Uh.... you sure about that, Sparky? Or did you just confuse the act of copying with the act of someone opting to buy an unlicensed copy instead of a licensed one?
Good points. I'd love to see the costs of filing a patent coming down. Unfortunately, that's unlikely, considering that proper patent examination is an expensive process in and of itself. You either pay for it when you file, or you for it through taxes. Either way, large companies are ahead of the small garage inventor.
Wasnt the basic idea behind the patent to 'disallow rich from screwing poor (when they try to bring up an idea)'?
Not the way I see it - or the way it was originally framed in the constitution. The way I see it, the idea behind a patent is to foster innovation by rewarding people who have spent resources developing a new and innovative product. The reward is the time-limited monopoly rent the inventors are allowed to extract when they bring their product to market. The concept of poor versus rich really doesn't come into play very much. It is just occasionally a nice side-effect.
Also, people who do *not* take too much risks are the ones whose patents/products have a higher chance of succeeding/changing the world.
I don't know about that. Risk is definitely part of it; even though I do agree that success is largely predicated on preparation, not luck.
True. In which case they can hook up with people who have money and then they work on putting a product out. But no product, no patent. And if they are worried about their ideas being stolen by the people with money, tough beans. No product, no patent.
And if they're not a risk taker, even more tough beans. Part of the idea behind a patent is that it rewards risk taking. If you don't take the risk to lose it all, you don't get to enjoy the benefits of a monopoly when you succeed.
Somehow, I get the impression that the entire concept of idea-patents is based around the notion that people are entitled to get money - loads of money - just because they can dream big. The key word here is *entitled*. I've got news for you: there is no such thing as entitlement, and the world is a cruel, hard place. If you can't make it big on your own, it probably is a sign that you should focus on making it small.
Yes, their ideas could be used. Have them hook up with people who know what they're doing. Have them work in a team. Once the product is ready, finished and proven to work, the dreamers can receive their share of any product-related royalties. I suspect though that the people who actually did the heavy lifting (like actually getting the idea to work) would balk at an even split.
Let's supose you have an interesting idea but don't have the time or resources to file a patent, develop a prototype or put them into practice. What should you do?
I'm sorry - are you actually proposing to patent ideas? Let's see - I've got an idea for a foo widget that I think will solve hunger, bring world peace and slay cancer. It works as follows:
1) Build foo.
2) Hunger is solved, world peace is here and cancer is no more.
Should I actually get a patent on this? Can I then sue everybody who builds a gadget that actually will kill cancer or solve world hunger?
If you are too lazy, incompetent or ignorant to actually prove that your idea actually works (as opposed to having an idea and then suing the people who actually managed to implement your idea), you should not get a patent. Ideas are like assholes - everybody has one, and they all stink. Come back when your idea is an actual product, and then we'll talk. Until then, you'd be nothing but a lazy profiteer trying to get paid for daydreaming.
To be completely correct, we can never be completely sure of anything that is inferred a posteriori - after observation. However, there is a priori knowledge, which is always completely correct. However, it is also reather useless, as it involves things like "A bachelor is single."
The solution to it has always been simple: assume that the number of correct observations with no counter observations indicates the likelyhood of something being "always". Then run with it. It's really only a problem in philosophy, not science.
It is assumed the laws of physics don't change because.... well, if they did, we'd be in a heap of trouble.:) This is really one of the more fundamental assumptions in science in general: if we don't see that something changes or has changed, we assume that it won't. Especially when it comes to physics. However, it is an assumption. It'll be an interesting day if we ever find out that they do change...
Not only that - but KDE and Gnome and Linux aren't owned by any one. Don't like how something's implemented? Switch distribution or write your own. Can't really see that happening with Vista.
Right. Except that right now, it is a couple of millions (soon to be billions) of individual people and corporations who have "proprietized" (ugh) the internet. They don't really have a coherent strategy of milking you of every penny. Now MS on the other hand... if it does come to conquer the internet, everything will look like XBox Live. Mind you, there are some things XBL does right. But I sure as hell don't want to have the entire Internet look like it.
As Reporters without Borders states, the solution is obvious: move your servers to a country where "federal regulations" protects rather than ousts the end user.,p>
I'm quite sure that one of the prerequisites of doing computer business in China is that the physical servers are always accessible in an instant to Chinese authorities. I don't think that the Chinese government would miss a loophole that big. Besides, there's gotta be some advantage (outside of latency) to having email servers in China. Otherwise, why would anyone need any servers other than the ones in the US?
Care to link to that NHTSA study? I have not seen a study that shows that ABS has marginal benefits on dry roads.
You're right that ABS requires rolling grip to work properly. Here's the thing though: in the vast majority of situations, the rolling grip (also known as static friction) is much greater than sliding grip (moving friction). If you're having trouble because there is too little rolling grip, you'd be in trouble with or without ABS.
Here's what I'd like to know: what is exactly the difference in braking distance with or without ABS when in loose snow and gravel? At what speeds? So far, all I have is some people swearing that they could have avoided an accident if ABS wouldn't have interfered, and some people simply stating that it feels like ABS is interfering in specific conditions. I'd like some hard data rather than personal estimates... who has them?
They could be wrong - of course. But all too often, this cry for "a thoughtful approach" is done before the data behind the initial claim has been analyzed. Or worse, when the data has been already analyzed in a thoughtful and careful fashion.
I don't have a problem with a thoughtful approach. I have a problem with people hiding behind the call for a thoughtful approach when the thoughtful approach is right in front of them.
Seriously, what do you expect to see before you would call the conclusions reached by climatologists worldwide as based on a "thoughtful approach"? Peer reviews? Done. Up the wazoo. Cross-referenced data from multiple sources? Done. Everything from modern technology to historical accounts have been combed over. Is there a hypothesis, complete with predictive power? Done. Has the hypothesis been tested against new data? Done. Has the data been analyzed by multiple people for accuracy? Done. Have the conclusions been verified against data sets not in the original study? Done.
So now that we know that the process is sound, what's missing? The "right" conclusion, maybe?
Sooooooo......... what part is he exactly wrong about? Or is there a reason that the dailykos was so busy ripping into Moore's business alliances that they didn't have time to actually talk about why Moore is wrong when he says that Nuclear Power is the way to go? Or maybe it's just so much easier to attack someone personally than to dissect why they're wrong?
Yeah, exactly - cuz because some people in the past were wrong about a specific topic , everyone who says anything about something that makes you uncomfortable has to be wrong too.
How about instead of grasping at straws, you actually look at the data? And I mean, all of the data, not just the one that makes you feel fuzzy and warm?
Because it isn't just the two people you mention who talk about Global Climate Change - it's an entire section of physicists that have come to largely the same conclusions. I wonder how long you'll be in denial?
Also, the technologies that make nuclear power safe today did not exist 40 years ago. To argue that you knew for 40 years that nuclear power is safe simply demonstrates that you argue from dogma, not science. Today's pebble reactors have nothing in common with the heavy water reactors from a couple of decades ago.
Ermmm... not sure where I said that good design is the only thing you need. I don't quite have your years of experience, but I've seen the problems you get when you try to shoehorn a bad design into higher performance. Like a web application that resides on one server and has therefore a fairly limited number of simultaneous connections available. Using that kind of design to service several hundred customers who all have multiple people using the system at once is a nightmare. I know the optimizations that take place because I hear all day about them. Too bad that they don't change the fundamental problem that it is nearly impossible to properly load-balance and cluster the basic design.
To some extent, it all boils down to the fact that the later you get in the development stage, the more expensive it becomes to change things. You're right - it's naive to assume that you can fix all problems in the design phase. But it's expensive to conclude that you therefore don't have to try.
Question: how often do you drive in snow? Specifically, the kind of loosely packed snow that would benefit from having locked tires dig in? That's right, close to never. Same thing goes for gravel. And locking your tires certainly does nothing on ice, where the friction coefficient is close to zero.
Besides, for those specific situations, most cars let you turn off any type of electronic assistance. In %99.9999 of all other driving conditions (and this comes from someone who skis and snowboards, which means that I do see my fair share of snow), ABS trumps human braking so much it ain't even funny.
I've had the same problem. Open up my inventory, wait a minute. Talk to someone, wait a minute. Talk to them again, wait another minute. And loading a new area? Another minute or so.
My problem went away after a while. Not sure what I did, but apparently, clearing the cache might do the trick. Hold down A (or was it the XBOX button?) during start-up. Either that, or re-boot a couple of times.:)
Either way, my lock-up problems are gone. Hope you have the same luck.:)
Ever heard this one? "Good design trumps good optimization everytime." I'm sure you would agree that no amount of optimization can fix bad design. If you plan to build a bug database by requiring 5 people to approve a bug submission and spidering the www for similar bug submissions, no amount of optimization is going to fix the fact it'll take weeks to submit one bug.
We are currently in the design phase. Changes we make here will have more impact on the amount of pollution we produce than any tweaks we'll make in the future.
A good quote I heard somewhere: "Hard work probably pays off sometime in the future. Lazyness pays off immediately." I'm not surprised anymore at the amount of work people put into justifying the status quo. What's a little time wasted posting ideas that were pulled out of your ass when the alternative is to spend a couple of weeks digging through the data, learning about climatology and investigating all the ways that you can save energy and reduce pollution?
Here's the good news for me: I can prepare. While all the nay-sayers and head in the sand people will still be sitting in their ocean front bungalows, trying to figure out how to pay this weeks gas bill for their SUV and air conditioner, I'll be the one selling them energy from my fuel-cell, sitting comfortably in an energy-efficient home and working on whatever problem is costing someone a lot of money to fix.
Survival of the fittest still applies - I might just put it to work for me.
Just because you suck at living doesn't mean that everyone else does. Yes, in a couple of billion years, everything will die from entropy. Doesn't mean I'm not gonna suck the marrow from the bones I can find - or make sure that I have a steady supply of bones available for my kids.
Oh please. I live in the US, and your argument is specious. Yes, it's true that providing public transportation service between Bumfuck, ND and Hicktown, OK is not gonna be very profitable (that's why Greyhound services them). But that's no reason why major metropolitan areas have a completely fucked public transportation system. For example, I currently live in San Jose, the second largest city in California. In order for me to go to San Francisco, Sacramento or LA, I can take: a bus, then a light rail system, then BART; or I can drive 30 minutes to Amtrak, take Amtrak for three hours; or I can, uh, drive to LA on a 2 lane freeway that occasionally goes down to one lane. None of this qualifies as proper transportation.
Proper transportation would be a direct link between san Jose and SF, going through Silicon Valley. Proper transportation would be an Amtrak station that services San Jose and doesn't take an eternity to go to Sacramento, because it has to stop in every little shack town. Or how about some train link between SF and LA? They are only the two major hubs in California. No need to have a stinking connection there.
Being tolerant of other people has nothing to do with tolerating stupidity and incompetence. Defending the US lack of transportation system by appealing to lack of luck is just stupid.
While you paid attention to some portions of your philosophy/religion class, you missed the part where God is defined as an all-powerfoul being that can do the logically possible. I.e., you can't set up inherently contradictory claims and then deduce from them the contradictory nature of god.
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Uh.... you sure about that, Sparky? Or did you just confuse the act of copying with the act of someone opting to buy an unlicensed copy instead of a licensed one?
Wasnt the basic idea behind the patent to 'disallow rich from screwing poor (when they try to bring up an idea)'?
Not the way I see it - or the way it was originally framed in the constitution. The way I see it, the idea behind a patent is to foster innovation by rewarding people who have spent resources developing a new and innovative product. The reward is the time-limited monopoly rent the inventors are allowed to extract when they bring their product to market. The concept of poor versus rich really doesn't come into play very much. It is just occasionally a nice side-effect.
Also, people who do *not* take too much risks are the ones whose patents/products have a higher chance of succeeding/changing the world.
I don't know about that. Risk is definitely part of it; even though I do agree that success is largely predicated on preparation, not luck.
True. In which case they can hook up with people who have money and then they work on putting a product out. But no product, no patent. And if they are worried about their ideas being stolen by the people with money, tough beans. No product, no patent.
And if they're not a risk taker, even more tough beans. Part of the idea behind a patent is that it rewards risk taking. If you don't take the risk to lose it all, you don't get to enjoy the benefits of a monopoly when you succeed.
Somehow, I get the impression that the entire concept of idea-patents is based around the notion that people are entitled to get money - loads of money - just because they can dream big. The key word here is *entitled*. I've got news for you: there is no such thing as entitlement, and the world is a cruel, hard place. If you can't make it big on your own, it probably is a sign that you should focus on making it small.
Yes, their ideas could be used. Have them hook up with people who know what they're doing. Have them work in a team. Once the product is ready, finished and proven to work, the dreamers can receive their share of any product-related royalties. I suspect though that the people who actually did the heavy lifting (like actually getting the idea to work) would balk at an even split.
What has happened for a long time? Patenting ideas? Venture capitalists hooking up with inventors? Money being poured into ideas? Specify.
I'm sorry - are you actually proposing to patent ideas? Let's see - I've got an idea for a foo widget that I think will solve hunger, bring world peace and slay cancer. It works as follows:
1) Build foo.
2) Hunger is solved, world peace is here and cancer is no more.
Should I actually get a patent on this? Can I then sue everybody who builds a gadget that actually will kill cancer or solve world hunger?
If you are too lazy, incompetent or ignorant to actually prove that your idea actually works (as opposed to having an idea and then suing the people who actually managed to implement your idea), you should not get a patent. Ideas are like assholes - everybody has one, and they all stink. Come back when your idea is an actual product, and then we'll talk. Until then, you'd be nothing but a lazy profiteer trying to get paid for daydreaming.
To be completely correct, we can never be completely sure of anything that is inferred a posteriori - after observation. However, there is a priori knowledge, which is always completely correct. However, it is also reather useless, as it involves things like "A bachelor is single."
The solution to it has always been simple: assume that the number of correct observations with no counter observations indicates the likelyhood of something being "always". Then run with it. It's really only a problem in philosophy, not science.
It is assumed the laws of physics don't change because.... well, if they did, we'd be in a heap of trouble. :) This is really one of the more fundamental assumptions in science in general: if we don't see that something changes or has changed, we assume that it won't. Especially when it comes to physics. However, it is an assumption. It'll be an interesting day if we ever find out that they do change...
Not only that - but KDE and Gnome and Linux aren't owned by any one. Don't like how something's implemented? Switch distribution or write your own. Can't really see that happening with Vista.
Right. Except that right now, it is a couple of millions (soon to be billions) of individual people and corporations who have "proprietized" (ugh) the internet. They don't really have a coherent strategy of milking you of every penny. Now MS on the other hand... if it does come to conquer the internet, everything will look like XBox Live. Mind you, there are some things XBL does right. But I sure as hell don't want to have the entire Internet look like it.
As Reporters without Borders states, the solution is obvious: move your servers to a country where "federal regulations" protects rather than ousts the end user.,p> I'm quite sure that one of the prerequisites of doing computer business in China is that the physical servers are always accessible in an instant to Chinese authorities. I don't think that the Chinese government would miss a loophole that big. Besides, there's gotta be some advantage (outside of latency) to having email servers in China. Otherwise, why would anyone need any servers other than the ones in the US?
Care to link to that NHTSA study? I have not seen a study that shows that ABS has marginal benefits on dry roads.
You're right that ABS requires rolling grip to work properly. Here's the thing though: in the vast majority of situations, the rolling grip (also known as static friction) is much greater than sliding grip (moving friction). If you're having trouble because there is too little rolling grip, you'd be in trouble with or without ABS.
Here's what I'd like to know: what is exactly the difference in braking distance with or without ABS when in loose snow and gravel? At what speeds? So far, all I have is some people swearing that they could have avoided an accident if ABS wouldn't have interfered, and some people simply stating that it feels like ABS is interfering in specific conditions. I'd like some hard data rather than personal estimates... who has them?
They could be wrong - of course. But all too often, this cry for "a thoughtful approach" is done before the data behind the initial claim has been analyzed. Or worse, when the data has been already analyzed in a thoughtful and careful fashion.
I don't have a problem with a thoughtful approach. I have a problem with people hiding behind the call for a thoughtful approach when the thoughtful approach is right in front of them.
Seriously, what do you expect to see before you would call the conclusions reached by climatologists worldwide as based on a "thoughtful approach"? Peer reviews? Done. Up the wazoo. Cross-referenced data from multiple sources? Done. Everything from modern technology to historical accounts have been combed over. Is there a hypothesis, complete with predictive power? Done. Has the hypothesis been tested against new data? Done. Has the data been analyzed by multiple people for accuracy? Done. Have the conclusions been verified against data sets not in the original study? Done.
So now that we know that the process is sound, what's missing? The "right" conclusion, maybe?
Sooooooo......... what part is he exactly wrong about? Or is there a reason that the dailykos was so busy ripping into Moore's business alliances that they didn't have time to actually talk about why Moore is wrong when he says that Nuclear Power is the way to go? Or maybe it's just so much easier to attack someone personally than to dissect why they're wrong?
Yeah, exactly - cuz because some people in the past were wrong about a specific topic , everyone who says anything about something that makes you uncomfortable has to be wrong too.
How about instead of grasping at straws, you actually look at the data? And I mean, all of the data, not just the one that makes you feel fuzzy and warm?
Because it isn't just the two people you mention who talk about Global Climate Change - it's an entire section of physicists that have come to largely the same conclusions. I wonder how long you'll be in denial?
Also, the technologies that make nuclear power safe today did not exist 40 years ago. To argue that you knew for 40 years that nuclear power is safe simply demonstrates that you argue from dogma, not science. Today's pebble reactors have nothing in common with the heavy water reactors from a couple of decades ago.
Ermmm... not sure where I said that good design is the only thing you need. I don't quite have your years of experience, but I've seen the problems you get when you try to shoehorn a bad design into higher performance. Like a web application that resides on one server and has therefore a fairly limited number of simultaneous connections available. Using that kind of design to service several hundred customers who all have multiple people using the system at once is a nightmare. I know the optimizations that take place because I hear all day about them. Too bad that they don't change the fundamental problem that it is nearly impossible to properly load-balance and cluster the basic design.
To some extent, it all boils down to the fact that the later you get in the development stage, the more expensive it becomes to change things. You're right - it's naive to assume that you can fix all problems in the design phase. But it's expensive to conclude that you therefore don't have to try.
ABS IS threshold braking. And the computer will in the vast majority of cases be far, far better than any human.
Question: how often do you drive in snow? Specifically, the kind of loosely packed snow that would benefit from having locked tires dig in? That's right, close to never. Same thing goes for gravel. And locking your tires certainly does nothing on ice, where the friction coefficient is close to zero.
Besides, for those specific situations, most cars let you turn off any type of electronic assistance. In %99.9999 of all other driving conditions (and this comes from someone who skis and snowboards, which means that I do see my fair share of snow), ABS trumps human braking so much it ain't even funny.
I've had the same problem. Open up my inventory, wait a minute. Talk to someone, wait a minute. Talk to them again, wait another minute. And loading a new area? Another minute or so.
:)
:)
My problem went away after a while. Not sure what I did, but apparently, clearing the cache might do the trick. Hold down A (or was it the XBOX button?) during start-up. Either that, or re-boot a couple of times.
Either way, my lock-up problems are gone. Hope you have the same luck.
Ever heard this one? "Good design trumps good optimization everytime." I'm sure you would agree that no amount of optimization can fix bad design. If you plan to build a bug database by requiring 5 people to approve a bug submission and spidering the www for similar bug submissions, no amount of optimization is going to fix the fact it'll take weeks to submit one bug.
We are currently in the design phase. Changes we make here will have more impact on the amount of pollution we produce than any tweaks we'll make in the future.
A good quote I heard somewhere: "Hard work probably pays off sometime in the future. Lazyness pays off immediately." I'm not surprised anymore at the amount of work people put into justifying the status quo. What's a little time wasted posting ideas that were pulled out of your ass when the alternative is to spend a couple of weeks digging through the data, learning about climatology and investigating all the ways that you can save energy and reduce pollution?
Here's the good news for me: I can prepare. While all the nay-sayers and head in the sand people will still be sitting in their ocean front bungalows, trying to figure out how to pay this weeks gas bill for their SUV and air conditioner, I'll be the one selling them energy from my fuel-cell, sitting comfortably in an energy-efficient home and working on whatever problem is costing someone a lot of money to fix.
Survival of the fittest still applies - I might just put it to work for me.
Just because you suck at living doesn't mean that everyone else does. Yes, in a couple of billion years, everything will die from entropy. Doesn't mean I'm not gonna suck the marrow from the bones I can find - or make sure that I have a steady supply of bones available for my kids.
Oh please. I live in the US, and your argument is specious. Yes, it's true that providing public transportation service between Bumfuck, ND and Hicktown, OK is not gonna be very profitable (that's why Greyhound services them). But that's no reason why major metropolitan areas have a completely fucked public transportation system. For example, I currently live in San Jose, the second largest city in California. In order for me to go to San Francisco, Sacramento or LA, I can take: a bus, then a light rail system, then BART; or I can drive 30 minutes to Amtrak, take Amtrak for three hours; or I can, uh, drive to LA on a 2 lane freeway that occasionally goes down to one lane. None of this qualifies as proper transportation.
Proper transportation would be a direct link between san Jose and SF, going through Silicon Valley. Proper transportation would be an Amtrak station that services San Jose and doesn't take an eternity to go to Sacramento, because it has to stop in every little shack town. Or how about some train link between SF and LA? They are only the two major hubs in California. No need to have a stinking connection there.
Being tolerant of other people has nothing to do with tolerating stupidity and incompetence. Defending the US lack of transportation system by appealing to lack of luck is just stupid.
While you paid attention to some portions of your philosophy/religion class, you missed the part where God is defined as an all-powerfoul being that can do the logically possible. I.e., you can't set up inherently contradictory claims and then deduce from them the contradictory nature of god.