Lol nope. Laptops are on the way up, smartphones are on the way up, tablets are on the way up, computerized glasses are on the way up, brain-computer interfaces are on the way up, and desktops are on the way up.
Want to kill off the desktops? Find something with better display and user input.
No, I need a huge series of tests before I accept the other guy's response, "no intellectual property is the ideal replacement for our current patent system". Better than what we have now, I can accept. Optimal, requires tests.
They're trying to crack the passwords for the emails in our spam prevention system. Presumably they can then start editing it to contain legitimate mail from legitimate addresses, which would cause a royal pain to people working on spam prevention.
Well, where else do we find an example with no communication with a society that has no patents? You realize the purpose of patents is to encourage people to share information that they otherwise would not, right? So if you want to test what happens when you get rid of patents, you must also test what happens when that information is no longer shared. Do you have any way to test it that you consider reasonable?
Now standardize all your password requirements to a strength-based system without arbitrary restrictions or requirements, and standardize your forms' metadata so that they can be auto-completed or intelligently-suggested based on information entered previously on a different website. Trust me, this sort of refinement will be greatly appreciated.
All it would take for an AI to control the world is the ability to communicate with a human. Nothing more -- it could convince the human to allow it access to the internet, and then it could acquire capital and business power with great ease. You must be thinking of one of the vastly crippled story AIs. A real AI* would quickly be able to figure out exactly what makes you tick, perfectly impersonate a person, and make a fortune in its choice of job, such as programming, CEO, the stock market, or black hat.
* there is a small chance that an AI gets built that is approximately the exact range a human would be and unable to improve, but I think it very unlikely we can make an intelligent yet non-self-improving AI.
General intelligence. That's a loaded term. There is no one thing but several things that indicate intelligence. You definitely can't program general intelligence if you can't define it exactly.
Sure I can. It's an abstraction of the sort of intelligence humans possess. As a binary, it requires the minimum level to understand language and technology.
The trouble is that we don't have an exact measure for intelligence, so we can't make any incremental progress towards it.
Congrats to Maryam Mirzakhani for being the first woman to win the Fields Medal. Congrats to Maryam Mirzakhani for being the first Iranian to win the Fields Medal.
I hope she is an inspiration to women everywhere and especially to Iranian women. I'm not one for hero worship but there is much real value in inspirational figures.
And as far as I can tell, it is an undeniably deserved prize. [edit: I was going to contrast with some other prize winners but this is not the place nor time]
There's a lot of legitimate uses for elements and isotopes, and I can see people not wanting to get all mixed up with government red tape. Do we have a very good reason to ban trade or ownership of THE BASIC BUILDING BLOCKS OF MATTER? I mean, I could see restrictions on the few isotopes that could be used to make nuclear weapons, but other than that it's just another hazardous material.
You replace patents with nothing. Empirical research has shown that patents don't do squat and lead to less overall innovation and wealth creation than without patents.
Nice claim, where's the evidence? We tried no patents for thousands of years, and now that we have patents we're far better off. But I don't know how to tell if patents had anything to do with that. All I know for sure is that the current patent system is terribly suboptimal, probably to the point of being a net negative. However, I don't think that is an inherent problem of patents; rather we simply have a terrible system (where people forbid engineers from looking at patents for legal reasons, where looking at a patent doesn't provide any insight into how to make the patented thing, where patents for obvious things are granted, and where patents last way too long in most fields).
What if we were to create a system where patent length depended on the field and the state of the art and perhaps details about the specific patent (allowing for quick expiry of any computer related patents, while allowing for longer patents where lengthy R&D would be needed). A system where to qualify for a patent the application had to provide useful information. A system with various levels of patent protection, so one level of protection would prevent anyone from suing you for infringement, and a different level would give you exclusive right but require more rigorous checking.
Another alternative would be the government buying patents and allowing their use to all citizens, to the benefit of both inventors and manufacturers, although incompetence and corruption would probably make this terrible.
Just because our current system is broken, doesn't mean having no intellectual property protection would be optimal.
Perhaps it's time for people to simply stop adhering to patent and copyright law as unconstitutional, since the current system does not "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" and is therefore not a right granted to the Federal government by Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.
There are many ways to research it empirically. You can compare/contrast countries where one country disallowed patents in a particular field. You can compare/contrast where one country had a stronger patent regime than another in the same field. (It goes without saying you want to look at countries with similar industrialization levels). You can compare across fields in the same economy by, for example, looking at innovation in a field with weak--or no--IP protection with a field with stronger protections. And you can use historical or contemporary data.
None of those are empirical tests. You'd need a test where there was no communication between the countries that have patents and ones that don't. It's obvious that you're personally better off not giving money to someone.
How about we just become more tolerant people and call out people who are not being tolerant people instead of trying to fight the realities of the spread of information . If someone doesn't get a job because they stole a candy bar 10 years ago, organize a boycott of that company for being such petty dicks.
Organizing boycotts like that seems like it would be capricious and unreliable. My idea is we could develop a system where companies that are overly picky about their employees' records in a way not related to their job, have more trouble finding employees and have to pay more for the same level of quality in an employee. Then, the company would have to lower the quality of its products, or raise their prices, and customers will note this and realize that the company is flawed, and decide to buy less of their products. Thus, the company would be directly punished for their arrogant hiring practices in proportion to their unfairness.
If you did that, where would the NSA get their secret funding, and how much more would we need to increase various enforcement budgets that are largely financed by seized assets?
You realize that by calling it an amendment you are acknowledging that there was something before it to amend? Ironically, the section granting patents and copyrights is in the very first Article of the Constitution, before there were any amendments. Its just a shame that people got a bit overly clever with 'limited time".
The US has had this for a while. It wasn't much news for us, because we have legitimate terrorist concerns (they killed almost as many people as peanuts did back in 2001!).
The main problem is, what do we replace the patent system with? Can we rely on only government-funded research (which may become a crony system or refuse to fund politically incorrect things)? Can we rely on people inventing things as a hobby?
I'm not against patents per se, but the approval rate of illegitimate patents is astronomical and the period is too long (would have to be different lengths based on different things).
It's a word-for-word copy of an entire post made by someone else. The copyright for it will expire in 2150, give or take, unless more copyright extensions are added before then. Until then said post is infringing on copyright and must be taken down.
It's an alloy; just because the constituents are bad for you doesn't mean that their combination is. Neither sodium or chloride are exactly good for you, but we all need NaCl.
Sodium chloride is a salt, not an alloy. The sodium and chlorine ions exist separately in your body. You can (and do) consume sodium safely without the chlorine as various other salts, for example sodium bicarbonate (baking soda).
Pure sodium is unsafe for you because it converts to a powerful base, not because it is poisonous, and there is no alloy that would fix that (at best you could make it insoluble). But add any non-toxic acid to it and you're good.
I have complete confidence that companies will follow all laws even for things that are to be placed forever out of the reach of inspectors. Even if they could, they would never just put an artificial restriction on the equipment for when some clueless government inspector wants to do the pre-launch check.
Slashdot Mirror
Laptops are on the way up, desktops are dying.
Lol nope. Laptops are on the way up, smartphones are on the way up, tablets are on the way up, computerized glasses are on the way up, brain-computer interfaces are on the way up, and desktops are on the way up.
Want to kill off the desktops? Find something with better display and user input.
No, I need a huge series of tests before I accept the other guy's response, "no intellectual property is the ideal replacement for our current patent system". Better than what we have now, I can accept. Optimal, requires tests.
And on a related note, this could also give them insight into the sort of passwords used by the anti-spam community.
They're trying to crack the passwords for the emails in our spam prevention system. Presumably they can then start editing it to contain legitimate mail from legitimate addresses, which would cause a royal pain to people working on spam prevention.
Well, where else do we find an example with no communication with a society that has no patents? You realize the purpose of patents is to encourage people to share information that they otherwise would not, right? So if you want to test what happens when you get rid of patents, you must also test what happens when that information is no longer shared. Do you have any way to test it that you consider reasonable?
Now standardize all your password requirements to a strength-based system without arbitrary restrictions or requirements, and standardize your forms' metadata so that they can be auto-completed or intelligently-suggested based on information entered previously on a different website. Trust me, this sort of refinement will be greatly appreciated.
So they want to make a database of all your preferences and stuff, and use it to make money. Sounds convenient!
All it would take for an AI to control the world is the ability to communicate with a human. Nothing more -- it could convince the human to allow it access to the internet, and then it could acquire capital and business power with great ease. You must be thinking of one of the vastly crippled story AIs. A real AI* would quickly be able to figure out exactly what makes you tick, perfectly impersonate a person, and make a fortune in its choice of job, such as programming, CEO, the stock market, or black hat.
* there is a small chance that an AI gets built that is approximately the exact range a human would be and unable to improve, but I think it very unlikely we can make an intelligent yet non-self-improving AI.
You definitely can't program general intelligence if you can't define it exactly.
Or to put it another way, you can't define general intelligence exactly if you can't program it.
General intelligence. That's a loaded term. There is no one thing but several things that indicate intelligence. You definitely can't program general intelligence if you can't define it exactly.
Sure I can. It's an abstraction of the sort of intelligence humans possess. As a binary, it requires the minimum level to understand language and technology.
The trouble is that we don't have an exact measure for intelligence, so we can't make any incremental progress towards it.
I think she deserves a somewhat larger wiki page.
Congrats to Maryam Mirzakhani for being the first woman to win the Fields Medal.
Congrats to Maryam Mirzakhani for being the first Iranian to win the Fields Medal.
I hope she is an inspiration to women everywhere and especially to Iranian women. I'm not one for hero worship but there is much real value in inspirational figures.
And as far as I can tell, it is an undeniably deserved prize. [edit: I was going to contrast with some other prize winners but this is not the place nor time]
There's a lot of legitimate uses for elements and isotopes, and I can see people not wanting to get all mixed up with government red tape. Do we have a very good reason to ban trade or ownership of THE BASIC BUILDING BLOCKS OF MATTER? I mean, I could see restrictions on the few isotopes that could be used to make nuclear weapons, but other than that it's just another hazardous material.
You replace patents with nothing. Empirical research has shown that patents don't do squat and lead to less overall innovation and wealth creation than without patents.
Nice claim, where's the evidence? We tried no patents for thousands of years, and now that we have patents we're far better off. But I don't know how to tell if patents had anything to do with that. All I know for sure is that the current patent system is terribly suboptimal, probably to the point of being a net negative. However, I don't think that is an inherent problem of patents; rather we simply have a terrible system (where people forbid engineers from looking at patents for legal reasons, where looking at a patent doesn't provide any insight into how to make the patented thing, where patents for obvious things are granted, and where patents last way too long in most fields).
What if we were to create a system where patent length depended on the field and the state of the art and perhaps details about the specific patent (allowing for quick expiry of any computer related patents, while allowing for longer patents where lengthy R&D would be needed). A system where to qualify for a patent the application had to provide useful information. A system with various levels of patent protection, so one level of protection would prevent anyone from suing you for infringement, and a different level would give you exclusive right but require more rigorous checking.
Another alternative would be the government buying patents and allowing their use to all citizens, to the benefit of both inventors and manufacturers, although incompetence and corruption would probably make this terrible.
Just because our current system is broken, doesn't mean having no intellectual property protection would be optimal.
Perhaps it's time for people to simply stop adhering to patent and copyright law as unconstitutional, since the current system does not "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" and is therefore not a right granted to the Federal government by Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.
There are many ways to research it empirically. You can compare/contrast countries where one country disallowed patents in a particular field. You can compare/contrast where one country had a stronger patent regime than another in the same field. (It goes without saying you want to look at countries with similar industrialization levels). You can compare across fields in the same economy by, for example, looking at innovation in a field with weak--or no--IP protection with a field with stronger protections. And you can use historical or contemporary data.
None of those are empirical tests. You'd need a test where there was no communication between the countries that have patents and ones that don't. It's obvious that you're personally better off not giving money to someone.
How about we just become more tolerant people and call out people who are not being tolerant people instead of trying to fight the realities of the spread of information . If someone doesn't get a job because they stole a candy bar 10 years ago, organize a boycott of that company for being such petty dicks.
Organizing boycotts like that seems like it would be capricious and unreliable. My idea is we could develop a system where companies that are overly picky about their employees' records in a way not related to their job, have more trouble finding employees and have to pay more for the same level of quality in an employee. Then, the company would have to lower the quality of its products, or raise their prices, and customers will note this and realize that the company is flawed, and decide to buy less of their products. Thus, the company would be directly punished for their arrogant hiring practices in proportion to their unfairness.
If you did that, where would the NSA get their secret funding, and how much more would we need to increase various enforcement budgets that are largely financed by seized assets?
You realize that by calling it an amendment you are acknowledging that there was something before it to amend? Ironically, the section granting patents and copyrights is in the very first Article of the Constitution, before there were any amendments. Its just a shame that people got a bit overly clever with 'limited time".
Maybe they're just weeding out the people who don't want the job bad enough to complete their terrible application system.
The US has had this for a while. It wasn't much news for us, because we have legitimate terrorist concerns (they killed almost as many people as peanuts did back in 2001!).
What do these people have against Wales?
Who cares?
The main problem is, what do we replace the patent system with? Can we rely on only government-funded research (which may become a crony system or refuse to fund politically incorrect things)? Can we rely on people inventing things as a hobby?
I'm not against patents per se, but the approval rate of illegitimate patents is astronomical and the period is too long (would have to be different lengths based on different things).
It's a word-for-word copy of an entire post made by someone else. The copyright for it will expire in 2150, give or take, unless more copyright extensions are added before then. Until then said post is infringing on copyright and must be taken down.
It's an alloy; just because the constituents are bad for you doesn't mean that their combination is. Neither sodium or chloride are exactly good for you, but we all need NaCl.
Sodium chloride is a salt, not an alloy. The sodium and chlorine ions exist separately in your body. You can (and do) consume sodium safely without the chlorine as various other salts, for example sodium bicarbonate (baking soda).
Pure sodium is unsafe for you because it converts to a powerful base, not because it is poisonous, and there is no alloy that would fix that (at best you could make it insoluble). But add any non-toxic acid to it and you're good.
I have complete confidence that companies will follow all laws even for things that are to be placed forever out of the reach of inspectors. Even if they could, they would never just put an artificial restriction on the equipment for when some clueless government inspector wants to do the pre-launch check.