[LINK] Einstein's fridge an example for NICTA?

[Karl Auer]

On Tue, 2006-12-12 at 07:34 +1100, Tom Worthington wrote:
> It is desirable that research contributes to the common good. But if 
> the Australian government is funding the research, I think some 
> effort should be put into some of the commercial benefits going to 
> Australians. It seems odd to fund research only to benefit our competitors.

No, no, no, no, NO!

Fund aAustralian researchers by all means, or only projects where
Australians will own the IP ifyou must, but you MUST decouple
"commercial benefits" from "research funding".

> The best way to demonstrate value to is to be able to point to 
> Australian businesses making money from the research.

This ONLY makes sense once research has shown itself to be commercially
useful, which is a bit of a Catch-22. Most research takes place long
before that - so who funds it?

Regards, K.

-- 
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Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)                   +61-2-64957160 (h)
http://www.biplane.com.au/~kauer/                  +61-428-957160 (mob)