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You should watch Stefan Sagmeister's "The Power of Time Off" -- great TED talk on the value of taking a break.

Representative for who? Just Lesters?

Private owners tend to care more about capital and try to use it better than an indifferent government which doesn't have the incentives to care. So as a society, we have better use of capital to our benefit.

This is kind of a myth. Yes private owners care more about capital, but that doesn't mean that they use it for the improvement of society. These ideas have been tested and they don't measure up. Look historically at any instance of a government service being privatised. F

TedTalks - Why you should listen to him:

Imagine using your car headlights to transmit data ... or surfing the web safely on a plane, tethered only by a line of sight. Harald Haas is working on it. A professor of engineering at Edinburgh University, Haas has long been studying ways to communicate electronic data signals, designing modulation techniques that pack more data onto existing networks. But his latest work leaps beyond wires and radio waves to transmit data via an LED bulb that glows and darkens faster than the human eye can see.

The system, which he's calling D-Light, uses a mathematical trick called OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing), which allows it to vary the intensity of the LED's output at a very fast rate, invisible to the human eye (for the eye, the bulb would simply be on and providing light). The signal can be picked up by simple receivers. As of now, Haas is reporting data rates of up to 10 MBit/s per second (faster than a typical broadband connection), and 100 MBit/s by the end of this year and possibly up to 1 GB in the future.

He says: "It should be so cheap that it’s everywhere. Using the visible light spectrum, which comes for free, you can piggy-back existing wireless services on the back of lighting equipment."

"As well as revolutionising internet reception, it would put an end to the potentially harmful electromagnetic pollution emitted by wireless internet routers and has raised the prospect of ubiquitous wireless access, transmitted through streetlights." Herald Scotland

http://www.ted.com/speakers/harald_haas.html

Here is the TED talk video:

http://www.ted.com/talks/harald_haas_wireless_data_from_every_light_bulb.html

TedTalks - Why you should listen to him:

Imagine using your car headlights to transmit data ... or surfing the web safely on a plane, tethered only by a line of sight. Harald Haas is working on it. A professor of engineering at Edinburgh University, Haas has long been studying ways to communicate electronic data signals, designing modulation techniques that pack more data onto existing networks. But his latest work leaps beyond wires and radio waves to transmit data via an LED bulb that glows and darkens faster than the human eye can see.

The system, which he's calling D-Light, uses a mathematical trick called OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing), which allows it to vary the intensity of the LED's output at a very fast rate, invisible to the human eye (for the eye, the bulb would simply be on and providing light). The signal can be picked up by simple receivers. As of now, Haas is reporting data rates of up to 10 MBit/s per second (faster than a typical broadband connection), and 100 MBit/s by the end of this year and possibly up to 1 GB in the future.

He says: "It should be so cheap that it’s everywhere. Using the visible light spectrum, which comes for free, you can piggy-back existing wireless services on the back of lighting equipment."

"As well as revolutionising internet reception, it would put an end to the potentially harmful electromagnetic pollution emitted by wireless internet routers and has raised the prospect of ubiquitous wireless access, transmitted through streetlights." Herald Scotland

http://www.ted.com/speakers/harald_haas.html

Here is the TED talk video:

http://www.ted.com/talks/harald_haas_wireless_data_from_every_light_bulb.html

Exactly. Bingo. Nail on the head. If most "tech industry" people who are railing against H-1B visa's are CS majors, then it is no wonder they can't find a job.

Not many employers are actually looking for CS majors. They don't need or want somebody to do research on the next big thing or somebody to have on their payroll to create tech ideas when the function of that business isn't technology related. What they want is that when they have a specific business need, they have somebody on the payroll who can implement and maintain that business need. When we need a bigger compute cluster with a larger SAN and perhaps to expand our network, a CS major is a poor choice for that job because of what you just told me. He can't subnet so he has no business touching their information infrastructure.

Most businesses who have a technology need are NOT in the business of the theoretical realm, so it's only natural that they won't hire people to do that.

http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html

That's why you're losing your job to foreigners.

To be honest, your attitude is why our industry is in decline. If we have no welders, pipe fitters, construction workers, plumbers, etc who is supposed to build stuff? People like you have declared war on work, and assume that somehow we have the ability to eliminate these jobs.

http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html

My cousin is a welder who makes $150k.

I'll try this a few ways:
First:
http://www.ted.com/talks/debate_does_the_world_need_nuclear_energy.html

Second:
http://xkcd.com/1162/

Third:
I worked nuclear power for 10 years (ops/maint), coal for the last 5 years(maint), and and converting the plant to biomass from waste wood currently. As the TED talk suggests, the right answer is to build nuclear now to replace the aging plants that we currently have while we figure out how to fit the renewable sources in.

http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html

sugata has done the research, you just need to impliment it

Michael Shermer noted that these devices are being sold to high schools for $900 a unit in his TED talk here

Unfortunately that was the reference I was thinking of, or at least the most prominent one, and it looks like it didn't make claims about military sales.

Make of it what you will, but I'm pretty sure I read about the US army buy the same kind of junk for preposterous amounts of money. I'll reply again if I find a source on that.

Trying to deter piracy with DRM is a losing battle. If people don't want to pay you, they won't pay. The trick is to get them to want to pay you.

The first step is to learn the art of asking: http://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_palmer_the_art_of_asking.html

Ask for money, don't demand it. Let them pay you whatever they think is reasonable, but communicate how much you want ($5 in this case) as a default.

And for all those freeloaders who decide not to pay you, and there will be plenty, show them some ads to recoup the cost. Better they see your ads than piratebay's.

http://www.ted.com/talks/stewart_brand_the_dawn_of_de_extinction_are_you_ready.html

There was a TED talk filmed in February that discusses what they are doing, who is doing it, and why. He does briefly mention what you're talking about. In short: Nature doesn't do things exactly the same way every time either, so don't worry about it.*

* I'm summing up quite a bit. Just watch the video (~20 mins).

Perhaps you'd be intrerested in a Chickenosaurus?

Anthony Atala: Printing a human kidney | Video on TED.com

I could bring a few, mainly specific governments. I will list a few you can look up the details on wikipedia.
Socialist systems that didn't work (not always due to their socialist policies but nevertheless): USSR, North VIetnam, DDR, Greece
Governments with many socialist policies that seem to work well for them: Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, China.
Bear in mind this is a complex issue, the difference between the way things are done in these different countries is massive. It is not possible to compare for example the policies of China and Finland in any meaningful way as their situations are too different. The countries that have had failures with socialist systems usually had their problems as a result of things that had nothing to do with socialism, also the countries that had success with socialist policies often had other advantages from the start and can't point purely at socialism for their success. Cuba is a nice example of both. Socialism has given them a fairly good national system in terms of wealth equality, education, medicine. On the other hand they are still a very poor country, they have a lot of enemies (well at least one major one). One nice way to compare different systems is through statistics.
A nice tool for this is google public data explorer. Things like literacy. life expectancy, child mortality, teachers per capita, doctors per capita, poverty etc. can be compared across different systems and the results can be surprising. On the other hand it is difficult to deduce causation from those statistics.
One of the strongest arguments in favour of socialist policies I have ever heard was from a TED video which showed that statistically economic inequality (unfair distribution of wealth) is a very strong indicator for almost every form of social of social problem, to such a degree that if all the rich people in an inequal country were to give 90% of their wealth to a trust to support the poorest in society, even those rich people would be better off.

This ted talk was from 2010. Looks simple and like it works really well. Not sure why you'd need a "full electrode mesh." Not sure what the hell's taking it so long either.

Very interesting. My specialty is mathematics and I am somewhat of a science critic, so I shouldn't have an opinion but that has never stopped me before.

What OTHER complex chemicals are found in the dust clouds in the universe?

While there is naturally an interest in detecting our own Earth-based type of life, I feel we can get distracted by DNA-centric prejudice and may be missing out on the chemical precursors of other types of life that may even predominate in the universe.

As a meta-scientist I looked for people working on this and was relieved to find Lee Cronin http://www.ted.com/talks/lee_cronin_making_matter_come_alive.html but he isn't too interested in extraterrestrial life, he just wants to create his own inorganic life.

I'm just as interested in what other complex chemicals could be found on meteorites.

Since you are a grad student I thought it would be good to ping you on this. You could become the Galileo of non-carbon-based astrobiology.

There could be such life lurking very near to us in the solar system, but if we aren't looking for it, it could find us before we find it.

Only in the way we currently manage cattle! Check this out, very very interesting! http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change.html

'Jason Fried thinks deeply about collaboration, productivity and the nature of work. He's the co-founder of 37signals, makers of Basecamp and other web-based collaboration tools' http://www.ted.com/talks/jason_fried_why_work_doesn_t_happen_at_work.html

Well, in what remains of our democracy and its core value of freedom of speech, you're certainly entitled to your opinions and speculations. :-)
http://bullies2buddies.com/Essential-Articles-for-Home-Page/the-true-meaning-of-the-golden-rule-love-your-bullies.html

Is some fraction of what I write ill-informed BS? No doubt. I just don't know which part or I'd correct it. :-) Still, let me reiterate, as I said in the post you responded to, in thirty years these sorts of economic discussion will likely be moot. With the growth of robotics and AI, 3D printing, advanced nanotech materials, probably hot and/or cold fusion power, certainly dirt-cheap solar panels (down to $1.75 or so a watt deliver from Amazon at the moment from 3X times that ten years ago), continued breakthroughs in nutritionally-based medicine and related diagnostic sensing, and so on, the economic landscape will almost certainly be radically different in 30 years than today. Most paid human labor will be replaced by such innovations, and most human labor will have little conventional economic value. That is the core point of my post. That is why I advocate rethinking economics, including by having a "basic income" like Marshall Brain proposes or along other lines like expanding the gift economy, improving subsistence production via 3D printers and solar panels, or improving government planning so it is more participatory at all levels. So, we are only quibbling about how the economic lines squiggle a bit to the left or right on the way there, IMHO.

A focus on individual people or their follies tends to ignore the long-term trends we see playing out, like the above. The progressing "Did You Know" series is interesting to watch on that including changes with the internet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmwwrGV_aiE

Or stuff by Hans Rosling:
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html

Or by me: :-)
http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html

Ignoring the ad hominems -- and the possibility you are just a psyops technician of the kind you claim elsewhere to despise :-) -- thanks for the challenge to get me to think more about this issue of floating exchange rates and currency manipulation. I have to agree that it is possible for countries to manipulate their currencies for an extended period of time to achieve certain national (or leadership-related) goals. China has been accused of that, probably with a lot of truth, like discussed here:
http://welkerswikinomics.com/blog/2010/11/23/exchange-rates-and-trade-a-delicate-balancing-act-currently-out-of-balance/

As discussed there, what are the key issues related to exchange rates and labor costs? Well, the cost of a product from China is essentially the cost of Chinese labor in China (plus costs from rent-seekers and raw materials that I'll ignore) times the conversion rate of Chinese currency to US currency (currently 0.16 USD per RMD according to one calculator I tried). You are implying that both Chinese wages and the currency conversion rate will hold fairly constant for 30 years. I am suggesting that both the Chinese wages and the conversion rate will likely significantly rise over the next thirty years and that this will happen in most other huma

First off, Everything is a remix. I haven't read Card's books, so I don't know to what you're referring, nor does it really matter whether he borrowed elements from some other book if he added his own flair to it.

And secondly, ad hominem is exactly what's so wrong with this story, and you're not exactly helping.

I don't think even more tech will resolve your issue. Everybody is different and I don't know it will work for you but what I have done is:

1. Find a job were I work on challenging, engaging projects. If your mind is wondering off, chances are you have a really boring job. Find a better one.
2. Get quiet working conditions: eliminate distractions, shut down email, IM, put phones on DND. If something urgent comes up, they'll have to come over in person. If your job requires constant distraction, either train yourself to handle the quick context switching or find another job.

I think this TED talk is relevant: http://www.ted.com/talks/jason_fried_why_work_doesn_t_happen_at_work.html

Video games have been shown that they can improve the brains ability to distinguish objects in low contrast and to track multiple objects simultaneously in other pilot studies. ( http://www.ted.com/talks/daphne_bavelier_your_brain_on_video_games.html ) I suspect the game time contributed significantly to the positive results, but as the TED talk explains, we still are trying to understand which game aspects are the good and which are the bad.

btw... how does one get involved in a study to play video games? and can I get paid for it?

I thoroughly enjoyed the talk, and especially appreciated Mitra's open minded approach to educational possibilities.

I am the parent of a child who is pursuing her education outside of a physical school setting, and I certainly recognized correlations with our experiences.

Mitra is asking for people to expand the research, and materials are available to participate.

I'll be fascinated to see how this develops.

"Given the fact that power generating wind turbines only poke up 30-50m from the surface, I fail to see how the effects are going to be as significant as Keith suggests."

This is the guy who suggested injecting a huge cloud of ash into the atmosphere to deflect sunlight and heat.
He has many strange ideas.

http://www.ted.com/talks/david_keith_s_surprising_ideas_on_climate_change.html

Worrying about the present and not for the future is ideology too. Don't let your language decide for you what matters.

From my point of view ("good" is a subjective evaluation, after all), Linux and its ideology gave me better user experiences than the alternatives, if even because i had more than just one desktop to pick from, and keep running most of my prefered apps in all of them. And in mobile also gave me better user experience, at least in my last 2 phones (n900 and n9) than the existing commercial alternatives.

Don't dismiss the ideology, it don't come alone. With it comes synergy between separate projects, plenty of people with new ideas that can effectively try them, options and control for you, and a lot of other things that you could dismiss or desesperatly need in different situations

Oh, I dunno...I think Skynet is starting to become sentient...:)

Quote from talk: "...nobody really knows what it is doing..."

http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_our_world.html

Jason Fried argues that less productivity happens at the office.

Jason Fried

That's his opinion. And he's wrong.

I get lots of work done at work. It's the only place that i work. If you aren't getting work done at work, then you're doing it wrong.

Jason Fried argues that less productivity happens at the office.

Jason Fried

suggesting that communists save lives while capitalists kill?

You require professional help, preferably in isolation, if you think opposite. Hint: except for science, free software movement, and groups described here there wasn't communism on Earth so far.

He did a TED Talk on the Chickenosaurus which is pretty entertaining
http://www.ted.com/talks/jack_horner_building_a_dinosaur_from_a_chicken.html/

it's also important to realize that drug testing in mice IS necessary.

See that is the part I don't understand... Why must it be mice? And how many drugs have a negligible effect in mice, but would work well in humans, or have a toxic effect in mice, but only minor side effects in humans? These days the drug would be overlooked or rejected. Humans are not mice... How often are we overlooking good drugs because of bad animal models?

I get the point, we need to protect humans first, and not be doing stupid/dangerous tests on humans just for the sake of science. I think, for me, this just makes more of a point that suggests we should go in the direction of testing first with human tissues and actual model organs then test in full system creatures like marmosets.
So far, this ted.com talk is the direction I think would benefit us most as a species. Not that I think we are there yet, it definitely looks like the way to go.

Almost every game has some fundamental real-world skill underneath it, just with some pretty graphics or social aspect to make exercising it fun.

Fast-paced shooters have been shown to have long-lasting positive effects for reaction time and observation skills. I imagine the sorts of puzzle and memory games in TFA could have their own positive effects.

Will they help you live longer? Prevent Alzheimer's? Turn a couch potato into a Nobel laureate? Probably not. But can they improve other useful, real-world skills? Absolutely.

If we rephrase your question into "Why do people obey when they get ordered to do bad things?" then this TED talk by Philip Zimbardo may explain some of the core problems with that (although it obviously shows much more extreme cases, sometimes even hard to watch.)

A software company chief research officer reassures the AC, that "if you go and buy a color laser printer from any major laser printer manufacturer [nowadays] and print a page, that page will end up having slight yellow dots printed on every single page in a pattern which makes the page unique to you and to your printer.", "Mikko Hypponen: Three types of online attack".

This TED.com talk by Danny Hillis is informative on this topic, http://www.ted.com/talks/danny_hillis_two_frontiers_of_cancer_treatment.html "Danny Hills makes a case for the next frontier of cancer research: proteomics, the study of proteins in the body. As Hillis explains it, genomics shows us a list of the ingredients of the body -- while proteomics shows us what those ingredients produce. Understanding what's going on in your body at the protein level may lead to a new understanding of how cancer happens."

Drew Curtis had some interesting ideas on fighting patent trolls. In cases, like this, you ask the patent trolls for explicit evidence of infringement, in which case, this puts the burden of proof on them. This isn't legal advice, but could provide some direction as to fighting back. Drew Curtis How I beat a patent troll

It's simply not physically possible for the world's human population to continue growing in numbers, affluence, and energy consumption without trashing the planet.

According to the TED video by Han Rosling, the population will level out at 10B persons. That is the number to plan for, we have reached peak childbirth at 2. http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies.html, whether current energy consumption of non-renewables can be sustained with that many more people though is highly unlikely and we'll likely move by necessity to energy sources that we have hundreds if not thousands of years of (nuclear fission but hopefully fusion).

Oh, trust me, slavery is alive and well, even thriving...and I actively seek out information and boycott products of anyone appearing in the press. Never have owned an Apple product, but I may in the future, dependent on if Apple can convince me that they are indeed serious about eliminating slavery, fair wages, decent working conditions/hours, etc. Good luck, Apple.

Sample of slavery in the world today:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_kristine_glimpses_of_modern_day_slavery.html

Bit late to the party, but I think this is pretty old news; http://www.ted.com/talks/marcus_byrne_the_dance_of_the_dung_beetle.html

Yep, the experiments described in http://www.ted.com/talks/marcus_byrne_the_dance_of_the_dung_beetle.html suggest dung beetles also use polarized light.

Mike Rowe covered this exact phenomenon here in America. Truth is, it's globally universal. Please listen to his speech with regard to work ethic on TED below.

http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html

He's the biggest SF-tease ever.

Let us not discount the Damon Lindelof phenomenon -- he wrote Prometheus and Cowboys vs. Aliens, and bears most of the responsibility for the Lost storyline. (He's also writing Into Darkness).

Then again, if yo've ever seen J. J. Abrams tell his "Mystery Box" Story it's pretty hard to not come to the conclusion that he's motivated by at least a little contempt for the audience's intelligence.

I'm a fan of your TED talks. It strikes me that many of your greatest discoveries come from destroying samples. You cut apart bones to see their growth stage, drop bones in acid (for no reason?) and found blood vessels. How did you develop this attitude toward your work?

that passes for intelligence in college, so what's the problem?

That's the *only* place it passes for intelligence. And that only works for 4 years. It doesn't work for grad level. (If it's working for you at grad level, find a different institution, because you're in one that sucks).

A lot of knowledge is not published at all. It's transmitted orally. It's also "discovered" by the user of facts through practice as to where certain facts are appropriate and where not appropriate. If you could use just books to learn a trade, we wouldn't need apprenticeships. But we still do. We even attach a fancy word to apprenticeships for so-called "white collar" jobs and call them "internships."

The apprentice phase is where one picks up the "common sense" for a trade.

As for the rest of your message, it's a load of twaddle, and I'm sure that Mike Rowe's argument for the "common man" is much more informed than your flame.

Please note where he talks about what so-called "book learned" (the SPCA) say about what you should do to neuter sheep as opposed to what the "street smart" farmer does and Mike's own direct experience. That's only *one* example.

http://blog.ted.com/2009/03/05/mike_rowe_ted/

In short, your follow-up sentence says that you are an elitist prick who probably would be entirely lost without the rest of the "lower" part of society picking up after you.

--
BMO

No, communism simply cannot be coercive, because by definition it is voluntary and [direct] democracy is requisite. Also, it helps when some resources are unlimited or of negligible cost (energy, communication, copying) and when the community is aware of the importance/benefit of a particular activity. Cf. open source communities, creative commons, wikipedia, collaborative consumption. THIS, not tyranny, is communism..

The most basic measure of success is survival.

Like I said, you've redefined lottery. Basic survival is no more a lottery than anything else in life. It is a ridiculously utilitarian definition.

Star Trek was released to try and make a buck. For a couple people it was a labor of love, for most it was a paycheck.

Like I said the first time, your argument is circular. Just because some people working on a project are not passionate about it does not redefine the entire project as utilitarian.

You also fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of google's 20% self-directed time. It isn't about a trade-off between "public demand" or what the company "needs" versus "passion" - its about recognizing that top-down structure is not sufficient for a creative enterprise. They fully expect to reap financial results from that 20% time - the company "needs" 100% of their time.

Maybe not literal ones, but are heading toward us, and are as unstoppable as the rock ones, putting politics dynamics into the equation.

The top players also need to know how to shuffle a deck. Learn to shuffle like this guy and it becomes a game of strategy instead of chance.

Actually, according to Ray Kurzweil, it does.