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[palsch]

I thought first thing was always health care/schooling, because minors, terminally injured and disabled people generally don't vote?

Healthcare only gets cut if only a minority rely on government healthcare anyway. Once everyone uses it, everyone protects healthcare spending with their lives. See the NHS.

Schools get cut when the slack gets picked up. See unfunded mandates and local property taxes.

And anything that affects old people gets protected because old people vote every time.

Science simply has no constituency and can often be painted as bizarre or worthless. Mocking research on fruit flies is easy when no-one knows just how central such research has been to our understanding of, well, everything to do with genetics.

But very simply, there is a huge gap between most publicly funded science (purely blue sky research) and science that results in patents which attracts industry funds. There are some overlaps, but those tend to be joint funded anyway. I'd like to see more money (public and private) but then that is my paycheck I'm thinking of, so I'm biased.

[quinnr]

Oh my.

Same person says in two years when he turns 18, he's going to live in the woods or the trash dump, because he doesn't like society.

[29-06, 23:54] bleh    raising fish in the pond ;p
 [29-06, 23:54] bleh    being apart of society isnt society itself now is it ;p
 [29-06, 23:54] quinn    And ponds don't include the fish. Most fish thrown in the dump would be dead anyways.
 [29-06, 23:53] quinn    So your friends who work at resturants aren't a part of society?
 [29-06, 23:53] bleh    no the point is i dont like society ;p
 [29-06, 23:53] bleh    if i lived in a dumb might make a fish pond or make a large aquarium
 [29-06, 23:52] bleh    ether one, as long as its not made inedible.
 [29-06, 23:52] quinn    And wasn't the whole point to get away from people forever anyways?
 [29-06, 23:52] quinn    And fishing where? Last I checked they don't keep fish filled ponds inside the dump. And going to water would require leaving the dump

Can someone else confirm that this is idiotic?

[Cthulhu]

How old is he, 15, 16?  He's asserting his identity.  Everybody does it, and the ways are myriad and retarded.  It'll pass when he realizes his mom won't cook him dinner when he lives in a dump.

[quinnr]

I don't think I've done that..yet...
I should totally start threatening everyone that I'm going to go live in the woods/dump.

And pretty sure he's 15/16. He was chatting 'bout how he failed his drivers permit test.

[Sergius]

Patents are a government-granted monopoly, that if you came with an idea you should somehow be the only one entitled to have that idea.

They were designed as "incentives" to innovate, but instead all they do is encourage big companies to hoard patents and try to suck them dry of any profit they can, while at the same time preventing competition by suing the hell out of everybody.

And in many cases they result in years and years of research lost that could help save lives. They are a net loss for society, and they hold technological advance back constantly. Then there's the strawman that without said "incentive" people would decide not to innovate, while there is ample evidence to the contrary.

[ChairmanPoo]

The problem is that in order to take discoveries from the experimental phase to the public you need money. Lots of it. And as it is now, we are relying on the big pharmaceutical companies to pay most of this money, and a good deal of the one for basic research. Thus, you can't simply do away with the patent system, without harming medical developments. I think that (as of now) work must be done to curtail patent wars, and to enable researchers to use patented items as a source for further developments (which as of now can't be done despite there being a law intending to do this, because a judge decreed that the only possible use of patented items in private experiments was personal amusement, not R&D. Which violates the spirit of the law, imho). But as it is, abolishing patents might produce a decrease in the prices of some medicaments short term, at the cost of harming medical research seriously in the long term.

[Phmcw]

Exapt if you want publicly funded research. 

[Zangi]

Why create a simple one step cure when you can market and sell your 10 step cure.  On the basis that you are getting more money selling 10 different things then you would selling 1 thing?

[Creaca]

that's the exact issue, i don't accept society >_>

Neither do I, it's riddled with problems and just plain stupid laws. Doesn't mean I go around saying it is terrible and should be torn down. I could easily design a better society, a perfect one. It would probably look almost exactly like communism. The problem? A perfect society doesn't work without perfect people, otherwise you have to design all sorts of safeguards to keep people from exploiting the system. The whole system is flawed because it is built to control flawed beings. There is no way to fix one without fixing the other.

Humanity reached our happy little place on the food chain because we exploited the system. I don't call that an imperfection in the least.

[Muz]

muz :  The patent system is actually killing the research. Scientifics are totally underpaid, and it's awfully difficult to find credit for fundamental research.

I have no idea where you're getting this from.

From what I'm seeing, scientifics are paid very highly. I know some psychologists (a useless field technically) who get paid more per day than burger flippers get paid a month. I'm in a technical field, did a bunch of fundamental research and demand is just incredible. I've got poor grades and I'm getting job offers everywhere before graduating from companies that wouldn't exist without patents. If anything, universities and research institutes are running out of money to pay researchers and get their money from selling patents.

It works the exact opposite of what you're saying Now tell me a way to make money from fundamental research if you don't have patents.

Public research already exists in the form of governments using taxpayer money to fund universities. That psychologist making tons of money? Government sponsored. Private funding also works very well for useless research. We've got a money coming in for stuff like pitch detection (in speech) research, all privately sponsored, because someone wants to hold a patent on that method.

[Phmcw]

Muz, we have to find citations now.
I tell what I see at the university (and technically, I was speaking about fundamental research in physic, which rarely produce patent, for all I know) and what the professors are complaining about. Now of course, that kind of research is damn expensive.

[Nikov]

I had a spell around that age where I wanted to go live in the woods. However I was intelligent enough to include 'bring a firearm' and 'shoot meat', not fish out of a pond at a garbage dump. How stupid are kids these days?! Explain to him he's going to need a good axe, whetstone, knife, a spool of cord (always handy) sewing needle, magnesium firestarter, cast iron pan, and a lidded clay pot.

[Phmcw]

that's the exact issue, i don't accept society >_>

I'm no sure but doesn't his smiley suggest irony?

[quinnr]

that's the exact issue, i don't accept society >_>

I'm no sure but doesn't his smiley suggest irony?

I don't think so...

[palsch]

I find it slightly amusing that people take patent law to be such an all or nothing when it is one of the areas where there is considerably more room for refinement and debate within the system. While I do want reform, it's one of the more flexible systems for IP and the tweaks needed to make it sensible are pretty reasonable in scale and implementation.

Trademark law is the one which is harder to make sensible without problems. And when I say problems, I mean hillarious nonsense.