"How much of the present gasoline tax is actually spent upon road maintenance?"
It might be more than all. That is, the road maintenance budget might be higher than the gas tax revenue where you live-- there are certainly places where it is. In other places it's lower. Anyway, the two aren't connected except in PR campaigns, so you could just as well ask "how much of the present sailboat excise tax is actually spent on ham radio license enforcement?".
This neatly gives the lie to the argument that the purpose of the tax is to maintain the roads.
"We're going to tax your vehicles by weight, because heavier vehicles damage the roads more."
"Oh look, our cars are getting lighter, good news, right? This means we won't pay much tax?"
"Uh, forget the weight, we're going to tax your cars based on something that's going up, because... because... oh, let's see..."
"...the gas taxes are earmarked for road maintenance..."
What exactly does that mean? As I understand it, the road maintenance budget is not equal to the gas tax revenue; the legislature routinely draws off "surplus" funds, or adds money from the general fund. And they know the previous year's revenue when they make these decisions, so all they're doing is deciding on a budget and then doing some arithmetic for the press releases.
I've heard about "earmarks" like this in many contexts, and as far as I can tell they mean nothing at all, they just suggest a link where none exists. (This is why I am not swayed by arguments of the form "let's impose a tax on X and earmark the money for Y", where Y is something I'm supposed to like.)
Notice that the state legislators don't say that these procedures are pointless security theater that does not significantly improve real security. They want to appeal to public outrage over TSA groping, but not lose votes by being Soft On Terrorism -- so do the federal officials.
The feds won't ban air travel in Texas because the voters would hate them for it; the states won't denounce the body-scan and pat-down as useless, because the voters would scream in fear; the public is outraged over the videos of crying children and beauty queens, so some state politicians must jump on that wagon...
So they attack the group with the least political power, the TSA screeners. If these bills pass, the screeners will have to risk jail time if they follow procedure... So they'll neglect procedure (as they already do in some airports). We'll have some dignity back, it won't make anybody less safe, but someday when somebody tries to bring down a plane (which will happen someday in any case) the politicians can point fingers at the "negligent" screeners.
Wouldn't it be great to hear some courage in these debates?
"Imagine if a locker owner setup a locker at Apple and Amazon and then gave their less used locker away or maybe even sold it."
Oh... oh, God...
Hours after reading that, my hands are still shaking. What fevered imagination could have conceived of such an idea? I seem to hear voices outside, young people telling each other to check it out, and thanking each other, but surely this can only be the whispering of my tortured brain. The very telephone wires in the room have taken on a sinister mien. And the sun will be setting soon.
As long as people will sacrifice a lot of security for a little convenience, that's what the market will bring.
How about a two-key system? Instead of a human-memorizable password (like "NinjaDood4") which I must type in with my fingers -- and trust the server not to store or reveal -- every time, I could have a key pair: the server sends me a session key encryped with my public key, and I'm good to go. Nobody can decrypt that without my private key, the server doesn't know my private key, and nobody can break the encryption for another century or so. If the company wants to, say, sign me up for an expensive new service, they'd better be able to show my private-key-signed authorization, or they'll have to give back every dime. This system can still be hacked, but it's a whole lot more secure than what we have-- however it would require a tiny bit of effort to implement, and the consumers aren't demanding it.
Credit cards are ridiculously insecure, but the demand for a more secure (but slightly less convenient) solution just isn't there.
By that standard, TSA screeners should recognize the fact that what they're doing is pointless security theater and just wave everyone through. Heck, the whole Department of Homeland Security should stop showing up for work. I concede that in a sense they should, and that we'd all be better off if they did, but when was the last time you quit a job (possibly the only one you could get) rather than do something pointless and silly?
Try to give them the benefit of the doubt: officially, they do not have the authority to bend the rules, even when it makes sense to do so. Either one of them could probably have been fired for deliberately letting you carry the knife, and if other passengers had seen it there would have been no end of "I'm a veteran!" "I have a security clearance!" "Do I look like a terrorist?".
Yes, some TSA workers are nitwits (and bullies and thieves), but some are just decent people doing their best in a bad situation. (The ones at the bottom, I mean-- the ones at the top have no excuse.)
It's interesting to note that if that had actually worked, and bordeebook had placed an order with profnath for hundreds of copies, profnath would have been in a position to destroy bordeebook's precious reputation just by screwing up that one big order.
Willton, for the record, you know more about the inner workings of the U.S. Pat. Off. than I do or ever expect to. However, your impressive wealth of detail doesn't really address my argument.
The point of spending a lot of human-hours reviewing an explanation and/or having more than one person evaluate it, is to reduce the rate of bad decisions (however you define them). I suggested that this could be done by one or, say, four, you said that it is done by two (maybe, if I'm reading your text right). Naturally it increases the cycle time. Apart from increasing the competence of the reviewers (something neither of us has touched on) the only other way to improve results is to push the errors in one direction or the other, either toward granting bad patents or toward rejecting good applications; that was what I was suggesting, so counterarguments about the cost of review are kind of beside the point.
As for your description of the review process: "[Now] both rejections AND allowances are scrutinized for their efficacy. This discourages examiners from being lazy... Accordingly, the disposal rate at the USPTO has risen..
This makes no sense to me and contradicts your own assertion: more scrutiny has led to faster conclusions? "Taking shortcuts" would be more accurate than "being lazy". And you still haven't explained what kind of evidence reviewers can provide to support an application. If an application really describes a novel invention, what can the reviewer say besides "I have no evidence that this has been thought of before, and I've looked." I suppose there could be research indicating that the invention is practical, useful or whatever, but that leads right into the next point: I have three reasons for thinking that the balance of error should be shifted to rejection of bad applications: 1) that error is much easier to rectify (reapplication is much easier than overturning a patent), 2) the injustice and harm of a bad patent seem much worse than that of an unfairly rejected application, and 3) there seem to be a lot of really bad patents in the news, and not all old ones. If you don't think these "few" rotten patents are an acceptable price to pay for barrels of decent ones, then you must concede that the review process is too easy to pass.
Finally, I wasn't criticizing the examiners themselves. I have experience with, and sympathy for, technical experts in a big organization laboring under idiotic policies. The bad ones thrive, the good ones leave or play along, and the whole operation quickly finds equilibrium turning out garbage, regardless of how the low-level employees feel about it.
I admit I don't know much about the inner workings of the Patent Office (the similarities between me and A.E. don't extend that far), but maybe you could enlighten me. How much worse would the administration of this scheme be than what already exists? And in light of what really happens in patent prosecution, was my second paragraph laughably naive because the reasons given for approval have to be better supported than the ones for rejection? (Notice that I didn't say the reasons for rejection have to be good or explicit in the present scheme, only that the reviewer who is using them to compete for a bonus has to come up with something.) Or because there is actually no pressure within the Patent Office to resolve lots of applications?
It's easy to invent an adversarial arrangement within the Patent Office. Imagine if raises and promotions were based on how many applications a reviewer rejected (with sound justification). Even better, suppose the Office would grant the patent only if, say, four separate reviewers in a row approved the application (without knowing how many others had already approved it).
As I was thing about that idea, I had to wonder why it isn't done that way already, and naturally my thoughts turned to economics. What incentive is there to rubber-stamp applications? The answer didn't come until I rephrased the question: what incentive is there to make the rubber stamp "APPROVED" instead of "REJECTED"? The official measure of a reviewer could very easily be the number of applications processed in a month-- it's easy to understand and keep track of, which is all a bureaucrat cares about. And REJECTION requires a reason, which requires facts, which require research and thinking, whereas APPROVAL requires only "sure, why not?".
The hard part is figuring out an incentive to overcome all of that institutional inertia and change the incentive system...
Who can come up with the best thing he could carry through customs but really shouldn't?
A few ideas that have crossed my mind:
A cheap cell phone with a long contact list of numbers chosen at random from the Washington D.C. telephone book, with code names like "Moose", "Beggar Man", "Pink Oboe"...
The chemical formula for coffee with sugar, written on mulberry paper, folded up very tightly and hidden in a cigarette case behind the cigarettes. Chinese cigarettes.
10,000 repetitions of "All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy" on microfiche. Israeli microfiche.
A floppy disk. A 5-1/4 inch floppy disk. Unformatted. Dusted with iron filings.
A flash drive containing a compressed file which expands to an exabyte of zeroes.
A copy of the birth certificate of the senior DHS officer on duty (requires considerable preparation or blind luck).
An Arabic fortune cookie.
A small obsolete travel alarm clock, mechanical. Some internal screws painted purple.
On the post: Utah Legislators Want Extra Tax For Owners Of Hybrid & Electric Vehicles
Re:
It might be more than all. That is, the road maintenance budget might be higher than the gas tax revenue where you live-- there are certainly places where it is. In other places it's lower. Anyway, the two aren't connected except in PR campaigns, so you could just as well ask "how much of the present sailboat excise tax is actually spent on ham radio license enforcement?".
On the post: Utah Legislators Want Extra Tax For Owners Of Hybrid & Electric Vehicles
Re: Re: Obvious
"We're going to tax your vehicles by weight, because heavier vehicles damage the roads more."
"Oh look, our cars are getting lighter, good news, right? This means we won't pay much tax?"
"Uh, forget the weight, we're going to tax your cars based on something that's going up, because... because... oh, let's see..."
On the post: Utah Legislators Want Extra Tax For Owners Of Hybrid & Electric Vehicles
Re:
What exactly does that mean? As I understand it, the road maintenance budget is not equal to the gas tax revenue; the legislature routinely draws off "surplus" funds, or adds money from the general fund. And they know the previous year's revenue when they make these decisions, so all they're doing is deciding on a budget and then doing some arithmetic for the press releases.
I've heard about "earmarks" like this in many contexts, and as far as I can tell they mean nothing at all, they just suggest a link where none exists. (This is why I am not swayed by arguments of the form "let's impose a tax on X and earmark the money for Y", where Y is something I'm supposed to like.)
On the post: Texas Legislature Looks To Make TSA Groping Procedures Illegal
it all makes sense in a way
The feds won't ban air travel in Texas because the voters would hate them for it; the states won't denounce the body-scan and pat-down as useless, because the voters would scream in fear; the public is outraged over the videos of crying children and beauty queens, so some state politicians must jump on that wagon...
So they attack the group with the least political power, the TSA screeners. If these bills pass, the screeners will have to risk jail time if they follow procedure... So they'll neglect procedure (as they already do in some airports). We'll have some dignity back, it won't make anybody less safe, but someday when somebody tries to bring down a plane (which will happen someday in any case) the politicians can point fingers at the "negligent" screeners.
Wouldn't it be great to hear some courage in these debates?
On the post: The Ridiculous Demands The Record Labels Want For Music Lockers
the unshareable
Oh... oh, God...
Hours after reading that, my hands are still shaking. What fevered imagination could have conceived of such an idea? I seem to hear voices outside, young people telling each other to check it out, and thanking each other, but surely this can only be the whispering of my tortured brain. The very telephone wires in the room have taken on a sinister mien. And the sun will be setting soon.
On the post: We've Trained The TSA To Search For Liquid Instead Of Bombs
Re:
I think this is what's known as a vicious circle.
On the post: We've Trained The TSA To Search For Liquid Instead Of Bombs
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I've Got That Beat
So... you think that agent should be allowed a pocket knife, but others shouldn't.
So... you don't really want the TSA screeners to use their judgement, you want them to use yours.
On the post: Lawsuits And Laws On The Way In Response To Sony Data Breach
you get what you pay for
How about a two-key system? Instead of a human-memorizable password (like "NinjaDood4") which I must type in with my fingers -- and trust the server not to store or reveal -- every time, I could have a key pair: the server sends me a session key encryped with my public key, and I'm good to go. Nobody can decrypt that without my private key, the server doesn't know my private key, and nobody can break the encryption for another century or so. If the company wants to, say, sign me up for an expensive new service, they'd better be able to show my private-key-signed authorization, or they'll have to give back every dime. This system can still be hacked, but it's a whole lot more secure than what we have-- however it would require a tiny bit of effort to implement, and the consumers aren't demanding it.
Credit cards are ridiculously insecure, but the demand for a more secure (but slightly less convenient) solution just isn't there.
And don't get me started on SS numbers.
On the post: FBI Hunting Down World Of Warcraft Gold Farmers?
you can't get away from economics
On the post: We've Trained The TSA To Search For Liquid Instead Of Bombs
Re: Re: Re: I've Got That Beat
On the post: We've Trained The TSA To Search For Liquid Instead Of Bombs
Re: I've Got That Beat
Yes, some TSA workers are nitwits (and bullies and thieves), but some are just decent people doing their best in a bad situation. (The ones at the bottom, I mean-- the ones at the top have no excuse.)
On the post: Targeted Advertising? Patented! Bunch Of Media Companies Sued
Re: Re: Re:
(Make sure you're a safe distance away from the Patent Office computer-- I saw them do this a couple of times on Star Trek, and it can get messy.)
On the post: The Infinite Loop Of Algorithmic Pricing On Amazon... Or How A Book On Flies Cost $23,698,655.93
Re: Re: The Real Question is:
On the post: The Infinite Loop Of Algorithmic Pricing On Amazon... Or How A Book On Flies Cost $23,698,655.93
Re: Re:
On the post: A Succinct Description For Why Assuming Patent Validity Is A Problem
Re: Re: Re: Re: Political Economics...
The point of spending a lot of human-hours reviewing an explanation and/or having more than one person evaluate it, is to reduce the rate of bad decisions (however you define them). I suggested that this could be done by one or, say, four, you said that it is done by two (maybe, if I'm reading your text right). Naturally it increases the cycle time. Apart from increasing the competence of the reviewers (something neither of us has touched on) the only other way to improve results is to push the errors in one direction or the other, either toward granting bad patents or toward rejecting good applications; that was what I was suggesting, so counterarguments about the cost of review are kind of beside the point.
As for your description of the review process:
"[Now] both rejections AND allowances are scrutinized for their efficacy. This discourages examiners from being lazy... Accordingly, the disposal rate at the USPTO has risen..
This makes no sense to me and contradicts your own assertion: more scrutiny has led to faster conclusions? "Taking shortcuts" would be more accurate than "being lazy". And you still haven't explained what kind of evidence reviewers can provide to support an application. If an application really describes a novel invention, what can the reviewer say besides "I have no evidence that this has been thought of before, and I've looked." I suppose there could be research indicating that the invention is practical, useful or whatever, but that leads right into the next point: I have three reasons for thinking that the balance of error should be shifted to rejection of bad applications: 1) that error is much easier to rectify (reapplication is much easier than overturning a patent), 2) the injustice and harm of a bad patent seem much worse than that of an unfairly rejected application, and 3) there seem to be a lot of really bad patents in the news, and not all old ones. If you don't think these "few" rotten patents are an acceptable price to pay for barrels of decent ones, then you must concede that the review process is too easy to pass.
Finally, I wasn't criticizing the examiners themselves. I have experience with, and sympathy for, technical experts in a big organization laboring under idiotic policies. The bad ones thrive, the good ones leave or play along, and the whole operation quickly finds equilibrium turning out garbage, regardless of how the low-level employees feel about it.
On the post: A Succinct Description For Why Assuming Patent Validity Is A Problem
Re: Re: Political Economics...
On the post: A Succinct Description For Why Assuming Patent Validity Is A Problem
Political Economics...
As I was thing about that idea, I had to wonder why it isn't done that way already, and naturally my thoughts turned to economics. What incentive is there to rubber-stamp applications? The answer didn't come until I rephrased the question: what incentive is there to make the rubber stamp "APPROVED" instead of "REJECTED"? The official measure of a reviewer could very easily be the number of applications processed in a month-- it's easy to understand and keep track of, which is all a bureaucrat cares about. And REJECTION requires a reason, which requires facts, which require research and thinking, whereas APPROVAL requires only "sure, why not?".
The hard part is figuring out an incentive to overcome all of that institutional inertia and change the incentive system...
On the post: ICE Redefines Detainment For Wikileaks Helper: You're Not Being Detained, You Just Can't Leave
Re: Re: don't feed the animals
On the post: ICE Redefines Detainment For Wikileaks Helper: You're Not Being Detained, You Just Can't Leave
don't feed the animals
A few ideas that have crossed my mind:
On the post: Judge Backpedals On Allowing Mass Infringement Lawsuits After Press Calls Attention To Her RIAA Lobbying Past
O tempora, o mores!
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