Ah, yes, I forgot to address your web point. It doesn't prove my point wrong because it's a apples and oranges comparison. Perhaps I should have been more clear that I'm defending patents for physical inventions. I'm against software patents.
Anyway, getting back to websites, developing a website is not comparable to, for example, developing a completely new type of fancy technology like say, some kind of display, or battery, or lightweight strong material. Someone can develop an innovative website (or most other software) in their garage, while some high tech items require labs that run into the millions and millions of dollars.
Apple is actually not a good example either way because their game is design, quality, polish, and marketing, not technological innovation.
Unfortunately I can't prove my point in the end because I can't prove that not having patents would slow down innovation because we've never had a modern (Western) world without patents. The closest example that I could offer was China and I'm not knowledgeable enough about it to use it as concrete proof. I can only say that from the anecdotal evidence I've heard about China leads me to believe that they don't have as much innovation as the West or as strong brands because their IP protections are weak. It would be interesting to make a comparison between China, Japan, and South Korea sometime though.
Good points, but my argument is really stated like this: in a world without patents, will businesses still invest as much money researching and developing new technologies if those new technologies can be freely copied the minute they put them on the market?
And unfortunately we don't have many recent examples of a patent-less modern economy. I guess the best example that could possibly be drawn would be China because I understand that their IP protections are not as strong as in the West. My understanding is that it's pretty much a free for all there where whenever someone creates a product that is popular everyone else comes out with a copy.
Didn't Apple wield the IP stick very early on, when Windows first came out? It was "look and feel" then, and it's patents now.
You have good points, but think about the other side of the coin. Without patents, innovation would slow down very significantly. So then do you want fast innovation, or do you want a completely unfettered market?
While I agree that the patent system is currently being severely abused, I don't think that Patents are inherently a bad thing.
Here's how they foster innovation: if company A has this great idea for a new technology but realizes that it will take $5 million to research and develop, there is no way that they would ever spend that money to do so unless they have a reasonable chance of getting a guarantee (i.e. a Patent) that they will have exclusive rights to sell that technology for a certain amount of time. Otherwise, as soon as they bring the product to market, some competitor will make a copy and they can't get any return on their R&D investment.
This is what the patent system is supposed to encourage - it says to innovators: if you spend this many resources developing this new technology, you can have exclusive rights to it for a certain amount of time.
You can argue about what amount of time (as well as various other parameters such as quality and uniqueness of patents) would enable the best balance of incentive for the creator vs. benefit for society, but there's no way you can argue that patents are inherently a bad thing regardless of the parameters.
Pretty much the same holds true for copyrights. Trademarks are a completely different story though, because they have a major component of consumer protection that they enable.
Your argument is basically equivalent to "guns are bad because some people use them for bad stuff, so we need to ban them!"
Would you care to recommend some automotive service manuals, emergency guides, and maps that you use on the kindle? I would be interested in checking some of these out. Thanks!
There used to be a cool site for this even before Kickstarter, called fundable.org, but apparently it went under. See some more info here: http://www.fundable.org/online-fundraising/
That page says that they're in the process of rebuilding it but until then they recommend:
Ted Kazinski, is that you? I didn't think you had internet access! What you say makes complete and utter sense. I wish I could say it so clearly. Big fan of your writing!
Since you like open-ended sandboxes, look up the game called Just Cause 2. I had not heard much about it before I ran into it but it's a fantastic sandbox game - an entire 400 square mile island where you can do pretty much anything you can imagine (within reason/ratings). The console versions (especially PS3) are better reviewed than the PC version but don't have the mods (search youtube for some interesting ones). I would really call this game a hidden gem.
Some movies stream in HD from Netflix. From what I recall, Exit Through the Gift Shop was one of them. Also, I don't know if without a side-by-side comparison most people would really be able to tell if a movie is HD or not, especially with some TVs doing line doubling (?).
Yes, I think you're in a minority. Look at the dominance of MP3s/AACs over anything else. Netflix streaming is the equivalent in the video world. In both cases you get 90% of the quality (arguable, I know) but it's many many times more convenient and often cheaper.
By the way, Netflix streaming looks fine to me on my 52" LCD, and I only have 3mbps DSL. I haven't watched a ton of stuff in it, but honestly when I watched "Exit Through The Gift Shop" for example I don't recall ever noticing any issues with picture quality. I can't comment on the sound quality however because I'm just using the TV's built-in speakers.
You forgot to mention Roku, which was the first and still the best Netflix streaming player box (among many other things like Amazon, Hulu, Vimeo, etc, etc - over 200 channels now).
You manage your "friends" easily. [..] I wouldn't have any issue adding my boss and co-workers to, unlike facebook.
In a sense, Google has learned from the mistakes of others; I still cannot fathom why Facebook did not add such functionalities - so many of its users would had welcomed them. Perhaps their coding skills are poor, or they are more busy trying to hire marketing people instead of coders, to figure out how they can sell your information to third parties more efficiently.
I still don't understand why people complain about this. It's been possible to easily control who can read your posts on facebook for at least a couple of years if not more. When you're typing up a new post, look at the little lock icon underneath the text editing window. You can choose exactly who can read each of your posts, and you can even set defaults. I setup R0, R1, R2 etc levels of trust groups type of system and by default don't allow anyone that I place in R3 to have access to any of my information. When I add people, I automatically assign them to one of those groups.
In effect, one of the big features of Google+ that people rave about, Circles, has existed on Facebook for years.
A large number of pets in the USA live horrible lives and a large number of perfectly healthy ones are euthanized daily. If you don't mind that and think nothing should be done, you're not really an animal lover.
I've thought for a long time that something should be done to address the fact that people continue to buy animals from pet shops and puppy mills while perfectly good pets die by the thousands in pounds and shelters.
Buying pets through commercial operations directly contributes to the suffering of thousands and thousands of pets every year. It contributes to this by reducing the market for shelter pets, and by providing a never ending source for more pets that end up at shelters for a variety of reasons (neglect, owner gets fed up, lost pets, etc).
If the market for commercial pet operations was killed, it would likely greatly reduce the number of pets in shelters, and consequently could also lead to shelters becoming non-kill by alleviating the budget impact of running them.
Perhaps this law is not the exact best way to address this problem, but I hope it will at least start the discussion among the general public, and perhaps it will eventually lead to better laws to address the issue.
Another way that this situation could be helped would be to mandate that all animals were microchipped and spayed/neutered before being sold, and to mandate that all pet sellers were registered and regulated.
Now, with that said: there is a future problem for content industries. Technology and content are becoming commoditized. Rendering technologies, places like Pixar, are becoming more and more realistic. And those technologies will eventually have Free implementations. Also, Free content, right now predominately in operating systems, is beginning to spread to other areas: props, character models, textures, sounds, music, and scripts: anything imaginable to make a story whether interactive or not. Eventually, using nothing more than creative commons material and lots of computer rendering power any individual or small group of individuals will be able to match the creative quality of today's Hollywood. There will be a collapse eventually for movies, fictional books, and music. It can only be held off.
Sorry, but only a person who is not very familiar with creating feature film quality computer graphics could say something like this. It currently takes years of work by an army of people to create a two-hour movie like Pixar does. Enthusiasts will not be able to replicate that with current technology or libraries - not without charging for it. Maybe some day if the productivity of the technology becomes exponentially higher than it is now it will be possible, but by then the work of the commercial production companies will be even further along.
Now, what may happen instead is that we will see a continuous decline in the level of all productions if they can't make a reasonable return on the work they put in. I know this is probably not a popular view here, but I believe it to be true.
It started well before that ruling. Ever since Roberts and Alito came in, the court seems to be overwhelmingly favoring the powerful over the powerless, usually in a 5 to 4 decision.
This country is well along its path to becoming a banana republic, and the supreme court is actively participating in this transformation.
Since no one (above a score of 3 at least, which is what I'm reading at right now) has mentioned this, I will.
It's high COLOR temperature lights - completely different from high temperature. It means bluer lights, more like sunlight, instead of more yellow/orange lights like tungsten lamps. It does not mean hotter lights.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, yes, I forgot to address your web point. It doesn't prove my point wrong because it's a apples and oranges comparison. Perhaps I should have been more clear that I'm defending patents for physical inventions. I'm against software patents.
Anyway, getting back to websites, developing a website is not comparable to, for example, developing a completely new type of fancy technology like say, some kind of display, or battery, or lightweight strong material. Someone can develop an innovative website (or most other software) in their garage, while some high tech items require labs that run into the millions and millions of dollars.
Apple is actually not a good example either way because their game is design, quality, polish, and marketing, not technological innovation.
Unfortunately I can't prove my point in the end because I can't prove that not having patents would slow down innovation because we've never had a modern (Western) world without patents. The closest example that I could offer was China and I'm not knowledgeable enough about it to use it as concrete proof. I can only say that from the anecdotal evidence I've heard about China leads me to believe that they don't have as much innovation as the West or as strong brands because their IP protections are weak. It would be interesting to make a comparison between China, Japan, and South Korea sometime though.
Good points, but my argument is really stated like this: in a world without patents, will businesses still invest as much money researching and developing new technologies if those new technologies can be freely copied the minute they put them on the market?
And unfortunately we don't have many recent examples of a patent-less modern economy. I guess the best example that could possibly be drawn would be China because I understand that their IP protections are not as strong as in the West. My understanding is that it's pretty much a free for all there where whenever someone creates a product that is popular everyone else comes out with a copy.
Didn't Apple wield the IP stick very early on, when Windows first came out? It was "look and feel" then, and it's patents now.
You have good points, but think about the other side of the coin. Without patents, innovation would slow down very significantly. So then do you want fast innovation, or do you want a completely unfettered market?
While I agree that the patent system is currently being severely abused, I don't think that Patents are inherently a bad thing.
Here's how they foster innovation: if company A has this great idea for a new technology but realizes that it will take $5 million to research and develop, there is no way that they would ever spend that money to do so unless they have a reasonable chance of getting a guarantee (i.e. a Patent) that they will have exclusive rights to sell that technology for a certain amount of time. Otherwise, as soon as they bring the product to market, some competitor will make a copy and they can't get any return on their R&D investment.
This is what the patent system is supposed to encourage - it says to innovators: if you spend this many resources developing this new technology, you can have exclusive rights to it for a certain amount of time.
You can argue about what amount of time (as well as various other parameters such as quality and uniqueness of patents) would enable the best balance of incentive for the creator vs. benefit for society, but there's no way you can argue that patents are inherently a bad thing regardless of the parameters.
Pretty much the same holds true for copyrights. Trademarks are a completely different story though, because they have a major component of consumer protection that they enable.
Your argument is basically equivalent to "guns are bad because some people use them for bad stuff, so we need to ban them!"
Great, thanks for the info!
Would you care to recommend some automotive service manuals, emergency guides, and maps that you use on the kindle? I would be interested in checking some of these out. Thanks!
There used to be a cool site for this even before Kickstarter, called fundable.org, but apparently it went under. See some more info here: http://www.fundable.org/online-fundraising/
That page says that they're in the process of rebuilding it but until then they recommend:
http://www.chipin.com/
and
http://www.thepoint.com/
Also search the net for 'charity crowdfunding' to see if you stumble into anything interesting.
Good luck!
Ted Kazinski, is that you? I didn't think you had internet access! What you say makes complete and utter sense. I wish I could say it so clearly. Big fan of your writing!
This is exactly the right answer. The debt limit is about paying for money that was already spent.
Since you like open-ended sandboxes, look up the game called Just Cause 2. I had not heard much about it before I ran into it but it's a fantastic sandbox game - an entire 400 square mile island where you can do pretty much anything you can imagine (within reason/ratings). The console versions (especially PS3) are better reviewed than the PC version but don't have the mods (search youtube for some interesting ones). I would really call this game a hidden gem.
Some movies stream in HD from Netflix. From what I recall, Exit Through the Gift Shop was one of them. Also, I don't know if without a side-by-side comparison most people would really be able to tell if a movie is HD or not, especially with some TVs doing line doubling (?).
Ah, yes, of course! Thanks!
Yes, I think you're in a minority. Look at the dominance of MP3s/AACs over anything else. Netflix streaming is the equivalent in the video world. In both cases you get 90% of the quality (arguable, I know) but it's many many times more convenient and often cheaper.
By the way, Netflix streaming looks fine to me on my 52" LCD, and I only have 3mbps DSL. I haven't watched a ton of stuff in it, but honestly when I watched "Exit Through The Gift Shop" for example I don't recall ever noticing any issues with picture quality. I can't comment on the sound quality however because I'm just using the TV's built-in speakers.
SCSI? Popular? Really? In servers only, not desktops.
What do you mean?
You forgot to mention Roku, which was the first and still the best Netflix streaming player box (among many other things like Amazon, Hulu, Vimeo, etc, etc - over 200 channels now).
I still don't understand why people complain about this. It's been possible to easily control who can read your posts on facebook for at least a couple of years if not more. When you're typing up a new post, look at the little lock icon underneath the text editing window. You can choose exactly who can read each of your posts, and you can even set defaults. I setup R0, R1, R2 etc levels of trust groups type of system and by default don't allow anyone that I place in R3 to have access to any of my information. When I add people, I automatically assign them to one of those groups.
In effect, one of the big features of Google+ that people rave about, Circles, has existed on Facebook for years.
A large number of pets in the USA live horrible lives and a large number of perfectly healthy ones are euthanized daily. If you don't mind that and think nothing should be done, you're not really an animal lover.
I've thought for a long time that something should be done to address the fact that people continue to buy animals from pet shops and puppy mills while perfectly good pets die by the thousands in pounds and shelters.
Buying pets through commercial operations directly contributes to the suffering of thousands and thousands of pets every year. It contributes to this by reducing the market for shelter pets, and by providing a never ending source for more pets that end up at shelters for a variety of reasons (neglect, owner gets fed up, lost pets, etc).
If the market for commercial pet operations was killed, it would likely greatly reduce the number of pets in shelters, and consequently could also lead to shelters becoming non-kill by alleviating the budget impact of running them.
Perhaps this law is not the exact best way to address this problem, but I hope it will at least start the discussion among the general public, and perhaps it will eventually lead to better laws to address the issue.
Another way that this situation could be helped would be to mandate that all animals were microchipped and spayed/neutered before being sold, and to mandate that all pet sellers were registered and regulated.
Like other above said, insightful tip. Thanks.
This is the kind of gem post/thread that I read slashdot for. Thanks!
Sorry, but only a person who is not very familiar with creating feature film quality computer graphics could say something like this. It currently takes years of work by an army of people to create a two-hour movie like Pixar does. Enthusiasts will not be able to replicate that with current technology or libraries - not without charging for it. Maybe some day if the productivity of the technology becomes exponentially higher than it is now it will be possible, but by then the work of the commercial production companies will be even further along.
Now, what may happen instead is that we will see a continuous decline in the level of all productions if they can't make a reasonable return on the work they put in. I know this is probably not a popular view here, but I believe it to be true.
Uh, sorry, but your figures of terrorism victims are way off:
ETA: have killed 820 since 1968, including 340 civilians.
IRA: have killed about 1800, with 1100 being from security forces.
September 11: killed nearly 3000 people, the vast majority of whom were civilians.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Irish_Republican_Army
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks
It started well before that ruling. Ever since Roberts and Alito came in, the court seems to be overwhelmingly favoring the powerful over the powerless, usually in a 5 to 4 decision.
This country is well along its path to becoming a banana republic, and the supreme court is actively participating in this transformation.
Since no one (above a score of 3 at least, which is what I'm reading at right now) has mentioned this, I will.
It's high COLOR temperature lights - completely different from high temperature. It means bluer lights, more like sunlight, instead of more yellow/orange lights like tungsten lamps. It does not mean hotter lights.
For reference, if you're not familiar with color temperature: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_temperature