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Raphael Lesage

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Message 4415 - Posted: 26 Oct 2004, 16:07:26 UTC
Last modified: 26 Oct 2004, 16:12:38 UTC

I was reading some old posts and reading the boards and I noticed that the project had shareolders.

Now are we giving computer time for a for-profit organisation ?

http://lhcathome.cern.ch/forum_thread.php?id=683
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Gaspode the UnDressed

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Message 4416 - Posted: 26 Oct 2004, 16:50:56 UTC

I think you have missed the point of the thread you refer to. The concept of shareholders, along with directors, etc. was introduced by a contributor to illustrate a point. CERN has 'stakeholders' - the conributing countries, the participating scientists, etc. , but makes no profit - at least, not directly.

I'm not sure how you'd go about marketing CERN anyway, or what it's products might be. With some of the more exotic particles having a half-life measured in microseconds or less you couldn't really pack them in a box for export ;-)



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Raphael Lesage

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Message 4422 - Posted: 26 Oct 2004, 17:28:09 UTC - in response to Message 4416.  

Ah right, that's what I was suspecting...

But sometimes researches are funded in the hope of using the knowledge to build new devices (especially military gadgets)

I just wanted to see where this was all going.

> I think you have missed the point of the thread you refer to. The concept of
> shareholders, along with directors, etc. was introduced by a contributor to
> illustrate a point. CERN has 'stakeholders' - the conributing countries, the
> participating scientists, etc. , but makes no profit - at least, not
> directly.
>
> I'm not sure how you'd go about marketing CERN anyway, or what it's products
> might be. With some of the more exotic particles having a half-life measured
> in microseconds or less you couldn't really pack them in a box for export ;-)
>
>
>
> Giskard - the first telepathic robot.

>
> <img> src="http://www.boincstats.com/stats/banner.php?cpid=04522e30d784bdab1278c532eff7f473">
>
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Gaspode the UnDressed

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Message 4429 - Posted: 26 Oct 2004, 18:26:22 UTC

>But sometimes researches are funded in the hope of using the knowledge to >build new devices (especially military gadgets)
>
>I just wanted to see where this was all going.


CERN, along with the accelerator at Brookhaven, and the LIGO and GEO600 projects (click here for more on these last two projects) fall squarely into the realm of 'pure research'.

Of course, once it's been researched and the discovery is made the genie can't be put back in the bottle. A discovery that CERN makes could be used for military purposes, but that's always been true of research. Some of CERN's activities do find a more worthwhile use - Positron Emission Tomography is used extensively in medical imaging, for example.

...and without the world wide web (derived from a CERN project) you couldn't read this!


Giskard - the first telepathic robot.


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