Interesting stuff. I wasn't aware Nanophosphate batteries were already in production. I wonder what the capacities are though. Zinc foil and carbon doesn't seem like it'd hold that much charge.
Cheap, relatively easy to design, and practical to what kids are interested in (loud music). Might even allow them to appreciate clean audio sounds instead of "dude! it's got a lot of bass!"
EM field changes do but current (pun intended) circuits are all based on the speed of electrons through a conductor (or semiconductor) which is far far far far far slower than light through a waveguide.
As others have said, all the major FPGA vendors provide cheap starter kits and software to go along. They're a great way to start.
What is essential, though is to understand the concepts of digital design. It's out of print and still expensive (even used) but get yourself a copy of "HDL Chip Design" by Douglas Smith. It is still hands-down the best book on HDL chip design (with every example given in both VHDL and Verilog).
The important thing to realize is that the language isn't important. You have to start with visualizing the gates, bits and timing windows; then move on to figuring out how to describe those circuits in a language. The Smith book guides you through this learning process.
if it's obviously woefully ignorant of basic facts, it's deluded, and not theoretical. i'm not asking you to be rigorously rigid, i'm asking you to call a duck a duck: if its more fantasy than creative extrapolation, then be intellectually honest please. there are plenty of cases in science where what was once controversial fringe is now solid canon. but for every one of those cases, there a million more ideas which were put forth seriously and are obviously feeble idiocy
I fail to see what you're point is. There are bad and nonsensical philosophical ideas about ethics, many, yes. That doesn't invalidate the good ones nor does it refute the argument that most if not all good legal systems aim to achieve goals set out by these ideologies. I think you're just ranting about how much you don't like the philosophy students at this point.
theoretical physics isn't science fiction. science fiction would be better analogy to what i was refuting. there are people out there who advocate for social systems that are the equivalent to believing in fire breathing dragons and ewoks: articulating a social system that depends upon human behavior that doesn't exist
In the same way most theories in physics start out with ideal cases (spherical chicken in a vacuum) that are unrealistic. I think you're letting a bit of bias and stereotype get in the way of seeing theoretical ethics for what it is: a starting point. People argue about "what happens in this perfect world" in order to get at "what would be most right". There are fanatics, mind you, that will hear this and think they can implement it in a week. That was never the point. Socrates never intended virtue ethics to be a practical system of law. Mill never intended utilitarianism to be a practical political or economic system. God knows what kind of system Kant would've thought about.
Saying that these philosophies have no value because they cannot be implemented in their ideal form -- the same way you'll never have a perfect vacuum or a frictionless surface -- doesn't devalue their contribution. When people set out to create a legal system, they take a philosophy and shape a practical system that can get as close as possible to achieving that goal.
theoretical physics does not try to defy established physics canon, it teases out hidden potential meaning in edge conditions.
Philosophical ethics doesn't try to defy human behavior. The reason so many philosophy students like to use sci-fi is because it presents an isolated condition that one can arrive at a consistent code of morality. Real life is messy, real human nature is convoluted. Philosophical ethics attempts to break that up by asking questions like "assuming humans didn't have this tendency, would this still be right?" to get at the heart of things.
The model still predicts what happens. You are just ignoring 80% of it.
I did say that you have to *match* your model prediction with real results. If you ignore 80% of your results, you're not exactly matching your theory with reality. Sorry but you're just griping at this point. Math and science are not flawed, ignoring math and science and selectively using parts of it is. It has nothing to do with the methodology being lacking, it has to do with people ignoring it.
I don't get it. In your examples you are still following well defined rules. Everything you described has rules. If you can shape or bend your data to fit those rules you are golden. Make the data fit your model. That is not fuzzy.
What you don't get is the second part of science that those drug companies were circumventing: testing the results with actual experimentation. You can bend all the numbers with an arbitrary set of rules all you want but if what your model predicts isn't what happens in the real world, you've made a mistake somewhere.
Ramsey theorem predicts group formation in a cluster and finds the minimum number of clusters that can be formed. This can be infinitely useful to say, secure/unsecure network separation, social theories on mating, etc. But in order to have a particular theory have any weight, it needs to be tested.
Speech recognition theory is the same. You test your result based on how accurate your algorithm is. What's fuzzy is that there is no "algorithm was right" or "algorithm was wrong". One algorithm recognized ~50% of a speaker's words. The other recognized 80%.
*Working* legal codes are created by people who can grasp social realities and yet try to apply as much of the philosophical ethics as possible in order to gain as much justice (hence why the system is not perfect) while still managing to work. Saying that theoretical ethics is pointless is like saying theoretical physics is pointless.
Theoretical ethics defines a goal. Without it, one is simply tied to "end justifies the means" mentality. The point is the philosophy of justice isn't to come up with a system that works; it's there to be used by others as a guidance of how a system of justice *should* work. And a legal system -- while it may have to be balanced by the will of the populous at times -- has a first and foremost duty to follow those philosophies.
That's why we have a judicial branch separate from the legislative branch. The law is there to be impartial and blind. The Congress is there to hear the will of the people.
I'm sorry but that's just biased "I didn't understand it so it's all subjective" mentality. While I'm not going to comment on your particular professor -- he may indeed have had an agenda -- basing a judgment on probability on your "I got it wrong" experience is just ignorant.
Math, applied math -- otherwise called engineering is about 3 steps:
1. Find a way to formulate a real world situation using numbers and rules. 2. Manipulate those numbers according to rules that have been proven to correlate to how the real world functions. 3. Map the resulting numbers to real world cases.
Each steps involve careful and often painfully rigorous validation before declared "correct" and just because step 2 involves a definite answer doesn't mean that your results will be "true/false".
Take, for example, Ramsey numbers. On the surface they appear as nothing more than some abstract idea and a rigorous exercise in counting. It's when you start applying it to, say, network security that it becomes obvious it isn't a "proving something was something".
Higher level probability is even more valuable. Speech recognition, for example, is all about fuzzy answers. Mathematical models such as Markov processes, Bayesian networks, Z-domain analysis, etc. are all essential.
A criteria for censorship is hardly "based completely upon". The rationale for censorship isn't based on social acceptance; someone had to demonstrate that broadcast can cause harm to children. A social acceptance criteria had to be created in order to make a judgment as to whether something is "obscene". That hardly qualifies any claim that censorship law is in any way founded solely on social acceptance. Try, for instance, to apply the Miller test to HBO.
And I know law can never be ideal but that's no reason to say we shouldn't strive to make it resemble the ideal case more than the mob-mentality case.
And therein lies the problem. People get away with sick, disgusting, and probably immoral and/or unethical things everyday, simply because they aren't against the law.
Probably because not everything that's "sick, disgusting, and probably immoral and/or unethical" is something that should be illegal. Eating roaches is disgusting, adultery is immoral, lying is unethical, yet all these things are legal and rightfully so.
The purpose of law is to protect people from one another, not to make people moral. If something someone does cannot be shown to conclusively cause harm to the life, liberty of pursuit of happiness of someone else, then it is not something the law should be concerned with.
[quote]In school we were taught that everything has a set of rules. For one set to be apart of another it has to follow these sets of rules. You do each rule/law and try and prove that it is false. Go through each rule/law and when you find ONE rule that is false you quit. The whole thing is false. It is black or white. It is not gray no matter how "black" it was? 4 out of 5 rules that are true does not equal 80% true. It == 100% false. I don't think the outside (people) follow that rule.[/quote]
Obviously you've never moved on to probability theory then. The idea that science and math are somehow so abstract that they aren't relevant to the world is incorrect. While elementary math is all about rules, higher-level math -- especially applied math -- is all about how to define models that follow rules but allow for "gray areas" to describe the real world.
Except that law -- ideal legal and justice system -- isn't based on social acceptance. There's an entire philosophy behind justice and the legal system. The people who founded law (the Persians, the Romans, the Americans, etc.) weren't people with "high social IQ" who made law something that does what's most popular with the people.
Aristotle, Hume, Mill, Hammurabi, Socrates, Franklin, Jefferson, etc. These weren't people who lacked critical reasoning skills in favor of social skills. The exact opposite in fact.
While I won't argue the subject of which is more valuable to be successful in the world -- certainly there are enough examples to show that this "Social IQ" is more valuable -- but the idea that law should be based on it is fallacious.
Justice is blind. Law is impartial. It isn't there to punish the social "eww" factor. It's there to maintain a set of codes agreed upon by scholars, not the populous, to be practically the best -- in utilitarian terms -- to the correct functioning of the population and any extensions thereof.
That sounds like guilty-before-proven-innocent mentality. You have no idea what this guy will do in the future. Whether he'll keep it a fantasy or try to make it reality. The law doesn't punish based on "probably because of my gut feeling and prejudice". The law punishes based on "here's proven fact he was planning to break the law or already has".
If he had a history of sexual misconduct, like attempted molestation, sexual harassment, etc. ANYTHING to show that he wasn't capable of controlling himself or had disregard for the law, THEN, you might have a case.
We don't -- at least we shouldn't -- punish anyone for thought-crimes.
This is a really good point. How much of a case is won by facts and how much of it was won by the slick lawyer who could give some impassioned speech with no logical backing and sway the mouth-breathing hillbillies who couldn't find a path from A to B without the wind blowing that way?
How much of an influence does the accused person's looks come into it? "Oh, he looks mean and dangerous". Jury's aren't exactly trained to be impartial; they're just anyone who wasn't smart enough to get out of jury duty. They're probably the least qualified people to judge the merits of an argument. I'm not arguing against the concept of a jury of one's peers. But there should be measures taken to make it easier on the jury to be impartial.
How much of this ruling was due to the fact that none of them wanted to come out, show their faces, and read "we find the law in favor of the weird perv-monkey." Standing up for principles at the cost of social stigma and mob mentality is hardly a characteristic I'd say is strong with the public.
Since when has law been concerned or should be concerned or should be anywhere near "how would you feel"? Isn't the first thing they should teach in law school "forget how you feel, work through the logistics of it, starting from the Constitution"?
If that were true, we'd see cosmetic changes directly proportional to the amount of users and popularity. This isn't true. Obviously it isn't all about novelty. As for entertainment value, well, guess what social networking sites provide in those cases? That's right, talking to your friends.
Now, while it may not seem like a lot to you to, say, build a cross-indexing, real-time database to connect people by favorite type of animal, color, sushi roll, etc. it's actually an engineering monstrosity when considering millions of users.
It's not always true but the biggest reason a bunch of people chooses site A over site B is over the features and ease-of-use site A offers over site B. Facebook lets you limit access to your friends. Hell, I'm surprised that it doesn't work with a tiered system. Where only "bff's" are allowed access to those embarrassing party photos, whereas "this guy I know" can only see certain things.
That's innovation and it takes man-months of engineering behind it.
This is different than any other business.....how? The longer something remains in the market, the more the profit for that item approaches zero. Even paid service. The only time this isn't the case is either in a monopolized market or when government steps in. That's why companies in the free market have to constantly innovate and come up with new things that the competitor doesn't have. This notion that any business model can guarantee that you'll make money forever once you've come up with one idea is a myth.
Last I checked, Google and Yahoo, who give their services away for "free", were not only still around but are two of the handful of companies making money while people who spat on the "free" business model are begging the government for a handout.
The problem with the dot-com bubble wasn't that the idea of a "free" product is a bad one. It was because too many people tried it. There's only a certain amount of internet usage and consumer base, not everyone can win and if too many people jump on the bandwagon anticipating wild growth, most of them won't make it and all that money they borrowed will all of a sudden just disappear.
It's the natural way of things. All laws serve to do is extend the downtime between highs and lows.
No, the reason is inflation. Compared to average salaries, today's cars cost a lot less than what they used to save for the premium niche (Ferrari, Porsche, etc.)
Everything at volume becomes a commodity eventually.
Because slashdot is such a tripe source of news compared to paragons of journalistic standards such as....wait, there aren't any.
It may be nice to romanticize journalism in the bygone day as some ivory tower of integrity but the truth is, "quality" has always been at the mercy of the individual. Edward Burrow was a "quality" journalist not because he was a journalist but because he was a good person and a good reporter.
William Randolf Hertz ran a shitty journalism institution because he was just a dick to begin with.
There's nothing magical about newspapers that make them more "quality" vs the blogs. There's simply the fact that you read crappy blogs.
You're making a distinction here which doesn't exist. If the shop gives something away for free but charges shipping and handling, then it's not free. If it offers free shipping but charges $20, it's not free. The object being sold doesn't have some magical value. What you're paying for is exclusive access to that object; that's what ownership is. Whatever cost is associated with making that happen: transporting it to your house, convincing the original owner (the shop) to let you take it, or keeping others from taking it (tax money for legal and police services) are all costs.
In the age of the internet, the part of the cost associated with exclusive access to an object has largely been eliminated. So the other costs are all that's left.
My god, it's as if they realize that what brings money to their pockets isn't necessarily the same as what is philosophically, morally or economically right and/or practical! How can college educated -- an experience that has the primary purpose of teaching critical thinking, reasoning and ethical analysis in the case of engineering studies -- people possibly be in support of these ideas philosophically if it doesn't make them money!?
Outsourcing to India and China is hurting my job prospects. Nevertheless, it is the economically smart (in most cases) thing to do. If I'm having a hard time finding a job it's not because outsourcing is bad, it's because I can't compete with those people on the metric that is used for the job criteria: performance/cost.
Am I perhaps more talented? Sure, why not. But my required salary is likely 4x what someone in India is being paid.
The same reasoning holds true for the idea of IP. Whatever money you can get away with getting for an idea is what that idea is worth. If someone can easily obtain information for practically nothing, then that information isn't worth anything. The responsibility is completely on you to limit access, not the government. Encrypt it. DRM it, etc. Make a better store that provides easier access (Amazon, iTunes) and make the price small enough that people will pay for the convenience.
The flaw in the current IP mentality is that somehow, you're automatically entitled to a set amount of money just for the idea. You're not. You have to sell it.
I've noticed this too. Particularly when using 3G or WiFi the battery life seems to be much worse than my older iTouch (1st gen) on WiFi. Even given the additional features and beefed up processor, the newer battery should more than compensate.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting stuff. I wasn't aware Nanophosphate batteries were already in production. I wonder what the capacities are though. Zinc foil and carbon doesn't seem like it'd hold that much charge.
Cheap, relatively easy to design, and practical to what kids are interested in (loud music). Might even allow them to appreciate clean audio sounds instead of "dude! it's got a lot of bass!"
No it doesn't....
EM field changes do but current (pun intended) circuits are all based on the speed of electrons through a conductor (or semiconductor) which is far far far far far slower than light through a waveguide.
As others have said, all the major FPGA vendors provide cheap starter kits and software to go along. They're a great way to start.
What is essential, though is to understand the concepts of digital design. It's out of print and still expensive (even used) but get yourself a copy of "HDL Chip Design" by Douglas Smith. It is still hands-down the best book on HDL chip design (with every example given in both VHDL and Verilog).
The important thing to realize is that the language isn't important. You have to start with visualizing the gates, bits and timing windows; then move on to figuring out how to describe those circuits in a language. The Smith book guides you through this learning process.
if it's obviously woefully ignorant of basic facts, it's deluded, and not theoretical. i'm not asking you to be rigorously rigid, i'm asking you to call a duck a duck: if its more fantasy than creative extrapolation, then be intellectually honest please. there are plenty of cases in science where what was once controversial fringe is now solid canon. but for every one of those cases, there a million more ideas which were put forth seriously and are obviously feeble idiocy
I fail to see what you're point is. There are bad and nonsensical philosophical ideas about ethics, many, yes. That doesn't invalidate the good ones nor does it refute the argument that most if not all good legal systems aim to achieve goals set out by these ideologies. I think you're just ranting about how much you don't like the philosophy students at this point.
theoretical physics isn't science fiction. science fiction would be better analogy to what i was refuting. there are people out there who advocate for social systems that are the equivalent to believing in fire breathing dragons and ewoks: articulating a social system that depends upon human behavior that doesn't exist
In the same way most theories in physics start out with ideal cases (spherical chicken in a vacuum) that are unrealistic. I think you're letting a bit of bias and stereotype get in the way of seeing theoretical ethics for what it is: a starting point. People argue about "what happens in this perfect world" in order to get at "what would be most right". There are fanatics, mind you, that will hear this and think they can implement it in a week. That was never the point. Socrates never intended virtue ethics to be a practical system of law. Mill never intended utilitarianism to be a practical political or economic system. God knows what kind of system Kant would've thought about.
Saying that these philosophies have no value because they cannot be implemented in their ideal form -- the same way you'll never have a perfect vacuum or a frictionless surface -- doesn't devalue their contribution. When people set out to create a legal system, they take a philosophy and shape a practical system that can get as close as possible to achieving that goal.
theoretical physics does not try to defy established physics canon, it teases out hidden potential meaning in edge conditions.
Philosophical ethics doesn't try to defy human behavior. The reason so many philosophy students like to use sci-fi is because it presents an isolated condition that one can arrive at a consistent code of morality. Real life is messy, real human nature is convoluted. Philosophical ethics attempts to break that up by asking questions like "assuming humans didn't have this tendency, would this still be right?" to get at the heart of things.
The model still predicts what happens. You are just ignoring 80% of it.
I did say that you have to *match* your model prediction with real results. If you ignore 80% of your results, you're not exactly matching your theory with reality. Sorry but you're just griping at this point. Math and science are not flawed, ignoring math and science and selectively using parts of it is. It has nothing to do with the methodology being lacking, it has to do with people ignoring it.
I don't get it. In your examples you are still following well defined rules. Everything you described has rules. If you can shape or bend your data to fit those rules you are golden. Make the data fit your model. That is not fuzzy.
What you don't get is the second part of science that those drug companies were circumventing: testing the results with actual experimentation. You can bend all the numbers with an arbitrary set of rules all you want but if what your model predicts isn't what happens in the real world, you've made a mistake somewhere.
Ramsey theorem predicts group formation in a cluster and finds the minimum number of clusters that can be formed. This can be infinitely useful to say, secure/unsecure network separation, social theories on mating, etc. But in order to have a particular theory have any weight, it needs to be tested.
Speech recognition theory is the same. You test your result based on how accurate your algorithm is. What's fuzzy is that there is no "algorithm was right" or "algorithm was wrong". One algorithm recognized ~50% of a speaker's words. The other recognized 80%.
*Working* legal codes are created by people who can grasp social realities and yet try to apply as much of the philosophical ethics as possible in order to gain as much justice (hence why the system is not perfect) while still managing to work. Saying that theoretical ethics is pointless is like saying theoretical physics is pointless.
Theoretical ethics defines a goal. Without it, one is simply tied to "end justifies the means" mentality. The point is the philosophy of justice isn't to come up with a system that works; it's there to be used by others as a guidance of how a system of justice *should* work. And a legal system -- while it may have to be balanced by the will of the populous at times -- has a first and foremost duty to follow those philosophies.
That's why we have a judicial branch separate from the legislative branch. The law is there to be impartial and blind. The Congress is there to hear the will of the people.
I'm sorry but that's just biased "I didn't understand it so it's all subjective" mentality. While I'm not going to comment on your particular professor -- he may indeed have had an agenda -- basing a judgment on probability on your "I got it wrong" experience is just ignorant.
Math, applied math -- otherwise called engineering is about 3 steps:
1. Find a way to formulate a real world situation using numbers and rules.
2. Manipulate those numbers according to rules that have been proven to correlate to how the real world functions.
3. Map the resulting numbers to real world cases.
Each steps involve careful and often painfully rigorous validation before declared "correct" and just because step 2 involves a definite answer doesn't mean that your results will be "true/false".
Take, for example, Ramsey numbers. On the surface they appear as nothing more than some abstract idea and a rigorous exercise in counting. It's when you start applying it to, say, network security that it becomes obvious it isn't a "proving something was something".
Higher level probability is even more valuable. Speech recognition, for example, is all about fuzzy answers. Mathematical models such as Markov processes, Bayesian networks, Z-domain analysis, etc. are all essential.
A criteria for censorship is hardly "based completely upon". The rationale for censorship isn't based on social acceptance; someone had to demonstrate that broadcast can cause harm to children. A social acceptance criteria had to be created in order to make a judgment as to whether something is "obscene". That hardly qualifies any claim that censorship law is in any way founded solely on social acceptance. Try, for instance, to apply the Miller test to HBO.
And I know law can never be ideal but that's no reason to say we shouldn't strive to make it resemble the ideal case more than the mob-mentality case.
And therein lies the problem. People get away with sick, disgusting, and probably immoral and/or unethical things everyday, simply because they aren't against the law.
Probably because not everything that's "sick, disgusting, and probably immoral and/or unethical" is something that should be illegal. Eating roaches is disgusting, adultery is immoral, lying is unethical, yet all these things are legal and rightfully so.
The purpose of law is to protect people from one another, not to make people moral. If something someone does cannot be shown to conclusively cause harm to the life, liberty of pursuit of happiness of someone else, then it is not something the law should be concerned with.
[quote]In school we were taught that everything has a set of rules. For one set to be apart of another it has to follow these sets of rules. You do each rule/law and try and prove that it is false. Go through each rule/law and when you find ONE rule that is false you quit. The whole thing is false. It is black or white. It is not gray no matter how "black" it was? 4 out of 5 rules that are true does not equal 80% true. It == 100% false. I don't think the outside (people) follow that rule.[/quote]
Obviously you've never moved on to probability theory then. The idea that science and math are somehow so abstract that they aren't relevant to the world is incorrect. While elementary math is all about rules, higher-level math -- especially applied math -- is all about how to define models that follow rules but allow for "gray areas" to describe the real world.
Except that law -- ideal legal and justice system -- isn't based on social acceptance. There's an entire philosophy behind justice and the legal system. The people who founded law (the Persians, the Romans, the Americans, etc.) weren't people with "high social IQ" who made law something that does what's most popular with the people.
Aristotle, Hume, Mill, Hammurabi, Socrates, Franklin, Jefferson, etc. These weren't people who lacked critical reasoning skills in favor of social skills. The exact opposite in fact.
While I won't argue the subject of which is more valuable to be successful in the world -- certainly there are enough examples to show that this "Social IQ" is more valuable -- but the idea that law should be based on it is fallacious.
Justice is blind. Law is impartial. It isn't there to punish the social "eww" factor. It's there to maintain a set of codes agreed upon by scholars, not the populous, to be practically the best -- in utilitarian terms -- to the correct functioning of the population and any extensions thereof.
That sounds like guilty-before-proven-innocent mentality. You have no idea what this guy will do in the future. Whether he'll keep it a fantasy or try to make it reality. The law doesn't punish based on "probably because of my gut feeling and prejudice". The law punishes based on "here's proven fact he was planning to break the law or already has".
If he had a history of sexual misconduct, like attempted molestation, sexual harassment, etc. ANYTHING to show that he wasn't capable of controlling himself or had disregard for the law, THEN, you might have a case.
We don't -- at least we shouldn't -- punish anyone for thought-crimes.
This is a really good point. How much of a case is won by facts and how much of it was won by the slick lawyer who could give some impassioned speech with no logical backing and sway the mouth-breathing hillbillies who couldn't find a path from A to B without the wind blowing that way?
How much of an influence does the accused person's looks come into it? "Oh, he looks mean and dangerous". Jury's aren't exactly trained to be impartial; they're just anyone who wasn't smart enough to get out of jury duty. They're probably the least qualified people to judge the merits of an argument. I'm not arguing against the concept of a jury of one's peers. But there should be measures taken to make it easier on the jury to be impartial.
How much of this ruling was due to the fact that none of them wanted to come out, show their faces, and read "we find the law in favor of the weird perv-monkey." Standing up for principles at the cost of social stigma and mob mentality is hardly a characteristic I'd say is strong with the public.
Since when has law been concerned or should be concerned or should be anywhere near "how would you feel"? Isn't the first thing they should teach in law school "forget how you feel, work through the logistics of it, starting from the Constitution"?
If that were true, we'd see cosmetic changes directly proportional to the amount of users and popularity. This isn't true. Obviously it isn't all about novelty. As for entertainment value, well, guess what social networking sites provide in those cases? That's right, talking to your friends.
Now, while it may not seem like a lot to you to, say, build a cross-indexing, real-time database to connect people by favorite type of animal, color, sushi roll, etc. it's actually an engineering monstrosity when considering millions of users.
It's not always true but the biggest reason a bunch of people chooses site A over site B is over the features and ease-of-use site A offers over site B. Facebook lets you limit access to your friends. Hell, I'm surprised that it doesn't work with a tiered system. Where only "bff's" are allowed access to those embarrassing party photos, whereas "this guy I know" can only see certain things.
That's innovation and it takes man-months of engineering behind it.
This is different than any other business.....how?
The longer something remains in the market, the more the profit for that item approaches zero. Even paid service. The only time this isn't the case is either in a monopolized market or when government steps in. That's why companies in the free market have to constantly innovate and come up with new things that the competitor doesn't have. This notion that any business model can guarantee that you'll make money forever once you've come up with one idea is a myth.
Last I checked, Google and Yahoo, who give their services away for "free", were not only still around but are two of the handful of companies making money while people who spat on the "free" business model are begging the government for a handout.
The problem with the dot-com bubble wasn't that the idea of a "free" product is a bad one. It was because too many people tried it. There's only a certain amount of internet usage and consumer base, not everyone can win and if too many people jump on the bandwagon anticipating wild growth, most of them won't make it and all that money they borrowed will all of a sudden just disappear.
It's the natural way of things. All laws serve to do is extend the downtime between highs and lows.
No, the reason is inflation. Compared to average salaries, today's cars cost a lot less than what they used to save for the premium niche (Ferrari, Porsche, etc.)
Everything at volume becomes a commodity eventually.
Because slashdot is such a tripe source of news compared to paragons of journalistic standards such as....wait, there aren't any.
It may be nice to romanticize journalism in the bygone day as some ivory tower of integrity but the truth is, "quality" has always been at the mercy of the individual. Edward Burrow was a "quality" journalist not because he was a journalist but because he was a good person and a good reporter.
William Randolf Hertz ran a shitty journalism institution because he was just a dick to begin with.
There's nothing magical about newspapers that make them more "quality" vs the blogs. There's simply the fact that you read crappy blogs.
You're making a distinction here which doesn't exist. If the shop gives something away for free but charges shipping and handling, then it's not free. If it offers free shipping but charges $20, it's not free. The object being sold doesn't have some magical value. What you're paying for is exclusive access to that object; that's what ownership is. Whatever cost is associated with making that happen: transporting it to your house, convincing the original owner (the shop) to let you take it, or keeping others from taking it (tax money for legal and police services) are all costs.
In the age of the internet, the part of the cost associated with exclusive access to an object has largely been eliminated. So the other costs are all that's left.
My god, it's as if they realize that what brings money to their pockets isn't necessarily the same as what is philosophically, morally or economically right and/or practical! How can college educated -- an experience that has the primary purpose of teaching critical thinking, reasoning and ethical analysis in the case of engineering studies -- people possibly be in support of these ideas philosophically if it doesn't make them money!?
Outsourcing to India and China is hurting my job prospects. Nevertheless, it is the economically smart (in most cases) thing to do. If I'm having a hard time finding a job it's not because outsourcing is bad, it's because I can't compete with those people on the metric that is used for the job criteria: performance/cost.
Am I perhaps more talented? Sure, why not. But my required salary is likely 4x what someone in India is being paid.
The same reasoning holds true for the idea of IP. Whatever money you can get away with getting for an idea is what that idea is worth. If someone can easily obtain information for practically nothing, then that information isn't worth anything. The responsibility is completely on you to limit access, not the government. Encrypt it. DRM it, etc. Make a better store that provides easier access (Amazon, iTunes) and make the price small enough that people will pay for the convenience.
The flaw in the current IP mentality is that somehow, you're automatically entitled to a set amount of money just for the idea. You're not. You have to sell it.
I've noticed this too. Particularly when using 3G or WiFi the battery life seems to be much worse than my older iTouch (1st gen) on WiFi. Even given the additional features and beefed up processor, the newer battery should more than compensate.