What is wrong with importing talent?
on
Johnny Can So Program
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I am all for the smartest people in the world coming to work here. America is founded on immigrant labor: people who are willing to move across an ocean for economic opportunity are always smarter, tougher, and harder working than their peers who stay in their homelands.
H1Bs don't take our jobs at gunpoint. If you lost your job to an H1B it is because they were smarter or willing to work harder for less money. Being born in the USA does not entitle you to a free lunch. If you don't like it, too bad. Maybe if you spent less time complaining on slashdot and more time being productive, you would be getting paid more.
I know a girl who was going to be a doctor. She went to college, realized it was going to be rather hard, and decided to marry a doctor instead. Guys don't have that option. I don't think women have less capability than men, but they have an easy out, especially the attractive ones.
Most of this thread is just tools trying to derogate women in an attempt to make up for their relative lack of reproductive value.
The correlation between intelligence and unhappiness has been observed by people as far back as Bacon. A quick glance at the list confirms that most professionals (lawyers, engineers, scientists) are unhappy.
For example, in justifying their decision they cite a National Equirer article written by a guy in Florida. The journalist was sued for libel and the California courts ruled that since he had done 'reseach' [this is National Equirer we are talking about here] by telephone in CA, and National Enquirers were availible in CA he could be sued under CA law.
OTOH, I simply cannot agree that in this case the long arm statue should be applied. Suppose some one in a 50 person town in Montana passes a law making it illegal to link to or serve any form of computer code unless one is a registered corporation. They could then use this precedent to enforce this law on people with webservers in Britain, California, Iowa, wherever. This is an extreme example, but the point remains: The State is much to small to write laws pertaining to the internet. At least with countries one only has to worry about maybe 10 sets of laws.
One thing to keep in mind here is that our legal system was *designed* to discourage change. The internet has only really seen widespread use in the past 5 years or so. The people that are using it are mainly 20-30-40 years of age. In another 15-20 years, when we start getting judges and legislators who grew up with the internet, things may change a great deal. Unfortunately it may be too late by then . . .
'Pass' states are called Zugzwang. They don't occur very often in the middlegame [aside from the famous Alekhine-Nimzowitch and Saemish-Nimzovitch], but they are quite common in the endgame. The simplest example is when one side is K+P vs K.
Example:
White King: e6
White Pawn: e5
Black King: e8
Now, with a 'pass move' black draws. All he has to do is sit there on the e8 square and white can never queen the pawn. But he has to move, which loses: 1...Kd8 2. Kf7 Kd7 c6+ and the white pawn queens.
Most chess programs only use the null move when there are several pieces left on the board; it is then fairly safe.
1) Kramnik is rated about 200 FIDE points higher than Fritz. Fritz played an equal match [all games drawn] with Dr. Robert Huebner of Germany [mid 2600 elo]. Kramnik is much stronger, and he has more energy due to being 40 years younger.
2) Anti computer techniques exist. Basically, computers have excellent tactical vision but poor strategic vision. So if I try to catch one with a knight fork, it won't work, but it will happily fall into a positional trap and lose 40 mores later. Most GMs don't bother to learn these because they would rather spend their time trying to beat other humans.
3) Kramnik's style is more suited to playing a machine than Kasparov's. Kasparov is mainly a tactical player. He wins by outcalculating his opponents. Kramnik is mainly a positional player. He wins by strangling people in the endgame. When he played Deep Blue, Kasparov tried to play positionally. It just wasn't his style.
4) Most GMs use Fritz as their computer analysis program, including Kramnik. He has a good feel for how the program works and can prepare opening surprises.
Don't get me wrong, computers are getting better and better at chess. Traditionally a program gains approximately 50 ELO points for every doubling in processor speed. Given that Fritz is approximately a 2600 program, that to convincingly beat Kramnik would require about a 2900 rating, and that processor speeds double about every 18 months, I predict that in another 10 years or so a PC may be able to give the world champion a run for his money. But not today.
As I see it, three relatively small changes could clean up the US IP situtation greatly.
1) The government needs to hire some geeks. The biggest problem with IP is that the people who control IP laws [Patent offices, Judges, Congressmen] do not understand technology. For example, Amazon's one-click patent was absolutely ridiculous. Its obvious they need to hire 10 or 20 good people with Ph.D's in EE/CE/CS. Perhaps congress could create some sort of technological advisory committee.
2) The time limit on IP has been inflated by lobbying by corporations and should be reduced. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Fox own 'Planet of the Apes' for *99* years?? Isn't the Amazon 1-click patent viable for 14 years? In 14 years we won't even *have* mice. And Amazon will own a patent on '1-word' shopping' IMHO, copyright should be about 10 years and patents about 3. Technology moves so fast today that even a few years is a *very long time*.
3) It needs to be more costly to sue in America. In Australia, the loser pays all court costs. People are going nuts with the litigous system in America because *it costs them nothing if they lose*. TechSearch would be a lot more careful if, in an incorrect suit, they were slapped with $5 million in legal fees.
In reality we probably need a totally new system of IP laws, but I think those three points would clean up the existing system quite a bit.
The findings indicated long-term changes in atmospheric CH4, CO2, ozone (O3) and CFC 11 and 12 concentrations and, consequently, a significant increase in the earth's greenhouse effect.
This is my problem with all environmental stuff. THIS IS NOT IN ANY WAY PROOF OF A GREENHOUSE EFFECT. All this says is that we have more C02; not that temperatures are drastically increasing.
Most of the 'evidence' I see is computer simulations and doomsday predictions and I simply find myself unable to be persuaded. Also, don't forget that scientists have to get research grants to study phenomena. They aren't exactly unbiased.
Try this. Imagine trying to have a relationship with someone who considers themself fundamentally better than you. These are some of the most irritating people around.
The reason I had social problems in middle and high school was that I simply felt I was superior to all the "drooling idiots" there. It's true I was vastly more intelligent that essentially all of them, but they had many skills I didn't: how to talk to girls, or more studying discipline, or maybe they were better with cars. The point is, given Person A and Person B, one can always find one thing that A is better than B at, and one thing that B is better than A at.
The simple fact of the matter is, there are lots of people out there who like cracking stuff like this, and have a lot of free time. No matter what they do, there will always be _someone_ who cracks the encryption, reverse engineers the player, whatever. I predict that within one month of release, SDMI's "secure" format will be cracked. And once even one copy gets on Napster or Gnutella . . . .
What they need to do is change their model. I think Stephen King's idea (sell chapters as people pay) is probably the best way. For example, Metallica could set up a website where people order their next CD, for say $10. Once the number of people who ordered the CD gets to 1,000,000, Metallica ships the CDs. Metallica gets guaranteed income, the people that pay $10 for the CDs are happy because they got the little jacket with the lyrics, supported the band, and can play it in their car without burning it, and the rest of the world gets their music for free.
Of course, ultimately I don't see what the RIAA's problem with online music is. CD sales reached record highs this year and Napster users are among the biggest CD buyers . .. -Coz
The metric system is superior not because the actual values are some god-given quantity butbecause it is easy to convert between units:
Examples:
1 liter = 1 cubic decimeter or 1/1000 cubic meters.
1000 meters = 1 kilometer
This is very helpful when doing physics or engineering.
Also there are some serious holes in your argument that there are more integer factors in 5280 than 1000. Why? 5280 is 5 times larger, therefore it will have more factors.
I do'nt know why I'm even responding to a troll like this. -Coz
That's not at all what it's about. This isn't a crypto war. It's like someone robbed a bank, and told all his friends how to get past security, then got caught and tried to convince everyone that he's the good guy for revealing that the bank had bad security. The point is that it was illegal to crack the encryption, and illegal to distribute the tool for doing so. If anyone doubts that it was really illegal, check out the DMCA. And it was the judge's job to uphold the law. So when he saw some kids arguing "Sure, we broke the law, but it was really their fault because their crypto sucked ass." of course he treated them with contempt. Their few defenses were bullshit. Development of a Linux player? Well besides the fact that developing an Open Source Linux player would be drastically violating DVD-CCA's intellectual property, (they spend money developing CSS, and they get that money back through licensing) the code was developed in Windows. But wait, he has another defense:
First, Courts are supposed to uphold the law, but they also _make_ the law. Everyone knows about historic court decisions like Brown vs. Board of Education or Miranda. The courts have overturned laws as unconstitutional before. This is clearly a groundbreaking case: one of the first if not the first use of the DMCA. As such, he should definitely consider the constitutionality of the DMCA in his decision. In my opinion, by the time this thing is over, MPAA vs 2600 will be a landmark case that is used to determine digital rights for some time.
Secondly, I have trouble with ANY real-life/internet analogies. In your bank analogy, there is no question: the bank lost money. But, DeCSS is more tricky: there ARE legitimate uses (LiViD) and one can argue how much money the MPAA really lost to DeCSS. I would argue that it's actually quite small.
Third, I honestly think intellectual property, already under drastic assault by the web, is going to die. It simply is going to be too difficult to enforce. I don't think information wants to be free, but I do think that trying to prevent piracy of digital media will be impossible. As more and more people get broadband net access, the MPAA will face the same problems as the RIAA.
I agree with a lot of what you've said, and/. does tend to be a lot of rabid GNUists:) But the fact of the matter is you (and Judge Kaplan) are applying laws to the internet that were not designed with it in account.
Suppose I download an old copy of, say Castle of the Winds, and (its actually not a bad game, although its graphics are bad) play this for a month.
Well, since I was playing Castle of the Winds, I didn't buy Diablo II. Software companies are simply afraid people will choose older, free software over newer, better (one hopes) software that costs $50+.
Part of the problem here (at least in the gaming industry) is that graphics are not nearly as important as many people think. I know a lot of games that are a blast to play even though they don't have super-up-to-date-graphics. Many older games have better gameplay than current ones.
The bottom line is, companies are worried about you getting the old software for free, because then you won't buy the new software. -Coz
To become an International Master requires a FIDE rating of 2400 and 3 IM norms. To become a Grandmaster requires a FIDE rating 2500 and 3 GM norms.
To gain a 'norm' requires an equal performance vs gms in a tournament. For example if i was an IM I could play at Wijk an Zee (well to get in you have to be a grandmaster anyway) play 4 GMs, win 1, lose 1, draw 2, and get a GM norm.
Garry Kasparov has a rating of 2800-2830(it fluctuates). His nearest competitors are several 'super gms' in the 2700s, Anand, Karpov, Adams, Shirov, Morozevich, Kramnik, Topalov, and I think that is about it. The average rating is ~1600. A 300 point rating difference is in general the 'crushing' distance, i.e. a 1900 should beat a 1600 9 out of 10 times or so.
Slashdot Mirror
I am all for the smartest people in the world coming to work here. America is founded on immigrant labor: people who are willing to move across an ocean for economic opportunity are always smarter, tougher, and harder working than their peers who stay in their homelands.
H1Bs don't take our jobs at gunpoint. If you lost your job to an H1B it is because they were smarter or willing to work harder for less money. Being born in the USA does not entitle you to a free lunch. If you don't like it, too bad. Maybe if you spent less time complaining on slashdot and more time being productive, you would be getting paid more.
I know a girl who was going to be a doctor. She went to college, realized it was going to be rather hard, and decided to marry a doctor instead. Guys don't have that option. I don't think women have less capability than men, but they have an easy out, especially the attractive ones.
Most of this thread is just tools trying to derogate women in an attempt to make up for their relative lack of reproductive value.
anthony
Please send money to ACCT#145253, Trust Bank, Abuja, Nigeria.
The Russian Space Group
The correlation between intelligence and unhappiness has been observed by people as far back as Bacon. A quick glance at the list confirms that most professionals (lawyers, engineers, scientists) are unhappy.
The interesting question is _why_.
anthony
For example, in justifying their decision they cite a National Equirer article written by a guy in Florida. The journalist was sued for libel and the California courts ruled that since he had done 'reseach' [this is National Equirer we are talking about here] by telephone in CA, and National Enquirers were availible in CA he could be sued under CA law.
OTOH, I simply cannot agree that in this case the long arm statue should be applied. Suppose some one in a 50 person town in Montana passes a law making it illegal to link to or serve any form of computer code unless one is a registered corporation. They could then use this precedent to enforce this law on people with webservers in Britain, California, Iowa, wherever. This is an extreme example, but the point remains: The State is much to small to write laws pertaining to the internet. At least with countries one only has to worry about maybe 10 sets of laws.
One thing to keep in mind here is that our legal system was *designed* to discourage change. The internet has only really seen widespread use in the past 5 years or so. The people that are using it are mainly 20-30-40 years of age. In another 15-20 years, when we start getting judges and legislators who grew up with the internet, things may change a great deal. Unfortunately it may be too late by then . . .
'Pass' states are called Zugzwang. They don't occur very often in the middlegame [aside from the famous Alekhine-Nimzowitch and Saemish-Nimzovitch], but they are quite common in the endgame. The simplest example is when one side is K+P vs K.
Example:
White King: e6
White Pawn: e5
Black King: e8
Now, with a 'pass move' black draws. All he has to do is sit there on the e8 square and white can never queen the pawn. But he has to move, which loses: 1...Kd8 2. Kf7 Kd7 c6+ and the white pawn queens.
Most chess programs only use the null move when there are several pieces left on the board; it is then fairly safe.
1) Kramnik is rated about 200 FIDE points higher than Fritz. Fritz played an equal match [all games drawn] with Dr. Robert Huebner of Germany [mid 2600 elo]. Kramnik is much stronger, and he has more energy due to being 40 years younger.
2) Anti computer techniques exist. Basically, computers have excellent tactical vision but poor strategic vision. So if I try to catch one with a knight fork, it won't work, but it will happily fall into a positional trap and lose 40 mores later. Most GMs don't bother to learn these because they would rather spend their time trying to beat other humans.
3) Kramnik's style is more suited to playing a machine than Kasparov's. Kasparov is mainly a tactical player. He wins by outcalculating his opponents. Kramnik is mainly a positional player. He wins by strangling people in the endgame. When he played Deep Blue, Kasparov tried to play positionally. It just wasn't his style.
4) Most GMs use Fritz as their computer analysis program, including Kramnik. He has a good feel for how the program works and can prepare opening surprises.
Don't get me wrong, computers are getting better and better at chess. Traditionally a program gains approximately 50 ELO points for every doubling in processor speed. Given that Fritz is approximately a 2600 program, that to convincingly beat Kramnik would require about a 2900 rating, and that processor speeds double about every 18 months, I predict that in another 10 years or so a PC may be able to give the world champion a run for his money. But not today.
Forecast: Kramnik 6.5;Fritz 3.5. Kramnik +3=7-0.
As I see it, three relatively small changes could clean up the US IP situtation greatly.
1) The government needs to hire some geeks. The biggest problem with IP is that the people who control IP laws [Patent offices, Judges, Congressmen] do not understand technology. For example, Amazon's one-click patent was absolutely ridiculous. Its obvious they need to hire 10 or 20 good people with Ph.D's in EE/CE/CS. Perhaps congress could create some sort of technological advisory committee.
2) The time limit on IP has been inflated by lobbying by corporations and should be reduced. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Fox own 'Planet of the Apes' for *99* years?? Isn't the Amazon 1-click patent viable for 14 years? In 14 years we won't even *have* mice. And Amazon will own a patent on '1-word' shopping' IMHO, copyright should be about 10 years and patents about 3. Technology moves so fast today that even a few years is a *very long time*.
3) It needs to be more costly to sue in America. In Australia, the loser pays all court costs. People are going nuts with the litigous system in America because *it costs them nothing if they lose*. TechSearch would be a lot more careful if, in an incorrect suit, they were slapped with $5 million in legal fees.
In reality we probably need a totally new system of IP laws, but I think those three points would clean up the existing system quite a bit.
Wasn't it Rousseau and not Hobbes who came up with social contract?
>>from study
The findings indicated long-term changes in atmospheric CH4, CO2, ozone (O3) and CFC 11 and 12 concentrations and, consequently, a significant increase in the earth's greenhouse effect.
This is my problem with all environmental stuff. THIS IS NOT IN ANY WAY PROOF OF A GREENHOUSE EFFECT. All this says is that we have more C02; not that temperatures are drastically increasing.
Most of the 'evidence' I see is computer simulations and doomsday predictions and I simply find myself unable to be persuaded. Also, don't forget that scientists have to get research grants to study phenomena. They aren't exactly unbiased.
I agree with Reality Master 100%.
Try this. Imagine trying to have a relationship with someone who considers themself fundamentally better than you. These are some of the most irritating people around.
The reason I had social problems in middle and high school was that I simply felt I was superior to all the "drooling idiots" there. It's true I was vastly more intelligent that essentially all of them, but they had many skills I didn't: how to talk to girls, or more studying discipline, or maybe they were better with cars. The point is, given Person A and Person B, one can always find one thing that A is better than B at, and one thing that B is better than A at.
-Coz
The simple fact of the matter is, there are lots of people out there who like cracking stuff like this, and have a lot of free time. No matter what they do, there will always be _someone_ who cracks the encryption, reverse engineers the player, whatever. I predict that within one month of release, SDMI's "secure" format will be cracked. And once even one copy gets on Napster or Gnutella . . . .
.
What they need to do is change their model. I think Stephen King's idea (sell chapters as people pay) is probably the best way. For example, Metallica could set up a website where people order their next CD, for say $10. Once the number of people who ordered the CD gets to 1,000,000, Metallica ships the CDs. Metallica gets guaranteed income, the people that pay $10 for the CDs are happy because they got the little jacket with the lyrics, supported the band, and can play it in their car without burning it, and the rest of the world gets their music for free.
Of course, ultimately I don't see what the RIAA's problem with online music is. CD sales reached record highs this year and Napster users are among the biggest CD buyers . .
-Coz
The metric system is superior not because the actual values are some god-given quantity butbecause it is easy to convert between units:
Examples:
1 liter = 1 cubic decimeter or 1/1000 cubic meters.
1000 meters = 1 kilometer
This is very helpful when doing physics or engineering.
Also there are some serious holes in your argument that there are more integer factors in 5280 than 1000. Why? 5280 is 5 times larger, therefore it will have more factors.
I do'nt know why I'm even responding to a troll like this.
-Coz
That's not at all what it's about. This isn't a crypto war. It's like someone robbed a bank, and told all his friends how to get past security, then got caught and tried to convince everyone that he's the good guy for revealing that the bank had bad security. The point is that it was illegal to crack the encryption, and illegal to distribute the tool for doing so. If anyone doubts that it was really illegal, check out the DMCA. And it was the judge's job to uphold the law. So when he saw some kids arguing "Sure, we broke the law, but it was really their fault because their crypto sucked ass." of course he treated them with contempt. Their few defenses were bullshit. Development of a Linux player? Well besides the fact that developing an Open Source Linux player would be drastically violating DVD-CCA's intellectual property, (they spend money developing CSS, and they get that money back through licensing) the code was developed in Windows. But wait, he has another defense:
/. does tend to be a lot of rabid GNUists :) But the fact of the matter is you (and Judge Kaplan) are applying laws to the internet that were not designed with it in account.
First, Courts are supposed to uphold the law, but they also _make_ the law. Everyone knows about historic court decisions like Brown vs. Board of Education or Miranda. The courts have overturned laws as unconstitutional before. This is clearly a groundbreaking case: one of the first if not the first use of the DMCA. As such, he should definitely consider the constitutionality of the DMCA in his decision. In my opinion, by the time this thing is over, MPAA vs 2600 will be a landmark case that is used to determine digital rights for some time.
Secondly, I have trouble with ANY real-life/internet analogies. In your bank analogy, there is no question: the bank lost money. But, DeCSS is more tricky: there ARE legitimate uses (LiViD) and one can argue how much money the MPAA really lost to DeCSS. I would argue that it's actually quite small.
Third, I honestly think intellectual property, already under drastic assault by the web, is going to die. It simply is going to be too difficult to enforce. I don't think information wants to be free, but I do think that trying to prevent piracy of digital media will be impossible. As more and more people get broadband net access, the MPAA will face the same problems as the RIAA.
I agree with a lot of what you've said, and
-Coz
Suppose I download an old copy of, say Castle of the Winds, and (its actually not a bad game, although its graphics are bad) play this for a month.
Well, since I was playing Castle of the Winds, I didn't buy Diablo II. Software companies are simply afraid people will choose older, free software over newer, better (one hopes) software that costs $50+.
Part of the problem here (at least in the gaming industry) is that graphics are not nearly as important as many people think. I know a lot of games that are a blast to play even though they don't have super-up-to-date-graphics. Many older games have better gameplay than current ones.
The bottom line is, companies are worried about you getting the old software for free, because then you won't buy the new software.
-Coz
Well they've gone to 150,000 people registered as of 4:00PM 23rd Oct. Never underestimate the power of /.
Coz
To become an International Master requires a FIDE rating of 2400 and 3 IM norms.
To become a Grandmaster requires a FIDE rating 2500 and 3 GM norms.
To gain a 'norm' requires an equal performance vs gms in a tournament. For example if i was an IM I could play at Wijk an Zee (well to get in you have to be a grandmaster anyway) play 4 GMs, win 1, lose 1, draw 2, and get a GM norm.
Garry Kasparov has a rating of 2800-2830(it fluctuates). His nearest competitors are several 'super gms' in the 2700s, Anand, Karpov, Adams, Shirov, Morozevich, Kramnik, Topalov, and I think that is about it. The average rating is ~1600. A 300 point rating difference is in general the 'crushing' distance, i.e. a 1900 should beat a 1600 9 out of 10 times or so.
supercoz