Slashdot Mirror
US Can't Meet The "Grand Challenges" of Physics
BlueSky writes "A new report paints a troubling picture of the state of physics research in the US, which the authors believe has dire consequences for the competitiveness of the US. 'The report identifies six key questions that will represent the grand challenges that materials science will face over the coming decade, the ones most likely to produce the next revolution. But it also raises fears that those challenges will be met by researchers outside of the US. It highlights the fact that government funding has not kept up with the rising costs of research at the same time that the corporate-funded research lab system has collapsed. As a result, US scientific productivity has stagnated at a time when funding and output are booming overseas.'"
The Bu$h regime and his anti-science fundie pals..
When you have so much Intelligent Design/Creationist proponents in positions of power it is natural that science education will suffer. There's always importing more Indians/Filipinos/Chinese nationals to do the heavy lifting.
It's like having Satanists run a local Baptist Church. No good will come of it.
Well, all the major physics breakthroughs have been made outside US. What's new?
This has, in truth, very little to do with science per se. The precise location where scientific research is conducted has little bearing on the science itself. There are important political, economic and strategic concerns, but the import of this article, as it always is, is more a matter of American exceptionalism and nationalism;
We see some rapidly growing economies in Asia... China and India are the biggest, but many of the smaller countries there have shown remarkable advances over the years. From a humanitarian point of view it's good to see the poverty reduce and the money available for research increase.
Globally the state of physics research is good; it's even growing in the USA, but just growing harder world-wide. This will mean that the world will be able to solve its most pressing problems bar one: the hunger for money of the US corporations. The US should be so wise to realize that they'll be the third or fourth biggest economy of the world in a couple of years and start specializing in a few markets, leaving bulk production to China and India.
extern warranty;
main()
{
(void)warranty;
}
I think this article helps us understand the path that our nation has walked down and the consequences of its destination. I see a bleak future as the gap between the rich and poor expand and the rich elite become less likely to grow America and more interested in growing their assets internationally by whatever means to achieve their profits.
Ultimately we will face a day when another nation has far exceeding power in weaponry because of their advances over us in physics, chemistry or nanotech/engineering. Then they will be in position to enforce their will upon us like we do to other nations today.
Our nation has become the big dumb bully rich preppy that we all fought against in high school.
I could just see how bad it'd be for the US if in the next 10 years:
Belgium develops more efficient batteries allowing the electric car to be feasable.
Zimbabwe makes a working robotic car.
China manufacturing makes solar panels 1000% more cost effective.
Spain manufactures warp drive.
And finally Brazil comes up with a cure for cancer and AIDS that are in the same pill.
What would us poor American's do? Oh yeah, we'd buy or steal the technology like every other nation does which is especially easy now with the internet.
No, I'd say the biggest threat to America comes from it's looming economic crisis coming from transition from gas to alternative fuels. If gas hits $5 or $6 a gallon, inflation may be too high for low income people to buy food and gasoline. A similar threat is losing jobs to overseas.
God spoke to me.
As long as there are enough other countries realizing the importance of scientific research, I do not see a problem.
It does not really matter who is doing it as long as it gets done.
Maybe some people cannot swell with national pride but who cares about that...
"Ah like money..."
-
Huh? What do they mean? There is plenty of money in research, one just has to find a way to make it sound like 'research' will eventually kill more Iraqis, then 'research' will get plenty of money. Let's look at some examples:
1. Nanotech : By building tiny small robots we can kill Iraqis and they wouldn't even see us coming! == Cha-ching $1bn of funding over the next 10 years.
2. Particle Physics: By finding the Higgs boson we could kill Iraqis over great distances. The Higgs boson will create a micro singularity in Iraq and suck in all the Iraqis and leave us all the oil we want. When we burn it all, the Higgs boson will be equally effective against Iranians! == Cha-ching $2bn for a new particle accelerator.
Gosh!... didn't academia teach these physicists anything
I've seen so many people say "So what? Other countries are still developing that stuff"
okay lets look at an example
The Romans- Clear Scientific superiority including war weaponry. What did they do? Conquer the whole known world and taxed it to afford their lifestyle.
and there are plenty of examples, but I tell you what there aren't examples of, countries which have made technological advances just giving them away to other countires. Considering how hated America is by the whole of the world, don't you think its very important for America to remain the strongest nation, because lathough in the past it could have faded into insignificance and no one would have cared, it would just be another economy, but now there are people just waiting for America to fall. Honestly you can't go round the world enforcing your will on other countires and then expect when you are weak for other people to cut you a break. When America falls behind it will become a nation which is pushed around and forced to act in certain ways just like it has done to others in the past, and if America wants to stay free, it can't let that happen.
Why is it always the easy freedoms that get fought for, and yet the important long term freedoms are left to rot.
Shouldn't this be from the "No-shit-sherlock" department?
From now on, no nuclear research will be conducted, we will focus our attention on nucular research only. Anyone caught doing nuclear research will be considered a terrorist.
When Physics challenged me to a thumb wrestling deathmatch I ran away and hid under my desk before it could give me a wedgie.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I agree from a humanitarian point of view/ But from a nationalistic point of view, I see it as a problem.
As other countries develop and develop their own comparative advantage in whatever it may be, what are we doing in the US? It seams that, as a country, we're distracted by really unimportant stuff, whether it be creationism vs evolution, some war, or whatever. In the meantime, what comparative advantage do we have? Marketing? Patent litigation? Being the CEOs of the World (the rest of us in the US are lawyers, doctors, salesmen, working at Walmart)? And/or are we going to be the shoppers of the World - everyone else creates, produces, builds, and we, the US, just consumes?
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
Science stagnating at a time when IP rights are stronger than ever? How can that be? I thought lots of patents on everything would virtually guarantee a scientific advantage! You mean to tell me that all those patent lawyers have been LYING?
Money for nothing, pix for free
"You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels.
It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today!"
--Arthur Jensen, played by Ned Beatty, Network, 1976
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
No, I'd say the biggest threat to America comes from it's looming economic crisis coming from transition from gas to alternative fuels. If gas hits $5 or $6 a gallon, inflation may be too high for low income people to buy food and gasoline. A similar threat is losing jobs to overseas.
Gasoline is currently 8 dollars a gallon in the UK (and similar round most of Europe). Probably was ten years at least since it was 5 dollars a gallon.
Me, I cycle 8 miles to work in the morning (and obviously about the same back in the evening unless there's a diversion for shopping or an evening out). Laptop goes in one cycle pannier and room for 2 carrier bags of shopping in the other. I suppose we've got more of a public transport infrastructure here as well?
We have one obvious huge thing on the horizon, and it's barely even mentioned:
Nanotech. If molecular nanotechnology happens, and many scientists are stating that it IS going to happen, it's just a matter of WHEN, then all those other questions will quickly become irrelevant.
Theoretically, with the advent of molecular nanotech, every man, woman and child on the planet would have infinite personal wealth, and infinite physical power. Other than Wikipedia, and some other new networking technologies, there is very little (and admittedly, those are almost not worth mentioning), or almost nothing that we have done to prepare for that situation. That article is ludicrously irrelevant. Much less what that has to do with the US. I mean, if every man, woman, and child on the planet has infinite personal wealth and power, then what the fuck does it matter where the US physicists are in some global roster? How is that relevant when we are already decimating every other living part of the biosphere and most of the populations of most of the completely corporate owned nation/states still believe some invisible man is going to come out of the sky and smite all the sinners? I mean what the fuck? The sky is falling in a LOT of ways, including the increasingly aggressive stance of China globally (who manufacture EVERYTHING we currently rely on, btw), global warming, nuclear proliferation, countless psychotic wars between invisible man fans in the middle east and elsewhere, corporate enslavement of the populations of nearly every nation.
How can anyone really honestly give a shit if our declining empire is lacking a couple of physicists? Most of our populace talks to invisible men, is grossly overweight, completely relies on cancerous products fed to us by increasingly corrupt corporations and openly hostile trading partners who have us out gunned (they manufacture most of our actual GUNS by the way), and think that the native Americans came over on some land bridge, and we only killed about a million of them to be here (Probably closer to SIXTY million, it turns out). Our whole society is falling completely apart while fake tanned moronic cheerleading talking heads on Fox discuss Paris Hilton's traffic violations. Meanwhile the genocide continues abroad, and the cancer rates continue to go up, inflation continues to rise as our illegal federal reserve continues to attempt to stave off the inevitable by printing increasingly meaningless green paper.
WHERE THE FUCK IS THE REAL NEWS? I CAN'T EVEN GET IT ON SLASHDOT ANYMORE!!
Now, back to your discussion on the "supposed" big questions currently facing us in physics, and how our completely failed education system is not producing PHYSICISTS, as if that is the root core of all our problems.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
I took physics III at the local university thinking of wanting to pursue medical physics. The class was great because of the professor, but condition of the department was terrible. The lab equipment is 20 years old, hasn't been maintained, and is in need of replacement. The department doesn't have money to purchase a peice of $300 dollar equipment!? The upkeep of the building was bad too. It smells like the bathrooms hasn't been cleaned properly. Something like that would never pass if it was the business department. Clearly something is wrong if physics can't even get money to meet basic needs like a clean bathroom...
Why not give individuals, not just corporations, more incentive to study the hard sciences?
Something in the neighborhood of a $1,000/year scholarship sounds reasonable. It really is a drop in the bucket in terms of our budget, and it sure as hell would go a long way, unlike certain billion-dollar wars...
The biggest threat to America is, without a doubt, our execrable education system. At University it is world class, but the levels below are basically third world.
As scary as this sounds, there are a lot of the same anti-intellect, anti-science people in the the global warming movement too -- and I'm not saying this to hurt the movement. I'm as pro-green as they come, but because of my understanding of science, not because someone said that the sky is falling. When I hear people say that global warming is a FACT that cannot and should not be challenged via the Scientific Method, I get pretty frightened. All challenges to any theory make it more accurate. Intelligent Design is not a theory because it cannot be challenged. Global Warming IS a theory, and a pretty good one, but it's SIGNIFICANTLY weakened by the morons who follow it blindly, and refuse to let others analyze it critically! There are a lot of fair minded, rational people with science backgrounds who believe that taking actions to reduce carbon emissions is a good thing for the planet, who don't want to throw out the scientific method. We're willing to work towards a better understanding of climate change through science, and in places where the current theory doesn't quite fit, we're very happy to say "yes -- the science here is inconclusive." It doesn't mean the whole theory is wrong. It doesn't mean that we should not reduce carbon emissions. It doesn't mean that our cause is not just. We're not afraid of people attacking the theory of global warming. Quite the opposite, when holes are found it means that MORE study should be done. I have a terrible feeling this is going to be misunderstood, but I'll throw one more paragraph on here. I completely support the idea of SIGNIFICANTLY reducing the use of fossil fuels. In my personal life I try to be as green as possible. I take public transportation everywhere, I've started/improved recycling programs everywhere I've worked. I truly believe that we can take action to improve the suitability of the earth for humanity. I just don't want the lies of "scientific consensus" and "the time for debate has passed" to put a chill on the GREATEST accomplishment of mankind -- the scientific method. The next time someone says "there's no time for debate" please think about the fact that you could debate AND be green at the same time.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
less "grand challenges". Why would anyone study science when less effort elsewhere offers better rewards? Until engineers and scientists obtain equal professional status things will stay the same. For physics, the worse part is that there might be no possible way to catch up in technology past certain critical breakthroughs. Look where Iran is today. They may get close to having a bomb (50's tech) just to get hammered into the ground by others that fear someone else having it.
You probably had a good point in there somewhere. Unfortunately it was smothered by too much ranting.
As regard molecular nanotechnology research though, you may recall that the US totally blocked all NNI funding for MNT work under pressure from the chem industry lobbiests. As a result, instead of well-funded progress towards MNT in the US, we will have better suntan lotion courtesy of "nanoscale" materials research in the chem megacorps, funded by US taxpayers.
And while it's still true that research abroad continues unimpeded by the current gross US myopia, there is no doubting that the pace of research is quite substantially proportional to funding. This makes a "Who cares about US silliness?" position unhelpful, because it creates a significant slowdown in the world. Most pro-MNT people would probably like to see at least some real MNT capability within their own lifetimes, and the US stance works against that.
The UK won't be far behind.
Let's "get behind" in (insert scientific innovation here) and have to play "catch-up." Similar to the space program in the late 50s and 60s. I think that is when Americans shine (or get jealous). They see their neighbor having something cooler/better/shinier and then have to go out and one-up them. It works with houses, cars, bling-bling and scientific discoveries!
At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend I don't care that you're not here with me
Learn to speak and write Mandarin and/or Hindi. If current trends continue (no guarantee), within several decades english won't be the lingua franca for science and engineering.
Too vague. No actual information and a derth -- no, none -- of cites. It was a long lamantatioin skreed designed to appeal to emotion, but providing no actual figures or evidence. As something to base an actual opinion on, it was worthless.
The government is more interested in IRAQ then in their own country. Here on LOng Island we have Brookhaven National LAbs. INstead of fundign the major machine (forgot what it is) they refused to give the labs funding. A private investor had to donate money to keep it going.
The article is not entirely accurate. A slashdot posting after this one discusses the test of a scramjet. I would think this to be a major feat of accomplishment in the physics arena. The article also mentions U.S. involvement. I think there would be more money for research, humanity, and more if our esteemed leader, George W. Bush, saw the pure insanity of the war he is waging in Iraq. The blame solely falls on the head and shoulders of Mr. Bush because he has not an inconsiderable amount of resources diverted to funding his war. I also believe, and this has been shared by many, that the Bush Administration has stifled science. Once Mr. Bush leaves the Whitehouse as a failure, the incoming leadership should re-establish science and stop funding faith-based initiatives because their exists a separation of church and state. His faith-based initiatives were to the detriment of science and humanity because he let his own moral judgements dictate to scientists what they can and cannot do. The faith-based initiative movement can be cataloged as another faiure which never even really had good intentions. The intent was for Mr. Bush to force his view of the world and morality on everyone; whether they agree or disagree.
To me it is interesting that the challenges all seem to be cross-disciplinary.
s -selling-solar.html
* How do complex phenomena emerge from simple ingredients?
* How will the energy demands of future generations be met?
* What is the physics of life?
* What happens far from equilibrium and why?
* What new discoveries await us in the nanoworld?
* How will the information technology revolution be extended?
How can dicipline specific funding mechanisms address these issues effectively? I think, generally, unless funding agencies are willing to entertain joint proposals (say biology and solid state) these questions will be hard to address. How can you be sure that proposals don't get rejected just because they seem out of field?
--
Electricity without rate increases: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Science research, as funded by the U.S. Gov't agencies, is always at a disadvantage because politics works on a shorter time space--the terms of the people who get elected. Science research always has a long look forward usually much beyond the scope of even a 6-year term. It takes years for results to appear that are useful for products and procedures that pay off in better ways of living for people. The funding for the Superconducting Super Collider that got cancelled was in my opinion the perfect example of a long-term science research project (expensive YES) that would have yielded decades of good science for U.S. scientists and those from other countries. I think the cancellation of that project was a huge mistake in terms of science in the U.S. Politicians want projects finished during their term of office so they have something to point to for their reelection campaign. Science research rarely fits those kind of time lines. As I see it, the ways we fund science at the federal level are fundamentally flawed because of this lack of appreciation of how long good science research actually takes. Funding needs to be continuing and stable. We also need to study our priorities and stop focusing on just the glamorous stuff. (Unglamorous science today may develop into glamourous science tomorrow.)
The USA has an army of laywers which will sue god for not adhering to intellectual property laws and to patent laws. :-)
So no worries, if somebody outside of the USA will make research progress god will be sued...
...they are not tying their research well enough to military, anti-terrorist (including the hype of terrorism), supporting the oil game, and hidden dictatorship support.
If they did that then I have no doubt the Bush administration would be falling all over themselves in support.
Just look at the budget for military....
I thought they already have so fat arses that you could use them as car bumbers. What's the point in wanting more?
The Physics world has moved into a wierd age. Phds. are now granted to people who produce equations and theories which can not be validated with experiments. Note: I did not say proved, I said validated.
One the other said of Physics world, applied physics, you have the patent wars slowing things to a crawl. In fields like fusion and nanotechnology innovation is being stalled by patents. If you aren't writing a patent, you are figuring out how to get around someone else's patent. The amount of time wasted on patents is sad. The patent system needs to change such that the obvious and trivial can no longer be patented. Just because an invention occurred in nanotechnology or biotechnology does not mean it should be granted a patent simply because it sounds really, really technical.
In our society, we now value feeding corporations and lawyers more that we value knowledge and innovation. Meanwhile other countries like China, who do not respect our Copyright and Patent process pirate our products and will soon leap ahead of the US in physics research because they aren't encumbered by the capitalistic IP game.
the US suffering for once.
They have stolen all the other countries best brains for the last 50 years by paying them more money to do their work in the US.
Now we will have a more level playing field if the US are only able to use their own scientists. In fact, we might find out how much better Eastern European scientists are, and how poor native born Americans perform?
Really, this is a serious misunderstanding, mostly because of the events leading up to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The thing is, all of the major advances in physics which made the atomic bomb possible, and physics suddenly important rather than an obscure new branch of philosophy, were made in Europe. All of them. What America did was industrialize those discoveries. Enrico Fermi stated flatly that it would be impossible to perform isotope separation because "you'd have to turn the whole country into a factory." When he arrived in the US and saw the scale of Manhattan Project constructions, Ed Teller reminded him of his comment and Fermi shot back "and you have done just that." That's what we Americans seem to excel at.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
They obviously need Jeremy Reimer (former high school physics teacher in Vancouver B.C. who was fired for molesting young boys there), because his skills in comp. sci. are severly lacking, evidenced by this post:
t icleid=41095&cpage=202
http://www.windowsitpro.com/articles/index.cfm?ar
Perhaps Jeremy Reimer can do better @ physics, than he does @ computer science related material (where Reimer 'fakes it till he makes it' as an "arstechnica derivative drivel author", merely regurgitating already known & proven material @ best, yet he has no degree or certification in the computer sciences, or profesional hands on experience in the field as a network engineer/administrator or programmer).
But everything we need to know is in the Bible, so why fund so called 'Scientists' to come up with the wrong answers to things we already know?
Think of all that money wasted on 'The Big Bang' for instance. The Bible gives us the truth about creation, so what is the point of paying athiests to make things up?
The money should be instead given to Israel to facilitate the ingathering and hasten the End Times. They are nearly up us, my Cat was raptured just last week!
Governments these days don't fund scientific discoveries as they used to. It is mostly private enterprises and publicly traded companies like IBM and Intel that fund these research ventures. And as much of the industry research is being outsourced because its cheaper and they can use sterner security measures if they need to.
If the Iraq war hadn't happened, the money still wouldn't have been spent on research, instead you'd have lower inflation.
Deleted
Societ is insane. Not everyone can see that, but smarter people do. Increasingly, they're opting to move to the Midwest and become underappreciated, starving artists, instead of putting up with the bullshit of corporate life to develop physics theorems that become the groundwork for the next superweapon.
"And what did you do, Grandpa?"
"I invented the neutron bomb, kids... never a prouder moment in this life."
Your society is dying. Face facts!
Anti-Globalism
I've said this before, but the real numbers say that this article is wrong.
We outspend every other country by FAR on science and technology. This may be useful propaganda to get the US to reinvigorate public interest in science again, but private and governmental interest has never waned.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
-Tom
Don't forget the immigrants. It wasn't just money that got us where we are today.
The United States benefitted enormously from an influx of European physicists in the 1930s and 1940s, some of them escaping Hitler's Germany... Not to slight Harold Urey or E. O. Lawrence or Richard Feynman... but, call the roll of the people who gave us the scientific lead that led to our superpower status: Leo Szilard, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Isador Rabi, Stanislaw Ulam, E. P. Wigner, Hans Bethe... and don't forget the German scientists recruited just after the war, Werner von Braun. Immigrants, every one of them.
In today's anti-immigrant and xenophobic climate, we've actually been kicking out graduate students and postdocs with Middle Eastern origins and generally making their lives miserable with red tape and problems with student visas. With that sort of treatment, they'll probably end up pursuing careers somewhere other than the U. S.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
You still have your fair share of champions. Champions find a way to overcome obstacles to achieve their objectives. Champions also attract followers.
They'll just have to do it as the rest of them have.
.
You're wrong. Just look here. Starting in the 1940s or 1950s, the US became the leader in physics research, even if present-day EU were (anachronistically) to be considered as a unit.
This is a consequence of several factors.
1) Sputnik.
Due to the USSR's dramatic achievements of the 1950s and 1960s, scientific research became a high priority for the US government and US society as a whole. Physics, chemistry, rocketry were funded by government and industry. To be interested in science as a kid did not necessarily mark you as an object of ridicule and a target of daily beatings.
2) Flight from Fascism.
Einstein, Fermi, Szilard, and many others left continental Europe to escape anti-Semitism. Some guys like Born became British subjects. Many more became citizens of the US, where they continued research and taught students who became the next generation of physicists.
3) Economy.
During the 1950s, it took some time for Western Europe to rebuild industry. (In Warsaw Pact countries, industrial capacity hardly rebuilt at all.) But in the US, industrial capacity had actually greatly increased during the war. So the US had a lot more money to invest in research.
Now, it could be argued that the advances in physics during 1900-1990 were more important than those made during 1950-2000. I think it would be wrong, but certainly an argument could be made. But it would be entirely beside the point. The question was whether or not the US was preeminent in physics research during 1950-1990. Clearly it was.
Faraday knew how to talk to these people. Asked by the Minister of the Exchequer why pure research should be funded, he responded, "Who knows, Sir, but that someday you may be able to tax it."
You're absolutely right about the SSC. I know a dozen physicists who lost not only that job but their research careers because of the closing of that project. One of them told me that the moment the funding was stopped, CERN put in a hiring freeze for several years so they wouldn't have to deal with the influx of applications. Perfectly good physicists ended up teaching at local community colleges. I was studying physics at the time, and it certainly ended my desire to pursue a physics career in the U.S.
I think a great litmus test for anybody to be taken seriously would simply be asking them how old the Earth is.
If they say it's 6000 years old, you can disregard anything that person says for the rest of their life.
These sorts of things always come up : that somehow, because the US gov't isn't funding some sort of research the US is "falling behind". There was a huge amount of fear about this in the early 1980's ... the Japanese were pouring tons of money into AI research.
Well, here's a thought -- the US is the economic juggernaut of the world. If US companies aren't spending boatloads of money on physics research, it might be because nothing it could produce is economically viable or useful.
As it turned out, the huge Japanese AI research push produced little of value, but cost a ton of money.
Here's a good quote about the value of government research.
That sounds jolly good, except our country is more than 3000 miles wide. Wait, I forgot you're european, lemme break out the abacus and count the beads to derive a kM value.... (please hold, the beads are stuck together by a misglue factory defect in china)...
.01 green-topaz beads wide.
Okay, it's a approximately 3.482 red beads wide. That means a bus system might not work quite as well as in your country which is
We have public transit in the megalopoli, however many parts of our country have populations of less than 100 people per yellow bead. ARGH i hate my made-in-china-plastic-wood-veneered abacus.
I give up.
I think he'll be happier there. Dunno if you'll meet the "invisible man" there, but there's plenty of bombs and arrows coming to smite thee, no excess food, so no fat people, no corporations other than Smith and Arrow and Wesson and Bow, and the cancerous products probably don't exist there. (I've yet to go and verify), however IMHO your computer monitor emits some level of radiation (around 860 milliH / year) so maybe you should close your laptop pack your bags and suit up for a place that will make you genuinely happy. Meanwhile, I'll go wait for paris to come out of detox...urr prison.
There is no longer prestigious to be a scientist in US. Scientists are geeks, dorks, crazy professors, villains, negative heroes, scary types, etc. Thanks to cartoons of 50s-60s, CBS/NBC/ABC/Fox and Hollywood movies. Scientist is very unattractive type, too ugly to be shown on "Idol" or any other popular show. Scientists cannot run gracefully while showing off their bodies to save somebodies life or shoot a criminal. Scientists are unpopular.
If they are unpopular (like perverts) democratically elected leaders are not interested in supporting them because in democracy leaders reflect voters preferences. This is how democracy work, politicians do what people who elected them want them to do. It means that for the time being it is the will of the nation. Democracy with free market is not the ideal form but it is the best we know yet.
Like it or hate it but this is far better than China. In China or Russia when government tells scientist what to research and what they should accomplish to save their asses from being purged. They would never tell you about it until they escape and get citizenship of a democratic country.
Given the comment, he is british, so no, miles too, but you know that right?
That sounds jolly good, except our country is more than 3000 miles wide.
It is.
That means a bus system might not work quite as well as in your country
Why?
We have public transit in the megalopoli, however many parts of our country have populations of less than 100 people per yellow bead.
So its the places with less than 100 people sparsely populating the country side thats guzzling all that fuel. I would have thought it was all those city folk in there shiney SUVs.
The article is just a spin on the original report written by eminent scientists. The report is mostly about the interesting challenges in condensed matter and materials science. Only two of the chapters discuss the current state of funding and publications, which cannot be ignored because these are immediately relevant to meeting those challenges. The challenges are fundamental research, not weaponizing known research, hence the lack of interest from our militarized administration.
See http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309109698 for a prepublication version of the report. Significant facets not addressed by slashdotters include: the previous tremendous impact of industrial labs, their current tremendously weakened state, and that government funding (static with respect to real dollars) is not commensurate with increases in actual costs. Effort spent writing grant proposals to compete for the shrinking grant dollar is effort that is not spent doing actual research. This is borne out by the relative number of publications in eminent journals.
Those who went on anti-nationalism rants are largely missing the point. Research drives the longer term future of industry. If the research happens elsewhere, so will the industry. If US taxpayers want their children to have good jobs, they would do well to fund basic research now.
The Supreme Court just slammed the granting of a lot of "obvious" patents in the KSR decision. Quick summary of it is that patents are no longer permitted for combining known processes and techniques and getting the expected result. This ruling was huge, but it will take a while for cases to wind through lower courts applying it to all the patents out there already.
We are too far ahead to catch up now... after all, we use our fabulous technological lead so that you can get Zwinky for free!
If it weren't for the stock market, and CEO's of major companies doing everything they could to squeeze the last 1/8th of a cent out of corporate operating costs on a quarter by quarter basis we'd still have US based research and production of goods, including high tech and scientific goods. But because of the drivers of the market at this point, and their ongoing desire for each fraction of a cent, corporations that used to fund research have decided that it would be wiser to spend that money on lobbyists to make sure they get tax breaks by moving overseas and executive bonuses for firing people.
Unless it can kill people, the U.S. as a government won't bother funding it.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
There is no way that lawyer jobs are going to be offshore outsourced. And there is no way that there will ever be too many lawyers, because lawyers create the very problems that lawyers solve. If you are smart enough to be a physicist, you are certainly smart enough to be a lawyer.
Lawyers control everything: lawyers are judges, lawyers are politicians, lawyers are lobbyists, and of course, lawyers are lawyers. No way the social/political climate will ever turn against lawyers - not in the USA.
Lawyers are also among the highest paid professionals, second only to physicians - and that could change.
Get smart. Leave that technical baloney to foreigners. If you are not smart enough to be a lawyer, be a professional litigant. Msft is always looking for professional litigants.
I predict, that in the near future, everybody in the USA will earn their living by suing one another.
I really don't think the religious nuts are the cause of the decline in technology in this country.
/profit/. Not many folks want to invest in "blue sky research" anymore, and even if they did, it's probably cheaper to invest in that kind of research overseas.
I think commercialism is far more easily the culprit.
We have rapidly entered an area where people want to invest heavily (401K, etc.). But everyone is after
Investment in research in this country is probably declining because we have become so heavily profit-motivated and no one sees any profit in research.
Further, I think most of the "low-hanging-fruit" of scientific learning was done between 1945 and 1980. But now perhaps we are reaching the time of diminishing returns, where it requires much heavier investment in the research to produce (profitable) results.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Any country that develops something that the US wants will become a terrorist threat, get invaded and the IP will get sold to Halliburton in a fire sale (as in 'sell it or we'll open fire' sale). So much more cost effective: really, people must get clued into the new Economy2.0 way of thinking.
The higher American educational system has not been in the business of producing and nurturing capable scientists at least since I have been involved with it during the 80's and 90's. They have been interested in serving the pragmatic if not rational purpose of providing (i.e. primarily via psychic cannibalization) corporate drones to meet the perceived need. Though it didn't seem to be the emphasis, I did glean some profound information along the way. Personally, however, I was never able to find anything but systematic hostility and antagonism within several "top rung" educational/research programs, with the striking exception being the CS I studied at junior colleges under primarily part time professional developers, and those notable exceptions to the professional educator rule. To give that system (i.e. its consistency) its due, however, I never discovered anything different working for American "corporations" (certainly includes universities), with the exception of some temporary hiatuses (though not always) in the research sector. It did seem like things might've begun to improve over the last few years, as I moved decisively into middle age, though my best recent experiences have been working for an Indian casino as a laborer (nothing wrong with that!) and currently for a foreign advanced software/support company. While that latter does follow some of the same corporate personnel formulas, they still seem to value talent and innovation, and have satisfied a/the cardinal need by providing interesting and challenging work. ("All day long I think of things but nothing seems to satisfy. Think I'll lose my mind if I don't find something to pacify. Can you help me occupy my brain?" Black Sabbath, Paranoid) (How about this one: "I will starve (intellecutally) for food.") So, to summarize, the 1984esque experience in the US troubled me for a long time, such that I would've jumped at the chance to leave, but lacked the wherewithall. Fortunately, something finally came my way. Thus, to summarize, I would place the problem squarely in the laps (first wrote "labs" ;) of our educators (bastards! :), though, to be fair, predominant parenting strategies really seem to have set the stage for it. And it is hard to either contemplate or explain that. Perhaps (re. the latter) it is because we are awash in a sea of indigenous blood. Make ammends, I say, MAKE AMMENDS!
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
You had me following with the discussion of how nanotechnology was going to produce infinite personal wealth and then what the hell happened? Suddenly you're off on a tirade of everything that's wrong with the US.
Get back to the nanotechnology. This stuff has always sounded like snake oil to me, it always seems to be billed as "It'll cure what ails ya!". What exactly are little particles going to do, specifically? How will they make infinite personal wealth? I had not heard that one before, and I'm interested.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Spot on. I really think this country needs a hard reset or we are going to collapse hard. Don't be surprised when it happens in the next couple of generations.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Is this in and of itself really something to be afraid of? That scientific advances might happen without the U.S.'s participation does not seem so threatening to me. If anything that fact is just an obvious corollary to the fact that the U.S. has lost interest in mainstream science, and is currently spending much more heavily on all the military / "defense" related technologies and advancements they can.
There was a time, I've been told, when the US actually worked with other countries rather than simply trying to dominate and control them all. If we don't go back to that before our government loses too much power throwing fits internationally, and spreading terror and submission nationally through it's ironically named "war on terror", the US will continue to drift more and more toward being what it used to accuse the USSR of being.
We should be HAPPY if other countries do with scientific research, we should form joint projects - Working together is not just a good idea on a personal level. This whole national attitude that we have to do everything better, first, and completely alone - that is a kind of psychosis that should not be supported. It's pretty fucked up that even 1% of Americans are willing enablers for being abusive toward the rest of the world, let alone 29% or whatever it is today.
People with those kind of fears pushed us into war with Iraq, and the same group will push us into the blue light special war of the month for as long as we let them run our country. It's a _business_ for them, and it has nothing to do with (our) security.
If science stayed in in it's own playground and stuck to science, that would be great. The problem is that recently scientists have had a tendency to unwittingly be used as pawns in politics, lending credibility to those politicians that say things like the "debate is over" or "there is a consensus".
Scientists have a responsibility to stand up and object when idiots say things like this. When someone disagrees, then invite them to present evidence. Don't sneer, don't reject their evidence because they work for Exxon or GM.
And if you think "consider the source" is an adequate refutation of the evidence, then you are a moron and you betray science.
And most of all, don't be an "advocate", except to advocate the science. Deciding what to do with the science with regard to public policy is the job of politicians. If you want to be involved in that, run for congress.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
It's to our detriment, but not really surprising. Science is not "cool". Research and development engineering draws on scientific advancement and that's been de-emphasized by American companies in a big way. It's viewed as a cost center and not a profit center. Many of the advances claimed by scienctific research, like physics, are intangible. If it can't be made to show a profit next quarter, who needs it? (sarcasm)
If we're ever going to find advanced technology - the stuff of science fiction today - the groundwork for those discoveries is going to come from physics research. Too many people seem to think that a guy in his garage is going to stumble upon the answer to gravity by accident, and that scientific research on a grand scale is nothing more than an entitlement program where there's a political agenda involved.
Yep, we're fucked.
It seems the US has been moving from cutting-edge science toward applied science. The theory is that applied science has a quicker turnaround and also that it can be patented by US organizations. If you create non-patentable ideas, then your competitors can use it also. This may slow the progress of technology and science in general, but does not necessarily hurt your *relative* competitiveness.
Table-ized A.I.
The U.S. is a nation built on middle-men. Services to researchers, rules, laws and regulations, as well as researchers themselves, are expensive, especially here in the U.S. Significant charges are made against research dollars that are not research. Not sure exactly how much, but it is certainly not a trivial amount.
I hear our healthcare dollar experiences the same environment.
Do not take this that I disagree with your facts, just having been a first-hand observer, I saw the leakage and it is immense.
The problem isn't funding--it's what we do with it. Oh, sure, we could use lots more money, but it's not the real problem. Before I get into the details, let's briefly pick apart some of the nonsense in the National Academy of Science's Condensed-Matter and Materials Physics report, such as their supposed "grand challenges":
When you increase the size of your system, your state space generally grows exponentially. Of course it gets complex. Figuring out the specific complex behaviors of various systems isn't a single grand challenge, it's a whole lot of little challenges (unless you're talking about superconductivity, which I'll revisit).
Long-term? It's probably fusion, which isn't a condensed matter problem; try nuclear and plasma physics.
This is bio-physics, not condensed matter. Condensed matter is only one of many fields contributing to bio-physics.
This one seems legitimate, although it would be more interesting if they framed it in terms of some of the big problems in non-equilibrium physics.
This doesn't even make sense as a research challenge. It could at least have been framed as a question involving nanotechnology.
Here it seems like private industry is doing a very good job with the short-to-medium term. Long term, the answer may well be quantum information, which is my own field. Some of the approaches to building quantum computers are condensed matter-based, but many aren't.
The big thing I'm surprised not to see on the list is superconductivity. One estimate I heard was that something like 40% of all physicists have worked on it at some point in their careers (for me, it was as an undergrad, albeit peripherally). Despite the enormous research effort, we still don't have a really solid handle on how it works.
I'm really unimpressed by the "grand challenges" the NAS was able to come up with; it reeks of committee work. For comparison, I could write a much better list for my own field. Just off the top of my head:
Similarly, the NAS suggestions also seem to be the product of a shy and timid committee. There's the usual--more outreach, more women/minorities, more education, more money. There's also a pining for the old days of Bell labs and such, but no realistic consideration of how to bring it back (which would of course start with figuring out why it left), beyond a call for more discussions.
The countries that do the most to meet [the challenges] will benefit the most economically.
(Playing devil's advocate) Why is that so? Basic research is available to everyone. The country that benef
What has happened to the United States in the most dramatic, rapid way possible is this: we don't make anything anymore. The low-income countries do. All those Alexander Hamiltons overseas are stripping us of the capacity to manufacture. Well, I mean, we're giving it to them. It's a process of changing from a dynamic, reality-based world view -- the US that built the West, that built the Panama Canal, the skyscrapers, the car culture, all of this, is dying. Why? Because of the financialization of our economy. It's hard to remember, but there was a time when credit cards were shameful. Then their interest was held down. Then their minimum payments kept up so, in theory, the consumer would be out of debt in two years if they stopped charging and paid the minimum. Now it must be thirty years at least. The governor of California sold off a pile of debt to Wall Street, meaning he doubled it, so that he would have to raise taxes.
Engineers follow development, and we have just about stopped. The problem is this: a financial, interest-based transaction adds nothing, just the ability to buy things at the price of indebting oneself. Putting up a hydrogen car factory is in the middle of a long transformation. It involves heavy investment in research, political preparation for the massive investments in new fueling stations, the development of actual cars that run pollution-free and are affordable: at all stages, that involves new jobs which in turn summon forth new services and so on. In the end, we have a hydrogen economy, a geopolitical system that no longer depends on the middle east for oil, no pollution in our cities, and so on and on.
Or you can put a trip to the Caribbean on your credit card, and Wall Street can do the equivalent, and the government can get up to its ass in debt so it can no longer invest in long-term projects, and we can all go quietly to hell.
In WW II, our economy went on a war footing -- because it had to. Our manufacturing base was by far the strongest in the world. From an Army Air Corps of a few hundred planes, to a massive production capacity that got up to about 80,000 planes a year -- all of this was possible because of our manufacturing base and the brilliance of our engineers. We built a crummy tank, the Sherman, but we could build thousands of them at the Ford Plant. Now, under similar circumstances, what would happen? We have just enough army for a blitzkrieg and a hapless occupation during which we consider more and more behaving like the Nazis we defeated.
This is what is considered neo-liberal economics (really, in American terms, free trade conservative economics): turning ourselves into the kind of empty giant that Spain was on the eve of the Armada.
Other countries look at history, and realize they should do what we used to.
Thank big business clinton for pulling the plug on the SSC, effectively gutting half the US physics departments.
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
We may not have the facilities anymore to develop scientists but we certainly have a corner on the market for the next generation of "Paris Hiltons" and "Ashley Simpsons!" And according to many TV shows it seems that is all that really counts to America's major industries.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
But, people have lived in small towns for ages before cars or public transportation exists. That just can't be it.
I think you're making the mistake of making a one-sided cause analysis here. You say that Americans have to get cars because the places they need to reach are too far to practically reach otherwise. But what you're missing is that the town can only afford to have workplaces and stores be so far-flung precisely because they can rely on people driving to reach them. In towns where cars are less common and people rely on public transport, this sort of problem doesn't exist that much, because the economics of getting people to workplaces and stores demands that they be located close to public transport, either through putting them where existing lines are, or creating new lines to enable new districts.
Are you adequate?
Let's face it, the WORLD IS FLAT and if India or China
has a competitive advantage in physics then according the LAWS of ECONOMICS it is to our ADVANTAGE to OBEY the invisible hand of the market, doing otherwise will only distract us from enjoying the LOWER PRICES at WALMART.
This has been a message from the Corporate Security Agency. God Bless America.
I am.
There is little money for Physics research anymore.
You can blame Bush if you want (and yeah, it's appropriate) but the real damage started years before that. Look at Clinton and his decision to scrap the half-built supercollider to fund the useless space station.
To be in physics now, you have to spend years and years in education with little money. After you graduate, to do research you take a job with a fraction of the salary you can get in industry (where you don't advance physics).
How did this guy get modded up? This is such a troll!
Replace "global warming" with "evolution" and reread the post and you'll see what I mean.
Or are you just making it up? I wouldn't be surprised if they've increased military spending, and a lot of that gets back into research grants. But spending on "global warming sciences"? No. They've cut money to NASA that would have put up new satelites to monitor the short-term weather and long-term climate.
This shouldn't really surprise anyone, because oil companies have a vested interest in us not going off fossil fuels anytime soon. They also give lots of political contributions. Thus we have a populace that thinks global warming is a myth, or a media doomsday saga. And everytime there's a cold spell, someone is happy to point it out, all the while ignoring that the average temperature is climbing.
Um, isn't that practically the case now, given that it is harder and harder to get?
Do you actually see tenured profs slacking off? Because I have to say, that hasn't been my experience. They might not be able to fire you, but there's still pay raises to get.
You can always do forced retirement, and then you don't have to worry about it. That is certainly the case at some institutions.
it emits water vapor, which is a greenhouse gas
This is sad but quite true.
Formula goes:
undergraduate education
graduate education
postdoc until you can get hired
low-level faculty (tenure track, if you are lucky) where you work like mad until you finally (if ever) get tenure
Instead most people I know dropped out of physics and went into... wait for it... programming.
And folks, we need some serious investment in science right now.
Beavis and Butthead summed this situation up nicely:
"I never wanted to be a scientist anyway...science sucks. Uh-huhuhuh-huh..."
"Heh, m'yeah, hehheh-heh-heh."
The school system in this country is churning out people who would struggle to keep up with these two intellectually. I went to the Bronx High School of Science and I saw it. There! In Bronx Science! I don't even want to *know* what it would have been like if I had just gone to my zoned school...
~Eien no Inori wo Sasagete~ Searching for my Hatsumi...
First, ship all the manual labour off to third-world countries. Then, ship all the intelligence off to second-world countries. Your first-world nation can then... ???
I just don't see how the USA is going to avoid failing as a nation, the way the big federal government just keeps shooting everyone in the foot. It's like the feds are everyone's worst nightmare enemy.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
> Further, I think most of the "low-hanging-fruit" of scientific
> learning was done between 1945 and 1980.
>
It seems to me that the low-hanging fruit will *always* seem to have been already done. Each year, scientists make the "easy" experiments and pursue the "easy" ideas that have the most impact - why wouldn't they? That leaves only the harder things for next year, and so on. Also, things often seem much easier to do after they have been done than before.
Bjarke Roune
Does anyone have the research funding for the EU, Japan, China, etc.? It would be interesting to see the funding per capita of the US versus other large nations. I don't have the figures, but I suspect the US is still pretty competitive as compared to say the EU. Sure the EU has CERN, but there are labs in the US too
>It seems to me that the low-hanging fruit will *always* seem to have been already done.
/today/?"
I don't know. I just recently re-visted the Space and Rocket center in Huntsville, Alabama.
When I was finished, my overall impression was depressing. It looked like we had done so much up through the 70's. But I was left thinking, "But where's the great accomplishments from
Then, too, I had the impresson of this kind of development pattern for spacecraft:
V2: "badass"
Mercury: "Bigger, more badass"
Gemini: "Bigger, more badass"
Apollo: "Bigger, more badass"
Shuttle: "Cost Effective"
It felt to me like we switched from the "bigger, more badass" mode to the "cost effective" mode. But I felt like we should still be in the "bigger, more badass" mode. I don't think we've gotten good enough at this stuff yet to switch into penny-pinching mode.
It's depressing.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
"We're failing because we're not spending enough".
I cannot count the amount of times I've seen this argument over and over again in political debates in America. It's the real downfall of America. In education, health care, scientific research, energy people just wave money around like some sort of cure-all when it isn't. What is really required is leadership and creativity and a lot of examining details in an even handed manner that the vast majority of people could care less about or would go over their heads. I think it's pretty reflective of the current trend of people not getting excited about any political issue unless it involves them getting some money from the government trough or money being taken away from them.
Wow, I didn't realize you had to drive 3,000 miles to work, or to the grocery store. We're not talking about airplanes and intercontinental travel here, fucknut. FWIW, I'm an American, I live in Houston, I have a grocery store a whole 1 mile away, practically around the corner, Randall's FTW.
I'm amazed at the Slashdot community... Everytime a discussion of Wikipedia or performing research on the WWW comes up, they insist that people should be (and in fact are) capable of determining the validity of a source of information for themselves. We don' need no steenkin' experts...
Yet nobody so far seems to have noticed that this report was generated by an agency that feeds at the public trough and thus has a vested interest in creating the impression that they are being starved! Instead - to a man you've hared off on blaming the Usual Suspects, President Bush, the religious right, education, etc... etc...
Rather than asking why they aren't getting a bigger share of pork - why aren't you asking what they have done to adress the rising costs?
1) We know where all their hidden runways are: we run the satellites and Global Hawk. Fly that Saab out of that hole *BANG*
c raft_of_Sweden/ And Grippen happens to be a fourth generation fighter.
m /
hmmm... if there are 50 hidden runways, are you going to keep you interceptors on the all the time? As happens to be that Sweden has one of the largest air forces in Europe... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_air
2) They get *no* GPS. Magellan has 1 bird aloft so far as I know, and no weapons that can use it.
Yes, but they have maps. You remember? Things used before GPS...
3) We make all their weapons.
No you don't. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAE_Systems_Bofors/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kockums/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab/
4) Presumably we're striking first, so we get the element of surprise. If you want to say that a carrier group cannot move without the element of surprise, I think your imagination is broke. Who is going to tell them where it is? Also, we still have Ohio and Los Angeles class subs and they can carry Tomahawks: I think 2 Ohios are being refitted to carry 154 Tomahawks apiece. See Wikipedia.
First strike is always a good idea, but from where? Are you going to take your carrier group to the Baltic sea? Or just bomb them over Norway? Same goes for the subs, put two Ohios in the Baltic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Sea/? Not a good idea...
5) What Swedish Navy?
You know, Swedish Navy, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Navy/ I'm sure that they would love to use their subs against your carrier group in the Baltic.
6) Do you think the Swedes can penetrate the shell of air defense over a modern U.S. carrier group? How? 1st there's F-18s. Then there's cruisers with Aegis and Standard Missile. Closer in we go to RAM and Phalanx and lots of AAA.
That's true, carrier groups are damn hard to knock out, by air force. But I wouldn't worry, because you can't get a carrier group close to Sweden anyway. And intercepting fighters is a lot more easy...
7) Do you think that they train for this fight?
Maybe not, but it's their country and they will defend it. People usually don't like foreign nations bombing them...
8) Do you think that their anti-ship missiles are things we (a) don't make (b) haven't taken apart and examined in great detail? One of the few heartening things from the Falklands is how it seems to have motivated the U.S. to take ship protection very, very seriously.
Yes, but taking things apart doesn't usually help when they are fired at you... http://www.military.cz/sweden/RBS15/default_en.ht
What you seem to forget is that most of West-European countries spend lot of time and money in preparing for the Soviet invasion. Ok, today most armies have been cut down, but do you think that they have forgotten everything? They still have bunkers and infrastructure to fight off invasions.
And no, I'm not Swedish.
Whitehouse release the legislation
"Linux is for noobs"-The new MS fud strategy
*shrug*
We spend a _vast_ amount on NASA right now. If we were to spend the same amount on the Russian space program, we'd have vastly more equipment. Slightly less safe? Perhaps. But many, many more launches.
The Shuttle is anything but cost effective. Each launch is prohibitively expensive. One of the biggest problems with the American Space Program *is* the Shuttle, and most visions of the future of this program involve more "disposable" rockets, because building cheap, big, disposable rockets for lifting cargo is orders of magnitude cheaper than maintaining the shuttle.
Depending upon how you calculate it, NASA's budget has declined somewhat since the Apollo project. But it hasn't declined by more than 40% or so, yet NASA's output has declined at a much faster rate.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
the only return on investment has been negative.
And how.
Well, at least you can count on those dividends of the criminally insane US foreign policy of the last century, and this one, being paid for at least the next few centuries. Your children and grandchildren will really appreciate it.
you had me at #!
Why was the parent post modded down? it's an opposing viewpoint to the usual /., and it's presented in a thoughtful, thinking manner. This is the kind of comment that should be modded up, not down.
What am I saying? This isn't a peculiar set of circumstances; this is normalcy.
You'll just eliminate all public spending and then poach all our taxpayer-educated PhDs and researchers from us as they migrate overseas in search of lower taxes...
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
Most of the suggestions are merely that we're not spending enough money. If anything, reading the recurring ignorant comments on Slashdot makes me weep for the future.