nonrandom mutations

A big part of brainstorming is to defy the "group-think" that so permeates organizations. To challenge what they thin of as "obvious" and demand explanations for why things "must" be a certain way (what makes that a *requirement* other than "that's how we've always done it" or "that seems the obvious way forward")

This is particularly true of organizations that don't have much inherent variety in their product offerings and much market pressure to explore new options.

Actually is is an unfortunate habit. Lose it.

Some of us are better at it that than you seem to be. Patents are a way of counting coup.

Annoying wedge-heads - people whose skulls have more room for brains that yours seems to have - may be gratifying but it is unlikely to be profitable in the long term.

Dilbert's pointy-headed boss does seem to be very satisfied with his own performance. So is Flyguy.

Sure. And that's very important.

But it is also important to be realistic. You can picture this as a sort of Poisson curve. Most improvements on a product (or whatever) do come from small changes and steps. Big changes and improvements come from more far-out ideas and innovations, but they are correspondingly rarer and less likely to succeed. When you go too far out on the tail, the likelihood of ending up with a positive payback becomes negligible.

Thus the sensible economic strategy for a company will usually mean that most of their effort goes to the low-risk but low-payoff changes - conservative viewpoint. They also need to put /some/ effort into the bigger gambles of ideas and development where the likelihood of success is much lower, but the pay-off is higher. But you don't waste time and money in the ridiculous ideas unless you have money to burn - it is only when you are the size of IBM that you can afford to get patents on faster-than-light travel.

Sometimes companies get the balance wrong, and are /too/ conservative. But large, established companies can't take too many risks either - they have a responsibility to their employees, customers, suppliers and shareholders who all benefit more from slow and steady rather than big all-or-nothing risks. It is the small startups that can take those risks.

Yes.

Right. Some people poison idea creation and evolution. In an unmoderated newsgroup, we have lots of people like that.

They often poison as teams.

I work with a couple of Fellows of a largish aerospace company. They create Fellows because they know that they need ideas. A Fellow has a nominal boss whose only responsibility is to issue a paycheck; the Fellows do whatever they want wherever they want. One of my pals has two offices, it two cities, so nobody knows where he is.

Every year or two, all the Fellows, I think about 150, are flown to a luxury resort for a week to brainstorm, or to do whatever they want. There are no rules, no agenda, free drinks.

It seems to work.

Wrong. The hostility expressed is to your behavior. You do have a habit of posting silly ideas, but that isn't the problem - it is your enthusiasm for claiming that you have a right to be a silly as you like, and that people shouldn't criticise you for posting ignorant nonsense

No. Just silly.

Exactly as I predicted. John Larkin expects everyone to consider his daftest and most ignorant outpourings (they usually don't have enough thought behind them to be called "ideas") as worthy of serious discussion. He thinks they should be treated as being on the same standing as long-established scientific theory and consensus in the field until it can be proven - to his satisfaction (which never happens)

- that he was wrong.

On the other hand, he is openly hostile to anyone else's comments, ideas, or explanations of real-life science and facts. The hostility is often wrapped in his martyr syndrome - we are all being nasty to him by not bowing down to his self-proclaimed genius.

That's it.

John - and anyone else - is free to post as silly comments as they like. And sometimes we end up with entertaining threads, starting with a silly post.

But people who are less ignorant and more capable of rational thought are equally free to call them out for being silly, and sometimes to explain the reality of how the world actually works.

Larkin would do better if he read these explanations, learned from them, and used them as positive feedback to post less silly and more interesting ideas in the future. Instead, he prefers to attack pointlessly with the same tired old routine - claiming we are dismissing ideas out of hand, therefore we can't brainstorm, therefore we are bad engineers and he is a genius.

So how about you just accept that the huge majority of random crazy ideas are utterly worthless, and /can/ be quickly dismissed? Keep posting them if you like, but stop getting your knickers in a twist when people tell you they are daft.

(And Bill, please stop obsessing about patent counts. They are a totally useless measurement or indication of inventiveness, design ability or anything else. They are primarily a business technique for beating down the competition as an alternative to building better products, and such a tiny percentage of granted patents represent truly innovate inventions that there is no point in bringing them up.)

That's absurd. I admit to generating a lot of goofy ideas. And to designing "lunatic fringe electronics."

Works for me.

It is interesting how many people want to talk about me and not talk about electronics.

"long-established scientific theory" doesn't design anything.

If they were real electronic designers, they would join the game and play with ideas and not stomp on them. Few people have the guts to do that in public.

That's about right.

That's all he's got, some old patents and some old papers. Sad.

Actually, they aren't totally useless. The patenting system is much abused, but the tiny percentage of granted patents that cover and protect truly innovative inventions protect most of the useful innovations that have got us where we are today. Blumlein's 128 patents included stereo recording and colour television.

When I worked at EMI Central Research, they were patent-mad, in much the same way that Bell Labs, RCA and IBM were, but I met

who invented the brain-scanner. I also met, and managed to avoid working with, Christopher A. G. LeMay

who patented the signal processing scheme that made the brain scanner practical

C. A. G. Lemay, “Method and apparatus for constructing a representation of a planar’s slice of body exposed to penetrating radiation,” U.S. Patent No. 3,924,129 (1975).

Hounsfield was odd. LeMay was a total menace - he'd work late and tinker with the gear under development without documenting his changes. The people working on the project that I'd managed to avoid had to go over their gear every morning to find out what he'd done and either document it or correct it.

One of my friends invented - and patented - a better confocal microscope, and everybody making confocal microscopes ended up paying license fees to the company he'd set up. He ended up collecting a few million dollars for his contribution.

My father had 25 patents. A couple of them were commercially significant. He didn't get a lot of money out of them, but they did make an appreciable difference to the world (though you'd have to be a pulp and paper chemist to know how). He was world famous in that very small world.

But it's your behavior that's absurd, not the description of it.

You have claimed that your circuits are "insanely good". They don't seem to be all that good.

What works for you is your conviction that what you are selling is good. It's clearly good enough to sell, and people who sell stuff to like to make exaggerated claims about the value of what they are selling. If you have sincere (even if mistaken) ideas about the high quality of your products, you'll sell them more effectively.

Nobody wants to talk with you about electronics - you don't have anything useful to say.

Of course it doesn't. But knowing more about what you are designing, and the problems you are designing to solve can be very helpful.

You certainly don't.

Or so John Larkin likes to think If he can't get the flattery he wants, he flatters himself.

Not strictly true. Good patents are worth millions, but it isn't easy to pick out the small proportion of patents that are worth taking out. Places like Bell Labs, EMI Central Research, RCA and IBM patented everything they could so that they didn't miss any opportunity.

Wrong. The small proportion of truly innovative and useful patents pay for all the others and quite lot more. Without the protection they offer to genuine and useful innovations, we'd have fewer innovations. The patent system was invented for a reason. There might be a better way of doing what it does, but nobody seems to have invented it yet.

John Larkin hasn't even got that, so he decides that they aren't worth having. Predictably.

I didn't say patents are always useless. I said that counting numbers of patents is a totally useless measure of inventiveness or anything else. When someone comes up with a great new idea, they do not necessarily patent it. When a patent is filed, it is not necessarily for a great new idea. There is very little correlation between patents filed and innovation - therefore patent counts are useless as a measure.

Making lots of money is an equally poor measure of engineering or designer skills. (It can be an indicator of other skills or characteristics, but often its an indicator of being lucky, knowing the right people, being born in the right place to the right family, or being ruthless enough to grab more than your fair share.)

Stop name-dropping - claiming credit by association is as unbecoming as Larkin's self-satisfaction and claims to genius.

In a setting like a this newsgroup, we have no way to reasonably judge anyone else's abilities, other than for specific topics under discussion. Pissing contents about who can boast the loudest, make the most money or name the most patent holders, are pretty pathetic on all sides.

I have seven granted patents. A while ago I worked for a small company which was bought by a large US corporation which I shall refer to only by its initials, GE. While they sucked all the joy out of it and while taking time to plan my exit, I mentioned to my PHB some fairly minor improvement to a product under development.

He'd been on a training course - next thing I knew I was in his office and he was typing furiously. GE had a web-based patent application system (IIRC the 'Inventor Center') where you filled out details and some far-off patent department evaluated things and did the legwork if they thought it a viable idea.

This first one was credited jointly to me and the PHB, but having seen how easy it was, the next ones I did myself. In total seven were granted, six of which were US and one Chinese. (To be fair, I can't be

100% sure about the Chinese certificate, it could just as easily be a treatise on haddock literacy in the fifteenth century, though it does have my name and diagram on it.)

I did it because it was easy, I got £1k for each one, and sometimes a trip to London to have lunch with a GE patent agent. One invention was quite clever I thought, and is still in use albeit in very small quantities. A second was very probably novel, though of less practical use. Most were pretty meh and one in particular was a complete piss-take, but they all got granted. In the very unlikely event that any of them makes a significant amount of money I'd get some sort of cut.

But these were nearly all US patents and I believe that applications were also made to other agencies, none of which succeeded. My conclusion? The US patent system is (or possibly has become) a joke, the UK patent system at least seems to have some standards.

But seven patents does look good on a CV, if only I needed a job.

Selling electronics is objective proof that people want to buy it in preference to something else. And it pays for rent and toys.

The US patent office is now a revenue machine, so they don't examine patents much. People have generated hoax patents.

I think designing electronics is fun. Is that Self-satisfaction?

When did I call myself a genius? I'm not.

Really, this ain't Facebook. Design something; you'll feel better. We can help.

Like electronic design.

It's not a great measure. but if you haven't got one you are lower in the pecking order than people who have.

Perfectly true, but irrelevant.

Certainly true, but it costs enough money that it isn't done frivolously.

No patents looks very like no innovation.

This has been looked at. In the US wealth is more heritable than height, which isn't true of more egalitiarian advanced industrial countries

If you spent time with people who have got patents, you do know a bit more about what they actually mean.

You are joking?

People who claim to be able to innovate, but don't seem to perform, do need to be held to account. People who clearly can - like Phil Hobbs - don't bother making a fuss about the fact.

Selling electronics is objective proof that you can sell stuff. All it says about the quality of the electronics is that it more or less works.

I knew quite a bit about the Lintech electron beam tester, which sold like hot cakes when it was the only on on the market. The guy who ran the business spent his development money on getting more bells and whistles that made the machine easier to sell. It wasn't all that easy to use or all that reliable, which pissed off the engineers who had to train the users (as well as designing and developing the bells and whistles).

One of them got himself hired by Fairchild and ended up developing a competitive machine for Schlumberger. He didn't have to make a very different machine, merely one that worked much the same way, but was a bit easier to use and appreciably more reliable. Once it hit the market Lintech didn't sell another machine. Mike Engelhardt (who worked on the project) has claimed that it ended up with 98% of the market.

It's an expensive joke. They cost thousand of dollars - the annual maintenance fee was around a thousand dollars a year thirty years ago.

The designing part can be fun, for a bit. Getting everything toleranced and documented is tedious.

Agreed.

John Larkin might be able to help, but I can't recall him posting anything that looked all that helpful

Posting circuits you claim to have designed doesn't hack it. Explaining why you designed it that way might.

Explaining why you wouldn't have designed a circuit the way the original poster did should be just as useful, but it does seem to rub people up the wrong way.

This is the sad truth about the (US) patent system. I was granted two patents as a teenager (lawyer jokingly verified I was old enough to enter into a legal contract). While it was an interesting experience, it completely soured me on the idea of patents -- damn near every patent is "obvious", if you think

*hard* (or even not-so-hard) about the problem.

I got a free lunch in the North End (yum yum!) for the mine. I've been reasonably well compensated (a few kilobucks, each) for other ideas that, AFAICT, were never patented. Or, were patented without my involvement.

E.g., the back of the packaging for this:

indicates PATENT PENDING but I never filled out any paperwork to that effect.

I met a guy who was a patent examiner, many years ago (we were both 20-ish). I naively asked him about the process by which he was "qualified" to examine patents. In short, he wasn't. He was just a paper-pusher and didn't have to understand anything about the patent(s) he was processing!

That just reinforced my disdain for it!

I used to think that when I was younger (when competing with other 20 year olds, patents make your CV stand out -- as does your education, etc.).

But, I found that it matters less and less in most industries; they're more interested in what you've done and can do than "paper credentials". Asking REALLY *good* questions, "cold", gets their attention. It shows insight into their problem domain.

I've a friend who appears to "collect" patents. He's aligned himself with folks who will subsidize the applications so no cost to himself (other than the time wasted -- which he likely treats as billable hours! -- chatting with the patent attorney). Apparently, "someone" (USPTO?) sells plaques on which an etched copy of thte top page of the granted patent is affixed -- so, you can adorn your walls with them and remind yourself how clever you are! :>

"If you've got to say you're a lady, then you ain't"

I think James Cagney said that to his on-screen moll, but I can't find a reference.

That is an interesting and useful distinction.

However, you should also include an understanding of the limits of a scientific theory, and an understanding of the limits of the scientific process (i.e., everything is "to the limits of our current knowledge, based on the evidence we currently have" and subject to being proven wrong or inaccurate by new evidence in the future). You must also include an understanding of your own personal limits to understanding - while appreciating that others understand it.

Then there is no need for "believe" to be involved.

Thus I understand the Newtonian model of gravity. I understand its limits - it gives an excellent approximation for a lot of use-cases, but fails to match experimental evidence and observation in others. I don't understand general relativity - I have not studied it enough, though I do understand some parts of it. However, I understand that it is the current best model we have for gravity, I understand that it too has its limitations and open questions, and that theoretical physicists are investigating alternatives or modifications. (Science progresses.)

I don't see where "belief" fits in there. I don't "believe" in relativity - I /understand/ that it is the current best theory of gravity. When someone figures out a theory that fits the evidence better, I'll try to understand that (or more likely, settle for understanding that others understand it).

Belief can be left for the parts for which we - as a community - have no understanding. Will the next big theory of gravity be based on string theory, modified Newtonian gravity, dark energy, or something else? I can belief modified Newtonian gravity makes more sense and is the likely candidate, but it is inevitably speculation. Once there is scientific understanding, there are quantitative measurements and predictions, and belief is not necessary.

Identifying what someone else believes or understands is always speculative, especially in a medium like Usenet where posts don't give the full picture.

I think I would settle for helping Larkin understand the current modern theories of evolution, and enough of the biology involved for him to see that some of his ideas do not remotely fit the evidence or have any feasible way of working.

<snip>

You are probably right.

Alas, the creationists have (literally) a textbook on awkward questions to pose; until you answer all their objections (what about the missing link?) there will be no end to their chatter. Evolution Cruncher: 928 pages of silly stuff.