I always hear people claim how the Vietnam war was a waste and that we should never have gotten involved. That is a fine position, but do you hold the same for th Korean War? Was that a war that was worth getting involved in? You need to realize that the Korean War and Vietnam were very similar, yet resulted in two very different outcomes. Is the moral of the story don't get involved, or don't get involved unless you can look back with 20/20 hindsight and only jump into the wars you know you will win?
To answer what I think your question is, no, other countries will not honor the patent. But that is true for any patent, simply because the patent system is only national in scope - that is, U.S. patents only apply in the U.S., just like U.K. patents only apply in the U.K., Japanese patents only in Japan, etc.
Kinda... sorta. Patents are national in nature. That said, there are a pile of trade treaties between various nations that in effect extend patents in one nation to another. Every time there is a free trade agreement between the US and someone else you always see a pile of posts complaining about the US imposing its patent system. This is what they are talking about.
More importantly, in almost all patent systems (US, Japan, and Europe included) a patent in another nation is considered prior art. If I patent something in the US, someone can not patent the same thing in the EU because the US patent in prior art. Further, at a later date, I can go ahead and patent my invention in the EU and that will be okay because the only prior art is my own. In fact, my patent will likely be pushed through faster because having a patent in one of the big three (EU, US, and Japan) is generally a good sign that the patent was sufficiently examined already.
International patent law is pretty well integrated all around. Each nation has its own quirks in their patent system. For instance, in Japan, you can make a slight modification to a patent and patent that. The US uses a first to invent system instead of the more usual first to file system. Despite these difference, interoperability between first world nations is not one of them. That isn't to say that patent laws are not fucked in their own and special way, just that working out patents between nations really isn't one of them. The only nation that really causes some minor irritations is the US with its first to invent system, and as the article suggests, that might very well go away.
If you find the fucking cure for AIDS you'd best not be trying to fucking profit from it.
Right. You better run and go tell the pharmaceutical companies and all the scientist pouring millions of dollars are years of research into this quickly. I am sure they would hate to spend millions of dollars and years of their lives only be told fuck you when they finally develop a cure. If your asinine knee jerk opinion ruled policy, research into new medicines would grind to a halt as scientist and investors go find something better to do with their time.
So, here is an alternative idea. Instead of complaining when someone develops something useful and doesn't give away years of their life's work and millions of dollars of investments away, how about you quit bitching, open your wallet, and donate to a charity that will buy the drug for people who can't afford it.
If you don't like it, get your own PhD and millions of dollars and go find a cure yourself.
You are missing two very important parts about that story.
1) That is not a symptom of commercial science. All science, regardless if it is academic in nature or commercial, hold back information until it can be confirmed. The entire peer review system is based upon the idea that you hold back information until you can be reasonably sure that it is true.
2) This is a good thing and helps improve science.
Last year I worked on a project with a commercial nanotechnology company. We were working on something that, once we figured out, we wanted to release to the public. The idea was already patented, so releasing it to the public could only bolster our reputation, help academics explore the field more, and give us cash flow if a commercial company wanted to implement it on a large scale. So, sufficient to say, we really wanted to make what we were doing public knowledge.
During the course of our experiments, I swear I screamed "Eureka!" at least a dozen times because I thought I had the problem solved. Sadly though, after swearing that we had something, I went back and retested. Some times it turned out that the equipment we were using was faulty and had given bad measurements. Other times the first analysis we did turned out great, but deeper analysis proved that there was nothing there. It is just the way the game is. If you come running out of your lab screaming every time you think you have it, you are going to have a very sore throat and a lot of irritated people when you need to retract what you just said. For the dozen times I thought I had it, all but one of those times did I truly have something.
The reason why the type of secrecy you cite is good for science is simply because people think they make discoveries all of the time and turn out to be dead wrong. When you come out and tell people you have something, then turn around and tell them a week later that your follow up tests showed that you don't, you just make noise, waste everyone's time, and look like an idiot for having to retract what you just said half of a dozen times. That, and the news media goes ape shit over every little finding you make. If you report that you find a highly toxic compound that kills cancer in cultured mice cells, the media will scream "SCIENTIST DISCOVER THE CURE FOR CANCER!!!111!!1!"
In your example, if the scientist had released the data as soon as they had it, that would not have diminished the credit they got for it. The reason why the held it back is because they simply wanted to retest their theory before telling people armed with multi-million dollar telescopes to spend time looking in the spot they pointed out. That isn't to say they don't want credit, as can be seen by the fact that they released their data early, even though they were not satisfied with their testing, but that the failure to release early has nothing to do with why scientist don't make claims until they are sure.
I think you vastly underestimate how often scientist think they have something and are dead wrong. Even as things stand now, the peer review system sends off discoveries to the journal junk pile from scientist that claim to have discovered something yet have not thoroughly tested their theory. The entire peer review system is built upon the idea that scientifically sound and proven work makes it public. If you have something that slips under the bar of that, the best you can hope for is a junk grade journal that no one reads. If people started to pour forth even more worthless information from half done experiments, nothing would change. Those unfinished or poorly run experiments would be tossed by reviewer of all but the worst journals, no scientist would bother to read the junk (as there would be more junk then there are people willing to read it), and people that submitted such incomplete work would look like idiots when they have to retract it.
As it stands there is more noise in the scientific community then even the most ardent research can keep up. Adding to the din with worthless and unproven data wouldn't help a thing.
Speaking as someone who has worked in research, in a 'secretive' nanotechnology company none the less, I completely disagree. First, these companies are not truly secretive. They want their name out in the forefront. Rule #1 to getting venture capitalist funding is to make a name for yourself. They tend to publish discoveries as they make them, with just enough lag time to patent them such that if someone wants to use it, they need to pay. Start ups are money starved and so don't think twice about licensing out their patents. The only other time when a startup is truly secretive about what they discover is when they intend to use it in the near future. They hold back simply because they think they have a hot idea and what to be the first to the market with it.
If you want reason #1 why commercial science is a good thing, it is because it draws people to science. In an ideal world you would have people go into R&D for joy of it. In reality, if you are going to charge $100,000 + for schooling and put them through academic hell for 4+ years of their life, a big fat pay check really keeps people from throwing up their hands and getting a degree in business or economics. As someone who went through the academics to get into R&D, money really did drive some bright people to stay in. More then one smart person stayed in because they knew at the end of the line they could join a company, get into some serious R&D, and make a small pile for themselves. If you had told them that the only place for R&D was in academia where advancement is snails pace, the pay is much harsher, and there is no prospect of forming your own company, a lot of people would have bolted for greener pastures.
People complain endlessly about commercial science, but to be honest, I can't fathom why. Nanotechnology discoveries are POURING in, Semiconducting technology is ever shrinking in size, and academia is forever still pumping out great ideas that are utterly worthless in practice. If there is a deficiency, I fail to see it. Everyone is doing their job damn good. Academia pours out tons of information that is utterly worthless for practical uses, startups take the risk and develop what the academia has created, and finally the larger production companies buy up the startups produce the technology. I am not saying that it is a perfect system that always works flawlessly or that IP laws are not fucked up, but it works pretty damn good.
1) Mars will never be like Venus unless we really go out of our way to make it so. Venus is the way it is because it has an active core. It doesn't matter what we do to Mars, it will never spew its guts into the atmosphere again. Run away green house effects are really not something to worry about. The only thing that is going to get into the Martian atmosphere is what is held in ice and what we add.
2) Mars can hold an atmosphere, just not forever (without help). The time scale it would take for a martial atmosphere to evaporate off is in the millions of years. Worrying about what will happen in a million years is rather fruitless. Anything could happen in a million years. Most likely, in a million years we won't care about the Martian atmosphere, and if we did, we would be able to restore it without much effort.
This is intellectual masturbation, but even horny 14 year old boys need to start somewhere. There are good reasons to colonize Mars. The two top reasons that come to my mind is the potential scientific growth and sociological growth it would promote. A challenge for science and a chance to start a new society could led to a hell of a lot of learning.
No, I really blame them both. Both the conservatives for shoving morals down my throat, and the liberals for building the bureaucracy to do it. I don't like theocratic states, and I don't like nanny states. You can delude yourself into thinking that only Republicans to blame, but Europe seems to show a pretty clear counter example where liberals are in control and they feel the need to nanny their populace too. The only difference is that they fear violence instead of sex.
I would personally like both sides to do me a favor fuck off.
I'll take that risk. Sure, some shows might miss out on some viewers, but others would explode. I would have watched every single Enterprise episode if I could have, commercials and all. I just didn't have the the time always be at home watching TV on a certain day each week, nor did I have the desire to sit through re-runs. Sure, I could tape it, but it isn't worth the effort for me to get a shitty quality VHS tape or burn a DvD that I am only going to use once. These days I simply wait for shows that I like to come out on DvD and Netflixs them and almost never channel surf. I tend to find out about new and interesting shows through Netflix recommendations and through friends.
Perhaps I am in the vast minority, but forcing me to channel surface and be on the TVs schedual has just made me all but stop watching TV. Other then whatever Netflixs pays for the DvDs, no one is making any money of me right now. Let me download TV shows so I can watch them when I feel like it, and you could easily collect a subscription fee or make me sit through advertisements. So, the choice is theres. Either they can get whatever Netflix pays out they can collect money from me directly. Either way, I am not going to live on the TVs schedual.
Clearly parents shouldn't even be allowed to raise their kids. They might fuck it up. The government is the one that really needs to do it for them.
No, if a parent wants to buy their kid a video game, the parent should be allowed to. Will some parents buy out of stupidity? Sure. On the other hand, I don't need to be told that my sixteen year old boy can't play Alien Vs Predator because uncle same as deemed it too graphic for his fragile little mind until he is a year older.
Government officials are completely stupid and ignorant when it comes to regulating information content. The entire Janet Jackson nonsense proved this rather conclusively. My kid can watch the news that shows real people dying, or he can watch dramatizations of humans being raped and murdered, but the second we see a nipple for half of a second the world ends? Bah, talk about a bunch of completely worthless and incompetent. They already have their fluffy union contracts, guaranteed life time pay, and the complete inability to be fired. They don't need power over information too.
Show me proof that video games are even a tiny fraction as dangerous as cigarettes and that playing them takes 30 years off your life, and you have an argument. Until that day though, the government can stay the bloody fuck out of my life on this issue.
Are people medicated when they shouldn't be? Certainly. To assume that all medication is a waste until the problem can be conclusively pinpointed and treated is sticking your head in the sand. That sort of foolishness would dictate that you can't remove a tumor until you understand why it started growing. It certainly would be nice to have perfect knowledge, but barring perfect knowledge you need to do what you can.
I would be terribly surprised to learn that you have ever known someone with true clinical depression because you display clear ignorance in the severity of the problem. True clinical depression associated with say bi-polar disorder doesn't make someone anti-social. On the contrary, bi-polars tend to be extremely social. The problem is that they have a crippling and completely irrational depression. We are talking about a depression so deep and so black that they simply cease to function as humans. To make it worse, the depression is completely without a rational reason and the victim of it consciously realizes that there is no reason for him/her to feel that way that he does. Take the feeling that a normal might have if say their entire family was murdered, make it a permanent feeling, and finally make it so that there is no reason to feel that way because everything is okay. There isn't anything to teach. They rationally KNOW that everything is okay and can tell you so. That doesn't do anything to alleviate that feeling of a crippling depression that you can't even contemplate having.
Your problem is that your limited imagination can't contemplate that you could constantly have a feeling for no rational reason, and that alls you have to do is think it away. That is fine for someone with a perfectly normal and functional head like you or I. For someone where something is broken, even if we have only limited understanding as to what is broken, that isn't fine. While we do not understand depression fully, we do see correlations between those with depression and those without. People with lower levels of neural transmitters tend to have depression. Drugs generally work by raising those levels. The confusion lies in that we do not understand the full picture, nor do we even know if low neural transmitters are the problem, or if it is a symptom of the root cause. What we DO know is that for some people, altering these levels lets people who normally would be completely incapacitated with completely irrational depression are able to start to function again. The results, while far from perfect, are undeniable. There are people out there that have found a happy existence when they once were crippled.
Honestly, I think you are going to remain completely ignorant as to the severity and the irrationality of depression until you actually know someone with serious clinical depression. You seem to be mixing people you knew that had teenaged angst or who were just attention whores with clinical depression.
You drastically underestimate the economic might that the first world nations have. Between the EU, US, and Japan is half of the world GDP. The combined population of those three bodies is just under a billion people. That means that just under 15% of the world's population has 50% of the wealth. These nations ARE plush with cash. True, they all have debt, but it is nothing that a tax hike for the US or a reduction in spending the EU couldn't fix. Granted, no one likes the idea of cutting spending or raising, they have enough wealth where there is plenty of wiggle room. These nations can afford to build sea walls and hold back the sea by building dykes. Hell, large sections of Europe and Japan already do this. That isn't to say everything would be saved, but no cities are going to go under water. At worst some land on the ocean might be given up rather then paying for the cost of keeping it dry. Either way, it will be an annoyance, not a matter of life or death.
Further, you need to realize that if a nation did decide to spend money holding back the ocean, it isn't like the nation spends that money and it goes into a black hole. It just gets circulated around the economy. The US, EU, and Japan all have extremely powerful construction industries that would be more then up to the task. The only reason why the US and most of Europe isn't already busy reclaiming the ocean is because they have plenty of land as it is and a stable population. For the first world, global warming is an irritation in the grand scheme of things. If the first world was all that was out there, we wouldn't even be talking about the issue from any other perspective other then as a discussion of how it aesthetically hurts the environment.
Of course, the rest of the world is not a third world nation. The other 85% of the population that owns the other half of the world GDP is in much dire shape. Shifting the climate around just changes what crops are grown where for the first world, but it causes mass famine in the third world. Higher sea levels means that islands get swallowed up and cities disappear. Increased hurricanes kill in the tens of thousands and do even more economic damage.
If the earth truly is warming due to human activity, it is probably already too late. Humans won't go backwards or use less energy. We either need to find a technological solution in terms of greener energy sources, or we need to get the third world to the point where it can deal with climate change effectively. Either way, the best we can hope for now is to slow down the rate and hope for the sake of the other 85% of the people in the world that a technological or economic solution comes sooner rather then later. That is just my opinion of course, and people have certainly called me a pessimist more the once.
Eh, I wouldn't hold your breath. The global climate is not really going to hurt the first world. The US is not going to suddenly explode because of global warming. Even if the seas were to raise, the US and Europe would just build higher and hold it back. The first world really does have the ability to hold back the tide. At worst, people will move crops around to take advantage of the changing weather patterns. Each new hurricane will just result in stronger buildings being built in their place to deal with the weather. To be honest, if the entire world was a big happy first world nation, I wouldn't pay global warming much mind and just rack it up to an expense you need to suck up to keep moving forward.
The real Hollywood style death and destruction will be in the third world. It is in the third world were they wont be holding back the tides or merrily swapping around their crops to deal with changing weather patterns. It is the third world where hurricanes kill more then a few idiots that didn't leave their beach front property. Global warming won't wipe out humans by a long shot. Your average American or European won't even notice beyond the fact that they might need to crank up their AC a little higher. It could seriously fuck up the third world though. If there is a reason to slow down global warming, it is so that those without piles of cash to make proper preparations to have a chance.
Eh, saving the planet doesn't do me much good if I am dead... which is what I would be if I grew up on a happy little communist style farm due to health reasons when I was younger. You need to attack such a problem for a moralistic point of view.
If you look at it from the point of 'nature', humans really don't mean anything. It is just another species. Is it wrecking the finely tuned order of things? Sure, but so do asteroids. In the end things will adapt and evolve. We couldn't wipe out all the life on this planet if we tried. We might be able to kill off all the large mammals, but thinking that nature values large mammals over rats and cockroaches is more then a little human centric.
If you look at it from the perspective of humanity, then you need to ask yourself what is best? Is the ultimate good to have as many people enjoy life as possible? Is it to have a few people enjoy life as much as possible? What is the best good? Is it better to have 6 billion people living longer then ever before, or 100,000 living with nature to the age of 30?
Finally, you can just be a greedy bastard. What is best? Whatever keeps me around kicking and happy. Part of my happiness might be altruism, but it is hard to enjoy the fruits of altruism when you are dead.
Unless you decide to personify nature as some sort of humanoid thinking entity that really likes large mammals, I think the only reasonable choice left is to, well, be selfish. Being completely selfish, the best course of action isn't to drastically reduce our standard of living and hope that earth remains as it is. The best thing to do is to try and avoid fucking up anything too bad, plow ahead, and hope to hell that technology fixes things as fast as they come.
People have argued that technology has created more problems then it solves. This blatantly ignores one undeniable fact. There are more humans living longer then at any other time in history. So far technology has done us damn good. My parents lived longer then their parents. I will live longer then they will live. People simply keep living longer and longer. At least as far as humans go, technology seems to be fixing problems faster then it creates them well enough that we keep on living longer and longer. Until someone has a better solution other then to sit on our hands and hack years off how long we live. I see no reason to give up on technology yet. Sure, try not to fuck the place up too bad, but trusting in technology to fix the problems of today seems to have worked so far.
Spoken like someone who knows jack and shit about mental illness, and/or a scientologist. If you are in complete denial that the human body occasionally goes chemically out of whack, I would hate to see your 'cure' for diabetes. "No ass hole, you can eat sugar, it is just in your head that you are going to get sick and die."
The simple fact of the mater is that our body IS a chemical machine that can be fucked with. Give someone MDMA and they WILL become happy and empathetic. Give someone vellum and they will be indifferent to almost anything. Your emotions are controlled by the chemistry of this machine. Now, are modern day psyche drugs crude at best? Absolutely, though that has less to do with medical abilities and more to do with long held denial that people could will away mental illness that retarded any true understand of the field for years. Wishing away a mental illness is roughly as effective as wishing away diabetes.
Most people are blatantly ignorant when it comes to mental illness. Hell, I was blatantly ignorant of it until I had to watch people I was close to go through it first hand. I don't get depressed. I can't even contemplate being sad for no reason. That said, this isn't true for all people. For some people, absolutely everything could be right in the world, recognize the absolutely nothing is wrong, and they could still wish themselves dead for reasons they don't know. No amount of reasoning or yoga can fix that because it is completely irrational to begin with and purely the result of a defect in their chemistry.
There is a difference between melodramatic people looking for attention and people who are clinically depressed. I personally hope that none of the later has to have you as a friend, as the last thing they need is one more stupid asshole telling them that it is all in their head and to stop being so melodramatic. That sort of worthless advice is what drives people to try one of the more effective methods of offing themselves that you suggest.
There actually might be a little more to this. Planetside was never really a big hit, and years latter I imagine its population is not growing. My guess is that they are either close break even in terms of profits. If that is the case, then advertisement is a way to stretch out the life of the game a little. Granted, it might simply kill the game faster, but give the choice of killing it now, or throwing in a few ads and extending its life, which would you pick?
Granted, this is all speculation. I have no idea fanacial status of Planetside.
I think most people (guys, slashdot readers) might learn about cunnilingus by licking a girl's vagina. I doubt it's just me.
How did that learning go? After 10 minutes of her laying there being bored did she finally break it to you that are not doing anything? You need to move that tongue a few centimeters north champ.
I would suggest taking alternative methods of healing very carefully. A friend of mine tried some alternative methods of dealing with his bi-polar disorder. He was on drugs that were kinda-sorta doing the job. They kept him stable and relatively happy, but they had some unpleasant side effects, namely weight gain and very bad acne. So, he decided to try an alternative method of dealing with it. He saw a glowing article on a certain vitamin therapy, started taking massive quantities of vitamins, dropped off his drugs, and eventually tried to kill himself.
The problem with 'alternative' medicines is that too few of the alternatives have been properly studied, they have been debunked, were studied by biased groups, or were studied using poor methods. Conventional medicine, while rarely offering up magic bullets, does a pretty good job telling you the sort of odds you are walking into. Alternative medicines on the other hand tend to be like setting off through a mine field. You might get something really that works, but you also might get some new age hippie bullshit.
So, if you have exhausted what conventional medicine has to offer, it isn't bad to branch out and explore a little. That said, I would be damn weary about dropping off drugs. The drugs might not be improving things, but they might be slowing down the progression of your illness or holding it steady. Further, you can try some alternatives without dropping off your drugs. There isn't a reason in the world why you have to drop off your drugs while you are trying acupuncture, meditation, or an improved diet.
The real crime is that non-whites get to play more video games. I think we need affirmative action to balance out the amount of video game play across all races. That means less work for white people, and more mandatory video game time. Hell, white people need to be paid to play video games until this horrible imbalance is corrected.
Joking aside, the static doesn't mean much. Honestly, I think getting into the video game industry being non-white male is NOT going to hurt you. Video game companies eat minorities up. It is going to help. A pasty kid from the 'burbs is not your first choice if trying to tap into the anyone but white males market. If anything, it is going to help you out simply due to companies trying to be more diverse.
The issue isn't company side. The issue is on the educational side. Schools in impoverished areas are more likely to suck. If you have only a HS degree or less, you are a lot less likely to get a technology job.
Basically, this is a social policy issue. Interesting to sociologist perhaps, but as far as News For Nerds, it is well outside of their realm of control, unless someone has a magical technological fix for the education system.
Is this so bad? Isn't that the end game for humanity? Get to the point where you can recreate all the time? Isn't that the Garden of Eden? Granted, it isn't terribly romantic to imagine all humans plugged into a wall matrix style enjoying whatever it is they enjoy most. That doesn't mean that given the choice people would choose that over anything else. The only thing the real world could offer that being plugged in couldn't is the belief that what you are seeing is real. Hell, even then, if believing what you are seeing is real is what makes you happy, couldn't you be tricked into believing it?
It is an interesting question, and one we will certainly have to consider if we ever end up developing AI powerful enough to replace humans in all things. If there is nothing useful you can do, what would you do? Escape into a fantasy world where you are useful? Try and upgrade yourself to be useful, accepting that you will basically destroy your old personality by expanding your intelligence and perceptions so much?
Who knows what the future holds. If nothing else, it should be interesting to see how things turn out. Who knows, if Kurzweil is anywhere close in his predictions you will get to find out the answer for yourself.
I have done a 50 hour work marathon... over the course of a week. Anyone who stays at work for 50 hours in a row better be living in a third world nation on the edge of starvation and desperatly need the work. If you are living in an industrialized first world nation, you are just a fucking wuss who needs to grow a pair. If your boss wants you to work 50 hours straight, tell him to fuck off. Really, I mean it. There isn't a first world nation in the world where that is even a little bit legal, nor is there a job out there worth that much pain.
Really, and I mean this doubly so to Americans, get some fucking perspective. Whatever you get paid, it isn't worth pissing that much of your life away. Take a pay cut. The extra ten thousand dollars you are making isn't the difference between starvation and being fed. It is the difference between a new car or a used car. Further, while the job market isn't the late 90's stupidity where you get paid 100k because you have visual basic and excel under your belt, it sure as shit isn't the great depression.
Anyone who works 50 hours straight is just a fucking idiot and is probably doing the world a service by removing themselves from the gene pool.
I don't have the patience to respond to anything more the one point. You have completely butchered the definition of a neocon. Neocons is defined almost purely by foreign policy. Namely, a neocon believes that it is worthwhile to export democracy aggressively, and that military force is viable way of toppling dictatorships. It romanticizes the success the Allies nation had in turning Germany and Japan into constructive democratic nations after World War II. Further, many neocons were ex-liberals.
Now, you can certainly have your conspiracy theories about how some are using the neocon philosophy to implement domestic changes. My point is that you shouldn't confuse the neocon position for a domestic position, nor assume that all neocons are domestic conservatives.
Personally, I think the confusion is a symptom of the American political system that tends to try and divide everything into two separate mutually exclusive categories. Being a free market advocate is not mutually exclusive to socially liberal policies. Believing in socialized economics is not mutually exclusive to conservative social beliefs.
Err, I was about to post to the other guy and tell him that you could probably plaster enough solar panels around to fuel the world if you didn't mind the environmental impact from producing so many. Then I saw your figure. If we are already using 4% of the output of the sun hitting the earth, that really makes solar energy look ugly. Think about it. A solid 70% of the earth is water. Massive amounts of earth are completely untouched and without rooftops. Look at earth from a satellite and it is green. Hell, look at Boston from a satellite and you see nothing but green until you are staring at downtown (provided the picture is from the summer). Humans just don't occupy that much surface area. We might make lots of that surface area worthless to large mammals, but the actual surface area we consume is compared to what the world has to offer. I would be shocked and amazed to learn that roof tops compose even a fraction of a percent of earth's surface area. Hell, just look at Canada and all that empty nothing. Even the United States is basically a massive forest with blots of human sticking out when you get away from the cities.
If we would need to cover 4% of the earth (assuming perfect solar cells) just to meet our needs for today, it makes solar sound pretty damn unreasonable. That isn't to say it can relieve some pressure if we can get some cheap cells up on roof tops, but I wouldn't expect solar to replace coal any time soon.
First, Moore's law is not a law. It is a damn good correlation. It has held true so far, but things are about to start getting funky in the world of transistors. That isn't to say that we will not overcome it, but I wouldn't be surprised to find Moore's law get broken in one direction or the other in the next 20 years when we really start to enter the world of quantum mechanics.
Second, I am guessing you are a Kurzweil fan. The thing you need to realize about Kurzweil and people who agree with his predictions it that they are based upon current knowledge. The easiest thing to question in his assertions is that human like intelligence can be broken down into transistors with the numbers he gives. Kurzweil assumes that a single transistor is roughly equivalent to a single neuron. This probably is not the greatest of assumptions. He could be offer by a massive order of magnitude. Hell, we don't really understand intelligence. It could be that all of what we consider to be intelligence takes place in the world of quantum mechanics, in which case he could be so far off in his predictions that his world doesn't come to pass for hundreds of thousands of years.
Finally, you need to wipe the idea of breaking Mars down with nanotechnology out of your head. As someone who works in the nanotechnology field, let me assure you that the nanobot that pulls apart molecules and reforms them is in a realm of fantasy that belongs beside warp drives and transporter beams. It might be possible, but we sure as hell don't even have the slightest clue as to how to do it. You can not physically grab an atom and pluck it off a molecule. Quantum mechanics just don't work that way. If you want to see atoms being plucked and move, see a chemical reaction.
So, now comes the big question, what do we do with these predictions? I say have a healthy intellectual debate, be vigilant of coming singularities in a potentially futile attempt to control them, and pretty much keep on chugging along as we are without paying much mind to them. We truly are blind to what the future holds, and that goes doubly so if a singularity is around the corner. Don't get me wrong, I love Kurzweil and mulling over the possibilities, but I don't think it is sound enough, especially on the time table, to decide that long term projects are not worth while because the singularity is coming anyways.
The definition that economists use when they talk about productivity is the GDP per person. The US DOES have the highest productivity in the world.
Now OECD does explain that a six other nations have higher productivity then the US per hours worked(http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/31/7/29880166. pdf). That is to say, if everyone only worked 40 hours a week, some other nations would have higher worker productivity (GDP per person). That however is not the case, and they specifically state that in these nations they work fewer hours per person compared to the US......Which, is exactly what my point was. I didn't claim Americans were the smartest or most efficient, but that they were reasonably smart, reasonably efficient, and work like animals. This is great for the economy and for me, but bad for the poor dumb bastard that is wasting 80 hours each week of his life at work.
So, uh... yeah... thanks for the finding the statistics that completely confirm exactly what I said.
Slashdot Mirror
I always hear people claim how the Vietnam war was a waste and that we should never have gotten involved. That is a fine position, but do you hold the same for th Korean War? Was that a war that was worth getting involved in? You need to realize that the Korean War and Vietnam were very similar, yet resulted in two very different outcomes. Is the moral of the story don't get involved, or don't get involved unless you can look back with 20/20 hindsight and only jump into the wars you know you will win?
To answer what I think your question is, no, other countries will not honor the patent. But that is true for any patent, simply because the patent system is only national in scope - that is, U.S. patents only apply in the U.S., just like U.K. patents only apply in the U.K., Japanese patents only in Japan, etc.
Kinda... sorta. Patents are national in nature. That said, there are a pile of trade treaties between various nations that in effect extend patents in one nation to another. Every time there is a free trade agreement between the US and someone else you always see a pile of posts complaining about the US imposing its patent system. This is what they are talking about.
More importantly, in almost all patent systems (US, Japan, and Europe included) a patent in another nation is considered prior art. If I patent something in the US, someone can not patent the same thing in the EU because the US patent in prior art. Further, at a later date, I can go ahead and patent my invention in the EU and that will be okay because the only prior art is my own. In fact, my patent will likely be pushed through faster because having a patent in one of the big three (EU, US, and Japan) is generally a good sign that the patent was sufficiently examined already.
International patent law is pretty well integrated all around. Each nation has its own quirks in their patent system. For instance, in Japan, you can make a slight modification to a patent and patent that. The US uses a first to invent system instead of the more usual first to file system. Despite these difference, interoperability between first world nations is not one of them. That isn't to say that patent laws are not fucked in their own and special way, just that working out patents between nations really isn't one of them. The only nation that really causes some minor irritations is the US with its first to invent system, and as the article suggests, that might very well go away.
Excuse me?! MARKET?
If you find the fucking cure for AIDS you'd best not be trying to fucking profit from it.
Right. You better run and go tell the pharmaceutical companies and all the scientist pouring millions of dollars are years of research into this quickly. I am sure they would hate to spend millions of dollars and years of their lives only be told fuck you when they finally develop a cure. If your asinine knee jerk opinion ruled policy, research into new medicines would grind to a halt as scientist and investors go find something better to do with their time.
So, here is an alternative idea. Instead of complaining when someone develops something useful and doesn't give away years of their life's work and millions of dollars of investments away, how about you quit bitching, open your wallet, and donate to a charity that will buy the drug for people who can't afford it.
If you don't like it, get your own PhD and millions of dollars and go find a cure yourself.
You are missing two very important parts about that story.
1) That is not a symptom of commercial science. All science, regardless if it is academic in nature or commercial, hold back information until it can be confirmed. The entire peer review system is based upon the idea that you hold back information until you can be reasonably sure that it is true.
2) This is a good thing and helps improve science.
Last year I worked on a project with a commercial nanotechnology company. We were working on something that, once we figured out, we wanted to release to the public. The idea was already patented, so releasing it to the public could only bolster our reputation, help academics explore the field more, and give us cash flow if a commercial company wanted to implement it on a large scale. So, sufficient to say, we really wanted to make what we were doing public knowledge.
During the course of our experiments, I swear I screamed "Eureka!" at least a dozen times because I thought I had the problem solved. Sadly though, after swearing that we had something, I went back and retested. Some times it turned out that the equipment we were using was faulty and had given bad measurements. Other times the first analysis we did turned out great, but deeper analysis proved that there was nothing there. It is just the way the game is. If you come running out of your lab screaming every time you think you have it, you are going to have a very sore throat and a lot of irritated people when you need to retract what you just said. For the dozen times I thought I had it, all but one of those times did I truly have something.
The reason why the type of secrecy you cite is good for science is simply because people think they make discoveries all of the time and turn out to be dead wrong. When you come out and tell people you have something, then turn around and tell them a week later that your follow up tests showed that you don't, you just make noise, waste everyone's time, and look like an idiot for having to retract what you just said half of a dozen times. That, and the news media goes ape shit over every little finding you make. If you report that you find a highly toxic compound that kills cancer in cultured mice cells, the media will scream "SCIENTIST DISCOVER THE CURE FOR CANCER!!!111!!1!"
In your example, if the scientist had released the data as soon as they had it, that would not have diminished the credit they got for it. The reason why the held it back is because they simply wanted to retest their theory before telling people armed with multi-million dollar telescopes to spend time looking in the spot they pointed out. That isn't to say they don't want credit, as can be seen by the fact that they released their data early, even though they were not satisfied with their testing, but that the failure to release early has nothing to do with why scientist don't make claims until they are sure.
I think you vastly underestimate how often scientist think they have something and are dead wrong. Even as things stand now, the peer review system sends off discoveries to the journal junk pile from scientist that claim to have discovered something yet have not thoroughly tested their theory. The entire peer review system is built upon the idea that scientifically sound and proven work makes it public. If you have something that slips under the bar of that, the best you can hope for is a junk grade journal that no one reads. If people started to pour forth even more worthless information from half done experiments, nothing would change. Those unfinished or poorly run experiments would be tossed by reviewer of all but the worst journals, no scientist would bother to read the junk (as there would be more junk then there are people willing to read it), and people that submitted such incomplete work would look like idiots when they have to retract it.
As it stands there is more noise in the scientific community then even the most ardent research can keep up. Adding to the din with worthless and unproven data wouldn't help a thing.
Speaking as someone who has worked in research, in a 'secretive' nanotechnology company none the less, I completely disagree. First, these companies are not truly secretive. They want their name out in the forefront. Rule #1 to getting venture capitalist funding is to make a name for yourself. They tend to publish discoveries as they make them, with just enough lag time to patent them such that if someone wants to use it, they need to pay. Start ups are money starved and so don't think twice about licensing out their patents. The only other time when a startup is truly secretive about what they discover is when they intend to use it in the near future. They hold back simply because they think they have a hot idea and what to be the first to the market with it.
If you want reason #1 why commercial science is a good thing, it is because it draws people to science. In an ideal world you would have people go into R&D for joy of it. In reality, if you are going to charge $100,000 + for schooling and put them through academic hell for 4+ years of their life, a big fat pay check really keeps people from throwing up their hands and getting a degree in business or economics. As someone who went through the academics to get into R&D, money really did drive some bright people to stay in. More then one smart person stayed in because they knew at the end of the line they could join a company, get into some serious R&D, and make a small pile for themselves. If you had told them that the only place for R&D was in academia where advancement is snails pace, the pay is much harsher, and there is no prospect of forming your own company, a lot of people would have bolted for greener pastures.
People complain endlessly about commercial science, but to be honest, I can't fathom why. Nanotechnology discoveries are POURING in, Semiconducting technology is ever shrinking in size, and academia is forever still pumping out great ideas that are utterly worthless in practice. If there is a deficiency, I fail to see it. Everyone is doing their job damn good. Academia pours out tons of information that is utterly worthless for practical uses, startups take the risk and develop what the academia has created, and finally the larger production companies buy up the startups produce the technology. I am not saying that it is a perfect system that always works flawlessly or that IP laws are not fucked up, but it works pretty damn good.
1) Mars will never be like Venus unless we really go out of our way to make it so. Venus is the way it is because it has an active core. It doesn't matter what we do to Mars, it will never spew its guts into the atmosphere again. Run away green house effects are really not something to worry about. The only thing that is going to get into the Martian atmosphere is what is held in ice and what we add.
2) Mars can hold an atmosphere, just not forever (without help). The time scale it would take for a martial atmosphere to evaporate off is in the millions of years. Worrying about what will happen in a million years is rather fruitless. Anything could happen in a million years. Most likely, in a million years we won't care about the Martian atmosphere, and if we did, we would be able to restore it without much effort.
This is intellectual masturbation, but even horny 14 year old boys need to start somewhere. There are good reasons to colonize Mars. The two top reasons that come to my mind is the potential scientific growth and sociological growth it would promote. A challenge for science and a chance to start a new society could led to a hell of a lot of learning.
No, I really blame them both. Both the conservatives for shoving morals down my throat, and the liberals for building the bureaucracy to do it. I don't like theocratic states, and I don't like nanny states. You can delude yourself into thinking that only Republicans to blame, but Europe seems to show a pretty clear counter example where liberals are in control and they feel the need to nanny their populace too. The only difference is that they fear violence instead of sex.
I would personally like both sides to do me a favor fuck off.
I'll take that risk. Sure, some shows might miss out on some viewers, but others would explode. I would have watched every single Enterprise episode if I could have, commercials and all. I just didn't have the the time always be at home watching TV on a certain day each week, nor did I have the desire to sit through re-runs. Sure, I could tape it, but it isn't worth the effort for me to get a shitty quality VHS tape or burn a DvD that I am only going to use once. These days I simply wait for shows that I like to come out on DvD and Netflixs them and almost never channel surf. I tend to find out about new and interesting shows through Netflix recommendations and through friends.
Perhaps I am in the vast minority, but forcing me to channel surface and be on the TVs schedual has just made me all but stop watching TV. Other then whatever Netflixs pays for the DvDs, no one is making any money of me right now. Let me download TV shows so I can watch them when I feel like it, and you could easily collect a subscription fee or make me sit through advertisements. So, the choice is theres. Either they can get whatever Netflix pays out they can collect money from me directly. Either way, I am not going to live on the TVs schedual.
Clearly parents shouldn't even be allowed to raise their kids. They might fuck it up. The government is the one that really needs to do it for them.
No, if a parent wants to buy their kid a video game, the parent should be allowed to. Will some parents buy out of stupidity? Sure. On the other hand, I don't need to be told that my sixteen year old boy can't play Alien Vs Predator because uncle same as deemed it too graphic for his fragile little mind until he is a year older.
Government officials are completely stupid and ignorant when it comes to regulating information content. The entire Janet Jackson nonsense proved this rather conclusively. My kid can watch the news that shows real people dying, or he can watch dramatizations of humans being raped and murdered, but the second we see a nipple for half of a second the world ends? Bah, talk about a bunch of completely worthless and incompetent. They already have their fluffy union contracts, guaranteed life time pay, and the complete inability to be fired. They don't need power over information too.
Show me proof that video games are even a tiny fraction as dangerous as cigarettes and that playing them takes 30 years off your life, and you have an argument. Until that day though, the government can stay the bloody fuck out of my life on this issue.
Are people medicated when they shouldn't be? Certainly. To assume that all medication is a waste until the problem can be conclusively pinpointed and treated is sticking your head in the sand. That sort of foolishness would dictate that you can't remove a tumor until you understand why it started growing. It certainly would be nice to have perfect knowledge, but barring perfect knowledge you need to do what you can.
I would be terribly surprised to learn that you have ever known someone with true clinical depression because you display clear ignorance in the severity of the problem. True clinical depression associated with say bi-polar disorder doesn't make someone anti-social. On the contrary, bi-polars tend to be extremely social. The problem is that they have a crippling and completely irrational depression. We are talking about a depression so deep and so black that they simply cease to function as humans. To make it worse, the depression is completely without a rational reason and the victim of it consciously realizes that there is no reason for him/her to feel that way that he does. Take the feeling that a normal might have if say their entire family was murdered, make it a permanent feeling, and finally make it so that there is no reason to feel that way because everything is okay. There isn't anything to teach. They rationally KNOW that everything is okay and can tell you so. That doesn't do anything to alleviate that feeling of a crippling depression that you can't even contemplate having.
Your problem is that your limited imagination can't contemplate that you could constantly have a feeling for no rational reason, and that alls you have to do is think it away. That is fine for someone with a perfectly normal and functional head like you or I. For someone where something is broken, even if we have only limited understanding as to what is broken, that isn't fine. While we do not understand depression fully, we do see correlations between those with depression and those without. People with lower levels of neural transmitters tend to have depression. Drugs generally work by raising those levels. The confusion lies in that we do not understand the full picture, nor do we even know if low neural transmitters are the problem, or if it is a symptom of the root cause. What we DO know is that for some people, altering these levels lets people who normally would be completely incapacitated with completely irrational depression are able to start to function again. The results, while far from perfect, are undeniable. There are people out there that have found a happy existence when they once were crippled.
Honestly, I think you are going to remain completely ignorant as to the severity and the irrationality of depression until you actually know someone with serious clinical depression. You seem to be mixing people you knew that had teenaged angst or who were just attention whores with clinical depression.
You drastically underestimate the economic might that the first world nations have. Between the EU, US, and Japan is half of the world GDP. The combined population of those three bodies is just under a billion people. That means that just under 15% of the world's population has 50% of the wealth. These nations ARE plush with cash. True, they all have debt, but it is nothing that a tax hike for the US or a reduction in spending the EU couldn't fix. Granted, no one likes the idea of cutting spending or raising, they have enough wealth where there is plenty of wiggle room. These nations can afford to build sea walls and hold back the sea by building dykes. Hell, large sections of Europe and Japan already do this. That isn't to say everything would be saved, but no cities are going to go under water. At worst some land on the ocean might be given up rather then paying for the cost of keeping it dry. Either way, it will be an annoyance, not a matter of life or death.
Further, you need to realize that if a nation did decide to spend money holding back the ocean, it isn't like the nation spends that money and it goes into a black hole. It just gets circulated around the economy. The US, EU, and Japan all have extremely powerful construction industries that would be more then up to the task. The only reason why the US and most of Europe isn't already busy reclaiming the ocean is because they have plenty of land as it is and a stable population. For the first world, global warming is an irritation in the grand scheme of things. If the first world was all that was out there, we wouldn't even be talking about the issue from any other perspective other then as a discussion of how it aesthetically hurts the environment.
Of course, the rest of the world is not a third world nation. The other 85% of the population that owns the other half of the world GDP is in much dire shape. Shifting the climate around just changes what crops are grown where for the first world, but it causes mass famine in the third world. Higher sea levels means that islands get swallowed up and cities disappear. Increased hurricanes kill in the tens of thousands and do even more economic damage.
If the earth truly is warming due to human activity, it is probably already too late. Humans won't go backwards or use less energy. We either need to find a technological solution in terms of greener energy sources, or we need to get the third world to the point where it can deal with climate change effectively. Either way, the best we can hope for now is to slow down the rate and hope for the sake of the other 85% of the people in the world that a technological or economic solution comes sooner rather then later. That is just my opinion of course, and people have certainly called me a pessimist more the once.
Eh, I wouldn't hold your breath. The global climate is not really going to hurt the first world. The US is not going to suddenly explode because of global warming. Even if the seas were to raise, the US and Europe would just build higher and hold it back. The first world really does have the ability to hold back the tide. At worst, people will move crops around to take advantage of the changing weather patterns. Each new hurricane will just result in stronger buildings being built in their place to deal with the weather. To be honest, if the entire world was a big happy first world nation, I wouldn't pay global warming much mind and just rack it up to an expense you need to suck up to keep moving forward.
The real Hollywood style death and destruction will be in the third world. It is in the third world were they wont be holding back the tides or merrily swapping around their crops to deal with changing weather patterns. It is the third world where hurricanes kill more then a few idiots that didn't leave their beach front property. Global warming won't wipe out humans by a long shot. Your average American or European won't even notice beyond the fact that they might need to crank up their AC a little higher. It could seriously fuck up the third world though. If there is a reason to slow down global warming, it is so that those without piles of cash to make proper preparations to have a chance.
Eh, saving the planet doesn't do me much good if I am dead... which is what I would be if I grew up on a happy little communist style farm due to health reasons when I was younger. You need to attack such a problem for a moralistic point of view.
If you look at it from the point of 'nature', humans really don't mean anything. It is just another species. Is it wrecking the finely tuned order of things? Sure, but so do asteroids. In the end things will adapt and evolve. We couldn't wipe out all the life on this planet if we tried. We might be able to kill off all the large mammals, but thinking that nature values large mammals over rats and cockroaches is more then a little human centric.
If you look at it from the perspective of humanity, then you need to ask yourself what is best? Is the ultimate good to have as many people enjoy life as possible? Is it to have a few people enjoy life as much as possible? What is the best good? Is it better to have 6 billion people living longer then ever before, or 100,000 living with nature to the age of 30?
Finally, you can just be a greedy bastard. What is best? Whatever keeps me around kicking and happy. Part of my happiness might be altruism, but it is hard to enjoy the fruits of altruism when you are dead.
Unless you decide to personify nature as some sort of humanoid thinking entity that really likes large mammals, I think the only reasonable choice left is to, well, be selfish. Being completely selfish, the best course of action isn't to drastically reduce our standard of living and hope that earth remains as it is. The best thing to do is to try and avoid fucking up anything too bad, plow ahead, and hope to hell that technology fixes things as fast as they come.
People have argued that technology has created more problems then it solves. This blatantly ignores one undeniable fact. There are more humans living longer then at any other time in history. So far technology has done us damn good. My parents lived longer then their parents. I will live longer then they will live. People simply keep living longer and longer. At least as far as humans go, technology seems to be fixing problems faster then it creates them well enough that we keep on living longer and longer. Until someone has a better solution other then to sit on our hands and hack years off how long we live. I see no reason to give up on technology yet. Sure, try not to fuck the place up too bad, but trusting in technology to fix the problems of today seems to have worked so far.
Spoken like someone who knows jack and shit about mental illness, and/or a scientologist. If you are in complete denial that the human body occasionally goes chemically out of whack, I would hate to see your 'cure' for diabetes. "No ass hole, you can eat sugar, it is just in your head that you are going to get sick and die."
The simple fact of the mater is that our body IS a chemical machine that can be fucked with. Give someone MDMA and they WILL become happy and empathetic. Give someone vellum and they will be indifferent to almost anything. Your emotions are controlled by the chemistry of this machine. Now, are modern day psyche drugs crude at best? Absolutely, though that has less to do with medical abilities and more to do with long held denial that people could will away mental illness that retarded any true understand of the field for years. Wishing away a mental illness is roughly as effective as wishing away diabetes.
Most people are blatantly ignorant when it comes to mental illness. Hell, I was blatantly ignorant of it until I had to watch people I was close to go through it first hand. I don't get depressed. I can't even contemplate being sad for no reason. That said, this isn't true for all people. For some people, absolutely everything could be right in the world, recognize the absolutely nothing is wrong, and they could still wish themselves dead for reasons they don't know. No amount of reasoning or yoga can fix that because it is completely irrational to begin with and purely the result of a defect in their chemistry.
There is a difference between melodramatic people looking for attention and people who are clinically depressed. I personally hope that none of the later has to have you as a friend, as the last thing they need is one more stupid asshole telling them that it is all in their head and to stop being so melodramatic. That sort of worthless advice is what drives people to try one of the more effective methods of offing themselves that you suggest.
There actually might be a little more to this. Planetside was never really a big hit, and years latter I imagine its population is not growing. My guess is that they are either close break even in terms of profits. If that is the case, then advertisement is a way to stretch out the life of the game a little. Granted, it might simply kill the game faster, but give the choice of killing it now, or throwing in a few ads and extending its life, which would you pick?
Granted, this is all speculation. I have no idea fanacial status of Planetside.
I think most people (guys, slashdot readers) might learn about cunnilingus by licking a girl's vagina. I doubt it's just me.
How did that learning go? After 10 minutes of her laying there being bored did she finally break it to you that are not doing anything? You need to move that tongue a few centimeters north champ.
I would suggest taking alternative methods of healing very carefully. A friend of mine tried some alternative methods of dealing with his bi-polar disorder. He was on drugs that were kinda-sorta doing the job. They kept him stable and relatively happy, but they had some unpleasant side effects, namely weight gain and very bad acne. So, he decided to try an alternative method of dealing with it. He saw a glowing article on a certain vitamin therapy, started taking massive quantities of vitamins, dropped off his drugs, and eventually tried to kill himself.
The problem with 'alternative' medicines is that too few of the alternatives have been properly studied, they have been debunked, were studied by biased groups, or were studied using poor methods. Conventional medicine, while rarely offering up magic bullets, does a pretty good job telling you the sort of odds you are walking into. Alternative medicines on the other hand tend to be like setting off through a mine field. You might get something really that works, but you also might get some new age hippie bullshit.
So, if you have exhausted what conventional medicine has to offer, it isn't bad to branch out and explore a little. That said, I would be damn weary about dropping off drugs. The drugs might not be improving things, but they might be slowing down the progression of your illness or holding it steady. Further, you can try some alternatives without dropping off your drugs. There isn't a reason in the world why you have to drop off your drugs while you are trying acupuncture, meditation, or an improved diet.
The real crime is that non-whites get to play more video games. I think we need affirmative action to balance out the amount of video game play across all races. That means less work for white people, and more mandatory video game time. Hell, white people need to be paid to play video games until this horrible imbalance is corrected.
Joking aside, the static doesn't mean much. Honestly, I think getting into the video game industry being non-white male is NOT going to hurt you. Video game companies eat minorities up. It is going to help. A pasty kid from the 'burbs is not your first choice if trying to tap into the anyone but white males market. If anything, it is going to help you out simply due to companies trying to be more diverse.
The issue isn't company side. The issue is on the educational side. Schools in impoverished areas are more likely to suck. If you have only a HS degree or less, you are a lot less likely to get a technology job.
Basically, this is a social policy issue. Interesting to sociologist perhaps, but as far as News For Nerds, it is well outside of their realm of control, unless someone has a magical technological fix for the education system.
Is this so bad? Isn't that the end game for humanity? Get to the point where you can recreate all the time? Isn't that the Garden of Eden? Granted, it isn't terribly romantic to imagine all humans plugged into a wall matrix style enjoying whatever it is they enjoy most. That doesn't mean that given the choice people would choose that over anything else. The only thing the real world could offer that being plugged in couldn't is the belief that what you are seeing is real. Hell, even then, if believing what you are seeing is real is what makes you happy, couldn't you be tricked into believing it?
It is an interesting question, and one we will certainly have to consider if we ever end up developing AI powerful enough to replace humans in all things. If there is nothing useful you can do, what would you do? Escape into a fantasy world where you are useful? Try and upgrade yourself to be useful, accepting that you will basically destroy your old personality by expanding your intelligence and perceptions so much?
Who knows what the future holds. If nothing else, it should be interesting to see how things turn out. Who knows, if Kurzweil is anywhere close in his predictions you will get to find out the answer for yourself.
I have done a 50 hour work marathon... over the course of a week. Anyone who stays at work for 50 hours in a row better be living in a third world nation on the edge of starvation and desperatly need the work. If you are living in an industrialized first world nation, you are just a fucking wuss who needs to grow a pair. If your boss wants you to work 50 hours straight, tell him to fuck off. Really, I mean it. There isn't a first world nation in the world where that is even a little bit legal, nor is there a job out there worth that much pain.
Really, and I mean this doubly so to Americans, get some fucking perspective. Whatever you get paid, it isn't worth pissing that much of your life away. Take a pay cut. The extra ten thousand dollars you are making isn't the difference between starvation and being fed. It is the difference between a new car or a used car. Further, while the job market isn't the late 90's stupidity where you get paid 100k because you have visual basic and excel under your belt, it sure as shit isn't the great depression.
Anyone who works 50 hours straight is just a fucking idiot and is probably doing the world a service by removing themselves from the gene pool.
I don't have the patience to respond to anything more the one point. You have completely butchered the definition of a neocon. Neocons is defined almost purely by foreign policy. Namely, a neocon believes that it is worthwhile to export democracy aggressively, and that military force is viable way of toppling dictatorships. It romanticizes the success the Allies nation had in turning Germany and Japan into constructive democratic nations after World War II. Further, many neocons were ex-liberals.
Now, you can certainly have your conspiracy theories about how some are using the neocon philosophy to implement domestic changes. My point is that you shouldn't confuse the neocon position for a domestic position, nor assume that all neocons are domestic conservatives.
Personally, I think the confusion is a symptom of the American political system that tends to try and divide everything into two separate mutually exclusive categories. Being a free market advocate is not mutually exclusive to socially liberal policies. Believing in socialized economics is not mutually exclusive to conservative social beliefs.
Err, I was about to post to the other guy and tell him that you could probably plaster enough solar panels around to fuel the world if you didn't mind the environmental impact from producing so many. Then I saw your figure. If we are already using 4% of the output of the sun hitting the earth, that really makes solar energy look ugly. Think about it. A solid 70% of the earth is water. Massive amounts of earth are completely untouched and without rooftops. Look at earth from a satellite and it is green. Hell, look at Boston from a satellite and you see nothing but green until you are staring at downtown (provided the picture is from the summer). Humans just don't occupy that much surface area. We might make lots of that surface area worthless to large mammals, but the actual surface area we consume is compared to what the world has to offer. I would be shocked and amazed to learn that roof tops compose even a fraction of a percent of earth's surface area. Hell, just look at Canada and all that empty nothing. Even the United States is basically a massive forest with blots of human sticking out when you get away from the cities.
If we would need to cover 4% of the earth (assuming perfect solar cells) just to meet our needs for today, it makes solar sound pretty damn unreasonable. That isn't to say it can relieve some pressure if we can get some cheap cells up on roof tops, but I wouldn't expect solar to replace coal any time soon.
There are a few things you need to realize.
First, Moore's law is not a law. It is a damn good correlation. It has held true so far, but things are about to start getting funky in the world of transistors. That isn't to say that we will not overcome it, but I wouldn't be surprised to find Moore's law get broken in one direction or the other in the next 20 years when we really start to enter the world of quantum mechanics.
Second, I am guessing you are a Kurzweil fan. The thing you need to realize about Kurzweil and people who agree with his predictions it that they are based upon current knowledge. The easiest thing to question in his assertions is that human like intelligence can be broken down into transistors with the numbers he gives. Kurzweil assumes that a single transistor is roughly equivalent to a single neuron. This probably is not the greatest of assumptions. He could be offer by a massive order of magnitude. Hell, we don't really understand intelligence. It could be that all of what we consider to be intelligence takes place in the world of quantum mechanics, in which case he could be so far off in his predictions that his world doesn't come to pass for hundreds of thousands of years.
Finally, you need to wipe the idea of breaking Mars down with nanotechnology out of your head. As someone who works in the nanotechnology field, let me assure you that the nanobot that pulls apart molecules and reforms them is in a realm of fantasy that belongs beside warp drives and transporter beams. It might be possible, but we sure as hell don't even have the slightest clue as to how to do it. You can not physically grab an atom and pluck it off a molecule. Quantum mechanics just don't work that way. If you want to see atoms being plucked and move, see a chemical reaction.
So, now comes the big question, what do we do with these predictions? I say have a healthy intellectual debate, be vigilant of coming singularities in a potentially futile attempt to control them, and pretty much keep on chugging along as we are without paying much mind to them. We truly are blind to what the future holds, and that goes doubly so if a singularity is around the corner. Don't get me wrong, I love Kurzweil and mulling over the possibilities, but I don't think it is sound enough, especially on the time table, to decide that long term projects are not worth while because the singularity is coming anyways.
US workers are not the most productive in the world.
2
0
. pdf). That is to say, if everyone only worked 40 hours a week, some other nations would have higher worker productivity (GDP per person). That however is not the case, and they specifically state that in these nations they work fewer hours per person compared to the US... ...Which, is exactly what my point was. I didn't claim Americans were the smartest or most efficient, but that they were reasonably smart, reasonably efficient, and work like animals. This is great for the economy and for me, but bad for the poor dumb bastard that is wasting 80 hours each week of his life at work.
I will not fish out the details for you, but organizations like the OECD and others will cure your unabashed optimism.
You might not bother to fish out the details, but I will.
First, let me cure your ignorance as to what productivity is with this site: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=13
Then let me show you how the US is compared to the world with this site:
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=16
The definition that economists use when they talk about productivity is the GDP per person. The US DOES have the highest productivity in the world.
Now OECD does explain that a six other nations have higher productivity then the US per hours worked(http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/31/7/29880166
So, uh... yeah... thanks for the finding the statistics that completely confirm exactly what I said.
"So, how many STDs are transmitted through abstinence?"
The same number that got transmitted to castrated men?