Keep in mind that Universities, one of the biggest centers of innovation (often government funded), tend to have massive patent portfolios. They license them out to companies and that in turn funds more fundamental research^W^W^W bigger stadium. So if we killed the system completely we would also have to restructure how basic research is done... which would probably be a good, thing.. just pointing out that corporations are not the only ones utilizing this system.
FTFY. Sorry..
Edison's lightbulb is a really bad example. Edison took something which was already working in a lab (wire emitting light when you send electricity through it) and made it actually useful. Before Edison it was a scientific curiousity.
That is not fundamental research, it is directed product development.
Since we are on the topic, I once chanced on an issue of "Review of Scientific Instruments" from around 1900s. I was amazed by lots of articles on many ingenious devices based on transformers, vacuum bulbs and many unlike anything I heard before. Nowadays we look back and think "Lightbulb, Fleming valve, Multiphase motor" but there was a lot of research..
The whole article was not much more than a high level review. The graphic naturally draws attention to the parameters the writer wanted to cover but he did not back up his graphic with any sort of serious textual review of what he felt were the weaknesses or advantages of the different programming language at least not in any detail.
And what he has is flawed as well. For example, he marked R as having issue with big data which is quite wrong - I routinely analyze multi-GB datasets in memory, and my databases go into TB. Of all the three languages R is the only one to have a native format (data.frame) that interfaces easily to database queries. Both Octave (Matlab) or Python have to use compound types which make addressing difficult.
Also, I found R easier to master than either Octave or Python, but this is probably because I am familiar with Lisp.
No, all fundamental discoveries are made by government. Commercial entities have never invented anything.
That is because profit is incompatible with social benefit.
We need to encourage more funding from government through taxation of corporation. Let's give government more control over corporations.
There are intermediate entities like old AT&T labs where invented transistor was invented. Note that because AT&T was a monopoly the patent was licensed for only a nominal fee. If it was a pure commercial company expect the computer revolution delayed by a decade.
About the only things that deserve patents are fundamental discoveries and drugs that are unique and cost hundreds of millions to develop and test. And even then, just provide some kind of "formula patent" that only lasts 5-6 years.
I know of very few cases when a fundamental discovery was made by a commercial company, they usually shy away from anything that takes a decade or more to develop. Usually this is funded by the goverment which is supposed to have a longer term view.
From spooky to downright disturbing, because if that is true, then the passengers of the very first viable colony expedition to another star will look back and see a super flare roast the Earth to a cinder just as soon as they are out of range.
Too complicated. We'll just get a signle Boltzmann brain.
From the article:
Update: For those of you inquiring about the strength of my Hotmail password – it was a seven-letter string of lowercase letters. Not a dictionary word, but part acronym, part proper noun. It’s not the world’s strongest password, and I can feel the parental glare of Davey Winder from 200 miles away, but it wasn’t that weak, either.
Yeah, not a very strong password. What the hell was he thinking? At least mix case and have one number. Passwords I use have mixed case, numbers and symbols in it so it's not so easy to guess.
Why would a moderate strength password not be enough ? I am sure even MS rate-limits login attempts. And if someone got root to Hotmail servers you are screwed anyway.
When you transmit particles though matter, or bounce them off of a surface, do they keep their properties? I don't know much about particle physics, but I thought that when this happens, particles are being absorbed, and new particles emitted. i.e. light doesn't actually "bounce" off of a mirror, but the particle interactions within the surface of the matter that makes up the mirror give a result that makes the photon appear to bounce. If this is true, wouldn't slowing things down with fiber optic cable or mirrors break the experiment?
The situation I was wondering about it this:
Victor has been sent to a distant planet, and is supposed to relay information to earth. For simplicity sake, lets say it's a yes or no answer (this is a simplification with a single bit that could be extended to bigger messages).
The experiment described in the article is done many times in succession (lets say a million times) with Alice and Bob recording results, and victor choosing the same thing every iteration (he will entangle for all million attempts, or not for all million attempts). While Alice and Bob cannot communicate directly with Victor to see whether he has entangled or not, the first handful of observations that they make would be indistinguishable from randomness, but after several thousand iterations, wouldn't there be a significant statistical deviation towards correlation of Alice and Bob's results if Victor was entangling?
In this way, couldn't victor communicate with Alice and Bob instantaneously?
I am not sure, but I don't think there is a paradox as for Victor to have carried off the photon pair implies causal relationship.
Perhaps, this experiment is similar to one where you send the photons into the black box and can tell whether the entanglement have been destroyed or not, without anything coming out of the black box.
Wishing without work is like fishing without bait. -- Frank Tyger