Non-IT News Thread
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@Dashrender said in Non-IT News Thread:
That's why trade secrets are pointless - you invent something, someone else buys it, reverse engineers, then they make it and sell it for less, and you're out of business... so - there are no protections if you don't have a patent.
You act like it is magic. A trade secret is VERY hard to reverse engineer if it has any value. It takes time and money. It's the opposite of pointless. If something is easy to reverse engineer, you had no business patenting it.
There is every protection.
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@pmoncho said in Non-IT News Thread:
If a protected time period doesn't exist, initial pricing will be three to five times more than it is already.
No, there's no reason for that. Trade secrets are effective and there is a reason TRUE innovation isn't patented today - because patents don't have international protection (and often not domestic protection), but trade secrets do.
Patents, in reality, provide hardly any protection in the modern world. Trade secrets, however, often prove effective.
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A big problem with patents is that they primarily punish the domestic market.
Take US Pharma A. They make a new drug, and file a patent. Pharma B put billions into making the same drug, but filed one day later even though they invented it first, but the USPS arrived one day later because they were in a more rural area or a most distant state. Patents punish "competitive research" awarding 100% of the awards to one company (sometimes picked arbitrarily) and nothing to another who may have done more work (and easily had their work stolen from them - look at the light bulb.)
Now Pharma A gets rich by holding the US market hostage. Both by having total price control over the drug and any similar (even if better) drugs that they didn't design while Pharma B who may have invested a better drug can do nothing. Research is crippled, and consumers are extorted.
Now Pharma C, being a non-US company, can simply grab the patents that Pharma A used to steal from Pharma B and the American public, and make the drug with no research or effort because all details had to be public for the patent. Now this drug is super cheap to most of the world, but not the tax payers who are being extorted for it.
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No matter how you spin it, free markets just make sense and attempts at government controlled economies always result in the domestic market suffering. Not just the citizens, but innovation, too. Whether it is US pharmas or Soviet iron smelting, it's the same basic principles.
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@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
A big problem with patents is that they primarily punish the domestic market.
Take US Pharma A. They make a new drug, and file a patent. Pharma B put billions into making the same drug, but filed one day later even though they invented it first, but the USPS arrived one day later because they were in a more rural area or a most distant state. Patents punish "competitive research" awarding 100% of the awards to one company (sometimes picked arbitrarily) and nothing to another who may have done more work (and easily had their work stolen from them - look at the light bulb.)
Now Pharma A gets rich by holding the US market hostage. Both by having total price control over the drug and any similar (even if better) drugs that they didn't design while Pharma B who may have invested a better drug can do nothing. Research is crippled, and consumers are extorted.
Now Pharma C, being a non-US company, can simply grab the patents that Pharma A used to steal from Pharma B and the American public, and make the drug with no research or effort because all details had to be public for the patent. Now this drug is super cheap to most of the world, but not the tax payers who are being extorted for it.
Of course there's no spin here.
If there is no protection on huge investments like this - then I wonder how many would be willing to invest billions in the first place, I really would expect it to go down a lot.
As for reverse engineering the meds, I have absolutely no clue how easy/hard it is, but I tend to side with @pmoncho that it wouldn't be THAT long before they would be knocked off as it were, the cost of reverse engineering it is likely many fold less than original research, and the value is potentially HUGE.
Now granted, the rest of the world can knock it off, but since they hold the US over a barrel, they know they'll make their money back and tidy profits on top in most cases, so they - meh the theft.
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@Dashrender said in Non-IT News Thread:
If there is no protection on huge investments like this - then I wonder how many would be willing to invest billions in the first place, I really would expect it to go down a lot.
Right, there is little incentive. But luckily, there is huge protection. So this doesn't apply in the real world.
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@Dashrender said in Non-IT News Thread:
As for reverse engineering the meds, I have absolutely no clue how easy/hard it is, but I tend to side with @pmoncho that it wouldn't be THAT long before they would be knocked off as it were, the cost of reverse engineering it is likely many fold less than original research, and the value is potentially HUGE.
Maybe, sometimes. But by what logic should someone get a monopoly and keep prices high for discovering something first that is easy to replicate? That's crazy. They already have an advantage to being first, a huge one. Why should they get more? What kind of crazy "big companies deserve our money to worship them for being big" logic is that?
The idea that research would go away is absurd. That makes absolutely zero sense.
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@Dashrender said in Non-IT News Thread:
Now granted, the rest of the world can knock it off, but since they hold the US over a barrel, they know they'll make their money back and tidy profits on top in most cases, so they - meh the theft.
Right, so since they can guarantee that they can rape the US market, they are okay not being competitive overall.
So you see my problem. One set of citizens suffer at the hands of the lack of innovation, just so that we can worship big pharma as if we "owe" them something.
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@Dashrender said in Non-IT News Thread:
the cost of reverse engineering it is likely many fold less than original research, and the value is potentially HUGE.
It's not. The potential value is tiny. And the first company always has the ability to lower the cost of manufacturing to the point where there is no value in reverse engineering. Reverse engineering is expensive and only has value under one situation: where the product isn't available on the market currently at a reasonable cost.
Reverse engineering only threatens a company that is non-competitive up front, and refuses to become competitive later. Any company that is believed to be willing to lower their cost when a competitor approaches the market has no fear of competition unless that competition has created a competitive advantage that they can't replicate themselves....
And if that one condition is true, then we have proven why patents cripple competition by not only making the product not have to compete on a free market playing field, but taking away all incentive to innovate around that product.
Every argument "for" patents, is actually proof of any you can't have them make sense.
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Maybe I just think capitalism is too logical to pass up. But the idea that you have a free market, an even playing field, and people are rewarded for doing a good job, not for bribing government officials, and keeping the government's hands out from manipulating the market just makes so much sense. I can't understand a desire for an anti-capitalist system in today's world when we've seen centuries of capitalism working and communism failing (at least on an economic basis.) Even countries with communist governments (China, Nica, etc.) have adopted vastly more capitalistic economic structures than the US because lessons have been learned that nothing else works anywhere nearly as good as free markets.
There's just no way to plan an economy as well as evolution already does it. Picking and choosing who wins is the ultimate strategy to undermine innovation.
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:astonished_face: :astonished_face: :astonished_face: :astonished_face: nah, not really shocked here...
Ajit Pai touted false broadband data despite clear signs it wasn’t accurate
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai touted inaccurate broadband-availability data in order to claim that his deregulatory agenda sped up deployment despite clear warning signs that the FCC was relying on false information.
Pai claimed in February 2019 that the number of Americans lacking access to fixed broadband at the FCC benchmark speed of 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream dropped from 26.1 million people at the end of 2016 to 19.4 million at the end of 2017, and he attributed the improvement to the FCC "removing barriers to infrastructure investment." The numbers were included in a draft version of the FCC's congressionally mandated annual broadband assessment, and Pai asked fellow commissioners to approve the report that concluded the broadband industry was doing enough to expand access.
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BBC News - Typhoon Haishen: Japanese urged to stay alert as storm blows in
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-54046150 -
@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
BBC News - Typhoon Haishen: Japanese urged to stay alert as storm blows in
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-54046150Powerful Typhoon Haishen leaves 2 dead, 4 missing, over 100 injured in Japan
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- A powerful typhoon left two person dead, four missing and more than 100 injured Monday in Japan as it battered almost the whole of the country's southwestern main island of Kyushu with violent winds, causing massive blackouts, and disrupting transportation and some mobile networks.
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Manga 'Ghost in the Shell,' Noh merged through VR technology
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Noh, one of Japan's traditional performing arts with a history of around 700 years, has expanded its boundaries by realizing the world of "Ghost in the Shell," a sci-fi manga masterpiece, on stage with the assistance of cutting-edge virtual reality and visual technology.
Ok, I don't know WTF tech they are using, but I want to see this shit in person... It sounds awesome.
Advanced technology allows the audience to enjoy illusionary effects in the play, with main character Motoko Kusanagi rendered invisible and then reappearing on the stage at times without the use of VR headsets.
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@JaredBusch That would be really cool. When I was in college I took a Japanese history class and my main paper that semester was about the differences between Noh and Kabuki theater.
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California wildfires: Hikers rescued as blazes rage
Rescuers in California have been airlifting dozens of people trapped by a huge fire, as crews continue to battle blazes across the state.
An initial attempt to rescue the group, stranded in mountain refuge for two nights, was abandoned on Monday night because of smoke from the Creek Fire. But helicopters were able to land early on Tuesday and are have begun taking the hikers to safety. Fires in California have burned through a record 2m acres in recent weeks. In total, these blazes span an area larger than the US state of Delaware. California is currently experiencing an unprecedented heatwave. Los Angeles County reported its highest-ever temperature of 49.4C (121F) on Sunday. Temperatures have dropped since then, but high winds are expected to fan the flames until Wednesday. -
Belarus: Nobel Laureate Alexievich visited by diplomats amid 'harassment'
European diplomats have been photographed at the home of a Nobel Prize-winning writer in Belarus after she said masked men tried to break in.
*Svetlana Alexievich called journalists to her home on Wednesday after the incident.
She is the last leading member of the opposition Co-ordination Council still in Belarus who has not been detained. The government has cracked down on dissent after protests swept the country following a disputed election. Maria Kolesnikova, one of three women who joined forces to challenge authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko in August's vote, is in detention after she resisted attempts by the authorities to expel her to Ukraine earlier this week. And on Wednesday witnesses reportedly saw Maxim Znak, a lawyer and another member of the Co-ordination Council, being led down a street in the capital Minsk by masked men in plain clothes. Belarusian authorities said both were being held on suspicion of harming national security and destabilising the country. -
Brexit: EU ultimatum to UK over withdrawal deal changes
The EU is demanding the UK ditches plans to change Boris Johnson's Brexit deal "by the end of the month" or risk jeopardising trade talks.
The UK has published a bill to rewrite parts of the withdrawal agreement it signed in January. The EU said this had "seriously damaged trust" and it would not be "shy" of taking legal action against the UK. But cabinet minister Michael Gove said the UK had made it "perfectly clear" it would not withdraw the bill. The government says Parliament is sovereign and can pass laws which breach the UK's international treaty obligations. EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said "trust and confidence are and will be key", after the latest round of UK-EU trade talks wrapped up in London on Thursday. -
High-fidelity record of Earth's climate history puts current changes in context
Scientists have compiled a continuous, high-fidelity record of variations in Earth's climate extending 66 million years into the past. The record reveals four distinctive climate states, which the researchers dubbed Hothouse, Warmhouse, Coolhouse, and Icehouse. These major climate states persisted for millions and sometimes tens of millions of years, and within each one the climate shows rhythmic variations corresponding to changes in Earth's orbit around the sun.
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@JaredBusch said in Non-IT News Thread:
High-fidelity record of Earth's climate history puts current changes in context
Scientists have compiled a continuous, high-fidelity record of variations in Earth's climate extending 66 million years into the past. The record reveals four distinctive climate states, which the researchers dubbed Hothouse, Warmhouse, Coolhouse, and Icehouse. These major climate states persisted for millions and sometimes tens of millions of years, and within each one the climate shows rhythmic variations corresponding to changes in Earth's orbit around the sun.
That is very interesting. I have long thought that humans aren't affecting the climate as much as we thought. I am sure we are a little. However, we really can't be sure how much until we have more data from the Sun. The Sun has solar cycles that it goes through. Some are shorter like every 9-10 years I think. There are longer ones though that are still being measured, such as hundreds or thousands of years long. These solar cycles have decreased periods of electromagnetism at their beginnings and increased levels at the end of the cycles. So what this means is that at the beginning more radiation (which is light in the various spectrums and ultimately heat) is getting to us from the Sun and warming the planet up and creating the hothouse effect. This eventually reverses and has the opposite effect where it corresponds to the icehouse effect because less radiation is getting through the magnetic field of the Sun.
