Lack of public transportation is! Maps and routes for public transportation are not difficult to find.
Now, if Google could just get me an English translation of the maps and schedules for the Japanese public transportation net, I would consider it an accomplishment. Lack of such information is one of the minor quibbles I have about living here.
but what I note is most of them do not talk about long-term effects. I agree that extra schooling temporarily affects IQ. Even in the most relevant case you cited, it was 1.8 points/year of school, and I doubt that much of this effect remained 10 years later.
Do you have any numbers concerning the sibling effect over time? Saying that IQs become more equal is one thing. Are we talking about 2-3 points or 20? I bet is is much closer to the former.
is the overwhelming size of the literature. It is getting harder and harder to find the information that you need among a sea of near misses. Even to stay on top of one's subfield would require reading at least five journal papers a day, which is a significant undertaking even before you have to spend large amounts of time hunting for papers. For example, I am a chemist. It is generally not too difficult to find papers about a specific molecule - each molecule is assigned a specific ID number, which can of course be searched, and then the results further whittled down by using relevant keywords. However, it can still be ridiculously hard to find such trivial information as "what is the best known method for making this molecule" or "what is this molecule soluble in?". Finding information on processes, however, has become a huge chore. If you think you have found a new way to make a class of molecules, you are in for days of sorting through papers hoping that no one has already had your idea - or worse yet, tried it, found that it didn't work, and never reported this information.
This information overload is pushing back the age at which scientists become productive. Back in the 1920's, many of the famous people you learn about made their huge discoveries in their 20's. Now, most Nobel-prize winning work is done in peoples' 40's and 50's. It simply takes that long to climb up the backs of all the giants that came before. At the rate it is going, in fifty years, scientists will die of old age before they can make it to the top.
We really need better ways to sort and condense this mass of information.
IQ does not change significantly after age 7 or so. I wouldn't get my hopes up about things "leveling out". Your reasoning sounds here more like wishful thinking. Otherwise, good post.
This could explain a lot, though. It is known that males have a larger variability in IQ than females. A single gene (or small set of genes) that swings IQ by 20 points only in males would be consistent with this observation.
No it's not. Providing a service or providing a product are completely different business models.
Business models are just that - models. They are not the real thing. I generate information and cede the rights to it to my employers. They pay me for this in return. This information, 99 times out of 100, is a process to make a product better/faster/cheaper. Did I sell a better product or did I sell a service? Who cares? A rose by any other name is still a rose.
In the absence of IP laws, you would not be able to charge one customer more than once for a single piece of information - and if that customer is really cavalier about that information, then as you say, you probably won't be able to charge anyone else for that information either (since it would be spread around).
In most cases, I wouldn't be able to sell it once in the first place. Who would buy, knowing the next guy will then copy it for free? Whoever buys loses. There would still be some engineering, though, because engineers tend to solve site/company-specific problems (ie, what the heck is wrong with this reactor? Why won't these custom programs work together?).
In a situation like that, you would not be able to make a living by selling information in the same way that you would sell a product. You would have to make a living by selling your SERVICES as an information generator/gatherer, which is a different business model than selling information as a product.
That's what we currently do. And without patents, no one would buy. You have created an artificial prisoner's dilemma, where whatever company does the right thing gets screwed - it pays, its competitors do not.
Companies hire scientists & engineers to help them develop products & services that will help them beat their competition.
In other words, patentable information. Except for localized process information, which can sometimes be kept secret and generally may not be that useful to the competition, valuable information is that which can be patented.
Companies which hire scientists & engineers only for the reason of generating patents are abusing the patent system, and represent a net drain on society (i.e., are like parasites).
Please try to go five minutes without them. Start by turning of your cpu and stripping naked. Even your clothes contain hundreds of elements that are or once were protected by patents.
That's your personal opinion. I've never seen a study which provides more than anecdotal evidence that the patent system actually encourages innovation, and almost everything I've read leads me to believe that the current implementation of the patent system is discouraging innovation by the scientists & engineers in THIS country and making it harder to compete with the overseas folks.
It is a fact that most research is private sector. I would be interested in you pointing any nation without a patent system that produces large amounts of research. As a scientist, I cannot think of substantial ways in which the system inhibits my research (it affects prices - that is pretty much it). However, without it, I would not be able to do my job in the first place.
The U.S. really wants their workforce to compete with the overseas folks, then we should deemphasize patents & should really be investing a LOT in locally-based
Why local? How many local places can afford mega-research centers? Science is the exact opposite of "local".
publicly-funded & public-domain research & development.
Because the government has proven so adept at managing things over the years. Note that in Europe, for example, a much higher fraction of research is publically funded. Now, name the ten most important inventions of the last 50 years. Note how many are European. The answer is probably zero. I have worked in European (and Japanese) labs. Those in the US are far ahead.
Whether you call that a "service" or "product" is rather irrelevant. However, the amount people are willing to pay for my information is the marginal cost. If it can be copied freely, that number vanishes to zero. If I can control who can use that information, I can sell it to the highest bidder.
Companies hire scientists in order to produce patentable information. It really is that sample. The scientific profession is already under tremendous pressure due to competition from low-salary nations such as China and India. You are proposing whiping out whatever is left of private-sector research (which is the majority - depending on one's field, the private sector hires 50-65% of PhDs and even higher fractions of BS/MS scientists).
You don't see "open source nanotechnology", though, do you. Why? Because you can't do it at home. It requires a tremendous investment in equipment and facilities, and no one is going to do it unless they can turn a profit.
Corporations have been pursuing patents since the founding of the nation.
I am a scientist. Why do people pay us for our work? Because they can patent it. If they couldn't, it wouldn't matter a whit "how much it worth", because anyone and everyone could copy it. I could invent the world's best mousetrap, but without patent protection, the company paying my salary could not manufacture it at a reasonable profit. The day they released it, the next company would copy the design and have it to market it in weeks.
Scientists and inventors are paid what their information worth - however, how much the value the information has is based on context. In a world where it can be copied freely, the answer is about the marginal cost - zero.
And yes, we would keep on inventing - as soon as we got done slaving away at Wal-Mart and McD's 60/h week in order to put a roof over our heads. And just imagine the fancy equipment we can afford on that wage!
unless they are working 60/h a week at a crappy service job, all because no company will bother to hire them unless the company can profit from his or her work.
Companies hire scientists for the sole reason of producing patents. Without patents, the services of scientists become much less valuable, and therefore you will have fewer of them. Yes, these people will still be smart, but their time, energy, and thoughts will be diverted to other ventures.
I have never noticed "n" sounding like an "m" before "j" before, only before "b" and "p". This is for the obvious reason that m/b/p are formed by almost exactly the same lip movement. Very much like in English, where "kicked" ends with a "t" sound, not a "d" sound, but "feared" does wnd with a "d".
I'll have to ask my gf to say "shinjiru" a few times to see if I can hear what you are saying.
Sure, we chemists can make all sorts of little tubes, balls, rods, pyramids, etc. Unfortunately, as you said, they are usually a mixture of many different sizes (and hence properties) as well as contaminated with all sorts of crap. The SEM and TEM pictures you see in the journals are assuredly the prettiest of the bunch.
Worse yet, we have almost no control over the arrangement of our little tinker-toys. At best, we can get them to sort-of line up or form some sort of regular lattice on a large scale, or using something like AFM manipulate one at a time in order to study it (of course, this is infeasible on a production scale). We are a long way from being able to arrange these parts on a mass scale in any sort of arbitrary, complicated geometry.
the most commonly used definition is "1-100 nanometers", so anything since the 90nm generation would qualify. However, I am not sure what definition researchers using the top-down, engineering approach use. I am a chemist and approach the problem from the other direction (trying to assemble lots of.2 nanometer atoms into organized multi-nanometer stuctures).
it is ok to steal from rich people, you have a point.Until then, any person with such reasoning should be barred from a jury. Automatic guilt or innocence based on the nature of the victim or defendant, rather than the actions committed, is a ridiculous idea.
You have no right to steal from anyone, rich or poor. Ever. Period.
No one on earth benefits from this lawsuit except the sharks. In the long run, Ellison would have donated the money to someone anyway. He can't and won't spend it all, and will just decrease his future donations by the same amount he was forced to donate.
The stockholders do not benefit, the charities do not benefit, Ellison does not benefit...
What a waste. The problem is that law schools are deliberately over-supplying the market with lawyers (we have several times as many as other nations, per capita). This results in not enough legitimate suits to go around. Stupid suits are the obvious result.
Perhaps we should sue the law schools for creating a "nuisance"...
The quality is not particularly different (a random error every twenty videos means squat). And I am willing to wager that a significant fraction, probably the majority, of downloading is of videos already released overseas.
I presume that, on your honor, you immediately buy every video that you downloaded in advance when it is eventually released?
If not, it isn't speed or quality, but theft that is your motivation.
If you watch it or listen to it, pay what the authors ask. All else is theft. Simple.
sales decline, too. Also, you are the first person I have ever heard claim that they used netflix substantially for anime. More than half of the hardcore anime fans that I know are substantial pirates, however. They buy almost none but download tons. Fan-subbing has eliminated nearly half of the market by my estimation.
Btw, don't complain about prices - anime is actually cheaper in the states than it is here in Japan. I am not kidding. DVDs are $35/disk for normal movies and can be even higher for anime. CD's are usually $25 as well.
Plenty of bad anime made it to the states long before fan-subs, and virtually all of the good stuff. This argument is both impossible to confirm and rather silly.
They have always been "slow-ass". Yet sales are decreasing while popularity is increasing. It is obviously because of piracy.
Quit complaining and pay for your goodies. By the time you have watched all the legally-available anime released in the US, your Japanese will be good enough that you don't need the subtitles anymore and you can just buy new stuff direct from Japan.
Btw, I do speak fair Japanese, and have rarely encountered problems with the official translations. Those that do appear are related to the vast differences in the language, not the translation itself. I can't comment on fan-subs because I do not watch them.
The evil puppet masters are controlling the world. Hemp is being held down so they can market their inferior crap. Prisons are full because the puppet masters own the prisons! I see their master plan now! Thanks for clearing it up for me.
Hemp is just another plant. It probably has some uses but not all the miraculous sillyness posted in some of these articles. You should learn to detect snake-oil...because that link was soaked in it.
Slashdot Mirror
Lack of public transportation is! Maps and routes for public transportation are not difficult to find. Now, if Google could just get me an English translation of the maps and schedules for the Japanese public transportation net, I would consider it an accomplishment. Lack of such information is one of the minor quibbles I have about living here.
Immediately reject any argument that is based on saving the children.
Now if we could only shoot these tyrants.
but what I note is most of them do not talk about long-term effects. I agree that extra schooling temporarily affects IQ. Even in the most relevant case you cited, it was 1.8 points/year of school, and I doubt that much of this effect remained 10 years later.
Do you have any numbers concerning the sibling effect over time? Saying that IQs become more equal is one thing. Are we talking about 2-3 points or 20? I bet is is much closer to the former.
is the overwhelming size of the literature. It is getting harder and harder to find the information that you need among a sea of near misses. Even to stay on top of one's subfield would require reading at least five journal papers a day, which is a significant undertaking even before you have to spend large amounts of time hunting for papers. For example, I am a chemist. It is generally not too difficult to find papers about a specific molecule - each molecule is assigned a specific ID number, which can of course be searched, and then the results further whittled down by using relevant keywords. However, it can still be ridiculously hard to find such trivial information as "what is the best known method for making this molecule" or "what is this molecule soluble in?". Finding information on processes, however, has become a huge chore. If you think you have found a new way to make a class of molecules, you are in for days of sorting through papers hoping that no one has already had your idea - or worse yet, tried it, found that it didn't work, and never reported this information.
This information overload is pushing back the age at which scientists become productive. Back in the 1920's, many of the famous people you learn about made their huge discoveries in their 20's. Now, most Nobel-prize winning work is done in peoples' 40's and 50's. It simply takes that long to climb up the backs of all the giants that came before. At the rate it is going, in fifty years, scientists will die of old age before they can make it to the top.
We really need better ways to sort and condense this mass of information.
IQ does not change significantly after age 7 or so. I wouldn't get my hopes up about things "leveling out". Your reasoning sounds here more like wishful thinking. Otherwise, good post.
This could explain a lot, though. It is known that males have a larger variability in IQ than females. A single gene (or small set of genes) that swings IQ by 20 points only in males would be consistent with this observation.
No it's not. Providing a service or providing a product are completely different business models.
Business models are just that - models. They are not the real thing. I generate information and cede the rights to it to my employers. They pay me for this in return. This information, 99 times out of 100, is a process to make a product better/faster/cheaper. Did I sell a better product or did I sell a service? Who cares? A rose by any other name is still a rose.
In the absence of IP laws, you would not be able to charge one customer more than once for a single piece of information - and if that customer is really cavalier about that information, then as you say, you probably won't be able to charge anyone else for that information either (since it would be spread around).
In most cases, I wouldn't be able to sell it once in the first place. Who would buy, knowing the next guy will then copy it for free? Whoever buys loses. There would still be some engineering, though, because engineers tend to solve site/company-specific problems (ie, what the heck is wrong with this reactor? Why won't these custom programs work together?).
In a situation like that, you would not be able to make a living by selling information in the same way that you would sell a product. You would have to make a living by selling your SERVICES as an information generator/gatherer, which is a different business model than selling information as a product.
That's what we currently do. And without patents, no one would buy. You have created an artificial prisoner's dilemma, where whatever company does the right thing gets screwed - it pays, its competitors do not.
Companies hire scientists & engineers to help them develop products & services that will help them beat their competition.
In other words, patentable information. Except for localized process information, which can sometimes be kept secret and generally may not be that useful to the competition, valuable information is that which can be patented.
Companies which hire scientists & engineers only for the reason of generating patents are abusing the patent system, and represent a net drain on society (i.e., are like parasites).
Please try to go five minutes without them. Start by turning of your cpu and stripping naked. Even your clothes contain hundreds of elements that are or once were protected by patents.
That's your personal opinion. I've never seen a study which provides more than anecdotal evidence that the patent system actually encourages innovation, and almost everything I've read leads me to believe that the current implementation of the patent system is discouraging innovation by the scientists & engineers in THIS country and making it harder to compete with the overseas folks.
It is a fact that most research is private sector. I would be interested in you pointing any nation without a patent system that produces large amounts of research. As a scientist, I cannot think of substantial ways in which the system inhibits my research (it affects prices - that is pretty much it). However, without it, I would not be able to do my job in the first place.
The U.S. really wants their workforce to compete with the overseas folks, then we should deemphasize patents & should really be investing a LOT in locally-based
Why local? How many local places can afford mega-research centers? Science is the exact opposite of "local".
publicly-funded & public-domain research & development.
Because the government has proven so adept at managing things over the years. Note that in Europe, for example, a much higher fraction of research is publically funded. Now, name the ten most important inventions of the last 50 years. Note how many are European. The answer is probably zero. I have worked in European (and Japanese) labs. Those in the US are far ahead.
Whether you call that a "service" or "product" is rather irrelevant. However, the amount people are willing to pay for my information is the marginal cost. If it can be copied freely, that number vanishes to zero. If I can control who can use that information, I can sell it to the highest bidder.
Companies hire scientists in order to produce patentable information. It really is that sample. The scientific profession is already under tremendous pressure due to competition from low-salary nations such as China and India. You are proposing whiping out whatever is left of private-sector research (which is the majority - depending on one's field, the private sector hires 50-65% of PhDs and even higher fractions of BS/MS scientists).
poor (50%) and doctor education (40%). Direct to consumer is about 10%.
In any case, since when spreading information a waste? I am not sure what point you are trying to make.
You don't see "open source nanotechnology", though, do you. Why? Because you can't do it at home. It requires a tremendous investment in equipment and facilities, and no one is going to do it unless they can turn a profit.
Corporations have been pursuing patents since the founding of the nation.
I am a scientist. Why do people pay us for our work? Because they can patent it. If they couldn't, it wouldn't matter a whit "how much it worth", because anyone and everyone could copy it. I could invent the world's best mousetrap, but without patent protection, the company paying my salary could not manufacture it at a reasonable profit. The day they released it, the next company would copy the design and have it to market it in weeks.
Scientists and inventors are paid what their information worth - however, how much the value the information has is based on context. In a world where it can be copied freely, the answer is about the marginal cost - zero.
And yes, we would keep on inventing - as soon as we got done slaving away at Wal-Mart and McD's 60/h week in order to put a roof over our heads. And just imagine the fancy equipment we can afford on that wage!
unless they are working 60/h a week at a crappy service job, all because no company will bother to hire them unless the company can profit from his or her work.
Companies hire scientists for the sole reason of producing patents. Without patents, the services of scientists become much less valuable, and therefore you will have fewer of them. Yes, these people will still be smart, but their time, energy, and thoughts will be diverted to other ventures.
You seem to be the typical troll who complains about something without suggesting how to fix it.
Does the patent system have problems? Yep. Easy to fix? Nope. Great alternatives? Nope.
I have never noticed "n" sounding like an "m" before "j" before, only before "b" and "p". This is for the obvious reason that m/b/p are formed by almost exactly the same lip movement. Very much like in English, where "kicked" ends with a "t" sound, not a "d" sound, but "feared" does wnd with a "d".
I'll have to ask my gf to say "shinjiru" a few times to see if I can hear what you are saying.
Sure, we chemists can make all sorts of little tubes, balls, rods, pyramids, etc. Unfortunately, as you said, they are usually a mixture of many different sizes (and hence properties) as well as contaminated with all sorts of crap. The SEM and TEM pictures you see in the journals are assuredly the prettiest of the bunch.
Worse yet, we have almost no control over the arrangement of our little tinker-toys. At best, we can get them to sort-of line up or form some sort of regular lattice on a large scale, or using something like AFM manipulate one at a time in order to study it (of course, this is infeasible on a production scale). We are a long way from being able to arrange these parts on a mass scale in any sort of arbitrary, complicated geometry.
the most commonly used definition is "1-100 nanometers", so anything since the 90nm generation would qualify. However, I am not sure what definition researchers using the top-down, engineering approach use. I am a chemist and approach the problem from the other direction (trying to assemble lots of .2 nanometer atoms into organized multi-nanometer stuctures).
it is ok to steal from rich people, you have a point.Until then, any person with such reasoning should be barred from a jury. Automatic guilt or innocence based on the nature of the victim or defendant, rather than the actions committed, is a ridiculous idea.
You have no right to steal from anyone, rich or poor. Ever. Period.
I don't see any prosecutors knocking at his door.
Instead we got a pointless civil suit which benefits no one except the lawyers.
No one on earth benefits from this lawsuit except the sharks. In the long run, Ellison would have donated the money to someone anyway. He can't and won't spend it all, and will just decrease his future donations by the same amount he was forced to donate.
The stockholders do not benefit, the charities do not benefit, Ellison does not benefit...
What a waste. The problem is that law schools are deliberately over-supplying the market with lawyers (we have several times as many as other nations, per capita). This results in not enough legitimate suits to go around. Stupid suits are the obvious result.
Perhaps we should sue the law schools for creating a "nuisance"...
Your logic of "if the victim is rich, the crime isn't a crime" is somewhere between utterly stupid and utterly dangerous. Please take your pick.
I have seen some pretty dumb lines of reasoning around here before, but you may have just beaten them all. Perhaps you are joking...
oh wait, like anyone does that.
"I can't wait" is not an excuse to steal.
The quality is not particularly different (a random error every twenty videos means squat). And I am willing to wager that a significant fraction, probably the majority, of downloading is of videos already released overseas.
I presume that, on your honor, you immediately buy every video that you downloaded in advance when it is eventually released?
If not, it isn't speed or quality, but theft that is your motivation.
If you watch it or listen to it, pay what the authors ask. All else is theft. Simple.
sales decline, too. Also, you are the first person I have ever heard claim that they used netflix substantially for anime. More than half of the hardcore anime fans that I know are substantial pirates, however. They buy almost none but download tons. Fan-subbing has eliminated nearly half of the market by my estimation.
Btw, don't complain about prices - anime is actually cheaper in the states than it is here in Japan. I am not kidding. DVDs are $35/disk for normal movies and can be even higher for anime. CD's are usually $25 as well.
Plenty of bad anime made it to the states long before fan-subs, and virtually all of the good stuff. This argument is both impossible to confirm and rather silly.
They have always been "slow-ass". Yet sales are decreasing while popularity is increasing. It is obviously because of piracy.
Quit complaining and pay for your goodies. By the time you have watched all the legally-available anime released in the US, your Japanese will be good enough that you don't need the subtitles anymore and you can just buy new stuff direct from Japan.
Btw, I do speak fair Japanese, and have rarely encountered problems with the official translations. Those that do appear are related to the vast differences in the language, not the translation itself. I can't comment on fan-subs because I do not watch them.
The evil puppet masters are controlling the world. Hemp is being held down so they can market their inferior crap. Prisons are full because the puppet masters own the prisons! I see their master plan now! Thanks for clearing it up for me.
Hemp is just another plant. It probably has some uses but not all the miraculous sillyness posted in some of these articles. You should learn to detect snake-oil...because that link was soaked in it.