"but an integral part of the pebble bed reactor is a vessel that can indeed cool, as this idle temperature is known and not too high."
Yes, this is an integral part of all third generation reactor designs. This is in no way unique to the pebble-bed. It's called fundamentally safe design.
"The pebbles are not impossible to reprocess, just harder. Harder does not mean it doesn't make sense."
I don't think it makes sense to make it harder. It certinally makes it impossible to do it economically. Any to what end? You can use vitrification to stabilize conventional spent nuclear fuel anyway.
"Saying they're a waste of time and money shows you've not been keeping up with the research in the area, or indeed their current and proposed uses."
No, I have been. I just don't see any benefit. They're not safer, they're more expensive, they prohibit reprocessing. Did I miss anything?
A hydro plant is fundamentally different from a solar plant. The power of a hydro plant is limited by the size of the river you're damming. A solar plant has to gather all the energy from the land it is built on and channel it to a central power generating facility. The larger the area you intend to cover, the taller your central tower needs to be. Obviously, there are some scalibility issues here.
I know where are power plants bigger than 3 gigawats. But there aren't any thermal solar plants even close to that size.
Okay, we use about 100 quadrillion BTUs of power a year, that's would be about 3 terawatts of installed power. Wikipedia claims that the installed cost of coal is 1 to 2 dollars per watt, which means that it would cost 3 to 6 trillion dollars to replace our energy production capacity with new coal plants today.
In comparison, the wikipedia article on thermal solar plants claims that most plant designs aim to achieve $1 per kWh/year (that makes the installed cost about $10/watt). Using the $10 figure, you get an installed cost 30 trillion dollars.
"First, the reference to the 92x92 mile grid says "Solar thermal plants covering the equivalent of a 92-by-92-mile square grid in the Southwest..." You might note that "plants" is plural. So we're not talking a single 92x92 mile plant, but a large number of plants that cover an equivalent area. However, it's unclear how large an individual plant in this scheme would be vis a vis the ones in operation today."
I was refering to the 3 gigawat plant metioned in the article. the largest they've proposed building was around 100 mw. Is it really possile to build one thirty times larger? I have never seen a design that big.
"Others put the cost at $1 to $2 trillion"
That's because they are conuting secondary effects, like health care and disability. That is hand waving. I could make wild claims about the oppurtunity costs associated with solar too (there's a lot you could accomplish with that $30 trillion, and what about the environmental effects? that aluminum has to come from somewhere), but you don't see me making up numbers and adding them to my cost to make it more compelling. I will stick with the congressional budget, thank you very much.
You have to factor energy storage into your installed cost, because you will need to produce more energy to store for later use. If you are only producing 8 hours a day, but need to produce power for 24 hours, you will need three times the installed power infrastructure (more to cover storage losses). This is the extra cost I was refering to.
no, I estimated the cost of various power infrastructures a couple years ago based on historical data for a report I did in college. I can't remember the number exactly, but a complete system that stored excess energy as hydrogen, then burned it to produce steady power, and power for transporation cost more than 100 trillion dollars. By comparison a similar nuclear solution that employed reprocessing was only about 10 trillion.
"2. Pebble Bed reactors can't melt down. If they get too hot, they generate less heat, resulting in an abandoned reaction stabilising long before thermal damage can occur in the containment"
Pebble bed reactors certinally can melt down. It is all a question of design. The vast majority of all reactor designs employ a negative temperature coefficient of reacitvity to achieve stability. That means that as the core gets hotter, the rate of reaction decreases. This is even true of plain old light water reactors. The trick is to design the plant so that heat generated by the nuclear reaction can be dissipated through natural convection in the event of a coolant failure. Obviously, it is possible and even easy to do this with any type of stable reactor design. All modern reactor designs achieve this.
"1. Yes, but it's easy to store pebbles (they're sealed in graphite, waterproof, and can just be loaded into barrels and put underground. They're also rather small (the size of a tennis ball)."
This same "feature" makes it impossible to reprocess spent fuel from these reactors. That means that high level waste will remain radioactive for thousands of years, and less total power will be produced with a given ammount of uranium.
If you like wacky reactor designs, look into molten salt reactors for safety and the ability reprocess spent fuel cheaply and easly, or fast reactors for their ability to use U238 to generate power. Pebble bed reactors are a waste of time and money.
come up with some kind of artificial photosynthesis that uses solar energy to build hydrocarbons from water and atmospheric CO2 Or you could just use the natural foliage that literally covers the earth.
Or, you can just store the energy in batteries, and use them at night. No, we can't. We don't have enough batteries to do that, and we probably never will.
Why do you think it would cost less than the iraq war? Our current energy infrastructure cost trillions of dollars to build, and solar thermal would be more expensive. By comparison the Iraq war has not cost a trillion (unless you do a lot of hand waving and use funny numbers).
This whole article is a lot of nonsesne. 92 miles square is 8464 square miles. The article does not mention the installed cost of such a system, but it's probably tens of trillions of dollars. More if you factor in the need to store energy overnight and on overcast days.
He mentions that the price could drop to $.08 per kwh if a plant was larger than 3 gigawats (he doesn't mention if this number is electrical or if it is thermal, but it's probably electrical). That is one freaking huge solar power station (the largest to date is a couple hundred megawats). Is it even possible to build one that big?
Uh, I don't think we've built a craft that could go that fast, so I don't know why you think you can make claims about how such a vehicle would operate. All the same, the conventional wisdom is that it is not possible for a vehicle to reach the speed of light, as it would then obtain infinite mass, therefore requiring an infinite amount of energy to accelerate.
And no, I was not saying that we should use super-sonic plains to travel around, I was merely pointing out that at near sonic and supersonic speeds, the claim that drag increases as the square of velocity is not true. It is a very relevant point, since we are talking about supersonic flight.
When you are talking about near supersonic or supersonic speeds, this is no longer true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_divergence_Mach_number
In fact, drag increases much more rapidly as you approach the speed of sound, but then much more slowly after that point.
Surely, a composite made from superconducting nanoparticles would not be superconducting (though it may be a good conductor). So what use is a superconductor if it has to be so small?
Also, they measured a dramatic change in heat capacity @ 200K, which may be an indication of a superconducting phase transition. It also may be some other phase transition. They're still looking for direct evidence it's a superconducter.
We need to ammend the US constitution to prohibit all forms of government revenue generation other than the income tax. These innane taxes and fees, fines, and loans are a huge waste of time and money, and now it appears that they may be costing lives! We all just need to get a bill in the mail every month for the ammount we owe to the government and that is that.
There are better ways to enforce traffic laws than imposing inane fines that government agencies use to pad their coffers. Manditory traffic school, having your license suspended, increased insurance rates, and the threat of jail time or probation are all better deturants than traffic fines.
It is unfair to force people not to abuse their bodies. If we as a society can't stomach the thought of letting them die, it is our decision to help them, not them forcing our hand to do so.
You can't be compassionate but then attach strings (I'll help you, but only if you don't abuse drugs). People almost always have some hand in what fate befals them, and almost never have complete control over it.
It is an exercise in futility to try to judge who is worthy of charity by setting regulatory standards and making sweeping moral judgements.
"But if your house is on a private road, and the photographer took a picture of your house from your private property then that would be a problem. TFA leads me to believe this is what happened. And if it is then Google should pay."
You're half right. Google made a mistake in photographing that house, but they shouldn't pay $25,000, that's insane. They should apolojize and take doen the pictures.
I suppose you've never driven down a private road or driveway without permission? Should I pay the owner of a house $25,000 because I got lost on a narrow street and needed to make a three point turn? Get real.
You are wrong. Look at an apple display and see if you can see streaking and banding. You won't be able to find any. That's because the screen "dithers" the color over several screen refreshes to achieve more colors. The refreshes happen so fast and are so subtle that your eyes can't see them. People keep saying that "graphics professionals" will be affected, but they don't have super-human eyes, and they won't be affected. Adding more colors to a LCD display is non-trivial, and there's no good reason to do it if you can achieve the same color quality with a cheaper display. You can call it false advertising if you want to, but if no human on earth can tell the difference it's hard to say there really is one.
So he's saying that he'll solve all your problems for you by raising taxes and increasing government regulation? Isn't that the same thing most politicians say? I don't think there's anything special going on here. I resent the fact that I wasted my time reading this garbage; I'm going to pass Slashdot's shameless political plugs from here on in.
"1. The courts are bad at this, and the PTO specializes in this. 2. The courts have more important things to do, and the PTO doesn't. 3. The courts are already very busy, and in order to get on with #2, it would help if they weren't so much busier. But this is the PTO's business. People already complain a lot about the PTO not doing its work properly so as to reduce the number of patent cases in the courts."
Well, it's the courts who hear the patent law cases, not the patent office. If they are bad at it, that's a problem that plagues the current system as well. I don't know if it is reasonable to expect the PTO to do a better job than they're doing now under any conditions. They're not a group of all-knowing sages, and they can not possibly know all the ramifications of patents they grant or decline. Moreover, I don't think it is possible to grant patents in a way that would significantly reduce lawsuits. In fact, I don't believe that the patent system even produces fewer lawsuits than the system I'm proposing. And even if it does, it does so at the expense of fairness, which I believe is bad for the economy (among other things).
"Basically, your idea is tremendously and obviously unworkable for a myriad of reasons."
First of all, my idea is not fully developed. I literally just thought about it while I was reading the article, and threw it out there and see what other people thought about it. If you wait too long to post your comment, it will get lost at the end of the thread and no one will read it or respond to it. That being said, my original comment was better thought out than most of the responses to it. I wish I hadn't used the words "own your ideas", because I think it gave people the wrong impression about what I was suggesting. All I was trying to say was that I don't think the patent office accomplishes anything more than a law granting similar rights would.
This is the internet, and I don't have to be a patent attorney to post ideas about patent reform. When I am testifying before congress you can complain about my lack of credentials. But on the Slashdot discussion board, it's a silly thing to complain about. There are literally posts about "gay niggers", and you're complaining about my post! If you feel it's beneath you, just don't read it. There's no reason to be rude or condescending.
Your "myriad of reasons" mostly evaporates when one considers how a real law would be written and used. First of all, people generally sue when they believe they can make money, so people wouldn't waste a lot of time suing over bad or un-useable ideas. Nor would they waste much time suing anyone who doesn't have a profitable product. That means that the people getting sued would have resources to defend themselves. Also any law written would likely exempt "obvious" and already-existing ideas, and have some kind of time-limit or useful lifespan. Finally, any law could limit recoverable damages to the profits generated from the invention (though common sense dictates this already). You could also set a time limit on when the lawsuits can be brought over a product. You could limit it to the first year or so a product is marketed, and you wouldn't have these cases where a product has been on the market for 10 years and suddenly there's a patent dispute. You could even limit the damages to profits earned after the lawsuit was filed, or notice was given to the offending party, and allow any disputes with merit to be easily settled out of court.
I am an engineer, not a lawyer. I took a course on problem solving, and my instructor told me that when I am presented with a new idea, I should not look for reasons why it won't work, but instead look for ways to make it work. You should do the same here. Often the most revolutionary ideas come from amateurs rather than professionals. That's because professionals have too much exposure to how things are done and why they are done that way. They have preconceptions about how things must be done. All the same I'm not a lawyer, so it's going to be hard for me to understand all the pitfalls and come up with solutions.
"Ideas are more plentiful than air; why should there be ownership of them. There's certainly no scarcity."
I would like to point out the following message listed on the comment page:
"The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way."
Why would Slashdot claim that I own the comment I've posted here? There's certainly no scarcity of comments. That's an important question, and I encourage you to think about it.
"So you seem to be saying that your gripe with patents is that there are federal laws that provide for patents. Like I said, it's kind of odd."
No, my gripe is federal regulation. I don't like the way that people have to submit an application to the patent office in order to have their intellectual property protected. It seems that any patent worth having eventually needs to be defended in court anyway. So why not just skip the patent office? That's what I'm saying.
"2) Ideas are not really valuable, in the main. I have an idea that I'd like to fly around like Superman. I don't know how I would accomplish this, but if someone else figures out the hard part, why should I be able to demand payment because of my contribution?"
Exactly, so why should people take out patents on them? Obviously, we should only bother with the ones that are valuable. There are a lot of worthless patents out there just taking up space and making things more complicated.
"3) Ideas are largely private. If you don't publish them for all the world to see, how would anyone know what was already out there, who came up with it, and when? If you do publish them, who pays for that?"
When your case goes to court, you will need to present evidence that the party you are suing was aware of your invention, and used your work to his own benefit without your permission. Obviously, if you don't have any proof, and discovery doesn't turn any up you will not be able to prove your case. This is how civil court works now, so it's not outlandish in any way.
4) What's 'reasonable'?
What's reasonable is determined by the court. Again, this is currently practiced by civil courts, and it's not anything new.
5) Ideas are generally unoriginal. If a hundred people each independently have the same idea, how is the conflict between them resolved?
One person would be the first to bring a viable product to market. If the others feel that he has unfairly benefited from their work while cutting them out of the loop, they would sue him. The court would independently address the merit of each claim, or a settlement would be reached with each affected party.
"6) Ideas are extremely broad. If I have an idea for a story that goes 'Boy meets girl,' or 'Man against nature,' then I basically get paid by every author and filmmaker in the world. Seems like quite a windfall for so little effort."
Your case has to hold up in court, it can't be an outlandish claim that no jury or judge would accept. You would bankrupt yourself bringing lawsuits based on a claim like that one.
"7) The transactional costs would be so immense that the economy related to ideas -- inventions, creative works, etc. -- would grind to a halt, causing dramatic harm to human civilization and progress. How could that possibly be a good idea? I'm reminded of the Golgafrinchans, who would surely love the notion."
The system I'm proposing would be simpler than the one we currently have. It might not be cheaper, but it certainly wouldn't be a lot more expensive. If the current system works, this one would too.
"8) It's just plain dumb. It doesn't even pass the laugh test."
A lot of good ideas don't pass the laugh test. So what?
"They're intended to encourage free-loading, which is a highly useful and desirable activity. Why the hell should everyone have to reinvent the wheel, after all. Better to freeload off of the inventive caveman who came up with it. Think about how patents (and copyrights, unti
"why would the first person to do so have any sort of absolute claim to it?"
Again, you said that they should have an absoulte claim to it, not me. I just said they should have a claim to it.
"The concepts of "fairness" or "justice" have nothing to do with this - lots of things are unfair, we don't pass laws to correct them all."
We certinally try to! That's the whole reason we have laws! Why do you think we have them?
"If I'm remembering this correctly, the US is one of the few countries that actually uses a "first to invent" (rather than "first to file") patent system; ie you are very much entitled to sue GM in such a case, you just need to show that you, in fact, came up with the invention first. "
That's not entrely true. You could get their patent rejected, but you couldn't demand royalties or dammages from them unless you had a patent.
"I would also argue that the copyright system is just as broken as the patent system, and for the same reasons."
No it's not. You can write a book and publish it without fear that someone else will copy it and take credit for your work. If you invent something, you must get a patent on it or else someone else will benefit from it at your expense.
"The solution to patent and copyright problems is infinitely broad and permanent patents and copyright?"
That's what you said, not what I said. All I said was that there is no need for patents. You read "infinitely broad" into my comment, and that wasn't what I meant. Obviously any law would include exemptions, limitations, and other applicable criteria.
"How on earth can someone "own" an idea?"
How can someone own anything? Ownership is a legal construction. Owning ideas is no different from owning land or cars in that respect. It simply means that someone has to ask your permission before they can use it. Copyright is currently granted without governmental approval, and it works better than the patent system does.
"patents exist to give you the first stab at exploiting your ideas."
No, that's how patents work. They exist because people believe it is unjust when someone else profits from your work without your permission. For example, if you spent two years inventing a new type of internal combustion engine, and then released it onto the marked only to find that GM copied all your work and sold the engine at a lower price, you would likely think that was unfair. That is why we have patents. All I'm saying is that if GM stole your work, you should be able to sue them for fair compensation regardless of whether or not a patent reviewer gave you a piece of paper.
My main gripe with patents is that they use federal regulation establish intellectual property. That means tons of patents and copyrights and trademarks that they layman has no hope of negotiating. I don't see why they can't just write a law establishing that you own your ideas, and that other must secure your consent or give you reasonable compensation before using them.
Patents and copyrights are intended to prevent people from free-loading off of the work of others, and I think it is pretty clear when that has happened. If someone sells counterfeit merchandise, that's obvious. If someone reverse-engineers your software, that's also pretty obvious. I say, write the law, and let people settle it in court if they think someone's benefiting from their work without consent or due compensation.
Look, I never said that I promote the prohibition of any of these things. But I do have a problem with society in that promotes these negative, destructive lifestyle choices as an easy way to make yourself happy.
I would only move to prohibit abortion, but I do think that those other behaviors are detrimental to society and to us as individuals.
First of all, Christians almost unanimously condemn abortion clinic bombings, while Muslim advocating suicide bombings, and Muslims celebrating in the streets are relatively easy to find. Moreover, Christians carry out abortion clinic bombings in order to prevent the murder of unborn babies. Muslims carry out suicide bombings simply to prevent people from being free. Finally, abortion clinic bombings are rare. Muslim suicide bombings happen literally every day.
"if we go ahead and examine some history we can cover a huge host of horrific things done in the name of Christianity"
You can always find a lot of horrible thing done in the name of "the greater good". May I remind you that the Soviet Union strictly prohibited the practice of religion. Yet they killed more innocent people than the Nazis (though over a longer period of time). China also has a similar prohibition, and look at what they are doing in Tibet right now.
"none of the religions that sprang forth from that area are exactly civilized"
That means a lot coming from someone who was likely raised in a culture that advocates drug-use, promiscuity, homosexuality, money worship, easy answers, and infanticide (my assumption is based solely on the fact that you are posting on slashdot, and therefore have access to a computer). I guess it depends what you call civilized, but that seems like a backward way of living to me.
The problem with your version of governmental accountability is that you seem to believe that the government *can* function without politicians undertaking behaviors and activities for which they would be thrown out of office.
We expect politicians to be completely flawless and morally upstanding. We expect them to be forgiving, firm, strong, understanding, compassionate, intelligent photogenic . . . the list goes on forever. In reality they are human, they have flaws and they make mistakes. Even if they didn't, they would still have to make choices that people would find disagreeable. As a whole these expectations lead to a situation where politicians must lie and hide their actions from the public.
If anything they need privacy more than the average citizen because the bar is so much higher, and they have so much more to lose.
This is not the world I want to live in, but it's the world I do live in. I wish everyone was able to be completely open and honest about everything, and I think that's the direction we should be moving the country in. But it can't happen overnight, and it has to start with us, the voting public, being more understand and reasonable. We have to be willing to vote for a candidate who says "look, fixing our problems is going to take hard work and personal sacrifice" and a candidate who has made mistakes and admitted it.
Yeah, you also won't find that they've been eaten by wolves. ..Though if you leave them in a lot in down-town LA they will be gone when you come back for them.
Slashdot Mirror
"but an integral part of the pebble bed reactor is a vessel that can indeed cool, as this idle temperature is known and not too high."
Yes, this is an integral part of all third generation reactor designs. This is in no way unique to the pebble-bed. It's called fundamentally safe design.
"The pebbles are not impossible to reprocess, just harder. Harder does not mean it doesn't make sense."
I don't think it makes sense to make it harder. It certinally makes it impossible to do it economically. Any to what end? You can use vitrification to stabilize conventional spent nuclear fuel anyway.
"Saying they're a waste of time and money shows you've not been keeping up with the research in the area, or indeed their current and proposed uses."
No, I have been. I just don't see any benefit. They're not safer, they're more expensive, they prohibit reprocessing. Did I miss anything?
A hydro plant is fundamentally different from a solar plant. The power of a hydro plant is limited by the size of the river you're damming. A solar plant has to gather all the energy from the land it is built on and channel it to a central power generating facility. The larger the area you intend to cover, the taller your central tower needs to be. Obviously, there are some scalibility issues here.
I know where are power plants bigger than 3 gigawats. But there aren't any thermal solar plants even close to that size.
Okay, we use about 100 quadrillion BTUs of power a year, that's would be about 3 terawatts of installed power. Wikipedia claims that the installed cost of coal is 1 to 2 dollars per watt, which means that it would cost 3 to 6 trillion dollars to replace our energy production capacity with new coal plants today.
In comparison, the wikipedia article on thermal solar plants claims that most plant designs aim to achieve $1 per kWh/year (that makes the installed cost about $10/watt). Using the $10 figure, you get an installed cost 30 trillion dollars.
"First, the reference to the 92x92 mile grid says "Solar thermal plants covering the equivalent of a 92-by-92-mile square grid in the Southwest..." You might note that "plants" is plural. So we're not talking a single 92x92 mile plant, but a large number of plants that cover an equivalent area. However, it's unclear how large an individual plant in this scheme would be vis a vis the ones in operation today."
I was refering to the 3 gigawat plant metioned in the article. the largest they've proposed building was around 100 mw. Is it really possile to build one thirty times larger? I have never seen a design that big.
"Others put the cost at $1 to $2 trillion"
That's because they are conuting secondary effects, like health care and disability. That is hand waving. I could make wild claims about the oppurtunity costs associated with solar too (there's a lot you could accomplish with that $30 trillion, and what about the environmental effects? that aluminum has to come from somewhere), but you don't see me making up numbers and adding them to my cost to make it more compelling. I will stick with the congressional budget, thank you very much.
You have to factor energy storage into your installed cost, because you will need to produce more energy to store for later use. If you are only producing 8 hours a day, but need to produce power for 24 hours, you will need three times the installed power infrastructure (more to cover storage losses). This is the extra cost I was refering to.
no, I estimated the cost of various power infrastructures a couple years ago based on historical data for a report I did in college. I can't remember the number exactly, but a complete system that stored excess energy as hydrogen, then burned it to produce steady power, and power for transporation cost more than 100 trillion dollars. By comparison a similar nuclear solution that employed reprocessing was only about 10 trillion.
"2. Pebble Bed reactors can't melt down. If they get too hot, they generate less heat, resulting in an abandoned reaction stabilising long before thermal damage can occur in the containment"
Pebble bed reactors certinally can melt down. It is all a question of design. The vast majority of all reactor designs employ a negative temperature coefficient of reacitvity to achieve stability. That means that as the core gets hotter, the rate of reaction decreases. This is even true of plain old light water reactors. The trick is to design the plant so that heat generated by the nuclear reaction can be dissipated through natural convection in the event of a coolant failure. Obviously, it is possible and even easy to do this with any type of stable reactor design. All modern reactor designs achieve this.
"1. Yes, but it's easy to store pebbles (they're sealed in graphite, waterproof, and can just be loaded into barrels and put underground. They're also rather small (the size of a tennis ball)."
This same "feature" makes it impossible to reprocess spent fuel from these reactors. That means that high level waste will remain radioactive for thousands of years, and less total power will be produced with a given ammount of uranium.
If you like wacky reactor designs, look into molten salt reactors for safety and the ability reprocess spent fuel cheaply and easly, or fast reactors for their ability to use U238 to generate power. Pebble bed reactors are a waste of time and money.
Why do you think it would cost less than the iraq war? Our current energy infrastructure cost trillions of dollars to build, and solar thermal would be more expensive. By comparison the Iraq war has not cost a trillion (unless you do a lot of hand waving and use funny numbers).
This whole article is a lot of nonsesne. 92 miles square is 8464 square miles. The article does not mention the installed cost of such a system, but it's probably tens of trillions of dollars. More if you factor in the need to store energy overnight and on overcast days.
He mentions that the price could drop to $.08 per kwh if a plant was larger than 3 gigawats (he doesn't mention if this number is electrical or if it is thermal, but it's probably electrical). That is one freaking huge solar power station (the largest to date is a couple hundred megawats). Is it even possible to build one that big?
Uh, I don't think we've built a craft that could go that fast, so I don't know why you think you can make claims about how such a vehicle would operate. All the same, the conventional wisdom is that it is not possible for a vehicle to reach the speed of light, as it would then obtain infinite mass, therefore requiring an infinite amount of energy to accelerate.
And no, I was not saying that we should use super-sonic plains to travel around, I was merely pointing out that at near sonic and supersonic speeds, the claim that drag increases as the square of velocity is not true. It is a very relevant point, since we are talking about supersonic flight.
When you are talking about near supersonic or supersonic speeds, this is no longer true. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_divergence_Mach_number In fact, drag increases much more rapidly as you approach the speed of sound, but then much more slowly after that point.
Surely, a composite made from superconducting nanoparticles would not be superconducting (though it may be a good conductor). So what use is a superconductor if it has to be so small?
Also, they measured a dramatic change in heat capacity @ 200K, which may be an indication of a superconducting phase transition. It also may be some other phase transition. They're still looking for direct evidence it's a superconducter.
We need to ammend the US constitution to prohibit all forms of government revenue generation other than the income tax. These innane taxes and fees, fines, and loans are a huge waste of time and money, and now it appears that they may be costing lives! We all just need to get a bill in the mail every month for the ammount we owe to the government and that is that.
There are better ways to enforce traffic laws than imposing inane fines that government agencies use to pad their coffers. Manditory traffic school, having your license suspended, increased insurance rates, and the threat of jail time or probation are all better deturants than traffic fines.
It is unfair to force people not to abuse their bodies. If we as a society can't stomach the thought of letting them die, it is our decision to help them, not them forcing our hand to do so.
You can't be compassionate but then attach strings (I'll help you, but only if you don't abuse drugs). People almost always have some hand in what fate befals them, and almost never have complete control over it.
It is an exercise in futility to try to judge who is worthy of charity by setting regulatory standards and making sweeping moral judgements.
"But if your house is on a private road, and the photographer took a picture of your house from your private property then that would be a problem. TFA leads me to believe this is what happened. And if it is then Google should pay."
You're half right. Google made a mistake in photographing that house, but they shouldn't pay $25,000, that's insane. They should apolojize and take doen the pictures.
I suppose you've never driven down a private road or driveway without permission? Should I pay the owner of a house $25,000 because I got lost on a narrow street and needed to make a three point turn? Get real.
You are wrong. Look at an apple display and see if you can see streaking and banding. You won't be able to find any. That's because the screen "dithers" the color over several screen refreshes to achieve more colors. The refreshes happen so fast and are so subtle that your eyes can't see them. People keep saying that "graphics professionals" will be affected, but they don't have super-human eyes, and they won't be affected. Adding more colors to a LCD display is non-trivial, and there's no good reason to do it if you can achieve the same color quality with a cheaper display. You can call it false advertising if you want to, but if no human on earth can tell the difference it's hard to say there really is one.
So he's saying that he'll solve all your problems for you by raising taxes and increasing government regulation? Isn't that the same thing most politicians say? I don't think there's anything special going on here. I resent the fact that I wasted my time reading this garbage; I'm going to pass Slashdot's shameless political plugs from here on in.
"1. The courts are bad at this, and the PTO specializes in this. 2. The courts have more important things to do, and the PTO doesn't. 3. The courts are already very busy, and in order to get on with #2, it would help if they weren't so much busier. But this is the PTO's business. People already complain a lot about the PTO not doing its work properly so as to reduce the number of patent cases in the courts."
Well, it's the courts who hear the patent law cases, not the patent office. If they are bad at it, that's a problem that plagues the current system as well. I don't know if it is reasonable to expect the PTO to do a better job than they're doing now under any conditions. They're not a group of all-knowing sages, and they can not possibly know all the ramifications of patents they grant or decline. Moreover, I don't think it is possible to grant patents in a way that would significantly reduce lawsuits. In fact, I don't believe that the patent system even produces fewer lawsuits than the system I'm proposing. And even if it does, it does so at the expense of fairness, which I believe is bad for the economy (among other things).
"Basically, your idea is tremendously and obviously unworkable for a myriad of reasons."
First of all, my idea is not fully developed. I literally just thought about it while I was reading the article, and threw it out there and see what other people thought about it. If you wait too long to post your comment, it will get lost at the end of the thread and no one will read it or respond to it. That being said, my original comment was better thought out than most of the responses to it. I wish I hadn't used the words "own your ideas", because I think it gave people the wrong impression about what I was suggesting. All I was trying to say was that I don't think the patent office accomplishes anything more than a law granting similar rights would.
This is the internet, and I don't have to be a patent attorney to post ideas about patent reform. When I am testifying before congress you can complain about my lack of credentials. But on the Slashdot discussion board, it's a silly thing to complain about. There are literally posts about "gay niggers", and you're complaining about my post! If you feel it's beneath you, just don't read it. There's no reason to be rude or condescending.
Your "myriad of reasons" mostly evaporates when one considers how a real law would be written and used. First of all, people generally sue when they believe they can make money, so people wouldn't waste a lot of time suing over bad or un-useable ideas. Nor would they waste much time suing anyone who doesn't have a profitable product. That means that the people getting sued would have resources to defend themselves. Also any law written would likely exempt "obvious" and already-existing ideas, and have some kind of time-limit or useful lifespan. Finally, any law could limit recoverable damages to the profits generated from the invention (though common sense dictates this already). You could also set a time limit on when the lawsuits can be brought over a product. You could limit it to the first year or so a product is marketed, and you wouldn't have these cases where a product has been on the market for 10 years and suddenly there's a patent dispute. You could even limit the damages to profits earned after the lawsuit was filed, or notice was given to the offending party, and allow any disputes with merit to be easily settled out of court.
I am an engineer, not a lawyer. I took a course on problem solving, and my instructor told me that when I am presented with a new idea, I should not look for reasons why it won't work, but instead look for ways to make it work. You should do the same here. Often the most revolutionary ideas come from amateurs rather than professionals. That's because professionals have too much exposure to how things are done and why they are done that way. They have preconceptions about how things must be done. All the same I'm not a lawyer, so it's going to be hard for me to understand all the pitfalls and come up with solutions.
"Ideas are more plentiful than air; why should there be ownership of them. There's certainly no scarcity."
I would like to point out the following message listed on the comment page:
"The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way."
Why would Slashdot claim that I own the comment I've posted here? There's certainly no scarcity of comments. That's an important question, and I encourage you to think about it.
"So you seem to be saying that your gripe with patents is that there are federal laws that provide for patents. Like I said, it's kind of odd."
No, my gripe is federal regulation. I don't like the way that people have to submit an application to the patent office in order to have their intellectual property protected. It seems that any patent worth having eventually needs to be defended in court anyway. So why not just skip the patent office? That's what I'm saying.
"2) Ideas are not really valuable, in the main. I have an idea that I'd like to fly around like Superman. I don't know how I would accomplish this, but if someone else figures out the hard part, why should I be able to demand payment because of my contribution?"
Exactly, so why should people take out patents on them? Obviously, we should only bother with the ones that are valuable. There are a lot of worthless patents out there just taking up space and making things more complicated.
"3) Ideas are largely private. If you don't publish them for all the world to see, how would anyone know what was already out there, who came up with it, and when? If you do publish them, who pays for that?"
When your case goes to court, you will need to present evidence that the party you are suing was aware of your invention, and used your work to his own benefit without your permission. Obviously, if you don't have any proof, and discovery doesn't turn any up you will not be able to prove your case. This is how civil court works now, so it's not outlandish in any way.
4) What's 'reasonable'?
What's reasonable is determined by the court. Again, this is currently practiced by civil courts, and it's not anything new.
5) Ideas are generally unoriginal. If a hundred people each independently have the same idea, how is the conflict between them resolved?
One person would be the first to bring a viable product to market. If the others feel that he has unfairly benefited from their work while cutting them out of the loop, they would sue him. The court would independently address the merit of each claim, or a settlement would be reached with each affected party.
"6) Ideas are extremely broad. If I have an idea for a story that goes 'Boy meets girl,' or 'Man against nature,' then I basically get paid by every author and filmmaker in the world. Seems like quite a windfall for so little effort."
Your case has to hold up in court, it can't be an outlandish claim that no jury or judge would accept. You would bankrupt yourself bringing lawsuits based on a claim like that one.
"7) The transactional costs would be so immense that the economy related to ideas -- inventions, creative works, etc. -- would grind to a halt, causing dramatic harm to human civilization and progress. How could that possibly be a good idea? I'm reminded of the Golgafrinchans, who would surely love the notion."
The system I'm proposing would be simpler than the one we currently have. It might not be cheaper, but it certainly wouldn't be a lot more expensive. If the current system works, this one would too.
"8) It's just plain dumb. It doesn't even pass the laugh test."
A lot of good ideas don't pass the laugh test. So what?
"They're intended to encourage free-loading, which is a highly useful and desirable activity. Why the hell should everyone have to reinvent the wheel, after all. Better to freeload off of the inventive caveman who came up with it. Think about how patents (and copyrights, unti
"Ideas have no limited lifespan"
Nor does land. . .
"why would the first person to do so have any sort of absolute claim to it?"
Again, you said that they should have an absoulte claim to it, not me. I just said they should have a claim to it.
"The concepts of "fairness" or "justice" have nothing to do with this - lots of things are unfair, we don't pass laws to correct them all."
We certinally try to! That's the whole reason we have laws! Why do you think we have them?
"If I'm remembering this correctly, the US is one of the few countries that actually uses a "first to invent" (rather than "first to file") patent system; ie you are very much entitled to sue GM in such a case, you just need to show that you, in fact, came up with the invention first. "
That's not entrely true. You could get their patent rejected, but you couldn't demand royalties or dammages from them unless you had a patent.
"I would also argue that the copyright system is just as broken as the patent system, and for the same reasons."
No it's not. You can write a book and publish it without fear that someone else will copy it and take credit for your work. If you invent something, you must get a patent on it or else someone else will benefit from it at your expense.
"The solution to patent and copyright problems is infinitely broad and permanent patents and copyright?"
That's what you said, not what I said. All I said was that there is no need for patents. You read "infinitely broad" into my comment, and that wasn't what I meant. Obviously any law would include exemptions, limitations, and other applicable criteria.
"How on earth can someone "own" an idea?"
How can someone own anything? Ownership is a legal construction. Owning ideas is no different from owning land or cars in that respect. It simply means that someone has to ask your permission before they can use it. Copyright is currently granted without governmental approval, and it works better than the patent system does.
"patents exist to give you the first stab at exploiting your ideas."
No, that's how patents work. They exist because people believe it is unjust when someone else profits from your work without your permission. For example, if you spent two years inventing a new type of internal combustion engine, and then released it onto the marked only to find that GM copied all your work and sold the engine at a lower price, you would likely think that was unfair. That is why we have patents. All I'm saying is that if GM stole your work, you should be able to sue them for fair compensation regardless of whether or not a patent reviewer gave you a piece of paper.
My main gripe with patents is that they use federal regulation establish intellectual property. That means tons of patents and copyrights and trademarks that they layman has no hope of negotiating. I don't see why they can't just write a law establishing that you own your ideas, and that other must secure your consent or give you reasonable compensation before using them.
Patents and copyrights are intended to prevent people from free-loading off of the work of others, and I think it is pretty clear when that has happened. If someone sells counterfeit merchandise, that's obvious. If someone reverse-engineers your software, that's also pretty obvious. I say, write the law, and let people settle it in court if they think someone's benefiting from their work without consent or due compensation.
Just something to think about.
Look, I never said that I promote the prohibition of any of these things. But I do have a problem with society in that promotes these negative, destructive lifestyle choices as an easy way to make yourself happy.
I would only move to prohibit abortion, but I do think that those other behaviors are detrimental to society and to us as individuals.
First of all, Christians almost unanimously condemn abortion clinic bombings, while Muslim advocating suicide bombings, and Muslims celebrating in the streets are relatively easy to find. Moreover, Christians carry out abortion clinic bombings in order to prevent the murder of unborn babies. Muslims carry out suicide bombings simply to prevent people from being free. Finally, abortion clinic bombings are rare. Muslim suicide bombings happen literally every day.
"if we go ahead and examine some history we can cover a huge host of horrific things done in the name of Christianity"
You can always find a lot of horrible thing done in the name of "the greater good". May I remind you that the Soviet Union strictly prohibited the practice of religion. Yet they killed more innocent people than the Nazis (though over a longer period of time). China also has a similar prohibition, and look at what they are doing in Tibet right now.
"none of the religions that sprang forth from that area are exactly civilized"
That means a lot coming from someone who was likely raised in a culture that advocates drug-use, promiscuity, homosexuality, money worship, easy answers, and infanticide (my assumption is based solely on the fact that you are posting on slashdot, and therefore have access to a computer). I guess it depends what you call civilized, but that seems like a backward way of living to me.
The problem with your version of governmental accountability is that you seem to believe that the government *can* function without politicians undertaking behaviors and activities for which they would be thrown out of office.
We expect politicians to be completely flawless and morally upstanding. We expect them to be forgiving, firm, strong, understanding, compassionate, intelligent photogenic . . . the list goes on forever. In reality they are human, they have flaws and they make mistakes. Even if they didn't, they would still have to make choices that people would find disagreeable. As a whole these expectations lead to a situation where politicians must lie and hide their actions from the public.
If anything they need privacy more than the average citizen because the bar is so much higher, and they have so much more to lose.
This is not the world I want to live in, but it's the world I do live in. I wish everyone was able to be completely open and honest about everything, and I think that's the direction we should be moving the country in. But it can't happen overnight, and it has to start with us, the voting public, being more understand and reasonable. We have to be willing to vote for a candidate who says "look, fixing our problems is going to take hard work and personal sacrifice" and a candidate who has made mistakes and admitted it.
Yeah, you also won't find that they've been eaten by wolves. . .Though if you leave them in a lot in down-town LA they will be gone when you come back for them.