The funniest thing about the Flying Spaghetti Monster is that since he is omnipotent, his image and name is arbitrary. I.e. Flying Spaghetti Monster is just a synonym for God.
I disagree. You're using the word discovery in place of invention. They are not interchangeable.
There is a lot of case law surrounding the interpretation of the constitution and invention easily overrides discovery in the criteria you need to satisfy for patent eligibility. You certainly don't discover a process (of the sort in a process patent). You invent it.
There are a lot of people who think process inventions and software inventions should not receive patent protection and the system at large needs to be overhauled.
But human genes aren't currently discovered. Human DNA was discovered in the late 1800s. Its structure was discovered over the next 100 years. Short sections of the human genome were sequenced in the 1980s and 1990s. It was sequenced in its entirety in 2004. Sequencing (mapping) is a string of letters in a particular order to which we assign meaning. This string is viewable to anyone, you just need the right machine. It is entirely akin to mapping a town from an aeroplane. You can't get a patent for it because it's a naturally occurring feature viewable by anyone.
Firearms in Australia (the topic country) have incredibly strict regulations that have only gotten stricter over time. Licensed shooters have a thorough background check for criminal convictions or activity and are very likely to be denied a license if they have a criminal record (or even an criminal association).
Firearms in Australia are an incredibly minor cause of premature death.
In general vehicles in Australia are a minor, but much larger than firearms, cause of premature death (it really depends on the age group).
The purpose of a gun is to kill (normally humans). Not causing death is misuse. Big difference. The fact guns are sometimes used for other things isn't really relevant. A car can be a weapon too. That's not it's primary purpose. Thinking that guns and death have some coincidental relationship is absolute stupidity.
No, a gun is designed to propel a projectile out of its barrel at great speed.
We use it (i.e. its purpose) to kill animals, to shoot paper targets, and to kill humans (which are just animals really).
The number one use (the primary purpose) for firearms is currently shooting paper targets and hunting animals (non-human). This outweighs their use against humans by several orders of magnitude in terms of bullets fired.
Interestingly in my country (Australia) we've had decreasing homicide rate yet increasing firearms ownership rate for the last 16 years - which means over here if anything there is a correlation between ownership and lowered rates of firearm death. We are talking about Australia after all.
It is illegal to own ammunition unless you are a licensed shooter. So for a non-licensed person printing a firearm is useless because you can't get ammunition.
A licensed shooter can own a 3d printed firearm as long as it meets the current regulations (i.e. barrel length, serial number, etc.).
People seeking an illegal firearm will probably spend their money on a current production firearm of some sort and in any case won't care if they make it illegal to print one since they are acting in breach of the law.
The Slashdot headline neglected to mention that they synthesised an embryo from adult human skin cells - so it's 100% genetically compatible with the donor.
""Which is it?" because it is a false dilemma, not a useful question."
Your original statement in regards to climate change denial can be interpreted three ways. I listed those three ways and asked you to clarify which it was. I'm sorry this has eluded you.
"you didn't even mention anything worthy of discussion"
Then why did you even write one single word in reply? BTW, it's easy to write statements like that. Here I'll show you: Dahamma, you're post has no value to this discussion. No real Slashdotter would argue the way you do.
"a supporting statistic"
You mean a supporting anecdote.
"Anyway, this isn't going anywhere."
Yes, it's not - for some reason you're stuck in a rut and can't just answer the question and clarify your position. You're holding back progress.
"If you would like to state an opinion and/or facts on climate change itself, feel free, but I'm done arguing semantics."
I have in other parts of this discussion. You didn't argue the semantics of your statements in the first place.
"Wha? Are you replying to me? And if so did you actually follow the point of my post and thread overall??"
Yes, clearly I am. I read most of the thread - but that is a meaningless misdirection away from my questions.
"One of those two "quotes" you attributed to me was just me quoting the parent"
Which is why it is in double quotes. You addressed it, and I addressed your opinion of it.
"and the other was not stating my opinion, so trying to claim I am being contradictory is a wee bit off there..."
It most certainly is your opinion - show me who else's opinion it is if it is not yours.
"And before you try to argue there are no climate change deniers (your "point number 1") because they'd "have to be insane" - something like 40% of the US population still believes in creationism."
In that regard they are bat-shit crazy.
"but sorry, if you go back and reread your post it didn't really contribute to the discussion at all"
In your opinion it doesn't - but you cannot authoritatively say whether it did or not. Another misdirection.
At the end of the day - you've avoided addressing my questions by questioning my questions and misdirection. An old an tired technique. Answering the questions would have taken half the space and verified your stance.
""no one denies climate change"" "they are claiming it won't hurt humanity"
So which is it? Are they claiming the climate isn't changing whatsoever? Are they accepting climate change but denying the possible effects from it? Or are they denying climate change and suggesting if it did occur that it still wouldn't affect the earth if it did.
Since you have to be insane to say 1 or 3 (since we can see it changing and by definition if it changes it has an effect), I'm going that most of them are at number 2 (supported by your second quote). In which case they don't deny climate change, they deny its effects. In which case you can call them "climate change effect deniers".
Nitpicking, but you walk the path of weasel words (when I'm sure you don't mean to).
"the highest average global temperatures on record"
I'm not disputing the records in the slightest, but, 200 years of records is not a very good data set compared to 454000000 years of the earth existing.
The NOAA forgets to mention that they are comparing a direct carbon dioxide measurement (400ppm) with two estimates (180ppm to 280ppm). These are very important distinctions in science that they have failed to make. It's the same for temperatures. All other temperature readings outside of our records are estimates based on other observable factors.
None of course. But you wouldn't use a knife, you'd use a sword. And going back in history the sword (long knife) was the ultimate killing tool for thousands of years. It's still just a tool though. It's a shard of metal that gives us a mechanical advantage. I bet your average male could, with a small amount of training, kill a lot of people very quickly with a sword.
When you have 60 million people rebelling we call it civil war.
If you're talking about murder and intimidation then it goes both ways. If the USA government wanted to enforce gun confiscation they would use murder (i.e. you fight for your beliefs and you will die) and intimidation (i.e. you peaceably hold onto your firearms and you'll go to prison) to achieve this.
Guns are not that hard to obtain. It is incredibly time consuming and inconvenient - but not hard.
The rate of firearm ownership in Australia is now much higher than it was in 1996 (the big ban/buyback year).
Have you considered that since we are one of the most highly educated and wealthy nations in the world that maybe this manifests itself in low murder rates? Our low murder rates certainly don't have anything to do with a lack of firearms.
How does a 10 round magazine greatly inconvenience a crazed murder? The fact that he has to do 4 magazine changes instead of 2 doesn't change much.
New Zealand didn't ban firearms in the same time frame as Australia - and they also haven't had a massacre in all that time (and they are demographically very similar to us).
You forget all the studies that show that the stringent firearms regulations didn't change much in Australia (except making it hard for normal legal owners to pursue their sport). The drop in firearm murder rate was happening well before the bans and buybacks and didn't change because of it.
Yes there are no competitors. I wonder if over their long industry dominating time Adobe ever made any efforts to keep things that way? I'd bet they have and continually do.
At most levels the best text books are exclusively published in paper.
Getting this same quality of text into digital form won't happen unless either the current publisher can monetise it, or someone writes an equally good new text and publishes it in digital format.
Getting this material into the hands of people with little or no money requires someone to give a quality text away free of charge or for very little money.
I think it can be taken for granted that educate and learn are intertwined.
Learning ability differs from person to person - this can be measured and educational material can be altered to maximise the learning of any given individual.
My children learned to communicate by listening and watching, but if I didn't correct their errors their communication skills (listening and speaking) would be at a lower level today than they are.
Slashdot Mirror
The funniest thing about the Flying Spaghetti Monster is that since he is omnipotent, his image and name is arbitrary. I.e. Flying Spaghetti Monster is just a synonym for God.
I disagree. You're using the word discovery in place of invention. They are not interchangeable.
There is a lot of case law surrounding the interpretation of the constitution and invention easily overrides discovery in the criteria you need to satisfy for patent eligibility. You certainly don't discover a process (of the sort in a process patent). You invent it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patentability.
There are a lot of people who think process inventions and software inventions should not receive patent protection and the system at large needs to be overhauled.
But human genes aren't currently discovered. Human DNA was discovered in the late 1800s. Its structure was discovered over the next 100 years. Short sections of the human genome were sequenced in the 1980s and 1990s. It was sequenced in its entirety in 2004. Sequencing (mapping) is a string of letters in a particular order to which we assign meaning. This string is viewable to anyone, you just need the right machine. It is entirely akin to mapping a town from an aeroplane. You can't get a patent for it because it's a naturally occurring feature viewable by anyone.
"That's because he's a clueless IT support geek, and not a real engineer."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
Not to someone who's already brainwashed into believing that giving up essential liberties for the illusion of safety is a good thing.
He wasn't suggesting they were numerically equivalent.
He was suggesting they were statistically equivalent when dealing with very large numbers in comparison.
Firearms in Australia (the topic country) have incredibly strict regulations that have only gotten stricter over time. Licensed shooters have a thorough background check for criminal convictions or activity and are very likely to be denied a license if they have a criminal record (or even an criminal association).
Firearms in Australia are an incredibly minor cause of premature death.
In general vehicles in Australia are a minor, but much larger than firearms, cause of premature death (it really depends on the age group).
The purpose of a gun is to kill (normally humans). Not causing death is misuse. Big difference. The fact guns are sometimes used for other things isn't really relevant. A car can be a weapon too. That's not it's primary purpose. Thinking that guns and death have some coincidental relationship is absolute stupidity.
No, a gun is designed to propel a projectile out of its barrel at great speed.
We use it (i.e. its purpose) to kill animals, to shoot paper targets, and to kill humans (which are just animals really).
The number one use (the primary purpose) for firearms is currently shooting paper targets and hunting animals (non-human). This outweighs their use against humans by several orders of magnitude in terms of bullets fired.
Interestingly in my country (Australia) we've had decreasing homicide rate yet increasing firearms ownership rate for the last 16 years - which means over here if anything there is a correlation between ownership and lowered rates of firearm death. We are talking about Australia after all.
Additionally in Australia:
It is illegal to own ammunition unless you are a licensed shooter. So for a non-licensed person printing a firearm is useless because you can't get ammunition.
A licensed shooter can own a 3d printed firearm as long as it meets the current regulations (i.e. barrel length, serial number, etc.).
People seeking an illegal firearm will probably spend their money on a current production firearm of some sort and in any case won't care if they make it illegal to print one since they are acting in breach of the law.
The Slashdot headline neglected to mention that they synthesised an embryo from adult human skin cells - so it's 100% genetically compatible with the donor.
""Which is it?" because it is a false dilemma, not a useful question."
Your original statement in regards to climate change denial can be interpreted three ways. I listed those three ways and asked you to clarify which it was. I'm sorry this has eluded you.
"you didn't even mention anything worthy of discussion"
Then why did you even write one single word in reply? BTW, it's easy to write statements like that. Here I'll show you: Dahamma, you're post has no value to this discussion. No real Slashdotter would argue the way you do.
"a supporting statistic"
You mean a supporting anecdote.
"Anyway, this isn't going anywhere."
Yes, it's not - for some reason you're stuck in a rut and can't just answer the question and clarify your position. You're holding back progress.
"If you would like to state an opinion and/or facts on climate change itself, feel free, but I'm done arguing semantics."
I have in other parts of this discussion. You didn't argue the semantics of your statements in the first place.
"Wha? Are you replying to me? And if so did you actually follow the point of my post and thread overall??"
Yes, clearly I am. I read most of the thread - but that is a meaningless misdirection away from my questions.
"One of those two "quotes" you attributed to me was just me quoting the parent"
Which is why it is in double quotes. You addressed it, and I addressed your opinion of it.
"and the other was not stating my opinion, so trying to claim I am being contradictory is a wee bit off there..."
It most certainly is your opinion - show me who else's opinion it is if it is not yours.
"And before you try to argue there are no climate change deniers (your "point number 1") because they'd "have to be insane" - something like 40% of the US population still believes in creationism."
In that regard they are bat-shit crazy.
"but sorry, if you go back and reread your post it didn't really contribute to the discussion at all"
In your opinion it doesn't - but you cannot authoritatively say whether it did or not. Another misdirection.
At the end of the day - you've avoided addressing my questions by questioning my questions and misdirection. An old an tired technique. Answering the questions would have taken half the space and verified your stance.
"It will perform"
It might - it will probably not be cost effective and get sidelined.
Non experimental ones achieve high speed - maybe not 3km/s (approximately Mach 9) but fast enough to evade this system in its experimental phase.
A small list of production Mach 5 and higher missiles.
Eg. the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-54_Phoenix screams along at 1.7km/s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-104_Patriot - same speed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-200_Angara/Vega/Dubna - 2.5km/s
I'm sure there are many more. Probably a few Mach 9 variants.
I wonder how well a mirror finish on a missile would protect it from lasers.
""no one denies climate change"" "they are claiming it won't hurt humanity"
So which is it? Are they claiming the climate isn't changing whatsoever? Are they accepting climate change but denying the possible effects from it? Or are they denying climate change and suggesting if it did occur that it still wouldn't affect the earth if it did.
Since you have to be insane to say 1 or 3 (since we can see it changing and by definition if it changes it has an effect), I'm going that most of them are at number 2 (supported by your second quote). In which case they don't deny climate change, they deny its effects. In which case you can call them "climate change effect deniers".
Nitpicking, but you walk the path of weasel words (when I'm sure you don't mean to).
"the highest average global temperatures on record"
I'm not disputing the records in the slightest, but, 200 years of records is not a very good data set compared to 454000000 years of the earth existing.
The NOAA forgets to mention that they are comparing a direct carbon dioxide measurement (400ppm) with two estimates (180ppm to 280ppm). These are very important distinctions in science that they have failed to make. It's the same for temperatures. All other temperature readings outside of our records are estimates based on other observable factors.
None of course. But you wouldn't use a knife, you'd use a sword. And going back in history the sword (long knife) was the ultimate killing tool for thousands of years. It's still just a tool though. It's a shard of metal that gives us a mechanical advantage. I bet your average male could, with a small amount of training, kill a lot of people very quickly with a sword.
The NCA bombing of 1994:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_major_crimes_in_Australia
When you have 60 million people rebelling we call it civil war.
If you're talking about murder and intimidation then it goes both ways. If the USA government wanted to enforce gun confiscation they would use murder (i.e. you fight for your beliefs and you will die) and intimidation (i.e. you peaceably hold onto your firearms and you'll go to prison) to achieve this.
I live in Australia.
Guns are not that hard to obtain. It is incredibly time consuming and inconvenient - but not hard.
The rate of firearm ownership in Australia is now much higher than it was in 1996 (the big ban/buyback year).
Have you considered that since we are one of the most highly educated and wealthy nations in the world that maybe this manifests itself in low murder rates? Our low murder rates certainly don't have anything to do with a lack of firearms.
How does a 10 round magazine greatly inconvenience a crazed murder? The fact that he has to do 4 magazine changes instead of 2 doesn't change much.
New Zealand didn't ban firearms in the same time frame as Australia - and they also haven't had a massacre in all that time (and they are demographically very similar to us).
You forget all the studies that show that the stringent firearms regulations didn't change much in Australia (except making it hard for normal legal owners to pursue their sport). The drop in firearm murder rate was happening well before the bans and buybacks and didn't change because of it.
If Im selling bread, and I know people will pay $50 /loaf, why would I charge less than that?
Because halving the price might quadruple the sales.
Yes there are no competitors. I wonder if over their long industry dominating time Adobe ever made any efforts to keep things that way? I'd bet they have and continually do.
At most levels the best text books are exclusively published in paper.
Getting this same quality of text into digital form won't happen unless either the current publisher can monetise it, or someone writes an equally good new text and publishes it in digital format.
Getting this material into the hands of people with little or no money requires someone to give a quality text away free of charge or for very little money.
I think it can be taken for granted that educate and learn are intertwined.
Learning ability differs from person to person - this can be measured and educational material can be altered to maximise the learning of any given individual.
My children learned to communicate by listening and watching, but if I didn't correct their errors their communication skills (listening and speaking) would be at a lower level today than they are.