If my memory serves, both the USPTO and the EPO are receiving money for each granted patent as their funding. Hence, neither patent office is very eager to reject any application.
> I love this in America... whatever you do don't reward the Great Performers, that's unfair because it makes me feel bad.
Actually, that isn't America. In comparison to other countries it awards Great Performers (whatever the market decides that is) quite outstandingly.
Average CEO's pay as a multiple of an average worker's pay:
United States 17.5 United Kingdom 12.4 Japan 11.6 Canada 9.6 Germany 6.5
Size of Middle Class:
Japan 90.0% Germany 70.1 Canada 58.5 United Kingdom 58.5 United States 53.7
Some people suggest, that there might be causal connection with the following table:
Armed robbery (per 100,000 people)
United States 221 Canada 94 United Kingdom 63 Germany 47 Japan 1
Please note, before I am accused as communist, I don't want to force someone to pay someone less. I just want to suggest that the people think about it.
Do yourself a favour and search with Google for "We will bury you" and "translation". It is called "contended tranlation" at best.
My vav pokhoronim, as Khrushchev said, did not mean "We will bury you - " i.e. do you in, kill you, but it did mean: "We will survive you, be present at your funeral." [...] The phrase "we will bury you" in Russian is "my vas zakopaem" which Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev never said.
It seems my argumentation was to subtil, I have to remember that sarcasm doesn't work over the web.
I wanted to point out that I am majorly dissapointed at inflammatory posts especially from "my" side (the "tree-huggers"), which take up arguments, which are easily disproved, and let the opponents paint us as irrational, fanatical panic-mongers.
My later suggestion, that right-wingers (which, btw, I consider only a subset of the otherwise respectable group of conservatives) are doing it themselves, was an attempt to show such a contraproductive argumentation can be found on the other side, too.
This should be considered as a warning to both sides to base their position on flawed arguments, as it will help the opponent more than oneself.
> The so-called scientists responsible for proving that humans are causing global cooling rush to TV cameras
Thanks for making my point clear. Which brings us to Myth number 1, since Chrichtons "State of Fear": "Global Cooling"
> Other than the "No consent" argument, which I don't quite understand the meaning of, all of these arguments are scientifically valid.
"No consent": The idea that there is no scientific consent among climatologists on a) the existance of global climate change or b) that human influence it. Untrue
"Not provable": The models cannot be verified, unless it already happened. Ignores the fact that we can resimulate the past. Therfor the models are "provable", in the sense that one can validate their quality.
"Sun fluctuations": The idea that the sun is the source of all heat and warmth, and therefor the major cause for the Climate Change (note: capital letters). Untrue
"Earth has been warmer" "Earth has been cooler" Corrolar: "We are in an Ice Age" "Little Ice Age": Essentially the same argument. Climate has changed and will change. Ignores the various scales in which those things have happened and their relevance for the current climate. The "Little Ice Age" and the Warm period in the Middle Ages was a regional effect, not a global one. And concerning the global ice ages and warm periods. They are happening over time-frames of millenia. Not decades, like the current change. And, when someone should bother to have a look, we are currently supposed at the beginning of a war period plateau.
"We puny humans have no influence in comparison to the might of earth": I find humility a positive streak, however when it paired with "We mighty humans will handle any problem earth will throw at us"" it seems nothing more a flag of convienience than real humility. And sadly the first is wrong, and the latter is only provable by trying, which some people would rather avert.
Let me pick up: ad hominem: The suggestion, that personal agendas are responsible for the outcome of climatologic research.
And now let me add: "Butterfly Effect": Shows that the writer has only cursive knowledge about Chaos-Theory and modelling, as Chaos only puts a limit to the accuracy to the predictions and the task of modeling is to also predict the accuracy.
> who believe in conservative ideals like the scientific method.
Well, I was trying to be derogatory to right-wingers, which I don't equate to be the same as conservative, but a subset. Similar to Michael, except with a different philosophy.
Scientific method can hardly be claimed as an uniquely conservative ideal. At most, it could be claimed an ideal originating in the liberal stream during The Enlightenent (E.g Kant). But even that is quite far-fetched, especially considering what conservatve and liberal meant then and now.
It doesn't. Makes one wonder, if Michael isn't maybe hired by the right to post easily disproved myths, which only discredit the green faction as wackos, which will believe in anything.
Maybe one should do that to the right-wingers.
Oh, they are doing it themselves. Brace yourself for: "No consent" "Not provable" "Global Cooling" "Little Ice Age" "Sun fluctuations" "Earth has been warmer" "Earth has been cooler" Corrolar: "We are in an Ice Age" "We puny humans have no influence in comparison to the might of earth" "We mighty humans will handle any problem earth will throw at us"
> Please.. Einstein was never just any other patent clerk. Of course, he wasn't. Now, we know that. Still, it was his job when he published his Nobel paper. And he did get that job only with the help of a friend, and because he wasn't accepted as assistant at universitities.
> Global weather models are not only so simplyfied that they really don't predict anything with any significant certainty.
Anything more complex than a two particle system is simplified. Weather models are subjected to the scientific process and are verified by trying to resimulate the past. The verification-process itself, of course, is also subject to the scientific progress.
> At the same time they are completely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't had a least a couple of years of undergraduate studies in physics.
Heck, the whole QM and QED is completely incomprehensible even for undergrads. Does that mean one shouldn't trust MRTs?
No, not unless a there is a substantiated argument against it.
As a physicist, you should know better about common sense.
> I wouldn't give you financial advice, since I am not a banker, but a physicist.
Still, it might be a good advice. That a banker will likely give me a better advice, (and that I should check your advice with a qualified person like a banker) is a different matter
Judging a statement on the basis of participating persons however, is ad hominem. Maybe a patent clerk has a revolutionary idea about time-space.
Especially, since politicians and business leader have participated in releasing this statement, not that they solely have written it from scratch.
"Two world church officials have urged political leaders to heed the danger that climate change could pose in triggering disasters like this week's killer tsunami."
Either it was simply a bad article, or you misunderstood something. Citing the downfall of an empire due local climate as an example for "everyday" global climate change is quite weak.
Where did you get that PO box address in the first place?
The difference is that on the Internet, people, no matter how divergent from their interests and/or personality in comparison to their RL surroundings, can easily find like-minded people, simply because distance doesn't matter. This disinhibits abnormal behaviour, because onseself doesn't consider it as abnormal anymore. You know people who are like you, and they encourage you.
This can be somewhat positive, like say, nerds gathering on Slashdot, people in a repressed country exchanging thoughts with democrats in their country from the outside.
So, generally, I'd support the psychologists analysis. However, it has a fatal flaw, which lies in the sentence: "While officially the number of child molestations did not change significantly."
> that was the long recognized flaw of the command economy in russia.
Um, except the economy in the Soviet Union was hierarchical. In fact, much more than a market driven economy. And actually quite elitist (Politburo)
> Look at how scientific research works.
Science is actually fairly non-hierarchical. Guess, why it is called peer-review. Yes, there are more famous scientists and they are usually better funded and one listens more to their words. Still, another scientist is the king of his own lab, not the subject of another.
> the world works in a hierarchical fashion not because it can but because in fact this works well.
I think the point is not so much about hierarchy, but about elitism.
> Everybody is currently living out the answers to those questions.
You failed to answer my question. If we are currently living out the answers, then it should be quite easy to answer those. But we don't know them, there is no consent on a single of these question. We are only living in the infantile states of the said developments and the mid- to long-term development is far from clear.
> but you'll notice that they're all dealt with in the context of already having happened in such pop sci-fi as...
Pardon, do you really want to suggest that either The Matrix, Firefly, Stargate, Enterprise or, God forbid, Star Wars, has dealt in any respective manner with any of those themes?
First of, I like The Matrix, Enterprise and Star Wars for various reason. But still, I have to say, in respect to Science Fiction I find them quite lacking. Yes, some of those questions where touched, but, if you have a slightly more than average interest of these themes, you will see how roughly those subjects where handled. They were nothing more than a motive for a story board writer with an average education to fill an episode or two.
Would you say that the Enterprise episodes with the Augments
is a satisfying disquisition on the social effects of genetic engineering or
had a lot of action as the Augments kicked ass?
Quite in contrast to, say, Stephensons Diamond Age, which painted quite a interesting and detailed picture of how globalism and nanotechnology could affect our society.
Re:Oooh. Low interest on Slashdot. . .
on
Clarion Sci-Fi Auction
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
> The Matrix, Firefly, Stargate, Enterprise, Star Wars.
Pop Sci-Fi with hardly any revealing insights. Mostly, that is why it they are selling it, its not challenging, no one will be offended, no risk.
> I think it's because the science in our culture is no longer fiction, all the choices have been made, and the scope of possible futures is narrowing rapidly as we zero-in on our final destination.
Okay, then please tell me.
How will genetic engineering affect our lives, or nanotechnology? How will the Global Climate Change affect us and our societies? Will China become the next superpower, or will shee break due to socioeconomical difference between the country and the cities? What will happen to the aging industrial societies? Will the globalism destroy cultural indiviuality or will it create transnational subcultures?
And more importantly, which questions did fail I to ask?
> Though Jews in Germany made up just 2% of the population, they owned about 60% of the companies[...]
And what kind of companies? Retail and Handcraft with 2-3 employees? Or Krupp, Volkswagen, IG Farben, Horch? I'm somewhat sceptical towards the message of a chart, in an article, which has been published sometime after 1930 (The statistic is quoted as being published in 1930, by "the Jewish economist Alfred Marcus")
> You can't deny it. Nazism is a form of class warfare, with Jews representing the monied class.
Of course, I can deny it. Because it isn't class warfare, but Racism (and that not because I think Jews are a race, but because the Nazis considered them one).
That Jews were considered wealthy and the general populace was starving poor was used to foster the latent anti-semitism. Paradoxical, when they were starving in the Gettos the reverse situation was used as propaganda against the Jewish populace.
On the other hand, "Arian" owners of large cooperations were never touched. They were even courted and heralded as examples of the superiority of the "Germanic race". Yes, I am well aware how paradox it is, see doublethink.
So simply, it didn't matter whether you were rich or poor, whether you believed or not. The point was, whether you or your parent, or your grand-parent was Jew, Sinti, Roma, or whatever ethnical or religious group they deemed "parasitic".
> Hostile opposition to the monied class
Another difference: The hostile opposition is usually to the existance of a monied class, as an abstract construct, not the very existance of said persons. (Which doesn't mean that there aren't socialists which may have a personal grudge against well-doing capitalists)
On the contrary National Socialism is for the existance/creation of classes (Arians, Lesser Races, Parasitarian Races) and elitarian (Fuhrer, SS,...)
> This is a common, but incorrect, belief, especially among progressive/socialists.
Maybe, because socialists know a bit about socialism?
> The full name of the Nazi party was the National Socialist Party
After some historical reflection, you should be aware about the special meaning of the names the Nazi party gave things.
> The Nazi's were actually big fans of a lot of the New Deal reforms.
Yes, they employed Keynesian control of the economy, favoured by many socialists. How does that make them socialist?
> But it was hardly capitalism.
No? The control was excerted by lending money from banks, and paying it to the companies for the projects they wanted to have accomplished. How uncapitalistic. I can't think of a single non-socialist leader of a nation, which would do such a thing.
Yes, being a totalitarian regime, there was political pressure on the executives. But, believe me, the relationship between the Nazi government and the company directors is known to have been quite amicable.
Hence, after WWII, the Allied Forces disowned several large company owners and broke companies up in the process of denazification.
> I guess technically Marx didn't really promote dictatorship, but rather just totalitarianism... (more of an oligopoly)
Know the difference between Marxism, Leninism, and finally Stalinism. There is a reason why there are differentiated.
> Amazingly, most (though not all..) of what the USSR did/promoted has a definite basis in Marx / Engels. Yeah, Stalinism has a basis in Marx/Engels. And the Conquestadores had a basis in the Bible.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't know wether this is really true or not:
If my memory serves, both the USPTO and the EPO are receiving money for each granted patent as their funding. Hence, neither patent office is very eager to reject any application.
Actually, that isn't America. In comparison to other countries it awards Great Performers (whatever the market decides that is) quite outstandingly.Some people suggest, that there might be causal connection with the following table:Please note, before I am accused as communist, I don't want to force someone to pay someone less. I just want to suggest that the people think about it.
Source
> shows undue sympathy to the USSR.
Yeah, sorry to suggest, that the leaders in the USSR could be anything else than murdurous warmongers.
> "We will bury you." was not a joke.
No, it was a wrong translation and shows the demonization of the USSR. The more correct translation is: "We plan to attend your funeral.".
> Surely you are not implying that this is a myth?
No, but the suggested implications for the current Global Climate Change are.
It seems my argumentation was to subtil, I have to remember that sarcasm doesn't work over the web.
.
I wanted to point out that I am majorly dissapointed at inflammatory posts especially from "my" side (the "tree-huggers"), which take up arguments, which are easily disproved, and let the opponents paint us as irrational, fanatical panic-mongers.
My later suggestion, that right-wingers (which, btw, I consider only a subset of the otherwise respectable group of conservatives) are doing it themselves, was an attempt to show such a contraproductive argumentation can be found on the other side, too.
This should be considered as a warning to both sides to base their position on flawed arguments, as it will help the opponent more than oneself.
> The so-called scientists responsible for proving that humans are causing global cooling rush to TV cameras
Thanks for making my point clear. Which brings us to Myth number 1, since Chrichtons "State of Fear":
"Global Cooling"
> Other than the "No consent" argument, which I don't quite understand the meaning of, all of these arguments are scientifically valid.
"No consent": The idea that there is no scientific consent among climatologists on a) the existance of global climate change or b) that human influence it. Untrue
"Not provable": The models cannot be verified, unless it already happened. Ignores the fact that we can resimulate the past. Therfor the models are "provable", in the sense that one can validate their quality.
"Sun fluctuations": The idea that the sun is the source of all heat and warmth, and therefor the major cause for the Climate Change (note: capital letters). Untrue
"Earth has been warmer"
"Earth has been cooler"
Corrolar: "We are in an Ice Age"
"Little Ice Age": Essentially the same argument. Climate has changed and will change. Ignores the various scales in which those things have happened and their relevance for the current climate. The "Little Ice Age" and the Warm period in the Middle Ages was a regional effect, not a global one. And concerning the global ice ages and warm periods. They are happening over time-frames of millenia. Not decades, like the current change. And, when someone should bother to have a look, we are currently supposed at the beginning of a war period plateau
"We puny humans have no influence in comparison to the might of earth": I find humility a positive streak, however when it paired with
"We mighty humans will handle any problem earth will throw at us""
it seems nothing more a flag of convienience than real humility. And sadly the first is wrong, and the latter is only provable by trying, which some people would rather avert.
Let me pick up:
ad hominem: The suggestion, that personal agendas are responsible for the outcome of climatologic research.
And now let me add:
"Butterfly Effect": Shows that the writer has only cursive knowledge about Chaos-Theory and modelling, as Chaos only puts a limit to the accuracy to the predictions and the task of modeling is to also predict the accuracy.
> who believe in conservative ideals like the scientific method.
Well, I was trying to be derogatory to right-wingers, which I don't equate to be the same as conservative, but a subset. Similar to Michael, except with a different philosophy.
Scientific method can hardly be claimed as an uniquely conservative ideal. At most, it could be claimed an ideal originating in the liberal stream during The Enlightenent (E.g Kant). But even that is quite far-fetched, especially considering what conservatve and liberal meant then and now.
Now, tha
It doesn't. Makes one wonder, if Michael isn't maybe hired by the right to post easily disproved myths, which only discredit the green faction as wackos, which will believe in anything.
Maybe one should do that to the right-wingers.
Oh, they are doing it themselves.
Brace yourself for:
"No consent"
"Not provable"
"Global Cooling"
"Little Ice Age"
"Sun fluctuations"
"Earth has been warmer"
"Earth has been cooler"
Corrolar: "We are in an Ice Age"
"We puny humans have no influence in comparison to the might of earth"
"We mighty humans will handle any problem earth will throw at us"
Since "dark matter" is per definition electromagnetically weakly interacting, such hypothesis wouldn't stand a chance.
Go here for consensus
Here for the global cooling myth.
I begin to wonder what is hurting more, an objector, or a bad arguing proponents.
As a "tree-hugger", I begin to think the latter.
> Please.. Einstein was never just any other patent clerk.
Of course, he wasn't. Now, we know that. Still, it was his job when he published his Nobel paper. And he did get that job only with the help of a friend, and because he wasn't accepted as assistant at universitities.
> Global weather models are not only so simplyfied that they really don't predict anything with any significant certainty.
Anything more complex than a two particle system is simplified. Weather models are subjected to the scientific process and are verified by trying to resimulate the past. The verification-process itself, of course, is also subject to the scientific progress.
> At the same time they are completely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't had a least a couple of years of undergraduate studies in physics.
Heck, the whole QM and QED is completely incomprehensible even for undergrads. Does that mean one shouldn't trust MRTs?
No, not unless a there is a substantiated argument against it.
> It's just common sense.
As a physicist, you should know better about common sense.
> I wouldn't give you financial advice, since I am not a banker, but a physicist.
Still, it might be a good advice. That a banker will likely give me a better advice, (and that I should check your advice with a qualified person like a banker) is a different matter
Judging a statement on the basis of participating persons however, is ad hominem. Maybe a patent clerk has a revolutionary idea about time-space.
Especially, since politicians and business leader have participated in releasing this statement, not that they solely have written it from scratch.
Here you go: There is little evidence for a connection between solar activity (as inferred from trends in galactic cosmic rays) and recent global warming.
Talking about perspective, how many people die of hunger, malaria, floods and droughts?
The emissions are dropping, due to policies enforcing them, while the GDP is still raising.
A scientist leaving the IPCC, due to politicking
Some perspective on Mr. Inhofes speech.
"Two world church officials have urged political leaders to heed the danger that climate change could pose in triggering disasters like this week's killer tsunami."
Ad hominem
Either it was simply a bad article, or you misunderstood something. Citing the downfall of an empire due local climate as an example for "everyday" global climate change is quite weak.
The page titled Global Warming @ National Geographic doesn't seem to suggest such a causal view of climate change.
Where did you get that PO box address in the first place?
The difference is that on the Internet, people, no matter how divergent from their interests and/or personality in comparison to their RL surroundings, can easily find like-minded people, simply because distance doesn't matter. This disinhibits abnormal behaviour, because onseself doesn't consider it as abnormal anymore. You know people who are like you, and they encourage you.
This can be somewhat positive, like say, nerds gathering on Slashdot, people in a repressed country exchanging thoughts with democrats in their country from the outside.
So, generally, I'd support the psychologists analysis. However, it has a fatal flaw, which lies in the sentence: "While officially the number of child molestations did not change significantly."
> that was the long recognized flaw of the command economy in russia.
Um, except the economy in the Soviet Union was hierarchical. In fact, much more than a market driven economy. And actually quite elitist (Politburo)
> Look at how scientific research works.
Science is actually fairly non-hierarchical. Guess, why it is called peer-review. Yes, there are more famous scientists and they are usually better funded and one listens more to their words. Still, another scientist is the king of his own lab, not the subject of another.
> the world works in a hierarchical fashion not because it can but because in fact this works well.
I think the point is not so much about hierarchy, but about elitism.
You failed to answer my question. If we are currently living out the answers, then it should be quite easy to answer those. But we don't know them, there is no consent on a single of these question. We are only living in the infantile states of the said developments and the mid- to long-term development is far from clear.
> but you'll notice that they're all dealt with in the context of already having happened in such pop sci-fi as...
Pardon, do you really want to suggest that either The Matrix, Firefly, Stargate, Enterprise or, God forbid, Star Wars, has dealt in any respective manner with any of those themes?
First of, I like The Matrix, Enterprise and Star Wars for various reason. But still, I have to say, in respect to Science Fiction I find them quite lacking.
Yes, some of those questions where touched, but, if you have a slightly more than average interest of these themes, you will see how roughly those subjects where handled. They were nothing more than a motive for a story board writer with an average education to fill an episode or two.
Would you say that the Enterprise episodes with the Augments
is a satisfying disquisition on the social effects of genetic engineering or
had a lot of action as the Augments kicked ass?
Quite in contrast to, say, Stephensons Diamond Age, which painted quite a interesting and detailed picture of how globalism and nanotechnology could affect our society.
> The Matrix, Firefly, Stargate, Enterprise, Star Wars.
Pop Sci-Fi with hardly any revealing insights. Mostly, that is why it they are selling it, its not challenging, no one will be offended, no risk.
> I think it's because the science in our culture is no longer fiction, all the choices have been made, and the scope of possible futures is narrowing rapidly as we zero-in on our final destination.
Okay, then please tell me.
How will genetic engineering affect our lives, or nanotechnology? How will the Global Climate Change affect us and our societies? Will China become the next superpower, or will shee break due to socioeconomical difference between the country and the cities? What will happen to the aging industrial societies? Will the globalism destroy cultural indiviuality or will it create transnational subcultures?
And more importantly, which questions did fail I to ask?
> Though Jews in Germany made up just 2% of the population, they owned about 60% of the companies[...]
And what kind of companies? Retail and Handcraft with 2-3 employees? Or Krupp, Volkswagen, IG Farben, Horch? I'm somewhat sceptical towards the message of a chart, in an article, which has been published sometime after 1930 (The statistic is quoted as being published in 1930, by "the Jewish economist Alfred Marcus")
> You can't deny it. Nazism is a form of class warfare, with Jews representing the monied class.
Of course, I can deny it. Because it isn't class warfare, but Racism (and that not because I think Jews are a race, but because the Nazis considered them one).
That Jews were considered wealthy and the general populace was starving poor was used to foster the latent anti-semitism. Paradoxical, when they were starving in the Gettos the reverse situation was used as propaganda against the Jewish populace.
On the other hand, "Arian" owners of large cooperations were never touched. They were even courted and heralded as examples of the superiority of the "Germanic race". Yes, I am well aware how paradox it is, see doublethink.
So simply, it didn't matter whether you were rich or poor, whether you believed or not. The point was, whether you or your parent, or your grand-parent was Jew, Sinti, Roma, or whatever ethnical or religious group they deemed "parasitic".
> Hostile opposition to the monied class
Another difference: The hostile opposition is usually to the existance of a monied class, as an abstract construct, not the very existance of said persons. (Which doesn't mean that there aren't socialists which may have a personal grudge against well-doing capitalists)
On the contrary National Socialism is for the existance/creation of classes (Arians, Lesser Races, Parasitarian Races) and elitarian (Fuhrer, SS,...)
> This is a common, but incorrect, belief, especially among progressive/socialists.
Maybe, because socialists know a bit about socialism?
> The full name of the Nazi party was the National Socialist Party
After some historical reflection, you should be aware about the special meaning of the names the Nazi party gave things.
> The Nazi's were actually big fans of a lot of the New Deal reforms.
Yes, they employed Keynesian control of the economy, favoured by many socialists. How does that make them socialist?
> But it was hardly capitalism.
No? The control was excerted by lending money from banks, and paying it to the companies for the projects they wanted to have accomplished. How uncapitalistic. I can't think of a single non-socialist leader of a nation, which would do such a thing.
Yes, being a totalitarian regime, there was political pressure on the executives. But, believe me, the relationship between the Nazi government and the company directors is known to have been quite amicable.
Hence, after WWII, the Allied Forces disowned several large company owners and broke companies up in the process of denazification.
You make me weep with sympathy.
> Marx believed that there had to be period that I think he called the "Dictatorship of the Prolatariate".
Have a look at what the meaning of Dictatorship of the proletariat is.
> Nazism is a form of national socialism.
No, the party defining Nazism merely had National Socialist in their name.
Socialists strive for an egalitarian society, National Socialists for an elitarian one.
Socialists are for workers rights, the National Socialists were, to say the least, not.
> I guess technically Marx didn't really promote dictatorship, but rather just totalitarianism... (more of an oligopoly)
Know the difference between Marxism, Leninism, and finally Stalinism. There is a reason why there are differentiated.
> Amazingly, most (though not all..) of what the USSR did/promoted has a definite basis in Marx / Engels.
Yeah, Stalinism has a basis in Marx/Engels.
And the Conquestadores had a basis in the Bible.