worthy (based on the combination of credit-card reader and traditional POS)?
The simple answer: customer's wont pay for it because it doesn't save them money. Establishments weren't paying for it because they wouldn't see enough increase in revenue or decrease in cost to pay for it.
Products and services - be they inventions or just good engineering/marketing/whatever - are only developed, as far as I can tell, for two or three reasons: A) someone is interested in making new things because they like creating stuff, B) there is something that someone thinks is too difficult so creates something to make it simpler for themselves, C) (closely related to B) someone sees something that could be done better and thinks others would be interested in a different solution.
So, basically, while people invented the "million" payment/tip calculators because they were tired of thinking, nobody is yet tired enough of splitting checks manually to automate the process. Heck, I'd pay good money for devices that would perform certain everyday household tasks and nobody's put one together yet... so what does that mean?
That's the problem; this isn't an invention at all. It's an agglomeration (or conglomeration, or perhaps both) of existing technologies to obtain the expected result of combining those technologies. Inventions are things that either involve new technology or combine technology to achieve results that are not obvious from the constituent parts. Anything else is just an engineering exercise. Consider: when Ford, GM, Toyota, or whomever create a new car model, they don't say they "invented" a new car even though they have a different combination of engine, interior, amenities, etc. than they had before. (Yes, they may have inventions inside that car, say a new type of emissions control or something, but that's a different thing entirely.)
That said, at least this patent is a machine - the claims explicitly refer to circuits and other hardware.
It's not really war unless people die. If people don't die, why would they stop doing whatever it is for which people are "fighting" against them?
Robots blowing up robots is (expensive) entertainment, not war.
The bigger issue isn't so much the tools and weapons, but the whole "modern" concept of war. You cannot accept the concept of war without the concept of causing destruction, even destruction of humans. To send people into a warzone and tell them not to cause destruction is actually more immoral and unethical, in my mind, than sending them in and allowing them to cause destruction.
<pedantic>
Do you mean it completes tasks in 50% to 90% of the time of other things, or do you mean that it performs 10% to 50% more tasks per unit time? There is a significant difference there (especially with the 50% number; 10% is close enough to be irrelevant). That difference is why I hate the use of the phrases "times faster" and similar.
</pedantic>
This exactly. Either there is some hidden common-cause failure* in the ADIRUs that was missed in development (bad), or someone did not really perform hazard analysis/FTA/FMEA (bad), or this was a multiple-point failure (against which it is usually impossible to engineer).
In any event, it sounds most likely that the system architects made some assumptions that were incorrect, resulting in the use of invalid data. One philosophy that should be used in critical controls is "if you don't trust your inputs, don't use them." This means that you *must* have a contingency for missing required parameters. In this example, angle of attack is either a) absolutely critical for flight which means that you must guarantee redundancy or b) it is not absolutely critical so if that input is missing or suspect, you just stop controlling off it.
The other way to look at this is to compare the failure rate of these devices to the expected failure rate: how many million flight hours have been logged? Yes this is one failure and it resulted in some injuries, but if the failure rate is one in 10 million flight hours, is that acceptable? Or do we expect to increase the cost of developing aircraft an order of magnitude just to increase that failure rate to one in 20 million hours? Like all things, flying is about economic, social, and engineering tradeoffs. No form of travel will ever be "failure free", and while we need to ensure diligence, if we do see failures at very low rates we should be reasonable about it. (Of course, I would personally include "failure to use seatbelts" as part of the failure in this particular instance, but I'm ornery.)
* With three independent devices, if they all have the same software then they are not really independent - there is a potential common failure mode in the software in that instance.
I think this is quite insightful actually. I would agree that "items" in "virtual worlds" are really more like a form of unofficial currency than a form of property. "Virtual property" has no intrinsic value from what I have observed: it cannot be used to increase crops, keep out the rain, store energy, etc. It's more like a piece of currency: you can use it to gain entertainment, but it's useless without some context; which in this case as FLEB noted is the construct of the virtual world. When that world is gone, the virtual goods have no meaning, just as currency has no meaning for nations which no longer exist.
This is vastly different than real property, which has intrinsic value: a hammer is always a hammer regardless of what nations exist. A house is always a house; a piece of land is always a piece of land. I will even admit that intellectual "property" has some intrinsic value, because an idea always contains some bit of information which allows the transformation of physical goods and so enables the creation of wealth.
As far as "rights" go, just like currency, the "rights" should mostly be controlled by the nation whose currency it is: the game companies. The US government, for instance, does not really guarantee anything about the Euro, so why should it (or any national government) be involved with the "rights" associated with the foreign currency of a virtual world? If anything, all I could see happening is something like rules associated with the foreign exchange market - not property rights.
Personally I think we should start lobbying to get vehicle economy listed in miles per kW-h or some other unit that doesn't erroneously grant massive miles-per-gallon figures when that metric is meaningless. It will also show relative efficiencies between fuels much more easily, as well as between US and UK gallons, liters, etc.
Talking about moving costs is tricky. Think about it in terms of investment: If I spend X resources now on cleaning up CO2, how many resources will I have after N years? Now, if I don't spend X on cleaning up CO2 and spend it on activity Q instead, how many resources will I have after N years? Even accounting for having to move in the future, you may still be better off spending resources on Q now instead of reducing CO2 even if you have to move in the future. This is the point I think most people forget - yes, you may have to move, but it may not really cost as much as you think.
I would argue that it would be more cost effective to invest in technologies which allow large numbers of people to relocate more easily. That way, you're protected against many more situations than those associated only with atmospheric CO2.
It is impossible for a device like this to be cost efficient in the present. It is unknown if it is cost efficient in the long run. Here's what I mean (caveat: I'm focusing wholly on economics here, not politics):
These devices require a fixed cost to produce (in terms of materials not available for other machines, labor not available for other activities, cost of required associated infrastructure, etc.) and a recurring cost to operate (energy not available for other things, maintenance labor and parts not available for other activities, transportation of reclaimed CO2 to other locations, etc.). They do not, however, produce an immediately obvious economic benefit. By that I mean the creation and operation of this device does not make it easier to perform some other activity - unless that the CO2 produced by this device is less expensive than current methods of industrial CO2 production. It is not really even clear that there is a future benefit to this device.
Now, I agree that reducing atmospheric CO2 will have an effect on average temperature. What I am not convinced of is the relative impact of climate change on world economic activity compared to other factors such as sheer population, politics, and other non-technical factors. But the fundamental unanswerable except in hindsight question is this: for each ton of CO2 removed per year from the atmosphere, what is the labor/material savings (if any) in the future, and does the rate of return on the "investment" of the CO2 reduction activities make this worthwhile? Put another way: Say today it takes me 1 hour to do activity X. If I spend 1+C hours on reducing CO2, will it then take me 1-q hours to perform activity X from that point onward so I have a good return on my investment? If the answer is no, then the "reduction" activity is a waste of resources from an economic standpoint.
(By the way, there is no such thing as free/open source hardware - you can have free and open designs, but the hardware itself will always have an associated cost.)
Most of the vehicles have a single battery *pack*. Within that pack are somewhere around two hundred individual NiMH cells* which are each about the size of a D-cell battery. So you could break open the pack and steal the individual batteries, but that would probably entail more effort than just hauling the pack around (the pack contains things like the battery cooling and battery control computer. And you thought batteries were simple...
* Sometimes the cells are bundled together like in RC vehicle packs, so you can't actually get at the individual cells without even more effort.
Unless his invention did something other than get the expected result of combining solid-state storage, digitally encoded audio information, and a means to convert that information back into pressure waves in a compressible medium, then there is nothing to be patented. If he got a design patent, that would not bother me. If he invented a new configuration of transistors to make the storage affordable, that would be patentable. But simply the idea of combining solid state storage with speakers should not pass the obviousness test in my opinion.
That said, it's unfortunate that the product wasn't marketable at the time, but part of smart inventing isn't just coming up with a product, but coming up with a product at the right time.
Why oh why is it that the folks who try and set up retirement plans seem to ignore this fact? I think what happens is that they look at an individual who is able to save up a lot and retire free - this works great for a single person, but when everyone tries it must fail. Just an example of the principle for which my econ profs would be disappointed to know I forgot the name where "what is good for one, is bad when everyone tries it".
In my opinion, the best "investment" is not in things which yield currency units, but in things which increase production (or increase robustness of production to environmental shocks) so that in the future there will be enough goods to go around.
Yeah, this was my thought as well. TFA is, as usual, slim on the technical details...
I think the bigger issue with Linux isn't the UI consisting of the widgets on the screen. I think it's the UI related to how software is installed and updated. For instance, which of the three installation methods would the general public most readily accept:
I know I've simplified these things, but by and large, the installation wizard and things like apt-get or RPM managers are cumbersome. I know that there have been instances on Linux (can't recall any on Windows) but almost all OS X installs are "drag this icon into your Applications folder and you are done." (Very rarely do OS X apps have a wizard, and those are mostly for power-user grade applications like Xcode or applications ported from the Windows world - I point my finger at companies like MS and EA here).
The other bit about Linux application installation issues is the concept of dependencies - unless things have changed significantly, trying to get applications to work on Linux is a chore to find out if you have the right dependencies, or to learn the package managers to try and make sure the dependencies are met. I would posit that if you fix the software installation process on Linux, you'll go a long way - longer than if you just make the widgets look different - to making Linux "desktop ready".
The other aspect that should be addressed is the "don't pander to the computer savvy mentality." For instance, Ubuntu is hailed as being one of the prime targets for the desktop, but it asks users to suddenly redefine kilo-, mega- and gigabyte by using different terminology (MiB vs MB); change concepts like drive mounting "where's my C drive!?!" and other things which, while yes they are just education topics, are things that are never really presented to the users when they first step into a non-Windows world.
Simply stated, the problems are not technical but social, and that's probably why the majority of the Linux crowd - which is focused on technical issues - is not where they want to be in terms of general public acceptance.