"Make sure your employer agrees that anything you write on your own time and on your own systems is yours."
To me the depressing thing is that you should have to get this agreement in the first place. I can not see why the burden of proof is on the employee.
Actually it was not always so. In the UK the copyright patents and design act of 1988 was the thing that changed this situation. Before that the employer would have to prove that their advice, or equipment or whatever was vital to the production of software to claim IP on it. What you wrote in your free time was yours.
Nowadays the situation has gone completely mad. My employers provide me with very little, but they still have me by the short and curlies. And there was me thinking that the IP law was supposed to support innovation?
One thing that strikes me is that they have not been very clear how this large amount of computing power is going to cure cancer.
Searching for ET is one thing. The job is massively parallalisable as one work unit does not really depend on another. It is also low bandwidth, because you have a large amount of analysis to do on a small amount of data. And finally the data is pretty much all the same. You can easily define one set of algorithms to all the data.
Now none of this is true with a biological problem. Parallalisable? Maybe. Low bandwidth? Definately not. Generally speaking computational biologists spend there time doing a relatively small amount of analysis (is this sequence the same or similar to this one?) over relatively large data sets. And easily defined algorithms? Well again no. One of the key issues with biology is the massive amount of heterogeneity involved in the data set. I would think that you would spend large amounts of time downloading the next set of algorithms.
It may be that this is the way forward, but I am not convinced at the moment. Yes there is a enourmous amount of untapped computing resources around the world, but the effort in tapping it is probably greater than the rewards you get from it, except for a very few problems. Seti was one of them. Curing cancer? Probably not.
"No. I didn't plant that. It just grew wild or from seeds dropped from passing traffic!"
Maybe US laws is different from UK law, but over hear the police have to show that you have been in possession of MJ to prosecute you. If it is found growing wild in your garden they have to show that you put it there, or were aware of it. Other wise it could just be er... a plant.
This is fortunate really. A friend of mine once had to dispose of a MJ plant as he was moving to a new house. In the end it planted in a herbacious border belonging to the local cop shop. It stayed there for several weeks before it disappeared. What its final fate was no one knows for sure.
"It is hard manipulating biological systems, and most biotech companies have a hard time staying profitable."
Monsanto is not a biotech company though. It has a long long history. It was spawned in the 40's and 50's when the US talk to spraying just about everything with persistant pesticides for no readily apparent reason. During this time it learnt that manipulation of politicians was a great way to sell your totally useless and environmentally damaging product. It made lots of money in the 60's, being responsible for amoung other things Agent Orange, which deforested whole sections of Vietnam, and caused untold damage to many people in the vicinity.
Monstanto now has jumped onto the genetic engineering bandwagon. Its hardly a surprise to find them out to their standard dubious tricks again. By what right can Monsanto force all farmers to check their fields for their dubious crops? Whats to stop them from spreading seeds at night over these areas, and therefore force all the farmers to perform either a finger search of their crops, or pay Monsanto fees.
Its a common problem in many areas of science. I work on problems of dealing with biological data. We have a pressing need for both computer scientist and also programmers. But there are very few around.
I think that part of the problem here though is that you do not have the tools to discriminate between who would be good and who would not be. Ultimately if you want to build a lab based on software then you the lab heads have to have some idea how the process of programming works. You have to have some project management skills. Otherwise you are going to end up getting a poorly performing, unmaintainable code base.
On the question of where to find programmers, I think that you are just going to have to take a leap in the dark, and advertise for people who are interested but who do not necessarily have the skills. When I took my first job working predominately as a computer programmer, I had skills as a lab biologist. I still have no formal education in programming, nothing on paper that I can show for it. I spent the time to learn though. Perhaps I just got lucky though in discovering my own apptitude. I have seen others take the same leap who have found it much harder.
Still never mind. With the economy about to crash I am sure that there will soon by lots of unemployed programmers looking for jobs. Of course you research funds will have dried up also...
"Private entities are gennerally less dangerous because you have choices. "
You have a choice with the state as well. You can move countries. Private entities are now getting so large that their reach is getting to be greater than that off countries. The lack of democratic accountabilty inherant within a capitalist economy is a problem which is only going to get worse.
"Ok, just remember you are part of the private sector. If I'm given the right to make a contract with the school to not mock them, and then mock them anyway, I'll have the right to break contracts with you. Perhapse I'll agree to buy your car, and then once I get it forget about the part where I actually have to pay you. "
I am fairly sure that the under US law there is a notion of an unfair contract. There certainly is in UK law. The music industry has been attacked on these grounds several times.
There are a number of examples that I can think
of. A contract which required one party to break the law would for instance be unenforcable by the other party. It seems perfectly reasonable to me to wonder whether in this case the contract between the school and the pupils is a fair one. And of course there is the additional problem that the contract was actually between the parents and school.
"I suggest you read the 1st amendment. That should clear up your confusion. It says that Congress shall pass no law inihibiting the freedom of speech, religion or press. They didn't. "
Is this the sum total of the freedom of speech legislation under US law then?
"The students broke school rules"
Then I think that the rules are probably incorrect. Using school rules to mussle students is not really great. There might be some justification if the students were using school equipment. In the case of the domain name this appears not to be the case.
"But it seems to me that that is different since the student was alleged to have broken a law, not a school-imposed rule. "
If rule covers expressing dissatisfaction with the school then it is wrong. If they were doing more, that is making unjustified accusations, then it is potentially libelous, and therefore a civil offence. Whats the difference.
"Of course you don't understand, that's why we told your crown to piss off in the 18th century."
Who is we in this case I wonder? The Americian revolution was of course largely carried out by the British, as well as some other nationalities. As for telling "our crown" to piss off well congratulations. "We" chopped the buggers head off a 100 years before.
"Europe doesn't lack democracy, it has regular elections for MEPs. The unelected commissioners are chosen by the elected MEPs."
I thought that the commissioners were appointed by the heads of governments, and not the MEP's.
Europe is not entirely undemocratic, but its form of democracy is severely lacking. Directly elected and appointment by directly elected individuals is a different thing. Its one step removed. European democracy needs extending.
"However a European parliament composed of some of the staunchest defenders of real freedom of speech would neuter his enormous political clout. "
You have a lot of faith which I think is unjustified.
Just out of curiosity for non US readers, I can't understand why this does not break the first amendment rules. Surely it applies automatically and the fact that the school is private is irrelevant.
I have to say though I have always disliked schools and other educational establishments taking the law into their own hands. If there is a disciplinary matter which needs dealing with in the school okay, but if a student has comminted a criminal action then the role of the school should be to refer the matter to the police, not to try and deal it with themselves. As an example there was a case in the UK a while back where a student at a well known University was accused of rape by another student. The University in question tried to expell the student in return for hushing the entire thing. This is absolutely wrong, as the university disciplinary procedure has no right to make a judgement of guilt in this case. Fortunately the student refused and he was eventually tried in a court. He was found innocent.
Now in this case there is not crime involved, but
if the school felt that their reputation was damaged then they should use the libel laws as recourse.
"What you're forgetting is that Britain is ruled by the likes Rupert Murdoch, not Tony Blair."
I can guarentee you that I am not forgetting this. Whilst I was at school and later at university my dad was continually worried about the state of his job. He was a printer. Murdoch had taken over his company.
"If Europe ran us at least we'd be run by a bunch of faceless bureaucrats who don't like power-crazed corporations at all and would cut Murdoch down to size."
I am not convinced by this. Faceless bureaucrats, and power-crazed individuals are a problem whether they operate through Europe, or through a multinational.
"There may be disadvantages to Europe but don't let the newspaper owners' political agendas blind you to the good points."
It is certainly true that if we are to maintain our democracy at its current (distressingly low) level, then our democratic institutions must grow or they will become irrelevant compared to the multi-nationals. But at the moment the organisation of Europe involves government growing, and not democracy.
This leaves me in the difficult situation with respect to Europe. Is it a good thing? No it is not, because it lacks democracy. But not having Europe might be worse because multi-nationals also lack democracy.
So should I support Europe or not? The answer is simple, I should not support Europe as it is, I should attempt to change it for the better. A hard task, but harder the longer we leave it.
"Yes, we do: just not in a single document in the American sense. Of course, this is normally in a parliamentary democracy (take Canada as another example [1]). "
It depends on how you define a "constitution" of course. Its certainly true that we do not have a document that we praise above all others, and use to demonstrate jingoistically how wonderful our democracy is.
The key point about the US constitution though its that its harder to change than other laws because it requires a bigger majority. I guess in a sense the human rights legislation that we have can be said to fulfil the same function. Whilst the UK law could be removed by parliament, the European law could not be, and that still applies.
Of course whilst the European law is admirable in its intent and aims, it suffers from one big problem, which is that the European structures of government suffer badly from a democratic deficit nearly as bad as the house of lords. Appointed by democratic representatives, is not the same thing as directly elected.
"What about fire? It consumes energy (oxygen), produces energy (heat), responds to its environment (too little oxygen, no fire... too much oxygen, BIG fire). AND it reproduces by spreading."
Most definitions of life normally include some idea of genetics. That is offspring look somewhat like their parent(s). Fire is not like that. If you set fire to some fuel the end result will be pretty much the same whatever source of fire you use to start it.
"Programs may seem real, but they aren't alive until they think: Cognito Ergo Sum "
You are confusing the idea of life and intelligence. Trees dont think either, at least not as far as I know. They are definately alive however.
The thing that I don't understand is what sequencing the genome has to add to this debate. We have known for a long time that genes in all organisms are highly related, and that the same themes turn up again and again. We know that the genes that are involved in developmental regulation, that were found in flies, also turn up in toads, and humans, and even plants. But this has become increasingly clear over the last 20 years of work. It hasn't convinced many creationists in the past, why should it now?
The problem with this whole debate is that 30,000 is just a simple straight forward number. Is it less than we expected? Well given that we had no real metric to measure against its hard to know what we expected. Worse given that we have no embracing definition of the "a gene" its kind of hard to trust the result.
At the moment there is a lot of stuff being concluded from this simple number. But really they are totally unwarrented. There are not that many genes therefore perhaps genetic determinism is wrong said Venter recently. On what basis? How many genes would have been enough?
The plain fact of the matter is that this number does not really advance us very much at all. The only reason that people are interested is that is something tangible and simple to come out of the human genome project. Its almost certain that anything actually useful which comes out of the genome data will not be simple, and will not fit into an easy sound bite.
"Evil? you gotta be kidding me you socialist freak. I keep seeing people bang on big corporations for being evil. "
Its funny the way that everytime someone on Slashdot says something which is not completely neo-liberal they get attacked for being a socialist, or a Marxist.
Now I find this rather amusing as I would describe myself as a socialist, and am quite happy with the attribute, but seriously there socialism is a lot more than just finding big corporations a little scary.
The notion for instance that large corporations should have some degree of accoutability can be seen in many ideologies, including for instance Keynsianism, which was the a commonly held believe even in the US for a while.
The neo-liberal agenda has been pushed for many years, and combined with the plain fact that many large corporations are larger than governments now its currently predominate. But many people have concerns with it. I would be happy if all of these were socialists, because if they were would have a revolution tommorrow, but the plain fact is that many, indeed most, of them are not.
Oh BTW on the small ISP front, I think that the solution is simply. Get together with 20 of your mates, and buy a co-located linux box. Both machines, and co-location are cheap enough to make this possible. Or it the notion of getting together and doing something with friends in a co-operative manner also going to get me described as a Marxist, commie pinko, dedicated to overthrowing the current world order.
As far as I can see though the arm is still moving. How is this different from for helmets which interpret head movements, which helicopter pilots sometime use (They connect to cameras which enable the pilot to see at night, or through the frame of the vehicle).
Unless they are hoping they extend the neural network to read intentions to move, in the brain, then I don't see the big advance.
"I guess I would like to see you provide some more evidence for this."
What do you think that the space race was about then? Actually in a way you are right that it was pretty irrelevant. The race was more important that the race I guess.
"what you're trying to get at when you ask who paid for what."
The majority of the population paid for it. The purpose of the space race, of the politics of hate, of "reds under the bed" thing, is to ensure that the minority of the population remain where they are. Extremely rich and generally in charge.
"I hope you're not suggesting that Lenin and Kruschev are still alive"
Good heavens no. Putin is ex KGB. This is a theme that is repeated throughout the old soviet bloc. And of course in the US you have pretty much the same faces. Bush's new office is staffed almost entirely by millionaire oil people.
"Gimme some facts, not some vague conspiratorial innuendo. "
Perhaps I am not being clear. What I saying is that the power structures that existed in the past, exist now. The space race was heavily subject to that. After the soviet bloc collapsed, ask yourself how long was it before the US found someone else to bomb? As well as Iraq, and Serbia, the US has invaded all sorts of countries since then. And now its "rogue states" that are the worry. The current political process demands enemies, demands people to hate, and demands people to compete and beat.
"Sorry about GW, incidentally."
Don't apologise. Its not your fault, and there is little that you could do to change the situation there.
Maybe this is true, although I think that the world has got into a big hurry since the last explorations. I'm not sure the time scales in terms of years is terribly meaningful.
"As ambivalent as you seem towards technological growth, you show all the signs of being spoiled by the same"
Spoilt my it? Maybe so. I work in a technological field. I have seen technology overturn all the ground rules in the time that I have been in it. Indeed its overturned so many thats its been re-invented. Its been exciting and enthralling to what it happen, and to a small part of it.
"I think the push on both sides was more to gain a
technological advantage than to bankrupt the other, and it was the Soviet's poor choice to try to play the game on US terms that did them in".
Then I think that you misunderstand the politics. Who paid for the arms race, and the space race? Who paid when the soviet bloc finally died? Not the leaders who were in charge all that time. Most of them still are now. Technological advances like the space race are amazing but they benefitted the minority of the population in both the US and the USSR. And around the world millions paid for this folly as they were caught in the cross fire.
"you haven't yet been inflicted with George W. Bush's statements signaling his intent"
Oh yeah we have. One of the more moronic of our leaders has suggested that its a great idea. Star wars II, the ultimate triumph. It is a big advance over the space race, because no one expects it to work in the first place, so how can it fail. Compared to this the space race was a big gamble. After all it was far from guarenteed that the US would get to the moon first.
"I'm not sure if it's late enough in the day to decide on the pointlessness or not. "
I think that its pretty late in the day myself. Space exploration will I think die in this century.
"you'll always find a portion who feel that those feelers are pointless wastes of resources. And they keep feeling that way until the benefits smack them in the face."
Maybe this is true. There are plenty of examples of exploration that were pointless as well of course.
Ultimately though space exploration and the moon shot were not about exploring space. Like the arms race, the space race was about the US making a show of bravado in an attempt to get another economy a third its size to bankrupt itself. It was smart and well choosen. It fitted in with many parts of the US psyche...the fairytale element, the place of individualist, cowboy element, the US love of technology as a solution for everything, and of course the frontier mythology. And along with the arms race it worked.
Nowadays the circumstances have changed. International politics do not dictate the requirement for such shows of technological might. The cold war is over, and the space race gone with it. I won't shed a tear.
"there is a fallacious assumption [...] would otherwise necessarily go to something more immediately practical"
There is no such assumption. I know that the money would not have gone to something more practical. Spending money on the space race was a lot better than spending it on nukes of course. I don't blame the space race for robbing malaria research for instance. The space race was a symptom of international power politics, and not its cause. Its the politics that I blame for the waste.
Slashdot Mirror
To me the depressing thing is that you should have to get this agreement in the first place. I can not see why the burden of proof is on the employee.
Actually it was not always so. In the UK the copyright patents and design act of 1988 was the thing that changed this situation. Before that the employer would have to prove that their advice, or equipment or whatever was vital to the production of software to claim IP on it. What you wrote in your free time was yours.
Nowadays the situation has gone completely mad. My employers provide me with very little, but they still have me by the short and curlies. And there was me thinking that the IP law was supposed to support innovation?
Phil
What a nasty unpleasant and largely untrue saying that is.
Phil
Searching for ET is one thing. The job is massively parallalisable as one work unit does not really depend on another. It is also low bandwidth, because you have a large amount of analysis to do on a small amount of data. And finally the data is pretty much all the same. You can easily define one set of algorithms to all the data.
Now none of this is true with a biological problem. Parallalisable? Maybe. Low bandwidth? Definately not. Generally speaking computational biologists spend there time doing a relatively small amount of analysis (is this sequence the same or similar to this one?) over relatively large data sets. And easily defined algorithms? Well again no. One of the key issues with biology is the massive amount of heterogeneity involved in the data set. I would think that you would spend large amounts of time downloading the next set of algorithms.
It may be that this is the way forward, but I am not convinced at the moment. Yes there is a enourmous amount of untapped computing resources around the world, but the effort in tapping it is probably greater than the rewards you get from it, except for a very few problems. Seti was one of them. Curing cancer? Probably not.
Phil
Maybe US laws is different from UK law, but over hear the police have to show that you have been in possession of MJ to prosecute you. If it is found growing wild in your garden they have to show that you put it there, or were aware of it. Other wise it could just be er... a plant.
This is fortunate really. A friend of mine once had to dispose of a MJ plant as he was moving to a new house. In the end it planted in a herbacious border belonging to the local cop shop. It stayed there for several weeks before it disappeared. What its final fate was no one knows for sure.
Phil
Monsanto is not a biotech company though. It has a long long history. It was spawned in the 40's and 50's when the US talk to spraying just about everything with persistant pesticides for no readily apparent reason. During this time it learnt that manipulation of politicians was a great way to sell your totally useless and environmentally damaging product. It made lots of money in the 60's, being responsible for amoung other things Agent Orange, which deforested whole sections of Vietnam, and caused untold damage to many people in the vicinity.
Monstanto now has jumped onto the genetic engineering bandwagon. Its hardly a surprise to find them out to their standard dubious tricks again. By what right can Monsanto force all farmers to check their fields for their dubious crops? Whats to stop them from spreading seeds at night over these areas, and therefore force all the farmers to perform either a finger search of their crops, or pay Monsanto fees.
Sounds pretty stupid to me.
Phil
I think that part of the problem here though is that you do not have the tools to discriminate between who would be good and who would not be. Ultimately if you want to build a lab based on software then you the lab heads have to have some idea how the process of programming works. You have to have some project management skills. Otherwise you are going to end up getting a poorly performing, unmaintainable code base.
On the question of where to find programmers, I think that you are just going to have to take a leap in the dark, and advertise for people who are interested but who do not necessarily have the skills. When I took my first job working predominately as a computer programmer, I had skills as a lab biologist. I still have no formal education in programming, nothing on paper that I can show for it. I spent the time to learn though. Perhaps I just got lucky though in discovering my own apptitude. I have seen others take the same leap who have found it much harder.
Still never mind. With the economy about to crash I am sure that there will soon by lots of unemployed programmers looking for jobs. Of course you research funds will have dried up also...
Phil
This always sound funny to British English speakers, as we use school for what you do between 5/6 and 16.
Of course its better than several other terms such as "fanny" and "rubber" which are open confusion and general hilarity on both sides of the pond.
As they say two countries divided by a common language.
Phil
You have a choice with the state as well. You can move countries. Private entities are now getting so large that their reach is getting to be greater than that off countries. The lack of democratic accountabilty inherant within a capitalist economy is a problem which is only going to get worse.
"Ok, just remember you are part of the private sector. If I'm given the right to make a contract with the school to not mock them, and then mock them anyway, I'll have the right to break contracts with you. Perhapse I'll agree to buy your car, and then once I get it forget about the part where I actually have to pay you. "
I am fairly sure that the under US law there is a notion of an unfair contract. There certainly is in UK law. The music industry has been attacked on these grounds several times.
There are a number of examples that I can think of. A contract which required one party to break the law would for instance be unenforcable by the other party. It seems perfectly reasonable to me to wonder whether in this case the contract between the school and the pupils is a fair one. And of course there is the additional problem that the contract was actually between the parents and school.
Phil
Is this the sum total of the freedom of speech legislation under US law then?
"The students broke school rules"
Then I think that the rules are probably incorrect. Using school rules to mussle students is not really great. There might be some justification if the students were using school equipment. In the case of the domain name this appears not to be the case.
"But it seems to me that that is different since the student was alleged to have broken a law, not a school-imposed rule. "
If rule covers expressing dissatisfaction with the school then it is wrong. If they were doing more, that is making unjustified accusations, then it is potentially libelous, and therefore a civil offence. Whats the difference.
Phil
Who is we in this case I wonder? The Americian revolution was of course largely carried out by the British, as well as some other nationalities. As for telling "our crown" to piss off well congratulations. "We" chopped the buggers head off a 100 years before.
Phil
I thought that the commissioners were appointed by the heads of governments, and not the MEP's.
Europe is not entirely undemocratic, but its form of democracy is severely lacking. Directly elected and appointment by directly elected individuals is a different thing. Its one step removed. European democracy needs extending.
"However a European parliament composed of some of the staunchest defenders of real freedom of speech would neuter his enormous political clout. "
You have a lot of faith which I think is unjustified.
Phil
I have to say though I have always disliked schools and other educational establishments taking the law into their own hands. If there is a disciplinary matter which needs dealing with in the school okay, but if a student has comminted a criminal action then the role of the school should be to refer the matter to the police, not to try and deal it with themselves. As an example there was a case in the UK a while back where a student at a well known University was accused of rape by another student. The University in question tried to expell the student in return for hushing the entire thing. This is absolutely wrong, as the university disciplinary procedure has no right to make a judgement of guilt in this case. Fortunately the student refused and he was eventually tried in a court. He was found innocent.
Now in this case there is not crime involved, but if the school felt that their reputation was damaged then they should use the libel laws as recourse.
Phil
I can guarentee you that I am not forgetting this. Whilst I was at school and later at university my dad was continually worried about the state of his job. He was a printer. Murdoch had taken over his company.
"If Europe ran us at least we'd be run by a bunch of faceless bureaucrats who don't like power-crazed corporations at all and would cut Murdoch down to size."
I am not convinced by this. Faceless bureaucrats, and power-crazed individuals are a problem whether they operate through Europe, or through a multinational.
"There may be disadvantages to Europe but don't let the newspaper owners' political agendas blind you to the good points."
It is certainly true that if we are to maintain our democracy at its current (distressingly low) level, then our democratic institutions must grow or they will become irrelevant compared to the multi-nationals. But at the moment the organisation of Europe involves government growing, and not democracy.
This leaves me in the difficult situation with respect to Europe. Is it a good thing? No it is not, because it lacks democracy. But not having Europe might be worse because multi-nationals also lack democracy.
So should I support Europe or not? The answer is simple, I should not support Europe as it is, I should attempt to change it for the better. A hard task, but harder the longer we leave it.
Phil
It depends on how you define a "constitution" of course. Its certainly true that we do not have a document that we praise above all others, and use to demonstrate jingoistically how wonderful our democracy is.
The key point about the US constitution though its that its harder to change than other laws because it requires a bigger majority. I guess in a sense the human rights legislation that we have can be said to fulfil the same function. Whilst the UK law could be removed by parliament, the European law could not be, and that still applies.
Of course whilst the European law is admirable in its intent and aims, it suffers from one big problem, which is that the European structures of government suffer badly from a democratic deficit nearly as bad as the house of lords. Appointed by democratic representatives, is not the same thing as directly elected.
Phil
Most definitions of life normally include some idea of genetics. That is offspring look somewhat like their parent(s). Fire is not like that. If you set fire to some fuel the end result will be pretty much the same whatever source of fire you use to start it.
"Programs may seem real, but they aren't alive until they think: Cognito Ergo Sum "
You are confusing the idea of life and intelligence. Trees dont think either, at least not as far as I know. They are definately alive however.
Phil
What pitiful flamebait. Perhaps you meant, lots of individuals who value his contribution to the free software and the debate that this has produced.
Phil
Phil
At the moment there is a lot of stuff being concluded from this simple number. But really they are totally unwarrented. There are not that many genes therefore perhaps genetic determinism is wrong said Venter recently. On what basis? How many genes would have been enough?
The plain fact of the matter is that this number does not really advance us very much at all. The only reason that people are interested is that is something tangible and simple to come out of the human genome project. Its almost certain that anything actually useful which comes out of the genome data will not be simple, and will not fit into an easy sound bite.
Phil
Its funny the way that everytime someone on Slashdot says something which is not completely neo-liberal they get attacked for being a socialist, or a Marxist.
Now I find this rather amusing as I would describe myself as a socialist, and am quite happy with the attribute, but seriously there socialism is a lot more than just finding big corporations a little scary.
The notion for instance that large corporations should have some degree of accoutability can be seen in many ideologies, including for instance Keynsianism, which was the a commonly held believe even in the US for a while.
The neo-liberal agenda has been pushed for many years, and combined with the plain fact that many large corporations are larger than governments now its currently predominate. But many people have concerns with it. I would be happy if all of these were socialists, because if they were would have a revolution tommorrow, but the plain fact is that many, indeed most, of them are not.
Oh BTW on the small ISP front, I think that the solution is simply. Get together with 20 of your mates, and buy a co-located linux box. Both machines, and co-location are cheap enough to make this possible. Or it the notion of getting together and doing something with friends in a co-operative manner also going to get me described as a Marxist, commie pinko, dedicated to overthrowing the current world order.
Phil
I think that this has only just come in recently though. They did not used to.
Phil
Unless they are hoping they extend the neural network to read intentions to move, in the brain, then I don't see the big advance.
Phil
What do you think that the space race was about then? Actually in a way you are right that it was pretty irrelevant. The race was more important that the race I guess.
"what you're trying to get at when you ask who paid for what."
The majority of the population paid for it. The purpose of the space race, of the politics of hate, of "reds under the bed" thing, is to ensure that the minority of the population remain where they are. Extremely rich and generally in charge.
"I hope you're not suggesting that Lenin and Kruschev are still alive"
Good heavens no. Putin is ex KGB. This is a theme that is repeated throughout the old soviet bloc. And of course in the US you have pretty much the same faces. Bush's new office is staffed almost entirely by millionaire oil people.
"Gimme some facts, not some vague conspiratorial innuendo. "
Perhaps I am not being clear. What I saying is that the power structures that existed in the past, exist now. The space race was heavily subject to that. After the soviet bloc collapsed, ask yourself how long was it before the US found someone else to bomb? As well as Iraq, and Serbia, the US has invaded all sorts of countries since then. And now its "rogue states" that are the worry. The current political process demands enemies, demands people to hate, and demands people to compete and beat.
"Sorry about GW, incidentally."
Don't apologise. Its not your fault, and there is little that you could do to change the situation there.
Phil
Maybe this is true, although I think that the world has got into a big hurry since the last explorations. I'm not sure the time scales in terms of years is terribly meaningful.
"As ambivalent as you seem towards technological growth, you show all the signs of being spoiled by the same"
Spoilt my it? Maybe so. I work in a technological field. I have seen technology overturn all the ground rules in the time that I have been in it. Indeed its overturned so many thats its been re-invented. Its been exciting and enthralling to what it happen, and to a small part of it.
"I think the push on both sides was more to gain a technological advantage than to bankrupt the other, and it was the Soviet's poor choice to try to play the game on US terms that did them in".
Then I think that you misunderstand the politics. Who paid for the arms race, and the space race? Who paid when the soviet bloc finally died? Not the leaders who were in charge all that time. Most of them still are now. Technological advances like the space race are amazing but they benefitted the minority of the population in both the US and the USSR. And around the world millions paid for this folly as they were caught in the cross fire.
"you haven't yet been inflicted with George W. Bush's statements signaling his intent"
Oh yeah we have. One of the more moronic of our leaders has suggested that its a great idea. Star wars II, the ultimate triumph. It is a big advance over the space race, because no one expects it to work in the first place, so how can it fail. Compared to this the space race was a big gamble. After all it was far from guarenteed that the US would get to the moon first.
Phil
Who are you to accuse me of ignorance? I understand the reasons for space race, and what came out of it perfectly well.
And as for the computer I attempt to use mine to provide knowledge that may help to cure disease. What wonderous uses do you put your too?
Phil
I think that its pretty late in the day myself. Space exploration will I think die in this century.
"you'll always find a portion who feel that those feelers are pointless wastes of resources. And they keep feeling that way until the benefits smack them in the face."
Maybe this is true. There are plenty of examples of exploration that were pointless as well of course.
Ultimately though space exploration and the moon shot were not about exploring space. Like the arms race, the space race was about the US making a show of bravado in an attempt to get another economy a third its size to bankrupt itself. It was smart and well choosen. It fitted in with many parts of the US psyche...the fairytale element, the place of individualist, cowboy element, the US love of technology as a solution for everything, and of course the frontier mythology. And along with the arms race it worked.
Nowadays the circumstances have changed. International politics do not dictate the requirement for such shows of technological might. The cold war is over, and the space race gone with it. I won't shed a tear.
"there is a fallacious assumption [...] would otherwise necessarily go to something more immediately practical"
There is no such assumption. I know that the money would not have gone to something more practical. Spending money on the space race was a lot better than spending it on nukes of course. I don't blame the space race for robbing malaria research for instance. The space race was a symptom of international power politics, and not its cause. Its the politics that I blame for the waste.
Phil