nova

We need an alternative mechanism to fund medical research. Granting artificial monopolies aka patents isn't cutting it, and it's getting highly unethical.

Given that what we currently have isn't a free-market approach at all I wonder why we couldn't just fund it directly, via taxes. The cost could be shared between countries AND the research could be directed. The companies could be pure R/D labs, leaving the manufacturing to others.

Steganography, then?

Are the (few in percentage) "good patents" the carrot so that we the pull the cart and accept the whole patent system?

> Not everyone with a patent is a troll, rather many are the little guy who were not able to win the race because A) they don't have enough resources or B) they couldn't rally enough troops to get behind them

In other words, the patent system benefits big companies with big lawyer armies and trolls with nothing to lose, and is useless for the little inventor who doesn't have the muscle to fight the legal war if someone copies his precious invention but now also have to worry to be the one being sued because of some obvious patent one can infringe just by breathing.

But let's keep the fantasy that patents protect the little guy after all.

Arithmetic coding, one of the early victims of software patents.

> You don't need to be doing something illegal, in order to want privacy...

But due to the existence of general-purpose computers the only way of really enforcing copyright law (meaning to stop the unauthorized transfer of information) is by some kind of total surveillance cyber-policial state.

So yes, it's not the same, but they are related in practice.

General purpose computing isn't probably going away because of its economic importance (but they sure can try with DRM schemes and such). Copyright law isn't getting any better because they own the governments. Therefore...

Maybe if we didn't have the absurd excuse of "the tyrant is evil, but at least he'll die someday" we would be more inclined to do something, instead of sheepishly obeying and letting time pass.

>I can accept everything about being human, except for death, so this is a challenge I've wanted to take on since I was quite young, but was afraid to directly face.

Glad to read this. The enterprise will be very difficult, but your heart (or brain) is in the right place.

Your reasoning seems too ceteris paribus. I'd say that widespread immortality would have big social consequences other than just people not dying.

If only it were merely technically and scientifically super-difficult.

The biggest hurdle is cultural and social, as many comments show. The first step towards ending death is to consider the fight possible and positive. But we are still deep in deathism, "Death is inevitable (with current science), ergo death is good". The biggest case of sour grapes or Stockholm syndrome ever, the most awful meme.

> Unfortunately it’s really hard to get traction for anything else, because the whole world already has JPEG decoders built into everything.

Patents don't help either.

"The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else." (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer)

And somehow there are still people who believe patents protect the little inventor from being robbed blind by big businesses.

The worst thing that can happen to an innovator is not that somebody copies your precious thing, is that they (trolls or not) sue you first, that you can't even compete. Even if the patent is bogus and you hope to theoretically win the legal battle you'll go broke from even trying.

You mean the ones caused by sugars, flours and vegetable oils?

I'd say the patent system is working exactly as intended.

Intellectual "property" is a serious business.

> Some European countries has very good regulations about supporting disabled children thus equipment is very expensive.

Regulations, at least the well intentioned ones, try to avoid accidents from ill-designed products. The downside is expensive or never made technology needed by a small number of patients.

After all, dead or injured children due to faulty machinery are very noticeable, whereas unassisted ones (because the technology doesn't exist) is just "a fact of life", and invisible to most (except their parents). "What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen", again.

Same with medicines.

We need a two-tier system: 1) certified and expensive, and 2) best-effort and on your own, but cheap.

(And don't let me get started on patents)

> If our work was unprotected then larger companies could just sit and watch the small companies try, and then swoop in and take over the market if the idea is valid and the market is there.

But could you actually take on a large company and win? Or is it just a theoretical possibility?

Do you have the means, or it's only luck?

In fact there is a much worse fate that having your precious idea "stolen": when you are the one sued, because someone (small troll or big Sauron company) has a patent on doing square roots on the internets.

> I wonder, is there still someone who believes that patents are protecting the small inventors and companies?

If that were true we wouldn't have any patent system at all.

Although I am not entirely convinced (what to do with immigrants, in particular) I believe this could be a good idea.

We should judge this from a pragmatic, not ideological, viewpoint. It may not be the ideal libertarian society, but it could easily be better than the current one, where we are already paying an insanely high amount of taxes which are in great part wasted.

But I don't see its application without some huge political change, as politicians would be most unwilling to give up the power they now yield. Let me share a well known Spanish saying:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quien_parte_y_reparte_se_lleva...

So, Wordperfect 5.1's "reveal codes" from 1989.

I am against patents in general, and specially in software, but I can see there is no way to change the system the way politics and lobbying work.

So maybe we should try another approach, something every government likes: taxes. Let's add a tax on patents please. (Maybe copyright too, specially of old (>10 years) works.) A big yearly tax for every patent you own.

It's the only way I can imagine to put some slowdown to the cancerous growth of IP.

> How can the little guy ever make money on an idea if he or she can be instantly wiped out by someone with more money?

But that is exactly the way it happens now: the little guy can consider himself lucky if he is not the one to get sued both by big companies AND trolls.

In the software world the problem is just utterly insane, but this is a general feature of the patent system.

Deathism is an insidious and pervasive meme. It is so widely accepted that we didn't have a word for it.

That's why I am so happy right now with this announcement: extremely rich and influential people moving beyond the same old Death Stockholm Syndrome.

Add me up.

Also, we are nowhere near being immortal and in many developed countries people already have stopped reproducing (Germany, Japan, Spain, etc)

I'd happily take the 5,000 million years (or whatever physics say) lifespan now please.

If I can't call it immortality, well, it'll have to do.

Well, deathism going out of fashion with one of the biggest technological companies of the world can only be good.

This is the greatest news I've heard in a long time and even if it ends up in nothing the attitude alone is commendable.

> How can any government accept a situation where communications are so secure that none of their agencies can break it?

Chief George Earle: Sensors all over the city can zero in on anyone at any time. I can't even conceive of what police officers did before it was developed.

John Spartan: We worked. This fascist crap makes me want to puke.

> You might imagine a different existence, but that doesn't change the facts, or the hand we're dealt.

Yeah why bother with fixing >20% infant mortality, or eradicating polio, or dying from infections we now easily cure with antibiotics. We should had accepted that as part of life and keep dying more, more painfully and earlier.

You are of course entitled to your own personal philosophy, as am I. That doesn't mean I have to silence my disagreement.

And in fact I find that "viewpoint" totally incomprehensible. I can asure you, I loved my mother much, much before cancer killed her at 52. That was not a gift, that was her body malfunctioning and our ignorance about how to fix it.

I have no need for death or grief to love or to value life, thank you very much.

And I don't keep my mouth shut about this because I worry about the real consequences of that philosophy. At any other moment of human history acceptance of death was perhaps the only sane thing to do, because there was no alternative. But we have now a scientific civilization and we should be fighting it, instead of rationalizing it.