But it's still a good idea, rather than proceeding outside of the rule of law.
"Outside of the rule of law"? You said you live in the US. In the US (and everywhere else I've heard of) whatever is not illegal is legal - something's not "outside of the rule of law" just because there aren't any laws about it. I, personally, would much prefer the government keep its sweaty little paws off as much of the world as possible - because in my experience, the only thing we can trust the government to do is screw things up.
not necessarily; for instance, something that could get a LOT of people's dander up, two gay men
approach a woman to be a surrogate mother to twin clones of the gay men. . .
I will never agree that we should have regulations to allow narrow-minded people to cuddle up to their bigotries to keep themselves warm at night. We don't make laws because "some people aren't comfortable with it"; we don't make laws that say "you can't do this, because we don't like you". (On a side note, I've already promised to be a surrogate mother for two gay men; you picked a sore spot with me here)
I know that surrogatemotherhood can be very complicated wrt emotional entanglements and such, but scenarios can arise where the birthing mother's role is trivial, and roughly equivalent to the "brewing vats" we know and love from Sci Fi B movies.
And? I fail to see why this is a problem. If that's the way that all parties are comfortable, so what?
On corporations "owning" clones.
- you tell me to not be ridiculous; tell Amazon.com to not be ridiculous about 1-click shopping
To reiterate, we're not talking about people being grown in vats here. We're talking about women giving birth to babies who just happen to be genetically identical to their mothers (or fathers).
We don't worry about corporations "owning" test-tube babies, or even the embryos left *after* the ones they've implanted take. This is the same sort of thing. It's a new kind of IVF, not Forty Thousand in Gehenna.
Cyclopatra "We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
human lives will be created with little knowledge of what health, or legal (or spiritual) consequences there will be.
This is nothing new, as far as health reasons go, spurious for spiritual ones, and somewhat silly as far as legal reasons go, unless you believe that we should not create or use new technology until the government has carefully studied what uses it thinks we should be allowed to use and worked out every little detail of how we're going to handle it, an idea I find fairly repugnant.
But will governments accept this person as a real person, with subsequent individual rights and freedoms?
Of course. You've been reading too much sci-fi (disclaimer: I'm not disparaging sci-fi here). For one thing, we're not talking about people being grown in vats or anything - we're talking about women giving birth, in the time-honored fashion, to children who happen to be genetically identical to their fathers. This is not really any different from IVF or surrogate motherhood.
Will the clonee be a legal heir to the "parent"? Will the "parent" be the legal guardian?
Again, of course. And one wonders why you surround 'parent' with doubtful little quotes. We're all made out of bits of our parents' genetic material - this is just a slightly different way of doing it.
Does the corporation that cloned this person "own" the results?
Not unless it's already legal in the clone's country to own people. Don't be ridiculous.
What if a person is cloned without the genetic donor's consent?
We already have regulations concerning the use of people's genetic material without their consent. You would no more be able (legally) to clone someone without their consent than you can use their harvested sperm and eggs, or implant into someone else an embryo created therefrom, without their consent.
If Dow chemical clones Brad Pitt, and
raises him to be an actor, can the real Brad Pitt sue them for using his likeness?
See above.
But still, genetically, we'll be pretty certain how this person will turn out, congenital diseases and all, who's going to insure that person?
Depends on what we know about how they're going to turn out. If their parent is healthy, probably anyone. We already have this problem with genetic testing and family medical history, however. Next question.
Who's going to protect that person's genetic privacy?
Who protects your genetic privacy? What is genetic privacy, anyway? Do you have any idea how cloning works? Cloning someone does not involve sequencing someone's DNA and reproducing it. A doctor who clones me knows no more about my genes than a doctor who harvests my eggs to fertilize them in vitro. Or are you worried about those samples of your genetic material that the evil cloning scientist now has? Cut your fingernails recently?
Then there are the health implications, will this clone spontanously melt down at age 10?
Unlikely.
That's a ridiculous example to be sure, but we really won't know what's going to happen until we do it. Animal trials are fun and games, until someone is born with one eye.
We have done it, over and over again. Animal trials are pretty persuasive when so many have been done with no noted problems. At some point, human trials have to begin. Human embryos have been cloned before as well - they just haven't implanted them and carried them to term.
If we never attempt anything because we're not sure what might happen, we might as well just give up here and now on living at all, except that we don't know what'll happen if we die, either.
Cyclopatra "We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
He said it would "develop guidelines with which
the technology cannot be indiscriminately applied for anybody who wants to clone themselves".
sticks in my craw.
Why shouldn't anyone who wants to be able to clone themselves? What is everyone so afraid of with cloning? I'm not talking about grow-me-a-new-body cloning (ie, having a clone made for organ donation, etc), but about allowing cloning for anyone who wants to raise a clone of themselves, regardless of whether it's their only way to have children or not.
What is everyone so afraid of when it comes to cloning? If I want to have a child and can't find a man I consider suitable to be a father, why should I have to trust that sperm donors are going to be any better?
The closest thing to an argument against this that anyone has given me is whether parents can make the distinction between their clones and themselves. However, my mother certainly couldn't have had any more trouble recognising that I didn't exist to make up for her mistakes if I had been her clone. We don't place any restrictions on who can have children (regardless of whether we ought to; that's another argument entirely, and one I have a different opinion on depending on what day of the week it is). Why should we place restrictions on how someone can have them?
-Cyclopatra "We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
If that's true, why do people have medical insurance? Why do I hear stories about people who are going to die because their insurance won't cover organ transplants if they can just go into a hostpital and say "I need an organ transplant and I'm not paying for it."
Because that only works when you are in immediate danger. If someone walked into an emergency room while dying of kidney failure, the doctors would be obligated to do what they could to save them (which doesn't, at that juncture, include a kidney transplant; there isn't time to find a donor, etc).
For that matter, there usually is some sort of state hospital where you can go in and get medical care without paying for it - or, at least, where they give you a payment plan (give us $20 a month for the next 25 years) and you ignore the bills - at least, no state hospital I've heard of is ever going to go to a collection agency to make you pay them.
Cyclopatra "We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
About being exposed to violence: think about the structure of most popular fairy tales. You'll find that there is plenty of violence and cruelty in those. Are we to conclude that fairy tales could transform kids in violent monsters?
Funny you should say that, because a couple of hundred years ago, that's exactly what a lot of (mostly Puritan) people thought. There are gobs of writings about fairy tales and their deleterious effects on children from the 18th and 19th centuries - not to mention the huge amount of children's literature designed to give kids a shove in the right direction (like those nice little morals most kids' shows seem to end with now). There really is "nothing new under the sun"...
-Cyclopatra "We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
What I always find interesting is that so many people make this assumption - the aging problem. In the scheme of things, it's really not a problem, it's sort of planned obsolescence. A species that didn't get old and die would outgrow its food supply pretty fast.
I'm as much in favor of not getting old as anyone, but in general, I really don't think humans are ready or that sort of thing. In reality, it's not the aging problem that we have to worry about, but the not aging problem we'll have when we have a cure for getting old. I mean, come on - we're not exactly devoted as a society to looking ahead and considering the future. I get a little frightened when I think about people having 200 years or more to not think about the consequences of their actions.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's really goddamn amazing that we can even seriously consider being able to do these things, and I don't for a minute suggest that we shouldn't try to achieve them. But I don't think they're the solution to a problem - they're just a whole other kettle of worms.
Well, I can tell you that my mother's CD player has some of the same sort of problems with CD-Rs that are described above, and we've found through trial and error that Maxwell CD-Rs always work, TDK's sometimes work, and those cheap ones that come from CompUSA without a spindle never work.
I could see broadband contributing to the low retention times for binary ngs, but it seems to me that most of Usenet, being text-based, wouldn't be as susceptible to being flooded by people with broadband accounts - after all, even with highspeed access, we can only type as fast as we did before, and that's pretty much the bottleneck for Usenet, even on a dial-up account.
What's more, Usenet-izens are much more strict about etiquette than anyone else on the Internet, as far as I've seen and a lot of Usenet rules of behaviour have to do with taking up as little bandwidth as possible.
Or maybe I've just been hanging out in the last bastions of politeness on Usenet...
If you use your credit cards almost like debit cards (spending only when you already have the money in the bank, and paying the whole balance off at the end of each month), and and are ultra-conservative about using your cards, your credit will be just as good (and your available borrowing rate just as low) as it would be for carrying a $3000 credit balance and making the "required" monthly payments.
Funny, this is what I thought, too - so that was exactly what I did with my credit card - used it as a convenient way not to have to carry cash, and paid off the charges as soon as they showed up.
Then my interest rate got raised (not for any reason, or at least that's what they said) and I started trying to get another card with a lower rate, just in case I had to carry a balance for some reason. So far, I've been turned down 3 times because "Revolving debt balance is too low" - in other words, AFAICT, because I don't carry a balance on my card.
Credit card companies really do want you to carry a balance. They don't make any money off you if you pay it all off before the interest kicks in.
-Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
Re:What IT Is And Isn't
on
What is 'IT'?
·
· Score: 4
IT probably stands for Individual Transport.
Bah. None of you are thinking big enough. I say IT stands for Instantaneous Transport That's obviously why he needed to build 2 of them - one to transmit, and one to receive.
OK, so I know I'm dreaming, but I want personal teleportation...
A warning, however: reading these in the wrong frame of mind becomes extremely creepy:
"...A machine or vehicle deriving its power from natural renewable sources can theoretically remain in operation indefinitely, or until some vital part comes to the end of its service life."
And if you're really clever, the darn things'll learn to fix each other, thus extending their useful period, and to cultivate their own 'renewable sources of power'...
But if we can create as much power as we want, that isn't exactly going to help global warming (well it is, but that's the point...).
Global warming has hardly been proven to exist. I doubt very much it's existence. I am not an 80 year old Senator from the 80's. I am VERY skeptical though that humans are affecting the temperature of the Earth. I am a bit perplexed how (With little in the way of meaningful studies) Global Warming is no longer talked of as a possibility, but rather an inevitability.
Even if we get rid of the gases that contribute to the glass house effect, simply releasing any amount of heat to the environment is going to hurt it (and already does).
Umm. No. No, it's not.
It's beside the point anyway, because the heat of the reactor is contained by a magnetic field. You see, it has to be that way - people don't react well to temperatures found on the surface of the Sun.
So such a power source might not be such a desirable thing after all
Yeah. Who really wants fushion power anyway? The promise of limitless, cheap and clean power. What a silly thing to wish for.
Yep, this machine can produce enough energy to "light America up like a birthday cake" and still, California is in a huge power crisis.
I believe that figure is actually what it sucks down (which may, in your mind, be worse). On the other hand, what the machine produces, according to the article, is 80x what the entire planet produces now (for a very short period, anyhow). The scary part is, they need three times that and then some before the "Machine" is supposed to work.
I don't suppose there's anyone around who knows much about fusion, huh? How much of this energy would be sucked back into maintaining a steady...um...fusing...and how much would actually be usable?
If you want a counter-anecdote, I also have an English degree, and I can program. But I think it's skill in picking up foreign languages that the original poster was talking about. I think being able to pick up programming *languages* easily is related to quickly learning foreign languages...at least the basics. I guarantee you that I can ace the first (and sometimes the second) year of any university level foreign language course. Why? Because, just like learning a new programming language, the basics of any foreign language involve memorizing rules...syntax, grammar, vocabulary, etc. Maybe the aptitudes are related in and of themselves, or maybe the ability to pick up new languages has to do with having new programming languages thrown at me every six weeks or so in my CS classes, but it's no mystery why someone who's good at one would be good at the other.
You have several years of school before you are i the real world. You have some important things to learn.
I agree totally, but for different reasons. You say you're a sophomore, and you've done a lot of web programming. I'd say the odds are you don't have much of an idea yet which you're better at or want to work in, industry or research, unless you've had more experience than you claim. I say this because I thought in terms of an MS or a PhD in CS after my sophomore year, too. It all seemed terribly easy and fascinating.
Now that I've finished my bachelor's and worked as a programmer for a while, though, I'm still thinking about the MS but the PhD is a distant dream - I know I'm not cut out for research or teaching like I once thought I was.
I'd say, go for the internship, and any project-based/directed studies courses you can get, and try them both out. See if your school allows more than one internship (the coop program at my school required, IIRC, 3 or 4). See how you feel about programming/thinking about programming all day, every day (I and many others happen to love it, but YMMV), and see how you feel about research. That's the only way you're going to find out which will make you happy.
But above all, don't feel like you have to decide right now and for the rest of your life. That's the way to give yourself ulcers and make yourself miserable.
I mean to say, do you know a programming language or two, have you ever done any coding on your own, or otherwise been exposed to some facet of CS? If not, you may want to take a few community college courses first, and see if you even *like* the stuff, because even the most theoretical CS program is going to require coding.
That said, The University of Hawaii's MSCS is open to non-CS bacchalaureates with a working knowledge of C or Pascal, provided you make up your undergraduate deficiencies (to the tune of about 18-24 credits, IIRC). But I'd definitely find out if I had a inclination towards CS before I jumped into an MS program, if I were you (if, of course, you haven't).
My company has all the programmers set up in one big room like this. We call it the "code farm". Noise is definitely a problem - particularly when the senior programmers across the room get into one of their arguments, or when the summer interns are getting silly. Headphones are a must.
Another problem I have with this is that, well, when I'm coding I get kind of weird. I sit around with my tongue sticking out of my mouth, I make odd noises when something works or doesn't, I hold long, one-sided conversations with my code ("Why are you doing this to me? What have I ever done to you that you would behave like this? Oh, don't you dare tell me I wrote you that way, that's no excuse...") or start swearing at it - and I have a foul mouth when something just won't work. If my headphones are on, I bop around to the music and lip sync. All in all, I'm faced in the "farm" with the choice of looking like an idiot or making sure I never fall into "the zone" - which of course means I'm not doing my best work.
OTOH, it is really useful when you're working with other people who you need to be in close contact with, or if you're mentoring/being mentored by another programmer, and the guilt factor probably does lead to less goofing off. I think it's really dependent upon what you're doing and what kind of environment you work well in (not to mention whether you look like a kook while you work).
You can turn off the features that send your browsing habits to Google.
They have a separate toolbar privacy policy
You aren't asked for a single piece of information during the install. Not your email address, not your name, nada.
Unless someone cares to believe that they're using your IP against a database given them by little green men to pull down your SSN and measurements, I don't see what the privacy flap is about.
I was poking around looking for something with an intended audience somewhere between the BBC article and the paper. No real luck, but here's the full story from the Anglo-Australian Observatory website; it's got some figures and vital statistics on the planets, as well.
Slashdot Mirror
"Outside of the rule of law"? You said you live in the US. In the US (and everywhere else I've heard of) whatever is not illegal is legal - something's not "outside of the rule of law" just because there aren't any laws about it. I, personally, would much prefer the government keep its sweaty little paws off as much of the world as possible - because in my experience, the only thing we can trust the government to do is screw things up.
not necessarily; for instance, something that could get a LOT of people's dander up, two gay men approach a woman to be a surrogate mother to twin clones of the gay men. . .
I will never agree that we should have regulations to allow narrow-minded people to cuddle up to their bigotries to keep themselves warm at night. We don't make laws because "some people aren't comfortable with it"; we don't make laws that say "you can't do this, because we don't like you". (On a side note, I've already promised to be a surrogate mother for two gay men; you picked a sore spot with me here)
I know that surrogatemotherhood can be very complicated wrt emotional entanglements and such, but scenarios can arise where the birthing mother's role is trivial, and roughly equivalent to the "brewing vats" we know and love from Sci Fi B movies.
And? I fail to see why this is a problem. If that's the way that all parties are comfortable, so what?
On corporations "owning" clones.
- you tell me to not be ridiculous; tell Amazon.com to not be ridiculous about 1-click shopping
To reiterate, we're not talking about people being grown in vats here. We're talking about women giving birth to babies who just happen to be genetically identical to their mothers (or fathers).
We don't worry about corporations "owning" test-tube babies, or even the embryos left *after* the ones they've implanted take. This is the same sort of thing. It's a new kind of IVF, not Forty Thousand in Gehenna.
Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
-Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
This is nothing new, as far as health reasons go, spurious for spiritual ones, and somewhat silly as far as legal reasons go, unless you believe that we should not create or use new technology until the government has carefully studied what uses it thinks we should be allowed to use and worked out every little detail of how we're going to handle it, an idea I find fairly repugnant.
But will governments accept this person as a real person, with subsequent individual rights and freedoms?
Of course. You've been reading too much sci-fi (disclaimer: I'm not disparaging sci-fi here). For one thing, we're not talking about people being grown in vats or anything - we're talking about women giving birth, in the time-honored fashion, to children who happen to be genetically identical to their fathers. This is not really any different from IVF or surrogate motherhood.
Will the clonee be a legal heir to the "parent"? Will the "parent" be the legal guardian?
Again, of course. And one wonders why you surround 'parent' with doubtful little quotes. We're all made out of bits of our parents' genetic material - this is just a slightly different way of doing it.
Does the corporation that cloned this person "own" the results?
Not unless it's already legal in the clone's country to own people. Don't be ridiculous.
What if a person is cloned without the genetic donor's consent?
We already have regulations concerning the use of people's genetic material without their consent. You would no more be able (legally) to clone someone without their consent than you can use their harvested sperm and eggs, or implant into someone else an embryo created therefrom, without their consent.
If Dow chemical clones Brad Pitt, and raises him to be an actor, can the real Brad Pitt sue them for using his likeness?
See above.
But still, genetically, we'll be pretty certain how this person will turn out, congenital diseases and all, who's going to insure that person?
Depends on what we know about how they're going to turn out. If their parent is healthy, probably anyone. We already have this problem with genetic testing and family medical history, however. Next question.
Who's going to protect that person's genetic privacy?
Who protects your genetic privacy? What is genetic privacy, anyway? Do you have any idea how cloning works? Cloning someone does not involve sequencing someone's DNA and reproducing it. A doctor who clones me knows no more about my genes than a doctor who harvests my eggs to fertilize them in vitro. Or are you worried about those samples of your genetic material that the evil cloning scientist now has? Cut your fingernails recently?
Then there are the health implications, will this clone spontanously melt down at age 10?
Unlikely.
That's a ridiculous example to be sure, but we really won't know what's going to happen until we do it. Animal trials are fun and games, until someone is born with one eye.
We have done it, over and over again. Animal trials are pretty persuasive when so many have been done with no noted problems. At some point, human trials have to begin. Human embryos have been cloned before as well - they just haven't implanted them and carried them to term.
If we never attempt anything because we're not sure what might happen, we might as well just give up here and now on living at all, except that we don't know what'll happen if we die, either.
Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
He said it would "develop guidelines with which the technology cannot be indiscriminately applied for anybody who wants to clone themselves".
sticks in my craw.
Why shouldn't anyone who wants to be able to clone themselves? What is everyone so afraid of with cloning? I'm not talking about grow-me-a-new-body cloning (ie, having a clone made for organ donation, etc), but about allowing cloning for anyone who wants to raise a clone of themselves, regardless of whether it's their only way to have children or not.
What is everyone so afraid of when it comes to cloning? If I want to have a child and can't find a man I consider suitable to be a father, why should I have to trust that sperm donors are going to be any better?
The closest thing to an argument against this that anyone has given me is whether parents can make the distinction between their clones and themselves. However, my mother certainly couldn't have had any more trouble recognising that I didn't exist to make up for her mistakes if I had been her clone. We don't place any restrictions on who can have children (regardless of whether we ought to; that's another argument entirely, and one I have a different opinion on depending on what day of the week it is). Why should we place restrictions on how someone can have them?
-Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
Because that only works when you are in immediate danger. If someone walked into an emergency room while dying of kidney failure, the doctors would be obligated to do what they could to save them (which doesn't, at that juncture, include a kidney transplant; there isn't time to find a donor, etc).
For that matter, there usually is some sort of state hospital where you can go in and get medical care without paying for it - or, at least, where they give you a payment plan (give us $20 a month for the next 25 years) and you ignore the bills - at least, no state hospital I've heard of is ever going to go to a collection agency to make you pay them.
Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
Funny you should say that, because a couple of hundred years ago, that's exactly what a lot of (mostly Puritan) people thought. There are gobs of writings about fairy tales and their deleterious effects on children from the 18th and 19th centuries - not to mention the huge amount of children's literature designed to give kids a shove in the right direction (like those nice little morals most kids' shows seem to end with now). There really is "nothing new under the sun"...
-Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
What I always find interesting is that so many people make this assumption - the aging problem. In the scheme of things, it's really not a problem, it's sort of planned obsolescence. A species that didn't get old and die would outgrow its food supply pretty fast.
I'm as much in favor of not getting old as anyone, but in general, I really don't think humans are ready or that sort of thing. In reality, it's not the aging problem that we have to worry about, but the not aging problem we'll have when we have a cure for getting old. I mean, come on - we're not exactly devoted as a society to looking ahead and considering the future. I get a little frightened when I think about people having 200 years or more to not think about the consequences of their actions.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's really goddamn amazing that we can even seriously consider being able to do these things, and I don't for a minute suggest that we shouldn't try to achieve them. But I don't think they're the solution to a problem - they're just a whole other kettle of worms.
-Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
HTH
-Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
What's more, Usenet-izens are much more strict about etiquette than anyone else on the Internet, as far as I've seen and a lot of Usenet rules of behaviour have to do with taking up as little bandwidth as possible.
Or maybe I've just been hanging out in the last bastions of politeness on Usenet...
Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
Funny, this is what I thought, too - so that was exactly what I did with my credit card - used it as a convenient way not to have to carry cash, and paid off the charges as soon as they showed up.
Then my interest rate got raised (not for any reason, or at least that's what they said) and I started trying to get another card with a lower rate, just in case I had to carry a balance for some reason. So far, I've been turned down 3 times because "Revolving debt balance is too low" - in other words, AFAICT, because I don't carry a balance on my card.
Credit card companies really do want you to carry a balance. They don't make any money off you if you pay it all off before the interest kicks in.
-Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
Bah. None of you are thinking big enough. I say IT stands for Instantaneous Transport That's obviously why he needed to build 2 of them - one to transmit, and one to receive.
OK, so I know I'm dreaming, but I want personal teleportation...
-Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
-Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
Publications
A warning, however: reading these in the wrong frame of mind becomes extremely creepy:
"...A machine or vehicle deriving its power from natural renewable sources can theoretically remain in operation indefinitely, or until some vital part comes to the end of its service life."
And if you're really clever, the darn things'll learn to fix each other, thus extending their useful period, and to cultivate their own 'renewable sources of power'...
-Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
"Those idiots should have made it run on caffeine and sugar..."
"Beer has lots of sugar... I think that the robot should be converted to beer power!"
-Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
Where to begin.
...).
But if we can create as much power as we want, that isn't exactly going to help global warming (well it is, but that's the point
Global warming has hardly been proven to exist. I doubt very much it's existence. I am not an 80 year old Senator from the 80's. I am VERY skeptical though that humans are affecting the temperature of the Earth. I am a bit perplexed how (With little in the way of meaningful studies) Global Warming is no longer talked of as a possibility, but rather an inevitability.
Even if we get rid of the gases that contribute to the glass house effect, simply releasing any amount of heat to the environment is going to hurt it (and already does).
Umm. No. No, it's not. It's beside the point anyway, because the heat of the reactor is contained by a magnetic field. You see, it has to be that way - people don't react well to temperatures found on the surface of the Sun.
So such a power source might not be such a desirable thing after all
Yeah. Who really wants fushion power anyway? The promise of limitless, cheap and clean power. What a silly thing to wish for.
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
I believe that figure is actually what it sucks down (which may, in your mind, be worse). On the other hand, what the machine produces, according to the article, is 80x what the entire planet produces now (for a very short period, anyhow). The scary part is, they need three times that and then some before the "Machine" is supposed to work.
I don't suppose there's anyone around who knows much about fusion, huh? How much of this energy would be sucked back into maintaining a steady...um...fusing...and how much would actually be usable?
Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
Cyclopatra
I agree totally, but for different reasons. You say you're a sophomore, and you've done a lot of web programming. I'd say the odds are you don't have much of an idea yet which you're better at or want to work in, industry or research, unless you've had more experience than you claim. I say this because I thought in terms of an MS or a PhD in CS after my sophomore year, too. It all seemed terribly easy and fascinating.
Now that I've finished my bachelor's and worked as a programmer for a while, though, I'm still thinking about the MS but the PhD is a distant dream - I know I'm not cut out for research or teaching like I once thought I was.
I'd say, go for the internship, and any project-based/directed studies courses you can get, and try them both out. See if your school allows more than one internship (the coop program at my school required, IIRC, 3 or 4). See how you feel about programming/thinking about programming all day, every day (I and many others happen to love it, but YMMV), and see how you feel about research. That's the only way you're going to find out which will make you happy.
But above all, don't feel like you have to decide right now and for the rest of your life. That's the way to give yourself ulcers and make yourself miserable.
Cyclopatra
That said, The University of Hawaii's MSCS is open to non-CS bacchalaureates with a working knowledge of C or Pascal, provided you make up your undergraduate deficiencies (to the tune of about 18-24 credits, IIRC). But I'd definitely find out if I had a inclination towards CS before I jumped into an MS program, if I were you (if, of course, you haven't).
Another problem I have with this is that, well, when I'm coding I get kind of weird. I sit around with my tongue sticking out of my mouth, I make odd noises when something works or doesn't, I hold long, one-sided conversations with my code ("Why are you doing this to me? What have I ever done to you that you would behave like this? Oh, don't you dare tell me I wrote you that way, that's no excuse...") or start swearing at it - and I have a foul mouth when something just won't work. If my headphones are on, I bop around to the music and lip sync. All in all, I'm faced in the "farm" with the choice of looking like an idiot or making sure I never fall into "the zone" - which of course means I'm not doing my best work.
OTOH, it is really useful when you're working with other people who you need to be in close contact with, or if you're mentoring/being mentored by another programmer, and the guilt factor probably does lead to less goofing off. I think it's really dependent upon what you're doing and what kind of environment you work well in (not to mention whether you look like a kook while you work).
-Cyclopatra
Unless someone cares to believe that they're using your IP against a database given them by little green men to pull down your SSN and measurements, I don't see what the privacy flap is about.
-Cyclopatra
$ insmod gnome using module /lib/modules-2.4.0/gnome.o
$ insmod evolution
using module /lib/modules-2.4.0/evolution.o
-Cyclopatra