Then make sure you pay the children of your plumber, your electrician, your gardener and garbage engineer in perpetuity, because after all, you wouldn't want to deny them the fruit of their father's business, would you? Christopher Tolkien is entitled to get paid for the work *HE* did. Not the work of his father, but his work. Let him reap whatever benefits he is getting from Silmarillion. But that doesn't give him the right to act as though all of Middle-Earth and his father's name belong to him. They don't. They belong to the public, which had a strong hand in creating The Lord of the Rings anyway.
Really? People constantly do what they're told; whether it's their boss, their better half, their parents, hormones or past traumas. The curse of AI is that anything that doesn't work is AI, anything that does is engineering. Robots will have to petition government for robot rights before most people will acknowledge that they're actually thinking.
"See Damascus steel for an example." Vastly overblown, really. We produce far superior steel today (in terms of strength and ability to hold a fine edge).
Damascus steel was a lost secret between the 18th and 20th century. Why? Because it was protected through trade secrets, and once the last holder of the secret was dead, the ability to produce steel with that kind of strength was gone - at least until we started making advances in other areas. Furthermore, it was not possible to use the knowledge of how Damascus steel is produced to advance other fields, because only sword makers in a specific area were taught the technique.
So yes, Damascus steel is a great example of how trade secrets are an inefficient way of protecting innovative products.
Where it went really wrong is when some moron in the PTO decided that the proper metric for measuring the efficiency of appraisers was to look at how many patents they *grant*. What exactly do you think is going to happen? Yep, any border case that can't be negatively resolved in 5 minutes of patent search gets approved.
Which one would that be? I'm gonna guess from the flamebait of your post that you're referring to "Obamacare" (nee Romneycare)... in which case a few courts said it wasn't constitutional, a few said it was, and the case is currently headed to the Supreme Court. So really, no one has "determined" anything yet, as the Supreme Court hasn't said anything yet.
Things like Creationism aren't science, and therefore do not belong in a science class. They should, however, be discussed in Philosophy class. Oh, wait, that's right. Most US schools do not teach Philosophy anymore.
That you were modded informative (while no one has modded me at all) suggests that I'm right about this.
Do explain how that works.
You're just continuing to act as though certain things were patently obvious even when, on actual reflection, they''re not.
The impact of measles is life-changing. As is that of rubella, whooping cough and polio. Furthermore, people do die from these diseases. Those are patently obvious. The only thing that remains is how many people have suffered from these diseases because their parents refused to vaccinate them. Since vaccination is a % game, there is no guarantee - but you can still derive expected values from statistics. And the links in the lmgtfy site will tell you more about that. So even that is patently obvious.
Participate in the discussion, or don't.
It's difficult to have a discussion if one side refuses to listen.
Every single time, someone has challenged me over the part of what I posted that is in exact agreement with the standard theory, as taught at such institutions as MIT or Cornell.
You're worried about the opinion of any single person - on the Internet? I think you either need to spend more time in the basement to get a feel for how many cranks REALLY are out there, or get out more so that that single crank doesn't bother you that much.
Let me make your example more specific, so that it actually maps 1:1. Market research company then uses your travels and start-end queries to publish its own map and navigation, where results are compiled straight from the travels you took while using someone else's map program.
I can't believe this is so difficult to understand. Seems to me that people are clearly lacking some ethics here.
Methinks you are the clueless one here. The important part is indeed that Bing is essentially using Google results to boost its own accuracy. It doesn't matter that it comes through a user clicking on the first result of a Google search and opting to send that action to Microsoft. It wouldn't matter if MS had a bot directly scraping results from Google or had gremlins pick through the algorithm to send results via ESP. Microsoft deliberately and knowingly incorporated Google results into its own results, but without acknowledging this fact anywhere. That is the definition of plagiarism, and ultimately, cheating.
If that's not the ultimate admission of "We don't know what the fuck we're doing, and have resorted to copying other people's results", I don't know what is.
No kidding. I'm used to nonsense from "industry analysts", but this takes the cake. It's a complete non-sequitur. This never was a question of reverse-engineering. It's a question of straight-up ripping off results.
On a related note, what's with all the Google-bashing recently? First the idea (which has now turned into a meme) that Google's search result are not the gold standard for search anymore, and now the idea (probably soon to be turned into a meme) that Google can't handle competition and is resorting to FUD?
Yes, Google is no saint, it's not perfect. No shit, Sherlock. But if all I did was read "industry analysts" and various websites, I'd think that Google was about to fall apart, what with search sucking and all other products completely falling flat on their face. There's either a general search for the same story going on (Look Ma! I broke the news of Google sucking first!), or some grade A bullshitting is taking place.
So here's something that I'm wondering. Does it have hyperlinks to outside sources? So far, it seems that's a no. Why then in gods name would I want to get something on the iPad when the same exact thing (a newspaper) already exists, and with none of the drawbacks (dirt cheap, no batteries needed, makes a great firestarter)?
In other news, the iPod was just a more advanced version of the Diamond Rio, the iPhone is just a more advanced version of the Palm Treo and the iPad is really nothing more than a Poqet PC with more horsepower.
Holy effin shit. Is people's knowledge of capitalism and free market economy that weak that they don't even understand what a patent is?
A patent is a government enforced monopoly. As such, it represents a barrier to entry to a market, reducing competition and protecting incumbents. By definition, this means that a market with a patent is less efficient than one without.
The only reason that patents exist is that people understand that inventions create NEW markets, and that said inventions require an up-front investment. Said investment has to have a chance to be recouped, or a free-market economy will actively prevent any R&D effort. That's why patents exist - so that in our style of economy, people actually have a reason to work on new stuff that doesn't have a market yet.
People who work on things like vaccines while refusing to patent them ought to be given lifetime stipends to do whatever the fuck they want. Because they're the real saints and heroes of our world.
It's the stuff you buy that gives you quality of life.
Correction. You seem to not only be delusional about how important you are, but are also sadly misguided about what quality of life is. I normally don' reply to the same person in different threads, but your posts were such a rare combination of sad, misguided and fantastic that I had to. I actually feel sorry for you.
Yes, because Buffett clearly needs the masses to love him. I mean, all those billions and he still doesn't have any real friends.
I love it when the only businessmen Randians look up to are assholes who rape and pillage an economy and are proud of it. All it means that that is who they would like to be.
To some extent, that's not what I'm worried about. The end result of this will be that Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Ebay don't get charged. But everyone else will. They'll either have to pay the ISPs extra to be "On the Internet", or they will be relegated to a no-man's land that only people can reach who pay the ISPs extra.
A la carte Internet access is coming, and it will be the death of the Internet. Kiss the next Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon and Ebay goodbye. Only the existing versions will be able to make it.
Seems to me that you need to refine your queries. I think people have come to expect Google to find relevant stuff with an almost magical and eerie accuracy. Now that Spammers have caught on, it's time to understand how Google can help you refine queries. Use +, -, ", site:, intitle:, etc.
The other thing is that while Google does have some issues with spam (specifically around rebroadcast content), I'm not sure the other search engines are better. Bing has its own set of issues, Yahoo is Bing, and none of the new search engines are useful. The only problem I'm considering switching over is that Google Maps is regularly having issues with proper placement and finding the right route. Again, I've gotten used to an almost magical quality to direction searches and I'm trusting Google maps more than I trusted any other map software before. But there is definitely the feel that its usefulness has taken a step back.
DirectInternet won't let me verify availability without an email address AND phone number. No thanks. Looking at the prices, they are twice what ATT asks for. Since I pay that amount to a different ISP, I'm pretty sure I know what's going on: DirectInternet leases the lines from ATT. In other words, DirectInternet is merely an expensive middleman to ATT, which is charging DirectInternet more for leasing the line in bulk than it is charging its customers. Furthermore, any issues with the line will not get resolved: DirectInternet can't access the lines, and ATT has all the incentives in the world not to.
So unless you can demonstrate that DirectInternet runs its own lines to my house, it is not a competitor to ATT. Which in turn means that we're still at 2 offerings for me.
As for your "goalposts", you clearly have no idea what a market is. A market requires equivalent products. If they aren't equivalent, they are not in the same market. If they aren't in the same market, they aren't competitors. End of story. By the most generous definition of market which equates DSL with cable, I have access to a duopoly. Ho-fucking-ray. If you'd know your economic history, you'd know that duopolies are almost as bad as pure monopolies when it comes to rent-seeking behavior.
So before you waste everyone's time again, get a grip on what a market is.
DirectTV is a competitor in the ISP market? Only in the sense that a fountain pen is a competitor to the pencil. Same with cable. What's more so, one cable provider and one DSL provider is not a competitive market, it's a duopoly. Add in significant fundamental technical differences between the two services, and it's even less of a competitive market.
Slashdot Mirror
Then make sure you pay the children of your plumber, your electrician, your gardener and garbage engineer in perpetuity, because after all, you wouldn't want to deny them the fruit of their father's business, would you?
Christopher Tolkien is entitled to get paid for the work *HE* did. Not the work of his father, but his work. Let him reap whatever benefits he is getting from Silmarillion. But that doesn't give him the right to act as though all of Middle-Earth and his father's name belong to him. They don't. They belong to the public, which had a strong hand in creating The Lord of the Rings anyway.
Really? People constantly do what they're told; whether it's their boss, their better half, their parents, hormones or past traumas.
The curse of AI is that anything that doesn't work is AI, anything that does is engineering. Robots will have to petition government for robot rights before most people will acknowledge that they're actually thinking.
"See Damascus steel for an example."
Vastly overblown, really. We produce far superior steel today (in terms of strength and ability to hold a fine edge).
Damascus steel was a lost secret between the 18th and 20th century. Why? Because it was protected through trade secrets, and once the last holder of the secret was dead, the ability to produce steel with that kind of strength was gone - at least until we started making advances in other areas. Furthermore, it was not possible to use the knowledge of how Damascus steel is produced to advance other fields, because only sword makers in a specific area were taught the technique.
So yes, Damascus steel is a great example of how trade secrets are an inefficient way of protecting innovative products.
Where it went really wrong is when some moron in the PTO decided that the proper metric for measuring the efficiency of appraisers was to look at how many patents they *grant*. What exactly do you think is going to happen? Yep, any border case that can't be negatively resolved in 5 minutes of patent search gets approved.
Which one would that be? I'm gonna guess from the flamebait of your post that you're referring to "Obamacare" (nee Romneycare)... in which case a few courts said it wasn't constitutional, a few said it was, and the case is currently headed to the Supreme Court. So really, no one has "determined" anything yet, as the Supreme Court hasn't said anything yet.
Things like Creationism aren't science, and therefore do not belong in a science class. They should, however, be discussed in Philosophy class. Oh, wait, that's right. Most US schools do not teach Philosophy anymore.
That you were modded informative (while no one has modded me at all) suggests that I'm right about this.
Do explain how that works.
You're just continuing to act as though certain things were patently obvious even when, on actual reflection, they''re not.
The impact of measles is life-changing. As is that of rubella, whooping cough and polio. Furthermore, people do die from these diseases. Those are patently obvious. The only thing that remains is how many people have suffered from these diseases because their parents refused to vaccinate them. Since vaccination is a % game, there is no guarantee - but you can still derive expected values from statistics. And the links in the lmgtfy site will tell you more about that. So even that is patently obvious.
Participate in the discussion, or don't.
It's difficult to have a discussion if one side refuses to listen.
Every single time, someone has challenged me over the part of what I posted that is in exact agreement with the standard theory, as taught at such institutions as MIT or Cornell.
You're worried about the opinion of any single person - on the Internet? I think you either need to spend more time in the basement to get a feel for how many cranks REALLY are out there, or get out more so that that single crank doesn't bother you that much.
I'm beginning think this debacle is a load of nonsense, having read a few posts, it looks like the engineer in everyone has turned off for the week.
This is not an engineering question, it's an ethics question. At least it's clear why you're lost.
Let me make your example more specific, so that it actually maps 1:1.
Market research company then uses your travels and start-end queries to publish its own map and navigation, where results are compiled straight from the travels you took while using someone else's map program.
I can't believe this is so difficult to understand. Seems to me that people are clearly lacking some ethics here.
Methinks you are the clueless one here. The important part is indeed that Bing is essentially using Google results to boost its own accuracy. It doesn't matter that it comes through a user clicking on the first result of a Google search and opting to send that action to Microsoft. It wouldn't matter if MS had a bot directly scraping results from Google or had gremlins pick through the algorithm to send results via ESP. Microsoft deliberately and knowingly incorporated Google results into its own results, but without acknowledging this fact anywhere. That is the definition of plagiarism, and ultimately, cheating.
If that's not the ultimate admission of "We don't know what the fuck we're doing, and have resorted to copying other people's results", I don't know what is.
No kidding. I'm used to nonsense from "industry analysts", but this takes the cake. It's a complete non-sequitur. This never was a question of reverse-engineering. It's a question of straight-up ripping off results.
On a related note, what's with all the Google-bashing recently? First the idea (which has now turned into a meme) that Google's search result are not the gold standard for search anymore, and now the idea (probably soon to be turned into a meme) that Google can't handle competition and is resorting to FUD?
Yes, Google is no saint, it's not perfect. No shit, Sherlock. But if all I did was read "industry analysts" and various websites, I'd think that Google was about to fall apart, what with search sucking and all other products completely falling flat on their face. There's either a general search for the same story going on (Look Ma! I broke the news of Google sucking first!), or some grade A bullshitting is taking place.
So here's something that I'm wondering. Does it have hyperlinks to outside sources? So far, it seems that's a no. Why then in gods name would I want to get something on the iPad when the same exact thing (a newspaper) already exists, and with none of the drawbacks (dirt cheap, no batteries needed, makes a great firestarter)?
In other news, the iPod was just a more advanced version of the Diamond Rio, the iPhone is just a more advanced version of the Palm Treo and the iPad is really nothing more than a Poqet PC with more horsepower.
Sometimes, implementation IS everything.
And this despite the discussion setting being explicitly set to have a one line summary for everything, -1 included. I hope this is a bug.
Holy effin shit. Is people's knowledge of capitalism and free market economy that weak that they don't even understand what a patent is?
A patent is a government enforced monopoly. As such, it represents a barrier to entry to a market, reducing competition and protecting incumbents. By definition, this means that a market with a patent is less efficient than one without.
The only reason that patents exist is that people understand that inventions create NEW markets, and that said inventions require an up-front investment. Said investment has to have a chance to be recouped, or a free-market economy will actively prevent any R&D effort. That's why patents exist - so that in our style of economy, people actually have a reason to work on new stuff that doesn't have a market yet.
People who work on things like vaccines while refusing to patent them ought to be given lifetime stipends to do whatever the fuck they want. Because they're the real saints and heroes of our world.
It's the stuff you buy that gives you quality of life.
Correction. You seem to not only be delusional about how important you are, but are also sadly misguided about what quality of life is. I normally don' reply to the same person in different threads, but your posts were such a rare combination of sad, misguided and fantastic that I had to. I actually feel sorry for you.
You believe that Glenn Beck reads your Slashdot posts? Alright, I can now write you off as delusional with a clear and calm conscience.
Yes, because Buffett clearly needs the masses to love him. I mean, all those billions and he still doesn't have any real friends.
I love it when the only businessmen Randians look up to are assholes who rape and pillage an economy and are proud of it. All it means that that is who they would like to be.
Because wealth that is not invested might as well not exist. It's an incentive to put all that wealth to work.
To some extent, that's not what I'm worried about. The end result of this will be that Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Ebay don't get charged. But everyone else will. They'll either have to pay the ISPs extra to be "On the Internet", or they will be relegated to a no-man's land that only people can reach who pay the ISPs extra.
A la carte Internet access is coming, and it will be the death of the Internet. Kiss the next Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon and Ebay goodbye. Only the existing versions will be able to make it.
Seems to me that you need to refine your queries. I think people have come to expect Google to find relevant stuff with an almost magical and eerie accuracy. Now that Spammers have caught on, it's time to understand how Google can help you refine queries. Use +, -, ", site:, intitle:, etc.
The other thing is that while Google does have some issues with spam (specifically around rebroadcast content), I'm not sure the other search engines are better. Bing has its own set of issues, Yahoo is Bing, and none of the new search engines are useful. The only problem I'm considering switching over is that Google Maps is regularly having issues with proper placement and finding the right route. Again, I've gotten used to an almost magical quality to direction searches and I'm trusting Google maps more than I trusted any other map software before. But there is definitely the feel that its usefulness has taken a step back.
DirectInternet won't let me verify availability without an email address AND phone number. No thanks. Looking at the prices, they are twice what ATT asks for. Since I pay that amount to a different ISP, I'm pretty sure I know what's going on: DirectInternet leases the lines from ATT. In other words, DirectInternet is merely an expensive middleman to ATT, which is charging DirectInternet more for leasing the line in bulk than it is charging its customers. Furthermore, any issues with the line will not get resolved: DirectInternet can't access the lines, and ATT has all the incentives in the world not to.
So unless you can demonstrate that DirectInternet runs its own lines to my house, it is not a competitor to ATT. Which in turn means that we're still at 2 offerings for me.
As for your "goalposts", you clearly have no idea what a market is. A market requires equivalent products. If they aren't equivalent, they are not in the same market. If they aren't in the same market, they aren't competitors. End of story. By the most generous definition of market which equates DSL with cable, I have access to a duopoly. Ho-fucking-ray. If you'd know your economic history, you'd know that duopolies are almost as bad as pure monopolies when it comes to rent-seeking behavior.
So before you waste everyone's time again, get a grip on what a market is.
DirectTV is a competitor in the ISP market? Only in the sense that a fountain pen is a competitor to the pencil.
Same with cable. What's more so, one cable provider and one DSL provider is not a competitive market, it's a duopoly. Add in significant fundamental technical differences between the two services, and it's even less of a competitive market.
By your logic, there is no limit to what the U.S. congress can do.
That is correct. Given enough constitutional amendments, or even a new constitution, everything's possible for Congress.
Might as well take the 50 State Legislatures and raze them to the ground, and let congress run everything.
If 2/3s of the states legislatures agree to this, yep, entirely possible.