As long as nobody else is affected by your actions - This could mean people on the road/ your dependents / overall society in general. The third point can even provide the justification for the war against drugs. Also it can explain why an individual smoking pot is a problem of the government since if there is no market, nobody will sell it.
Simple - It is much more accesible. If I were to go to library every time I want to read books, I would read much much less. It is too much of a hassle, especially since people dont plan too much for these items.
What I do is, every 3 months or so, I buy a bunch of books and store it. Later, whenever I am in the mood of reading books, I take one and read it.
My guess is that this is what most people would be doing.
I am no expert in this area, but if all the functions of sleep are so easily replaceable, then wouldn't nature have done so long before? Being in a state of very low alertness in a jungle is something which would have been filtered out by evolution long long ago.
Actually, the inventor, in many a case, lives in a vacuum. I know some small scale inventors, and their social skills are, to put it mildly, less than exemplary. They either believe others fully or completely disbelieve them. Also, their financial situation means that they cannot straight away file a patent once the invention is complete. All these factors can mean that 'first to invent' is indeed better in the long run.
An interesting point - Since we are doing science, is it a good idea to throw away nonconformist images away as improper? Are we not bringing our own bias also to this? If we are only looking at what we expect to find and throw away the unexpected, wouldn't science take a hit?
1. Cost of patenting based on the wealth of the patentee. This should help the small garage inventor + actual real good innovations. Patent trolling will be less effective. 2. Patent to be supported by product within a period of 3 years. It is the responsibility of the patent holder to provide proof that a product that was created by his patent has been made after 3 years. This product has to be a) made by the patent holder or b) the patent holder has given license to the company which creates it. Otherwise the patent lapses. This would again take care of the patent trolls + help actual good inventions 3. The cost of patent to be borne across the years. Every 5 years the patent has be re-issued with quite a high fee (again based on the wealth of patentee). This means that only good useful products are under patent for the complete duration of the patent. This again will support the basic idea of patenting, i.e. really good useful ideas not to be kept under wraps, and not the small ideas.
I guess these ideas should help modify the patent system so that a) Patent office gets more money which means more people, which means better results b) Small guy inventor is supported c) Real good ideas can be patented for the whole duration d) Company still can work freely without struggling with frivolous patents, while producing real good products under patents themselves.
Since patent is supposed to support the innovative spirit, cant they have different patent filing fee slabs depending on the wealth of the filer? Basically, if the patent is filed by an garage inventor, the cost for patenting is much less than if it by a multinational company, which can anyway afford it.
Thus, by hiking the cost of patenting high enough, we would be able to reduce the effect of patent trolls, or the companies patenting every small thing, whereas, for the individual it would be better since the cost for him will actually decrease.
Along with this, the patent examiner will be able to better review the patents because a) there will be lesser no of patents and b) there is much more money going around - so more patent examiners can be recruited.
Why should that point be considered stupid? For every being, the concept of it finding an item 'appealing' has been honed by natural selection. Cannibalism doesn't go well in a society like ours, and along with the possibility of prion diseases it has become an unappealing custom. Since most of the time, living beings don't even think about what to eat, I guess for humans too, eating what it finds appealing should be quite proper.
If you have devised the french-fry theory to specifically predict ketchup, yes, then existence of ketchup doesn't validate french-fry theory. But, if your french-fry theory is one which was completely designed in a robust (and with very few variables) mathematical framework, with no intention of predicting ketchup, and if it predicts ketchup, it does mean that existence of ketchup does validate this theory.
Similarly, string theory was not expected to predict gravity. It was just another theory, albeit a very beautiful one, which was devised to explain our universe. While investigating more on this theory, it was found that it predict gravity, which no other theory does.
Thus, the existence of gravity does validate string theory.
Anyway, I'm kind of a skeptic already, I don't think that looking for life outside our galaxy is particularly interesting or useful anyway, considering that the nearest life would be millions of years away by interstellar travel. Even if it's out there, we'll never meet it or communicate with it. Not quite. If we were to embark on a journey that long, it would mean we are able to achieve speeds close to c. Now, at that speed, time dilation would really show it's effects. This would mean that even if the distance is millions of light years the traveller might not feel the age. i.e. even if it is millions of light years, the traveller might age in decades/years/months ??
This means our species would still go on, albeit at a long distance and time away. And, I believe that is reason enough to be both interesting and useful.
Can it be because there is more selection pressure due to the dinosaurs? If there is more selection pressure, more the chance of diverging to new species. And when dinosaurs died out, the mammals had a field day.
I do believe that you are not a troll. It is just that moderators are a little too overenthusiastic. My point is not that morality is a bad thing. After reading about Mahatma Gandhi, I cannot even come close to saying that. What I was just suggesting was that some of these countries are under extreme economic pressure. I am a person who considers that the amount of good you do matters more than the intent of yours. Again, I am not saying that intent is overrated. Just that at many a time, what matters is the amount of good you do.
Gates here is such an example. He is doing a lot of good. He is helping children live. He may be just doing for his PR. But that doesnt take away the goodness that he did. And he should be lauded for that.
I do see your point here and also I do agree with you in many areas. But, not completely. My point still remains that it is unusual for a person to spend 1/3rd of his life savings (however lrge that maybe), for charity. As I mentioned in another post long ago, when I was not as rich as now, I had no issues in giving money away for charity. See, I had decided to give 10% of my savings to charity. Once I got richer (by a little bit), my heart bled when I gave the same 10%, since it was a higher amount. Later on I stopped because the amount became too much.
So, I laud him. And the companies which support his mission.
Most people try to keep it for their future generations.
we ALL have a RESPONSIBILITY to only invest in companies which match our morality. Otherwise, you are simply doing things that, well, you don't know what they are. Do you really find that to be acceptable?
I agree to your point. But, only to a degree. What he might be thinking might be very different from what we think. There has been a lot of philanthropic organizations over the years, and very few made any mark in the world. Here, he has divided it to two different areas, one which makes money to support the other. Both of them doesn't influence each other. Such an operation might be in the end a way to make positive changes in the world.
And that makes it Tokay to pollute? To harm every inhabitant of the globe through pollution? To be making people in the area sick? You know why they don't care if they do it? Because people will still come to work for them because they're the only thing around. Does that make it right for them to produce such egregious pollution? Are you seriously going to make that argument? When the people working in the plant get sick and are simply replaced, with the previous employees kicked out on the street to die, is that justified by education? Is that justified by giving people jobs for which you pay them orders of magnitude less than the prevailing wage in other countries which are producing the same commodity?
I guess you haven't been to 3rd/4th world countries till now. I have been, it does (at least in my eyes) make it Ok. See, if that company doesn't pollute, some other company will. Bribes are rampant and nobody gives a heck about environment. The people there are concerned about their day-to-day survival. A very high percentage of them. They do not live usually long enough to feel the effects of it. People die young, and so they have much higher tolerance for pollution. Here what is needed is money for survival and education. That is what these companies provide. And the most important fact is that the education that they gain helps the whole country.
Now at least we know that the money that they make through this is at least going to help the people in that country. And that, I guess is the most important thing.
Aren't you being a little too harsh on a person who spent more than 1/3rd of his life's savings in philanthropy> His point, as many would point out here, is that it is very difficult for an investor to invest only in companies to do no evil. Many of the evils, say pollution etc, might be offset by the same company by providing jobs/shelter for many of the localities and much more importantly, transference of knowledge to the poor. If the same company decides to avoid doing evil and go completely green, then the competition, which has no such restrictions imposed on them, might destroy it. Then the company would have done disservice to their shareholders/employees and the native people and thereby would have committed evil.
I guess there is a lot of gray areas in the working of these, and it is unnecessarily harsh to lambaste someone who did the right thing, as he felt it.
Yes. That is what I mentioned by the second point. Unless the $100 laptops flood the market, in such a way that there is no buyers at all for the $100 laptop, stealing is a big risk. Another factor to consider is that the people who steal wont be selling it in USA most probably. For example the people who steal it in Nigeria would most probably sell it in Chad or Sudan. How they are going to stop this smuggling is beyond me. I really do wonder whether this whole lofty idea might get washed by the flood of human grief and greed.
I do understand that there a pretty lofty thoughts & minds behind this, but I do wonder whether this is a good move? If the real world price of this laptop is $200 (it is what the buyer pays, regardless of the fact that one is going to 3rd world country), and it is being sold to people in 3rd world countries for $100, then wouldn't this cause _not_so_good_people_ to buy/steal from the poor people and sell it here?
Even if they are just selling it to the poor countries (and not giving it through ebay at all) , people being people, would buy it through ebay, even paying $150/200 since it is cheaper than what they can buy here.
I guess this $100 laptop should be given to the general public too, so that such injustice doesn't happen.
If one person is creating a web site, he might want to make sure it works in the primary browser (by usage) in the world. He shouldn't have to buy a windows OS just for that purpose.
This is a little off-topic, but I guess the only way to take out this menace of spam is to make the average joe accountable. If the spam originated from a botnet in his machine, make him accountable too.
If he has installed the latest updates from Microsoft and still the botnet could get in, then it is not an issue. But, if he has not taken the effort to download the patches for say, the last 6 months, and a botnet operated from his machine, causing discomfiture to all and sundry, then he is accountable for it.
Push forward legal actions against the 'joe' and we would see real increase in the understanding of computers fallibility and a real decrease in the amount of spam.
I guess the worm should have just installed firefox (that too after random days, so it doesn't affect the network traffic substantially), and changed the target of IE link to that of firefox. Maybe it should even run the firefox installation (is there a theme to make firefox look like IE?) to set it up, so that the average user doesnt even feel the difference.
This page describes install of Debian Etch on Dell Inspiron 1150, including tweaks for Compiz and Truecrypt encryption. Looks like this is where the author obtained most of his information. Anyways, one issue I find with all of these installation guidelines is that they do not always talk about 915resolution etc. I had installed ubuntu and debian sarge/etch in dell laptops, and every time I had to get the help of 915resolution to get the max resolution possible. Issues I found in debian etch are - 1. 915resolution needed, as mentioned above. 2. Sound/Audio -esp in flash based sites like youtube. The problem is - this works randomly. Same site might come up proper the second time I restart. 3. Hanging while booting. This occurs every 5 times or so, so the issue is not the max priority. It hangs while detecting hardware. Googling also wasnt much of a help here. 4. Grub latency - Mine is a dual-boot with WinXP. The boot-loader takes ages (approx 3-4 minutes) to come up every time I boot from linux. But, if I were to boot only linux/windows for consecutive 3 times, then the boot loader comes up fast. Googling didnt help here too.
If such issues were all cleared up, I guess linux is ready for an average joe. Installation otherwise was pretty simple.
My biggest issue with Harry Potter series is that it depicts the protagonist as one who has no genius, is not hard-working by any standards, has bigotry - in short - an absolutely average person. The protagonist then goes and defeats a much more able antagonist (whose biggest fault is bigotry, by the way) with nothing more than - love of his mother protecting him.
My biggest issue with such a story - that too tailored for young children - is that the protagonist is not anywhere close to the perfect role model for children - and they are impressionable at that age. I am not asking for the protagonist to be a genius - I am just saying there should be some real stand-out feature in the protagonist - in a children's book. I couldn't find it in this book. When I read the book, it felt as if the political correctness of the current times have enveloped the fantasy world too.
My goodness... Does this mean that there could also be a possibility of there being only one galaxy - or maybe even one star or even lesser? The different power and shape of other elements (stars/supernovas etc) could be viewed as the same happening in the same galaxy being reflected of a far-off plane? i.e. a single super-novae occurring long ago, being reflected off some far off plane etc. + if it is not a proper dodecahedron or with multiple planes having different properties expanding or contracting the power?
Even though it is nowhere near the truth, the fact that such scenarios could be even thought off itself gives me goosebumps.
Re:1965+ research says your view is incomplete
on
Understanding Burnout
·
· Score: 1
The view you expressed doesn't sound all that different from Tom Cruise's denunciation of "post-partum depression" as hokum made up by people who were just personally weak. Oops - I am sory it sounded that way. See, I am also feeling the effects of burnout currently - and I could say that whatever I mentioned in the earlier post was the reason that I could come up - for my case. When I looked at my case and really happy people around me, i came to this solution. But, I by no means am trying to suggest that this is the only reason. Sorry if my post came out that way.
Slashdot Mirror
As long as nobody else is affected by your actions -
This could mean people on the road/ your dependents / overall society in general.
The third point can even provide the justification for the war against drugs.
Also it can explain why an individual smoking pot is a problem of the government since if there is no market, nobody will sell it.
Simple - It is much more accesible.
If I were to go to library every time I want to read books, I would read much much less.
It is too much of a hassle, especially since people dont plan too much for these items.
What I do is, every 3 months or so, I buy a bunch of books and store it.
Later, whenever I am in the mood of reading books, I take one and read it.
My guess is that this is what most people would be doing.
I am no expert in this area, but if all the functions of sleep are so easily replaceable, then wouldn't nature have done so long before?
Being in a state of very low alertness in a jungle is something which would have been filtered out by evolution long long ago.
Actually, the inventor, in many a case, lives in a vacuum.
I know some small scale inventors, and their social skills are, to put it mildly, less than exemplary.
They either believe others fully or completely disbelieve them.
Also, their financial situation means that they cannot straight away file a patent once the invention is complete.
All these factors can mean that 'first to invent' is indeed better in the long run.
An interesting point -
Since we are doing science, is it a good idea to throw away nonconformist images away as improper?
Are we not bringing our own bias also to this? If we are only looking at what we expect to find and throw away the unexpected, wouldn't science take a hit?
I mentioned some in my earlier post http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=267689&cid=202 12953.
Just some thoughts.
1. Cost of patenting based on the wealth of the patentee. This should help the small garage inventor + actual real good innovations. Patent trolling will be less effective.
2. Patent to be supported by product within a period of 3 years. It is the responsibility of the patent holder to provide proof that a product that was created by his patent has been made after 3 years. This product has to be a) made by the patent holder or b) the patent holder has given license to the company which creates it. Otherwise the patent lapses. This would again take care of the patent trolls + help actual good inventions
3. The cost of patent to be borne across the years. Every 5 years the patent has be re-issued with quite a high fee (again based on the wealth of patentee). This means that only good useful products are under patent for the complete duration of the patent. This again will support the basic idea of patenting, i.e. really good useful ideas not to be kept under wraps, and not the small ideas.
I guess these ideas should help modify the patent system so that
a) Patent office gets more money which means more people, which means better results
b) Small guy inventor is supported
c) Real good ideas can be patented for the whole duration
d) Company still can work freely without struggling with frivolous patents, while producing real good products under patents themselves.
Since patent is supposed to support the innovative spirit, cant they have different patent filing fee slabs depending on the wealth of the filer?
Basically, if the patent is filed by an garage inventor, the cost for patenting is much less than if it by a multinational company, which can anyway afford it.
Thus, by hiking the cost of patenting high enough, we would be able to reduce the effect of patent trolls, or the companies patenting every small thing, whereas, for the individual it would be better since the cost for him will actually decrease.
Along with this, the patent examiner will be able to better review the patents because a) there will be lesser no of patents and b) there is much more money going around - so more patent examiners can be recruited.
Shouldnt this help?
By that logic, single children should be far more intelligent than others, right?
Why should that point be considered stupid?
For every being, the concept of it finding an item 'appealing' has been honed by natural selection.
Cannibalism doesn't go well in a society like ours, and along with the possibility of prion diseases it has become an unappealing custom.
Since most of the time, living beings don't even think about what to eat, I guess for humans too, eating what it finds appealing should be quite proper.
If you have devised the french-fry theory to specifically predict ketchup, yes, then existence of ketchup doesn't validate french-fry theory.
But, if your french-fry theory is one which was completely designed in a robust (and with very few variables) mathematical framework, with no intention of predicting ketchup, and if it predicts ketchup, it does mean that existence of ketchup does validate this theory.
Similarly, string theory was not expected to predict gravity.
It was just another theory, albeit a very beautiful one, which was devised to explain our universe.
While investigating more on this theory, it was found that it predict gravity, which no other theory does.
Thus, the existence of gravity does validate string theory.
Gravity is predicted (postdicted??) by String theory.
I guess, that is one real prediction which no other theory is able to match.
This means our species would still go on, albeit at a long distance and time away.
And, I believe that is reason enough to be both interesting and useful.
Can it be because there is more selection pressure due to the dinosaurs?
If there is more selection pressure, more the chance of diverging to new species.
And when dinosaurs died out, the mammals had a field day.
I do believe that you are not a troll. It is just that moderators are a little too overenthusiastic.
My point is not that morality is a bad thing. After reading about Mahatma Gandhi, I cannot even come close to saying that.
What I was just suggesting was that some of these countries are under extreme economic pressure. I am a person who considers that
the amount of good you do matters more than the intent of yours. Again, I am not saying that intent is overrated. Just that at many
a time, what matters is the amount of good you do.
Gates here is such an example. He is doing a lot of good. He is helping children live. He may be just doing for his PR. But that
doesnt take away the goodness that he did. And he should be lauded for that.
I do see your point here and also I do agree with you in many areas. But, not completely. My point still remains that it is unusual for a person to spend 1/3rd of his life savings (however lrge that maybe), for charity. As I mentioned in another post long ago, when I was not as rich as now, I had no issues in giving money away for charity. See, I had decided to give 10% of my savings to charity. Once I got richer (by a little bit), my heart bled when I gave the same 10%, since it was a higher amount. Later on I stopped because the amount became too much.
So, I laud him. And the companies which support his mission.
Most people try to keep it for their future generations.
I agree to your point. But, only to a degree. What he might be thinking might be very different from what we think.
There has been a lot of philanthropic organizations over the years, and very few made any mark in the world. Here, he has divided it to two different areas, one which makes money to support the other. Both of them doesn't influence each other. Such an operation might be in the end a way to make positive changes in the world.
I guess you haven't been to 3rd/4th world countries till now. I have been, it does (at least in my eyes) make it Ok. See, if that company doesn't pollute, some other company will. Bribes are rampant and nobody gives a heck about environment. The people there are concerned about their day-to-day survival. A very high percentage of them. They do not live usually long enough to feel the effects of it. People die young, and so they have much higher tolerance for pollution. Here what is needed is money for survival and education. That is what these companies provide. And the most important fact is that the education that they gain helps the whole country.
Now at least we know that the money that they make through this is at least going to help the people in that country. And that, I guess is the most important thing.
Aren't you being a little too harsh on a person who spent more than 1/3rd of his life's savings in philanthropy>
His point, as many would point out here, is that it is very difficult for an investor to invest only in companies to do no evil.
Many of the evils, say pollution etc, might be offset by the same company by providing jobs/shelter for many of the localities and much more importantly, transference of knowledge to the poor.
If the same company decides to avoid doing evil and go completely green, then the competition, which has no such restrictions imposed on them, might destroy it. Then the company would have done disservice to their shareholders/employees and the native people and thereby would have committed evil.
I guess there is a lot of gray areas in the working of these, and it is unnecessarily harsh to lambaste someone who did the right thing, as he felt it.
Yes. That is what I mentioned by the second point.
Unless the $100 laptops flood the market, in such a way that there is no buyers at all for the $100 laptop, stealing is a big risk.
Another factor to consider is that the people who steal wont be selling it in USA most probably.
For example the people who steal it in Nigeria would most probably sell it in Chad or Sudan. How they are going to stop this smuggling is beyond me.
I really do wonder whether this whole lofty idea might get washed by the flood of human grief and greed.
I do understand that there a pretty lofty thoughts & minds behind this, but I do wonder whether this is a good move?
If the real world price of this laptop is $200 (it is what the buyer pays, regardless of the fact that one is going to 3rd world country), and it is being sold to people in 3rd world countries for $100, then wouldn't this cause _not_so_good_people_ to buy/steal from the poor people and sell it here?
Even if they are just selling it to the poor countries (and not giving it through ebay at all) , people being people, would buy it through ebay, even paying $150/200 since it is cheaper than what they can buy here.
I guess this $100 laptop should be given to the general public too, so that such injustice doesn't happen.
If one person is creating a web site, he might want to make sure it works in the primary browser (by usage) in the world.
He shouldn't have to buy a windows OS just for that purpose.
This is a little off-topic, but I guess the only way to take out this menace of spam is to make the average joe accountable.
If the spam originated from a botnet in his machine, make him accountable too.
If he has installed the latest updates from Microsoft and still the botnet could get in, then it is not an issue. But, if he has not taken the effort to download the patches for say, the last 6 months, and a botnet operated from his machine, causing discomfiture to all and sundry, then he is accountable for it.
Push forward legal actions against the 'joe' and we would see real increase in the understanding of computers fallibility and a real decrease in the amount of spam.
I guess the worm should have just installed firefox (that too after random days, so it doesn't affect the network traffic substantially), and changed the target of IE link to that of firefox.
Maybe it should even run the firefox installation (is there a theme to make firefox look like IE?) to set it up, so that the average user doesnt even feel the difference.
Anyways, one issue I find with all of these installation guidelines is that they do not always talk about 915resolution etc.
I had installed ubuntu and debian sarge/etch in dell laptops, and every time I had to get the help of 915resolution to get the max resolution possible.
Issues I found in debian etch are -
1. 915resolution needed, as mentioned above.
2. Sound/Audio -esp in flash based sites like youtube. The problem is - this works randomly. Same site might come up proper the second time I restart.
3. Hanging while booting. This occurs every 5 times or so, so the issue is not the max priority. It hangs while detecting hardware. Googling also wasnt much of a help here.
4. Grub latency - Mine is a dual-boot with WinXP. The boot-loader takes ages (approx 3-4 minutes) to come up every time I boot from linux. But, if I were to boot only linux/windows for consecutive 3 times, then the boot loader comes up fast. Googling didnt help here too.
If such issues were all cleared up, I guess linux is ready for an average joe. Installation otherwise was pretty simple.
My biggest issue with Harry Potter series is that it depicts the protagonist as one who has no genius, is not hard-working by any standards, has bigotry - in short - an absolutely average person.
The protagonist then goes and defeats a much more able antagonist (whose biggest fault is bigotry, by the way) with nothing more than - love of his mother protecting him.
My biggest issue with such a story - that too tailored for young children - is that the protagonist is not anywhere close to the perfect role model for children - and they are impressionable at that age. I am not asking for the protagonist to be a genius - I am just saying there should be some real stand-out feature in the protagonist - in a children's book. I couldn't find it in this book.
When I read the book, it felt as if the political correctness of the current times have enveloped the fantasy world too.
YMMV.
My goodness ...
Does this mean that there could also be a possibility of there being only one galaxy - or maybe even one star or even lesser?
The different power and shape of other elements (stars/supernovas etc) could be viewed as the same happening in the same galaxy being reflected of a far-off plane? i.e. a single super-novae occurring long ago, being reflected off some far off plane etc.
+ if it is not a proper dodecahedron or with multiple planes having different properties expanding or contracting the power?
Even though it is nowhere near the truth, the fact that such scenarios could be even thought off itself gives me goosebumps.
When I looked at my case and really happy people around me, i came to this solution.
But, I by no means am trying to suggest that this is the only reason. Sorry if my post came out that way.