The only point of the patent system "is to encourage inventors to publicly document how their invention works so other people can use it (with licensing), instead of keeping it secret and possibly having the knowledge lost over time."
Is this some documented "official" purpose of a patent?
Either way, I have a hard time believing that this is a bigger problem than managing a patent system per se.
Also, there are probably much better ways to protect secrets systematically for the benefit of both inventors and the public.
More plausible is the potential benefit of being able to broadcast an invention and attract investors without having to give up a first-to-move advantage. Elisha Gray might suggest otherwise.
If propert rights included poor people's properties nobody would have to pay 24% interest.This happened 100-300 years ago in Europe and America.According to Hernando de Soto this is what it takes to make capitalism work.If you leave out the majority of people you tend to leave out, if not the majority,a large fraction of the capital.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that(due to its largely african(mores) population) some southern dialects are as much arabic as portugese dialects?
Portuguese and Castillian both had massive arabic influences in pronunciation and vocabulary, not only because of demographics, but also because the Muslims had a more advanced and refined culture at the time. Still,
- they both remained mostly latin languages, and
- that influence had already happened when American colonization began. In Spain, the Muslim and Jewish were banned the very year America was discovered.
So the only explanatory power of that fact may be that
- Portuguese colonies were repopulated mainly from the north of the country (as was the case at least for Brazil), and
- that the southern dialects of the language have been promoted as the standard and expanded throughout the country. This is true today, where mass media are washing away the northern phonetics (actually richer: they distinguish between x and ch and -om and -am), accents and vocabulary in new generations.
Here in the Veneto, the former Republic of Venice, the dialect is still very alive and well, and in many situations is more prevalent than Italian. And it really is quite different than Italian in many ways:
"She's a beautiful girl"
Italian: E` una bella ragazza.
Venetian Dialect (at least one version of it): Xe na bea tosa.
Lots of words change, and even the grammar a bit. Indeed, with many italian "dialects" it's quite likely that they evolved from Latin on their own, rather than there being some standard "Italian" that then diverged.
It's really amazing, too, how much it changes over short distances - I can't hear it myself, I don't speak it that well, but you can ride an hour by bicycle from here and people recognize that you're from over there...
Edit: another good bit of dialect would be appropriate for the comment by Mark_Book below, "xe un mona".
Another good example is Bergamo, a city on the side of the Alps, where people from higher part of the town has a different dialect from the people on the lower one.
On top of developing independently from the Latin, the dialects where heavily influenced by the different dominations each part of Italy had. North-west dialects for example have a strong French influence while in south Italy the influence is more Spanish.
Probably much more than 50%. I've never heard my grandparents speaking any italian at all, but I guess they could understand it to some extents.
Italian as a language started to spread among middle/lower classes only in the 60's when most of the people bought TV sets for their living room.
I still use my regional language (a variation of venetian) everyday with family and friends.
The above comment of mine received a fair number of votes with the majority being negative. The comment was intended to be humorous and in my view if people downvoted because they were offended on behalf of Italians they need to lighten up.
OTOH if they downvoted becaust they thought it was not funny, fair enough. I don't mind because it's not my joke I heard it on The Simpsons
I think the misreading was you misreading gtufano.He disputed the unsupported statement that income differences within a nation are mainly because of intelligence differences
