I would be happy with that result, but I don't think that's the case. The problem with the circuit in the example is that it's really just an abstract formula which happens to be represented in the form of a circuit diagram involving ideal components, and the reduction to a physical chip does not involve anything innovative. (If anything, circuit diagrams are even more obviously math than software is. Any circuit diagram is isomorphic to a system of equations.)

Simply designing or simulating something on a computer would not render it unpatentable. Having nothing innovative to offer beyond the abstract design or simulation would. In essence, I'm saying that the natural laws—including mathematics, and by extension software and abstract circuit designs and anything else equivalent to math—have to be taken as a given when considering obviousness. To be patentable, an invention has to offer something more than just the plain natural laws, such as a particular configuration of matter or a physical process for producing it.

Taking software and running it on a computer is always obvious. Taking an abstract circuit design and implementing it with standard circuit elements is always obvious. A previously unknown configuration of matter which acts as a more efficient transistor may be non-obvious. A new manufacturing process to produce a specific alloy or drug may be non-obvious.

I don't know about "general agreement", but this is far from unanimous. Where is the non-obvious step in turning an abstract (i.e. non-patentable) circuit diagram or HDL into a custom chip? If you introduce a new type of logic element, like a specially optimized transistor, that's one thing, but a physical chip (FPGA or ASIC) produced by applying standard procedures to an abstract circuit design doesn't seem like something that should be patentable to me.

It is you who is confused. It is true that a person who owns a 1% share in Apple does not own 1% of Apple's assets; instead, they have 1% of the ownership of all of Apple's assets. The difference is that an individual shareholder can't show up at Apple headquarters and demand "their share". When all the shareholders act together, however, they collectively have 100% ownership of Apple's assets, and are free to exercise that ownership as they wish. That includes appointing managers for the company, who then have a duty (as the shareholders' agents) to represent the interests of those who appointed them.

The share price is a historical fact regarding what people have been willing to trade for a share of the company. It is not property; no one owns it, much less the shareholders.

Why can't browsers tell me which tab or window (let alone frame etc) is playing sound and also offer a way to disable it? It's cause their customers are doing it. Oh well, I woulda expected better from Firefox.

Find the video River of Myths by Hans Rosling in youtube. Overall global poverty has been reducing dramatically over the last few decades.

Did you read the rest of my comment for the explanation? You can own shares in robots just like your current value comes from investing in education. The cost of education will be low in the future so you and the government can spend money on your gaining investments in companies. You can invest badly and suffer, just like you can not pay attention in class or get a bad education. But overall most should do OK. Poverty has been trending downwards globally. Look up the video River of Myths in youtube.

0.1% ? That's not true. Lots of companies will exist and compete with each other. And lots of people will own shares in them. We already have a country where a majority of people own shares whether they realize it or not (401k plan, actually even social security). Some already even live off dividends (certain pension plans).

"And how will all those unemployed people pay for the robotically manufactured goods? " I answered that question if you bothered to read beyond the first line.

Well no, I don't expect people to endorse socialism. Socialism is when government owns the factories and controls the industry. Instead, I am are talking about taxation and welfare. Not socialism. It's better than fascism (forcing people to hire humans instead of purchase robots) suggested by the people who are anti robots.

I am sure there will be companies offering testing/certification services and also companies offering facilities for practical work. It'll be sort of like homeschooling.

Unemployment checks. Savings. Welfare (like how Alaska pays people from their oil revenue). Lots of ways to pay for it. The replacement will be gradual over a decade or two minimum.

Also, instead of paying $200,000 for a college education, you can get the education 100% free online (udacity, khan academy etc) and instead buy shares in a robot-using company. People will be able to pursue things they are interested in, they will just have a much greater safety net and more freedom to try out ideas.

Of course this is the utopian vision, but at least you must concede that the reality will not be a dystopia either.

The economy functions fine with workers and companies right? Why wouldn't it function with robotic workers and companies?

1. People can own shares in companies that own robots. Those shares will pay dividends (or increase in value etc).

2. The government can tax the profits of the robot run factories. These profits can provide a dividend check to citizens who would hopefully invest wisely in the robot companies.

Rather than work, people's time will be spent trying to figure out which robot companies perform well. You can use a computer program to do it .. which will let you decide if you want to be a risky investor etc. If you want to design robots for extra income, you can do that too.

I didn't say products should be free. People will have to pay for the manufactured goods. Think of it this way -- it's the same as working. Instead of you physically going to work and getting a paycheck. Your robot does it for you.
People who make bad investment choices will be worse off than those who make wiser choices. Hopefully nobody will starve, because government will have enough tax revenue for a welfare scheme that provides the bare essentials.

Easy. Given a very simple computer where output consists of ASCII data in RAM, the formula for your program becomes:

RAM = { 72, 101, 108, 111, ... }

The specific physical form the output takes is part of the design of the computer, not the software. As far as the software is concerned, assuming the string is considered input, your program can simply be an identity function. (If the string is not input then the program is just a constant.) On a real-world computer the function would be much more complicated, of course, because the I/O interface requires a more complex representation of the original ASCII data, and multiple programs are being interleaved (composed) to perform work in parallel.

I2P works fine without outproxies; you don't need to communicate outside the I2P network for the scheme to work. While there are a limited number of I2P outproxies for certain protocols (e.g. HTTP), that is not the way it is designed to be used (unlike Tor, where internal .onion sites are the exception).

Yes, that is how the system works. Calling it a "philosophy" is a bit ridiculous; it's an engineering solution to the problem of ensuring a consistent linear history of updates to a database shared among a large group of anonymous individual who don't trust each other, which is exactly what you need for a peer-to-peer domain name system. It may not be ideal, but so far it's the only solution anyone's managed to propose which actually works.

Your personal bias against Bitcoin-like protocols doesn't change the facts: Namecoin is obviously one way to make P2P DNS work. It functions as well as any alternative DNS root system, and is fully peer-to-peer.