I extracted the Junk DNA and respliced it so that it would stand without the DNA that is neccessary to humans, inserted it in a cell and watched it grow. 5 hours later to my horror it took a flat retangular shape, black lines appeared on a white surface. They connected to form letters in clear English which read...
"Mr _________ , You have been selected as a final entry for the Publisher's Clearinghouse largest drawing, enclosed is a Check worth $30,000,000 if you have the winning number!!! Please open and send your entry form within the next 24 hours, and get a GUARANTEED prize."
I tried the Junk DNA of other chromosomes and got ads for term life insurance, timeshares, and then the Junk DNA materialized in front of me into a pushy Amway distributer!!!! The horror!!! Cellular SPAM!!! AGHHHHHHHH
I meant to say where the natives are in POVERTY not in HARMONY... I mean Sally Struthers infomercial style belly sticking out and child dying of dysentary kind of poverty as opposed to destroying happy indigenous cultures with my futuristic visions...sorry about the mistake fellas...
If the first "colony" were made here on earth in an inhospitable place where the natives are in harmony. A prototype underground city where the world's poorest can be a part of a living "experimant" to grow their own hydroponic food underground and enjoy a standard of living and comfort they never knew before.
1. This would be a great preparation for future colonization
2. It is farming that would have a low environmental impact, even if the crops are genetically engineered to grow well hydroponics they would be not grown out where they can mingle with indigenous plant life. Laws could be then passed that all surface agriculture be natural and organic and both environmentalists and engineers would have a compromise they can live with.
3.Water use and land use would be much more efficient.
4. Rather than giving these people food all of the time and/or relocating them we would give them the ability to contribute to mankind and feed themselves.
5. on earth the scale of underground hydroponic farming is limited only by energy resorces and abilty to tunnel, I would guess it would be feasable to have triple the worlds population living this way (recyling water and nutrients) and yet at the same time allow the surface of the earth to return to it's natural state.
6.By the time we'd be ready to colonise mars many of the sociological bugs, and many technical ones will have been worked out. The technologies of recycling, manufacturing, and such in a contained setting will have been worked out.
7. Corperations can still make money here, the "intellectual property" rights on their crops, expanding the labor-force to include those in extreme poverty who in turn are enabled as consumers, the rents on their underground flats, and the revenues from perhaps the cold fusion reactors they own powering the cities or some other power source. The goal should not be merely self sustaining colonies in space, but profit sustaining colonies that produce more goods and services than they need to sustain themselves.
If this is done I will support Mars colonization, otherwise if we are just going to pay for toys and a few lucky ass Major-Toms to fly there and back or live up there sending emails to schoolkids I'd say scrap the project and put the money just into feeding people.
Real reason for future-bashing as an artsy intellectual.
1. We generally grow up alienated from society and peers, they reject us when we have our heads stuffed in books planning our own private idea of utopia at odds with the life everyone else might want..."for their own good".
2. In college this attitude is rewarded and encouraged.
3. In the real world the Humanities degree, liberal arts, or philosphy not paired with any technology prowess means underpaid shit jobs in starbucks or art supply retail stores. The humilated indignance of being left behind having the brilliant mind and being left behind as a cheif with no Indians, to serve frappachinos to people that have read only a fraction of what you read but walk about like kings and drive nice sport utilities because they know computers...well, it's a major blow to the ego at every level.
4. It is only then that out of sheer vanity one considers oneself the champion of the working man left behind in todays world. Those left behind by technology. Forgotten labor and farmers that could care less for the stilted advocacy and would if they could rather give you a wedgie and fart cheese whiz into your face than listen to you; but you are the only one coming to help them and ineffectual help is still something not turned away easily. So as the intellectual you push the anti free-trade, technology, and progress issues that left these blue collar people behind and pat yourself on the back that as the people's poet you are a hero in your "other life" away from foaming milk or scooping fries.
5. You enter graduate school on a shoestring, write about how it's all still awful making it your doctoral thesis. Photograph some homeless people peeing if you are an art major in a stark industrail setting and work your way from graduate assistant to professorship.
6. As professor you encourage students just as alienated, arrogant, and theatrical as you are to do the same...thus the cycle continues ad-infinitum.
Nobody listens to such intellectual until the point to when there is a total breakdown of trust between average people and society that they can exploit to become a new establishment (that is seldom much better than the old one). It is easy to criticise another society, it is hard to engineer a new one that doesn't have just as many gaping holes and cracks to fall through.
I have abandoned intelligencia, I think the future will be good and bad, it will always be good and bad. People still have to help each other and try to minimize the number of people hurt by transitions in society but progress cannot and should not be curtailed in that endeavor because to do so is to impose on the personal and economic freedom of average people. I now paint like Norman Rockwell, listen to soulful house music, and refuse to read anything depressing.
Peace, Johnny
PS-flames by intellectuals who have not come around to realizing this I have an answer for now so I won't have to post later...."I feel your pain" 'nuff said.
I was supposed to be just an experiment, the first human with a neural link into the WWW. It was great at first, but I picked up a modified Neural Back Oriface program and my life was over. I barely get sleep because the little bastard somewhere keeps posting my sexual memories (what few I have) on amateur porn sights. He plays bad Jimmy Buffet songs in my head all night while trying to convert the data into an MP-3 format, what kind of a sicko does that?! Every once in a while he just buts in when I am doing something normal...and...oh, no he'e going to do it now....
MUHAHAHAHAH, YEAH BABY! I got this pup to withdraw all his mac accounts and max his own credit card and he don't even know it yet. Now I'm gonna really torture this chump and make some KC and the Sunshine Band MP.3's with his memory of bad 70's songs....Yummy Yummy Yummy, Got dat Luv in my tummy...P3AC3
Magvs
"Do not fight bravely and love deceptively, love bravely and fight deceptively."
Being an artist myself often at odds with the artistic intelligencia that have problems with realism and push their own aesthetics I am not suggestng that. I personally beleive that personal choices in consumer goods and services will have that homogenizing effect without any draconian mandates by idealists. When I get onto the MP3.com I see that a small genre of music I love (soulful garage house-and drum and Bass) is one of many with an audience as far flung as france, japan, and Russia. I feel these subcultures that when a "fad" never get a chance to fully develop into a real aestetic because they haven't had the time to before another fad replaces it. This happens in art too. If there was more youthful longevity people would get beyond the fads and develop these musical subcultures with increasing levels of refinement, and I would suppose the results would be as impressive as the generations that went into refining classical music. What would have happened with romance music if five years after Beetoven's fifth society decided that style was passe.
So...I hope you don't think me a fascist... I was hoping for circumstances that would cause people to freely choose a less disposible "plastic" culture. What they choose and develop might not even be what I might personally choose to embrace as a new aestetic. But I do not want to see a culture imposed on anyone...however, I am sure you might agree that the fastest growing culture in the world today is a global culture, albeit now it is very plastic and commercialized. It's sources seem to spring equally from everywhere... as I watch Japanese anime, eat Jamaican beef patties, wash it down with a swig of Malta india or Turkijsh coffee, and get onto the "world -wide" web for entertainment and to exchange ideas.
Four times our present lifespans, probably about eight times the average lifespan in the ancient world whether Judea, greece, or china where life expectancy of the common man hovered around fourty. In these fabeled "golden ages" men were mentioned to live easily to 400 with key figures being mentioned living much longer than that (such as Methusala). To be honest I do not really think such a golden age really ever existed...yet. In early reckonings in egypt and mesopotania there was much confusion between decimal groupings, for instance the way to describe a hundred or a thousand was with the same word. A person hearing a story a few generations later would not realize this descrepancy and think it to mean the real figure multiplied by a factor of ten. This occured with the Atlantis myth, that the greeks preserved from Egyptian historians, what allegendly happened to the destrution of an island city in the Agean a few thousand years ago in translation corresponded with ruins we actually found...almost precisely one tenth of the time the cataclism was supposed to have occured.
If a similar adjustment were made between tens and hundreds regarding these ancient "golden ages" we'd see average ages in the forties and fifties, with a few amazing people getting into the nineties...pretty close actually to how long people lived in the ancient world anyway. Still, even if mankind never attained such longevity in the past doesn't mean we cannot in the future:)
What you are referring to is nothing more than "risk managment" developing as a skill. In some elderly it does mean over-caution and worry but in more than a few shining examples it means a maturity in innovation. I look back at some artists from Titian and El Greco to Picasso; it wasn't until they started to get older that they took more and more artistic risks because they developed a confidence. Sure there have been young artists that have innovated, but let's not be age-ist here and think that an ol' fart or too can't wow the youngones...if we give them health and youth I am sure we will all benefit.
What I do see changing somewhat is the nature of fads. The population would eventually shift to being a majority of consumers that already saw enough fads in disposible culture. Currently we have new "fashions" that come and go...and recycle...but I suppose if in the future we have youthful 200 year olds running around they'd probably have chosen an aesthetic by then for architecture and clothing that they can bring continual refinement too. I was just in the museum yesterday and would love to see this refinement take place, even if a little conservative, because it would bring about a real sense of culture that we really haven't known since the end of the end of the renaissances in Europe, Japan, and China. However, this new culture would probably be world-encompassing and if I might be so bold I would venture to guess it would bring mankind closer together in the long run.
One good thing about experiance as time goes on is that people no matter how conservative start to lose their desire for war and seek other means of conflict resolution with more vigor. I think that is what they used to call "wisdom" and I would love to live in a world some day (or at least have my children live in a world) where wisdom is a common thing.
I think you need to smile more and look back in history. I am not a scientist, I am an artist with an enthusiasm for science and it has been people like me that can see a future coming over the horizon that vote in the politicians that give you the research grants.
Optimism is ignorance perhaps only on the issue of timing. I have a book of old sci fi illustrations from the turn of the century filled with fantastic pictures of cities with soaring skyscrapers, a stockbroker with lines and some kind of screen to observe events from all around the world by which to base his trading decions on, the majority of people owning automobiles of some kind (usually streamlined), and the image of jet airliners in a time when wings of early aircraft were made from canvass. I don't feel flamed by your reaction to my post at all, and I don't want you to take it the wrong way, but it wouldn't hurt to be more of a romantic. The work will still get done either way. It was thought we'd have space colonys and robots with AI by now by writers like Asimov and presidents like Kennedy and we don't... but though such challenges have been harder to meet than expected progress is a continual thing. Don't lose your sense of wonder if there is a setback:)
Yes I do beleive, I should qualify this, that it is relatively easier to alter the gene sequence in a zygote than it would be to alter the gene sequence in a grown human being by using retroviruses. Human beings aren't fruit flies, but doing gene splicing on fertilized fruit fly eggs from the beginning has been done plenty of times, still at the single cell stage I would assume that the process of splicing and altering fruit fly or human DNA would be similar. I don't think in that sense our technology is too far away from this, and that is why I made my "ignorant" comment that I do feel that if the genome were cracked, it would be (relatively) easy (in contrast with altering adults) for the next generation of kids to benefit.
There is always a long way to go kind sir, but if you take your eye off the goal....you get lost. Now cheer up and have a wonderful day!
you must admit though that if governments are concerned now about the effect longevity is having it's a better problem than those govenrments that deal with the problem of a majority of their citezenry not making it to the age of fourty. Oddly, those are the nations with the highest birthrates.
I tend to agree that dramatic increases in lifespan could be well after the end of my lifetime but I am really unsure of this. If the human genome is truly cracked, it could probably be engineered easily at least into the next generation with not too much trouble. However it would be more problematic to lets say devise a retrovirus to help along the genes of an adult male like myself to share in the fortunate situation Dorian Gray had going for him. I tend to think the major obstacles will not be technical, since the rate of technological development is accelerating exponentially, but political. Still, consumerism does tend to win out over anything else, parents who can pay for it want happy intelligent beautiful children with long lives or else why would they even resort to silly things like giving birth to babies in bathtubs. Also, like in the movie "Dead Again" many would give away a fortune to perpetuate youth and life, though as it illustrates some people will not.
As for accidents, well the most immediate benefits from this research will probably not be in increasing life span genetically but the growth of new tissues, organs, perhaps even limbs with someone's genetic code sequenced in the new body part. This could mean a completely new way of dealing with severe physical trauma, though I suppose that if the brain is damaged there might be in the least a loss of "data".
I agree though that the transition that society will face over this will be traumatic on a global scale. It may further divide wealthy societies from poorer and traditional societies, religious people against the non-religious. I recall the trauma in the eighties felt by those people who were unemployed when we went through the transition of a soley industrial economy to one based on information goods and services as small farming was replaced by intensive conglomerate agriculture. To me back then it seemed evil, but now it is the basis of our prosperity that all of these changes occured. I would not give up the internet based culture I benefit from to go back to the life I knew as an average child in the mid seventies.
Change is always difficult, it's important to have something worth changing for I guess.
I am not religious, but I recall in the Upanishads, Torah, Chinese (Lao Tzu makes mention of it) and Greek myth a time of a golden age when mankind had a physical perfection, and lived lives roughly 4 times the current maximium life spans with a degree of youth and vigor. This genetic research we have now has already revealed the secret of telemeres which control aging by cell division and we have already sustained human cells and quadrupled the natural life span of a roundworm. Which genetically speaking is not as far away from human beings as one might think.
I could easily conclude that we have no idea how this may change the nature of mankind. The medicines and even perhaps the introduction of genetic fashions and beauty, or intellect by entepreneurs for the coming generation of childen will alter our own perceptions of our mortality. Our culture is very much based on that knowledge of our mortality, how we love, perceive ourselves, our religions, and even our artistic acheivments. It's scary, but I see some very positive changes down the road that might make the negatives easier to deal with.
For one if this genetic knowledge creates longer youthful lives it will mean a political shift that will dramatic. The average man is still left with the "me generation" philosophy of short term thinking thanks to the brinkmanship of the cold war's potental of nuclear annhilation. All we are now, even our sexual revolution stemmed from the concept that we could all die tomorrow. Our politicians think in short term, though it is begining to change, politicians that urge policies that think in the long term are commiting politcal suicide. If we manage to increase lifespans of the citizenry to some 300 years that short-term nihilism behind policies will have to change. If people beleive they have a long future, they have to plan for it, it won't be their children's problem anymore it will be theirs.
I can envision everything from environmental policy to the forgoing of cheap architecture for ornate and enduring stuctures made to be beautiful. Consumerism may change. Even love and family relationships may change, for a mother that is 200 would proably look about 25 and seem to be by appearance a peer not only to her daughter but to her grandaughter as well. A dirty year old man like me, should I make it to 250, might date an innocent young 80 year year old tht looks like she could be an 18 year old japanese anime character.
So open those floodgates of information, bravo!!! Like all mankind before me I will believe in the religion that will promise me immortality, and if science is the religion that can deliver us into that golden age then I will most certainly be a convert.
I don't think the average sales/marketing person cares to violate my rights or to uphold it. Instead there is a mutual interest, they want to send ads that are more or less relevent to people who'd be interested in their good or service, and my interest is only to receive ads that would be of interest to me. In fact, I appreciate the fact that MP3.com sends me an email only once a month or so with links to the latest releases of music in the genre's I am interested in...and not "spam" for Wayne Newton's compilation album.
But essentually any information they have about me is just a blip of my music browsing habits. It isn't contianing information that supposed evil people in a weird corperate/government conspiracy of satanic alluminati freemasons bent on world domination would find relevent, even if paranoid scitzophrenics have been right all along about the existance of such.
I think it would be nice some day not to get called at dinner time for alluminum siding when I don't own a home, or calls for a charitable donation when I am an utterly selfish scrooge with my money. The only way that is going to be possible is if they already have information about me in some subroutine that flags me and says "don't bother calling/emailing/snailmailing him for this product, it's a waste of resources". I have yet to get a phonecall from a telemarketer that gave me information about what I like to spend my disposable income on; like a new sushi resteraunt!!! When that day comes I think everybody will be happy, and privacy wont seem as important as not being nagged for what you don't care to buy.
Hypothetically an agency of a govenrnment that may or may not be ours intended to regulate alleged abuses of it's electorial process. It might appear that this postulated entity (I am not naming names here) and the administration behind it (hypothetically again- could be anywhere) are again doing what they do best.
They (whoever they are) are not necessarilly dealing with really powerful entities that threaten to undermine the democratic process; for argument's sake lets say a communist nation doling out pac money, and "soft" money contributions from the already rich and powerful that contribute to both parties and claim they have no control over legislation.
Instead they bring the full force of law on mostly harmless and ineffectual backwoods hate-mongers no one would listen to anyway just so they look like they are doing a job. Throw in a few cyber-bores ranting as self stylized spin-doctors that are only preach to their own choir for good measure, and some rickety ol ministers urging the vote on a rather beaten to death Pro-life issue and now they are really looking like they have a "mission" to justify their budget.
It is obvious that Larry Flint has accomplished more investigation than the organization (with less money) that could be called the FEC (but I am not saying it is). If this is the best violations of election proceedure they can come up with it is clear that their charges will never hold in court, and I wouldn't want to be them around budget time if another (hypothetical) party takes office.
Any resembleance the above hypothetical agency, admistration, or government has to any real agency, administration, or government is purely coincidental and the author disavows any relationship of such with the full knowledge that Big Brother is watching.
To some extent 3-d molecular objects have been made with carbon atoms in the particular case of the buckminsterfullerine or "bucky ball" which is becoming more widely produced not so much as a machine per se...but possible as a passive object such as a lubricant since it seems fairly durable. Some have suggested that these bucky balls can also be used as a molecular "scaffolding" for the assembly of nanomachine parts...though this claim to me sounds like it is going to need a little more work before I'd hold my breath.
Pilsner is a really really light brew, lager is a bit heavier and darker, Ale is darker yet and thicker taste, stout is really really dark.
My beer knowledge is limited, there are so many varieties now with all of the microbrews I couldn't possibly know all of the obscure ones.
Pilsners because of their clean tastes are good with spicy foods, like curries, chinese food, sushi...a darker beer is good for heartier food...like a guiness stout is good with a stew or a french onion soup.
Doest thou write english after the manner of antiquity. Why doest thou and the multitude not write after this fashion? Ist Thou using bad grammar because the way of antiquity hath been surpassed by modern English?
Really, the way the English language is used today by academia is nothing like the language that was espoused by academia at the turn of the century.
Like other forms of evolution, the acceptance of the word "her" will either survive or die off. There is nothing to be upset about, or really to champion either. It may indeed be quaint and outmoded with time, like "daddy-o", "Square", and "Like you know like fer sure". How many women now demand to be called "Mizzzz" instead of Misses or Miss, what percentage of girls do you know really insist on spelling women as "womyn".
Man the ramparts if you want to entertain self important delusions your culture will be subverted by a feminist, liberal, intellectual conspiracy if it gives you a sense of postmoderist identity. But in the end both you and the feminists are probably equally as ineffectual and great entertainment for each other as you take positions of hero and villian.
We know that a website that is hit more frequently is of greater interest to advertizers. I would encourage a slashdot-style website for scientific journals that encourages non-scientists to participate in the process. Though it may seem a distraction, it becomes documented evidence to those who issue research grants and politicians that approve funding that this is of interest to a part of the voting public. Links should be provided to politicains that will be voting on budgets (lets say of NASA) with perhaps even a form letter that can be sent via-email to make it convenient for people to vote their support.
Scientists will also become more seasoned in their ability to communicate their ideas and concepts to lay-people, and members of the buisiness community can make suggestions into how a particular discovery or direction of research could be commercially applied. Ethics questions brought up in an open forum might be disturbing to a scienist, but he will be better able to handle such questions in person if he has already had the chance to respond to them in a Forum. Or if the concern is real and something he didn't consider he might modify the experiment to adress a concern, it could mean safer science in the future we all want that:) !!!
NASA badly needs a site like this to demonstrate it's popularity at a grass-roots level so it can get the political support for the budget money it needs. Of course, I don't want to get SPAM from scientic website I merely logged onto asking for money; but I would willingly submit my name to a email list to keep me updated to when critical scientific funding is going to be voted on.
Could you imagine if China's great wall had been built by merely people that felt like donating their construction to the project and not under compulsion as it had been? Would not the Mongol tribes have had a feild day waiting for people to overcome their own selfishness while their leaders humbly awaited their contributions? The wall would have never been built accept that it had been when people were forced to build it, and yet they all benefited later.
Stalin's "five year plans" were equally brutal compulsory work projects that did have the positive effect of bringing a pre-electric Feudal Russia into the 20th century complete with rail transportation, electricity, and indoor plumbing. Russias a mess now, but what would it have been like if these public works projects to the benefit of everyone wasn't forced on people. Should he have waited until people felt likt contributing to modernization. If he had, there would have been no "Red Threat", there wouldn't even be those dreary high rise flats, there would have been tenements and shacks without water. There would be transportation of goods by horses.
Now, in light of this it really isn't so painful to force a bunch of unwilling people to pay taxes for things that may not benefit them immediately, but benefit all of mankind in the long term. Nobody is being forced at gunpoint to dig ditches here, like in the examples above, it's merely a sacrifice of income that compared to the European Tax structure is quite leniant.
Civilization has to be built on the backs of the unwilling, if you let the majority have a say they'd merely allow civilization to degenerate into Jerry Springer Deathmatches, pork-rinds, cheese-whiz, cheap beer, lap dances, and selfishness. Forget museums, culture, libraries, and yes knowledge of space that the relevant minority that holds civilization together enjoys. They do not have the resources to support these institutions by themselves, it can only be done through taxing those that do not give a damn about these things.
I apologise if this is inflamitory and un-democratic...but I really do not feel optimism for where this country is going.
...If there are ANY thrid parties that want to support space exploration? It doesn't seem to be that the "Reform" party has a postition on anything to do with the space program but are more concerned with cutting tax spending as well. The green party is afraid of any contingency where a rocket blast might potentially kill an endangered bird and wants to return technology to ecologically safe sticks, twigs, hemp, and granola. Libertarians also seem to want to cut it. Other parties out there seem to look like scary militants of one kind or another. Can anyone tell me why our constituency is being ignored so profoundly? We can't be in that much of a minority, Star Trek conventions look pretty full to me, should we march on washington from a Con?
If we are not going to utilize our aerospace technology we really shouldn't get bent out of shape when China steals it and tries to do something with it. If our leaders forget that China is trying to develop their space program agressively, I think I we should consider taking a Berlitz course in Conversational Chinese (At least we will have plenty of choices in ordering Take-out).
This is not anti-communist paranoia BTW, it's just a simple fact that whoever develops something first and claims it gets to reap the benefits and call the shots. Interesting that our politicians will give dominion of space away to other nations.
Well, I never claimed to be a headhunter myself, my father is and if there are people that are being underpaid because they do not know their own worth and are breaking thier ass besides I am sure he has not misrepresented some people he has met, and put into higher paying jobs. You are correct that there are some people that will willingly work above 60 hr weeks if they are compensated adequately, and that most people will leave if they are not compensated well. Most. That I point out that there are people that do not know their own worth and work as hard as people that do with the same skills does not really give you a foothold to say "I must no know a lot of investment bankers then". I don't nor have I claimed to that wasn't what I was talking about.
My father places programmers and techs that are high-level but hands-on that support the investment bankers, they are NOT "the" investment bankers themselves. Their bonuses are not 300 to 500k unless they happen to be the cheif information officer or are of similar stature. Most bonuses for the support managment/disaster recovery guy or higher level programmer is more modest, though it seems like a lot of money to me right now (about 35,000 was a guaranteed bonus I heard accepted in a negotiation).
BTW there are some investment banks and particularly some managers that are notorius for poor bonuses that do indeed lose a lot of good people. Perhaps they are where entry-level people pay their dues for experiance until they can go elsewhere, such places are usually where my father will try to recruit from since most employees are all too willing to leave. But still some people will put up with that crap and stay for a decade or more, who knows why....
I agree wholeheartedly MrSam that anyone that puts up with that is stupid. Yet many do. Some think that if they put up with it in Microsoft, with such experiance on their resume they will be able to name their price when they move on. Some hope to move within the company.
My friend that got a job there was a pretty entry level tech that went into a seattle computer training course run by that state's welfare department because her teaching degree was pretty useless there. She only got long term sub assignments with no decent pay.
Anyway, she and others in her classes were then put into an agency that paid them about $10hr to run various programs on windows 98 (before it was released) and report on each programs functionality. They also did hardware installation. There was no real quality control in that environment, over personel, or anything. And the manager running that department would obstruct any and all attempts anyone there had of moving into a permanent position and a different department of microsoft. It was a hell-hole.
But what surprises me is how many high level people in many different places, even investment banks, tolerate getting lousy Bonuses and work 60 hour weeks. Sometimes it's someone that is very talented from overseas that wants a work visa ans citizenship desperately getting taken advantage of, but most of the time it's someone that just doesn't know their own worth. Still there are good managers too that fight for their workers to keep a 40 hr week, people just have to look.
The only person I know that works 60 weeks that is reasonable is a consultant friend that takes six month off a year, he makes incredible money. I'd do that if I could:).
My father places Full life cycle high level programers for a living, he knows his candidates well and they tell him about the places they worked. He has heard nothing but bad things about Steve Jobs, if the movie went into his behavior when he was with NEXT it would have revealed yet again how an ingenious product was screwed up by a personality problem rivaled only by Calligula.
I know steve cares about a quality product, I'd buy something made by him over something from Bill Gates if I had a choice, but I'd never want to work for him and my Father would not place a good candidate under him but encourage them to go elsewhere.
Bill Gates isn't much better, I have a friend in seattle that worked for microsoft for a year. Nobody there had a social life, just sixty hour weeks living like monks doing product testing and development all day long. Not even paid that well either, he does his product testing with underpaid temps without bennies...wonder why windows still crashes? there's your answer.
Slashdot Mirror
I extracted the Junk DNA and respliced it so that it would stand without the DNA that is neccessary to humans, inserted it in a cell and watched it grow. 5 hours later to my horror it took a flat retangular shape, black lines appeared on a white surface. They connected to form letters in clear English which read...
"Mr _________ , You have been selected as a final entry for the Publisher's Clearinghouse largest drawing, enclosed is a Check worth $30,000,000 if you have the winning number!!! Please open and send your entry form within the next 24 hours, and get a GUARANTEED prize."
I tried the Junk DNA of other chromosomes and got ads for term life insurance, timeshares, and then the Junk DNA materialized in front of me into a pushy Amway distributer!!!! The horror!!! Cellular SPAM!!! AGHHHHHHHH
I meant to say where the natives are in POVERTY not in HARMONY... I mean Sally Struthers infomercial style belly sticking out and child dying of dysentary kind of poverty as opposed to destroying happy indigenous cultures with my futuristic visions...sorry about the mistake fellas...
If the first "colony" were made here on earth in an inhospitable place where the natives are in harmony. A prototype underground city where the world's poorest can be a part of a living "experimant" to grow their own hydroponic food underground and enjoy a standard of living and comfort they never knew before.
1. This would be a great preparation for future colonization
2. It is farming that would have a low environmental impact, even if the crops are genetically engineered to grow well hydroponics they would be not grown out where they can mingle with indigenous plant life. Laws could be then passed that all surface agriculture be natural and organic and both environmentalists and engineers would have a compromise they can live with.
3.Water use and land use would be much more efficient.
4. Rather than giving these people food all of the time and/or relocating them we would give them the ability to contribute to mankind and feed themselves.
5. on earth the scale of underground hydroponic farming is limited only by energy resorces and abilty to tunnel, I would guess it would be feasable to have triple the worlds population living this way (recyling water and nutrients) and yet at the same time allow the surface of the earth to return to it's natural state.
6.By the time we'd be ready to colonise mars many of the sociological bugs, and many technical ones will have been worked out. The technologies of recycling, manufacturing, and such in a contained setting will have been worked out.
7. Corperations can still make money here, the "intellectual property" rights on their crops, expanding the labor-force to include those in extreme poverty who in turn are enabled as consumers, the rents on their underground flats, and the revenues from perhaps the cold fusion reactors they own powering the cities or some other power source. The goal should not be merely self sustaining colonies in space, but profit sustaining colonies that produce more goods and services than they need to sustain themselves.
If this is done I will support Mars colonization, otherwise if we are just going to pay for toys and a few lucky ass Major-Toms to fly there and back or live up there sending emails to schoolkids I'd say scrap the project and put the money just into feeding people.
Real reason for future-bashing as an artsy intellectual.
1. We generally grow up alienated from society and peers, they reject us when we have our heads stuffed in books planning our own private idea of utopia at odds with the life everyone else might want..."for their own good".
2. In college this attitude is rewarded and encouraged.
3. In the real world the Humanities degree, liberal arts, or philosphy not paired with any technology prowess means underpaid shit jobs in starbucks or art supply retail stores. The humilated indignance of being left behind having the brilliant mind and being left behind as a cheif with no Indians, to serve frappachinos to people that have read only a fraction of what you read but walk about like kings and drive nice sport utilities because they know computers...well, it's a major blow to the ego at every level.
4. It is only then that out of sheer vanity one considers oneself the champion of the working man left behind in todays world. Those left behind by technology. Forgotten labor and farmers that could care less for the stilted advocacy and would if they could rather give you a wedgie and fart cheese whiz into your face than listen to you; but you are the only one coming to help them and ineffectual help is still something not turned away easily. So as the intellectual you push the anti free-trade, technology, and progress issues that left these blue collar people behind and pat yourself on the back that as the people's poet you are a hero in your "other life" away from foaming milk or scooping fries.
5. You enter graduate school on a shoestring, write about how it's all still awful making it your doctoral thesis. Photograph some homeless people peeing if you are an art major in a stark industrail setting and work your way from graduate assistant to professorship.
6. As professor you encourage students just as alienated, arrogant, and theatrical as you are to do the same...thus the cycle continues ad-infinitum.
Nobody listens to such intellectual until the point to when there is a total breakdown of trust between average people and society that they can exploit to become a new establishment (that is seldom much better than the old one). It is easy to criticise another society, it is hard to engineer a new one that doesn't have just as many gaping holes and cracks to fall through.
I have abandoned intelligencia, I think the future will be good and bad, it will always be good and bad. People still have to help each other and try to minimize the number of people hurt by transitions in society but progress cannot and should not be curtailed in that endeavor because to do so is to impose on the personal and economic freedom of average people. I now paint like Norman Rockwell, listen to soulful house music, and refuse to read anything depressing.
Peace,
Johnny
PS-flames by intellectuals who have not come around to realizing this I have an answer for now so I won't have to post later...."I feel your pain" 'nuff said.
I was supposed to be just an experiment, the first human with a neural link into the WWW. It was great at first, but I picked up a modified Neural Back Oriface program and my life was over. I barely get sleep because the little bastard somewhere keeps posting my sexual memories (what few I have) on amateur porn sights. He plays bad Jimmy Buffet songs in my head all night while trying to convert the data into an MP-3 format, what kind of a sicko does that?! Every once in a while he just buts in when I am doing something normal...and...oh, no he'e going to do it now....
MUHAHAHAHAH, YEAH BABY! I got this pup to withdraw all his mac accounts and max his own credit card and he don't even know it yet. Now I'm gonna really torture this chump and make some KC and the Sunshine Band MP.3's with his memory of bad 70's songs....Yummy Yummy Yummy, Got dat Luv in my tummy...P3AC3
Magvs
"Do not fight bravely and love deceptively, love bravely and fight deceptively."
Being an artist myself often at odds with the artistic intelligencia that have problems with realism and push their own aesthetics I am not suggestng that. I personally beleive that personal choices in consumer goods and services will have that homogenizing effect without any draconian mandates by idealists. When I get onto the MP3.com I see that a small genre of music I love (soulful garage house-and drum and Bass) is one of many with an audience as far flung as france, japan, and Russia. I feel these subcultures that when a "fad" never get a chance to fully develop into a real aestetic because they haven't had the time to before another fad replaces it. This happens in art too. If there was more youthful longevity people would get beyond the fads and develop these musical subcultures with increasing levels of refinement, and I would suppose the results would be as impressive as the generations that went into refining classical music. What would have happened with romance music if five years after Beetoven's fifth society decided that style was passe.
So...I hope you don't think me a fascist... I was hoping for circumstances that would cause people to freely choose a less disposible "plastic" culture. What they choose and develop might not even be what I might personally choose to embrace as a new aestetic. But I do not want to see a culture imposed on anyone...however, I am sure you might agree that the fastest growing culture in the world today is a global culture, albeit now it is very plastic and commercialized. It's sources seem to spring equally from everywhere... as I watch Japanese anime, eat Jamaican beef patties, wash it down with a swig of Malta india or Turkijsh coffee, and get onto the "world -wide" web for entertainment and to exchange ideas.
Four times our present lifespans, probably about eight times the average lifespan in the ancient world whether Judea, greece, or china where life expectancy of the common man hovered around fourty. In these fabeled "golden ages" men were mentioned to live easily to 400 with key figures being mentioned living much longer than that (such as Methusala). To be honest I do not really think such a golden age really ever existed...yet. In early reckonings in egypt and mesopotania there was much confusion between decimal groupings, for instance the way to describe a hundred or a thousand was with the same word. A person hearing a story a few generations later would not realize this descrepancy and think it to mean the real figure multiplied by a factor of ten. This occured with the Atlantis myth, that the greeks preserved from Egyptian historians, what allegendly happened to the destrution of an island city in the Agean a few thousand years ago in translation corresponded with ruins we actually found...almost precisely one tenth of the time the cataclism was supposed to have occured.
:)
If a similar adjustment were made between tens and hundreds regarding these ancient "golden ages" we'd see average ages in the forties and fifties, with a few amazing people getting into the nineties...pretty close actually to how long people lived in the ancient world anyway. Still, even if mankind never attained such longevity in the past doesn't mean we cannot in the future
What you are referring to is nothing more than "risk managment" developing as a skill. In some elderly it does mean over-caution and worry but in more than a few shining examples it means a maturity in innovation. I look back at some artists from Titian and El Greco to Picasso; it wasn't until they started to get older that they took more and more artistic risks because they developed a confidence. Sure there have been young artists that have innovated, but let's not be age-ist here and think that an ol' fart or too can't wow the youngones...if we give them health and youth I am sure we will all benefit.
What I do see changing somewhat is the nature of fads. The population would eventually shift to being a majority of consumers that already saw enough fads in disposible culture. Currently we have new "fashions" that come and go...and recycle...but I suppose if in the future we have youthful 200 year olds running around they'd probably have chosen an aesthetic by then for architecture and clothing that they can bring continual refinement too. I was just in the museum yesterday and would love to see this refinement take place, even if a little conservative, because it would bring about a real sense of culture that we really haven't known since the end of the end of the renaissances in Europe, Japan, and China. However, this new culture would probably be world-encompassing and if I might be so bold I would venture to guess it would bring mankind closer together in the long run.
One good thing about experiance as time goes on is that people no matter how conservative start to lose their desire for war and seek other means of conflict resolution with more vigor. I think that is what they used to call "wisdom" and I would love to live in a world some day (or at least have my children live in a world) where wisdom is a common thing.
Dear Fellow,
:)
I think you need to smile more and look back in history. I am not a scientist, I am an artist with an enthusiasm for science and it has been people like me that can see a future coming over the horizon that vote in the politicians that give you the research grants.
Optimism is ignorance perhaps only on the issue of timing. I have a book of old sci fi illustrations from the turn of the century filled with fantastic pictures of cities with soaring skyscrapers, a stockbroker with lines and some kind of screen to observe events from all around the world by which to base his trading decions on, the majority of people owning automobiles of some kind (usually streamlined), and the image of jet airliners in a time when wings of early aircraft were made from canvass. I don't feel flamed by your reaction to my post at all, and I don't want you to take it the wrong way, but it wouldn't hurt to be more of a romantic. The work will still get done either way. It was thought we'd have space colonys and robots with AI by now by writers like Asimov and presidents like Kennedy and we don't... but though such challenges have been harder to meet than expected progress is a continual thing. Don't lose your sense of wonder if there is a setback
Yes I do beleive, I should qualify this, that it is relatively easier to alter the gene sequence in a zygote than it would be to alter the gene sequence in a grown human being by using retroviruses. Human beings aren't fruit flies, but doing gene splicing on fertilized fruit fly eggs from the beginning has been done plenty of times, still at the single cell stage I would assume that the process of splicing and altering fruit fly or human DNA would be similar. I don't think in that sense our technology is too far away from this, and that is why I made my "ignorant" comment that I do feel that if the genome were cracked, it would be (relatively) easy (in contrast with altering adults) for the next generation of kids to benefit.
There is always a long way to go kind sir, but if you take your eye off the goal....you get lost. Now cheer up and have a wonderful day!
you must admit though that if governments are concerned now about the effect longevity is having it's a better problem than those govenrments that deal with the problem of a majority of their citezenry not making it to the age of fourty. Oddly, those are the nations with the highest birthrates.
I tend to agree that dramatic increases in lifespan could be well after the end of my lifetime but I am really unsure of this. If the human genome is truly cracked, it could probably be engineered easily at least into the next generation with not too much trouble. However it would be more problematic to lets say devise a retrovirus to help along the genes of an adult male like myself to share in the fortunate situation Dorian Gray had going for him. I tend to think the major obstacles will not be technical, since the rate of technological development is accelerating exponentially, but political. Still, consumerism does tend to win out over anything else, parents who can pay for it want happy intelligent beautiful children with long lives or else why would they even resort to silly things like giving birth to babies in bathtubs. Also, like in the movie "Dead Again" many would give away a fortune to perpetuate youth and life, though as it illustrates some people will not.
As for accidents, well the most immediate benefits from this research will probably not be in increasing life span genetically but the growth of new tissues, organs, perhaps even limbs with someone's genetic code sequenced in the new body part. This could mean a completely new way of dealing with severe physical trauma, though I suppose that if the brain is damaged there might be in the least a loss of "data".
I agree though that the transition that society will face over this will be traumatic on a global scale. It may further divide wealthy societies from poorer and traditional societies, religious people against the non-religious. I recall the trauma in the eighties felt by those people who were unemployed when we went through the transition of a soley industrial economy to one based on information goods and services as small farming was replaced by intensive conglomerate agriculture. To me back then it seemed evil, but now it is the basis of our prosperity that all of these changes occured. I would not give up the internet based culture I benefit from to go back to the life I knew as an average child in the mid seventies.
Change is always difficult, it's important to have something worth changing for I guess.
I am not religious, but I recall in the Upanishads, Torah, Chinese (Lao Tzu makes mention of it) and Greek myth a time of a golden age when mankind had a physical perfection, and lived lives roughly 4 times the current maximium life spans with a degree of youth and vigor. This genetic research we have now has already revealed the secret of telemeres which control aging by cell division and we have already sustained human cells and quadrupled the natural life span of a roundworm. Which genetically speaking is not as far away from human beings as one might think.
I could easily conclude that we have no idea how this may change the nature of mankind. The medicines and even perhaps the introduction of genetic fashions and beauty, or intellect by entepreneurs for the coming generation of childen will alter our own perceptions of our mortality. Our culture is very much based on that knowledge of our mortality, how we love, perceive ourselves, our religions, and even our artistic acheivments. It's scary, but I see some very positive changes down the road that might make the negatives easier to deal with.
For one if this genetic knowledge creates longer youthful lives it will mean a political shift that will dramatic. The average man is still left with the "me generation" philosophy of short term thinking thanks to the brinkmanship of the cold war's potental of nuclear annhilation. All we are now, even our sexual revolution stemmed from the concept that we could all die tomorrow. Our politicians think in short term, though it is begining to change, politicians that urge policies that think in the long term are commiting politcal suicide. If we manage to increase lifespans of the citizenry to some 300 years that short-term nihilism behind policies will have to change. If people beleive they have a long future, they have to plan for it, it won't be their children's problem anymore it will be theirs.
I can envision everything from environmental policy to the forgoing of cheap architecture for ornate and enduring stuctures made to be beautiful. Consumerism may change. Even love and family relationships may change, for a mother that is 200 would proably look about 25 and seem to be by appearance a peer not only to her daughter but to her grandaughter as well. A dirty year old man like me, should I make it to 250, might date an innocent young 80 year year old tht looks like she could be an 18 year old japanese anime character.
So open those floodgates of information, bravo!!! Like all mankind before me I will believe in the religion that will promise me immortality, and if science is the religion that can deliver us into that golden age then I will most certainly be a convert.
I don't think the average sales/marketing person cares to violate my rights or to uphold it. Instead there is a mutual interest, they want to send ads that are more or less relevent to people who'd be interested in their good or service, and my interest is only to receive ads that would be of interest to me. In fact, I appreciate the fact that MP3.com sends me an email only once a month or so with links to the latest releases of music in the genre's I am interested in...and not "spam" for Wayne Newton's compilation album.
But essentually any information they have about me is just a blip of my music browsing habits. It isn't contianing information that supposed evil people in a weird corperate/government conspiracy of satanic alluminati freemasons bent on world domination would find relevent, even if paranoid scitzophrenics have been right all along about the existance of such.
I think it would be nice some day not to get called at dinner time for alluminum siding when I don't own a home, or calls for a charitable donation when I am an utterly selfish scrooge with my money. The only way that is going to be possible is if they already have information about me in some subroutine that flags me and says "don't bother calling/emailing/snailmailing him for this product, it's a waste of resources". I have yet to get a phonecall from a telemarketer that gave me information about what I like to spend my disposable income on; like a new sushi resteraunt!!! When that day comes I think everybody will be happy, and privacy wont seem as important as not being nagged for what you don't care to buy.
Johnny
Hypothetically an agency of a govenrnment that may or may not be ours intended to regulate alleged abuses of it's electorial process. It might appear that this postulated entity (I am not naming names here) and the administration behind it (hypothetically again- could be anywhere) are again doing what they do best.
They (whoever they are) are not necessarilly dealing with really powerful entities that threaten to undermine the democratic process; for argument's sake lets say a communist nation doling out pac money, and "soft" money contributions from the already rich and powerful that contribute to both parties and claim they have no control over legislation.
Instead they bring the full force of law on mostly harmless and ineffectual backwoods hate-mongers no one would listen to anyway just so they look like they are doing a job. Throw in a few cyber-bores ranting as self stylized spin-doctors that are only preach to their own choir for good measure, and some rickety ol ministers urging the vote on a rather beaten to death Pro-life issue and now they are really looking like they have a "mission" to justify their budget.
It is obvious that Larry Flint has accomplished more investigation than the organization (with less money) that could be called the FEC (but I am not saying it is). If this is the best violations of election proceedure they can come up with it is clear that their charges will never hold in court, and I wouldn't want to be them around budget time if another (hypothetical) party takes office.
Any resembleance the above hypothetical agency, admistration, or government has to any real agency, administration, or government is purely coincidental and the author disavows any relationship of such with the full knowledge that Big Brother is watching.
>Bart Simpson- "I didn't do it...It wasn't me"
I get calls to donate "spare" money to this and that charity during dinnner hours on my private phone.
My "spare" organs are going to be donated in the case of an untimely death.
People keep trying to bum "spare" cigarettes and gum and change from me.
My "spare" clothes are being worn by freinds and family.
My dog and cat hover over me every meal as if to say "buddy can you spare some of your food"
A crazy chick wants my "spare time" so she can whine to me about her Jerry Springer Guest of a boyfriend.
Now Seti and/or atmospheric scientists want any spare cycles... I have to draw a line somewhere don't I?
I bet if we do translate a message from ET it will say the following "Hey neighbor can you spare a planet!!!!!"
To some extent 3-d molecular objects have been made with carbon atoms in the particular case of the buckminsterfullerine or "bucky ball" which is becoming more widely produced not so much as a machine per se...but possible as a passive object such as a lubricant since it seems fairly durable. Some have suggested that these bucky balls can also be used as a molecular "scaffolding" for the assembly of nanomachine parts...though this claim to me sounds like it is going to need a little more work before I'd hold my breath.
Pilsner is a really really light brew, lager is a bit heavier and darker, Ale is darker yet and thicker taste, stout is really really dark.
:)
My beer knowledge is limited, there are so many varieties now with all of the microbrews I couldn't possibly know all of the obscure ones.
Pilsners because of their clean tastes are good with spicy foods, like curries, chinese food, sushi...a darker beer is good for heartier food...like a guiness stout is good with a stew or a french onion soup.
Bon Apetit!~
Though you accuse the other of wasting time, the author of wasting time, and will probably me of wasting time...
...I am of the beleif that it is not us that is wasting time, time is wasting us !!!!!
:)
Language is not static dear fellow
Doest thou write english after the manner of antiquity. Why doest thou and the multitude not write after this fashion? Ist Thou using bad grammar because the way of antiquity hath been surpassed by modern English?
Really, the way the English language is used today by academia is nothing like the language that was espoused by academia at the turn of the century.
Like other forms of evolution, the acceptance of the word "her" will either survive or die off. There is nothing to be upset about, or really to champion either. It may indeed be quaint and outmoded with time, like "daddy-o", "Square", and "Like you know like fer sure". How many women now demand to be called "Mizzzz" instead of Misses or Miss, what percentage of girls do you know really insist on spelling women as "womyn".
Man the ramparts if you want to entertain self important delusions your culture will be subverted by a feminist, liberal, intellectual conspiracy if it gives you a sense of postmoderist identity. But in the end both you and the feminists are probably equally as ineffectual and great entertainment for each other as you take positions of hero and villian.
about my time on the computer or our sex life.
:)
I just need to inflate her once and a while
We know that a website that is hit more frequently is of greater interest to advertizers. I would encourage a slashdot-style website for scientific journals that encourages non-scientists to participate in the process. Though it may seem a distraction, it becomes documented evidence to those who issue research grants and politicians that approve funding that this is of interest to a part of the voting public. Links should be provided to politicains that will be voting on budgets (lets say of NASA) with perhaps even a form letter that can be sent via-email to make it convenient for people to vote their support.
:) !!!
Scientists will also become more seasoned in their ability to communicate their ideas and concepts to lay-people, and members of the buisiness community can make suggestions into how a particular discovery or direction of research could be commercially applied. Ethics questions brought up in an open forum might be disturbing to a scienist, but he will be better able to handle such questions in person if he has already had the chance to respond to them in a Forum. Or if the concern is real and something he didn't consider he might modify the experiment to adress a concern, it could mean safer science in the future we all want that
NASA badly needs a site like this to demonstrate it's popularity at a grass-roots level so it can get the political support for the budget money it needs. Of course, I don't want to get SPAM from scientic website I merely logged onto asking for money; but I would willingly submit my name to a email list to keep me updated to when critical scientific funding is going to be voted on.
Could you imagine if China's great wall had been built by merely people that felt like donating their construction to the project and not under compulsion as it had been? Would not the Mongol tribes have had a feild day waiting for people to overcome their own selfishness while their leaders humbly awaited their contributions? The wall would have never been built accept that it had been when people were forced to build it, and yet they all benefited later.
Stalin's "five year plans" were equally brutal compulsory work projects that did have the positive effect of bringing a pre-electric Feudal Russia into the 20th century complete with rail transportation, electricity, and indoor plumbing. Russias a mess now, but what would it have been like if these public works projects to the benefit of everyone wasn't forced on people. Should he have waited until people felt likt contributing to modernization. If he had, there would have been no "Red Threat", there wouldn't even be those dreary high rise flats, there would have been tenements and shacks without water. There would be transportation of goods by horses.
Now, in light of this it really isn't so painful to force a bunch of unwilling people to pay taxes for things that may not benefit them immediately, but benefit all of mankind in the long term. Nobody is being forced at gunpoint to dig ditches here, like in the examples above, it's merely a sacrifice of income that compared to the European Tax structure is quite leniant.
Civilization has to be built on the backs of the unwilling, if you let the majority have a say they'd merely allow civilization to degenerate into Jerry Springer Deathmatches, pork-rinds, cheese-whiz, cheap beer, lap dances, and selfishness. Forget museums, culture, libraries, and yes knowledge of space that the relevant minority that holds civilization together enjoys. They do not have the resources to support these institutions by themselves, it can only be done through taxing those that do not give a damn about these things.
I apologise if this is inflamitory and un-democratic...but I really do not feel optimism for where this country is going.
...If there are ANY thrid parties that want to support space exploration? It doesn't seem to be that the "Reform" party has a postition on anything to do with the space program but are more concerned with cutting tax spending as well. The green party is afraid of any contingency where a rocket blast might potentially kill an endangered bird and wants to return technology to ecologically safe sticks, twigs, hemp, and granola. Libertarians also seem to want to cut it. Other parties out there seem to look like scary militants of one kind or another. Can anyone tell me why our constituency is being ignored so profoundly? We can't be in that much of a minority, Star Trek conventions look pretty full to me, should we march on washington from a Con?
If we are not going to utilize our aerospace technology we really shouldn't get bent out of shape when China steals it and tries to do something with it. If our leaders forget that China is trying to develop their space program agressively, I think I we should consider taking a Berlitz course in Conversational Chinese (At least we will have plenty of choices in ordering Take-out).
This is not anti-communist paranoia BTW, it's just a simple fact that whoever develops something first and claims it gets to reap the benefits and call the shots. Interesting that our politicians will give dominion of space away to other nations.
Well, I never claimed to be a headhunter myself, my father is and if there are people that are being underpaid because they do not know their own worth and are breaking thier ass besides I am sure he has not misrepresented some people he has met, and put into higher paying jobs. You are correct that there are some people that will willingly work above 60 hr weeks if they are compensated adequately, and that most people will leave if they are not compensated well. Most. That I point out that there are people that do not know their own worth and work as hard as people that do with the same skills does not really give you a foothold to say "I must no know a lot of investment bankers then". I don't nor have I claimed to that wasn't what I was talking about.
My father places programmers and techs that are high-level but hands-on that support the investment bankers, they are NOT "the" investment bankers themselves. Their bonuses are not 300 to 500k unless they happen to be the cheif information officer or are of similar stature. Most bonuses for the support managment/disaster recovery guy or higher level programmer is more modest, though it seems like a lot of money to me right now (about 35,000 was a guaranteed bonus I heard accepted in a negotiation).
BTW there are some investment banks and particularly some managers that are notorius for poor bonuses that do indeed lose a lot of good people. Perhaps they are where entry-level people pay their dues for experiance until they can go elsewhere, such places are usually where my father will try to recruit from since most employees are all too willing to leave. But still some people will put up with that crap and stay for a decade or more, who knows why....
I agree wholeheartedly MrSam that anyone that puts up with that is stupid. Yet many do. Some think that if they put up with it in Microsoft, with such experiance on their resume they will be able to name their price when they move on. Some hope to move within the company.
:).
My friend that got a job there was a pretty entry level tech that went into a seattle computer training course run by that state's welfare department because her teaching degree was pretty useless there. She only got long term sub assignments with no decent pay.
Anyway, she and others in her classes were then put into an agency that paid them about $10hr to run various programs on windows 98 (before it was released) and report on each programs functionality. They also did hardware installation. There was no real quality control in that environment, over personel, or anything. And the manager running that department would obstruct any and all attempts anyone there had of moving into a permanent position and a different department of microsoft. It was a hell-hole.
But what surprises me is how many high level people in many different places, even investment banks, tolerate getting lousy Bonuses and work 60 hour weeks. Sometimes it's someone that is very talented from overseas that wants a work visa ans citizenship desperately getting taken advantage of, but most of the time it's someone that just doesn't know their own worth. Still there are good managers too that fight for their workers to keep a 40 hr week, people just have to look.
The only person I know that works 60 weeks that is reasonable is a consultant friend that takes six month off a year, he makes incredible money. I'd do that if I could
My father places Full life cycle high level programers for a living, he knows his candidates well and they tell him about the places they worked. He has heard nothing but bad things about Steve Jobs, if the movie went into his behavior when he was with NEXT it would have revealed yet again how an ingenious product was screwed up by a personality problem rivaled only by Calligula.
I know steve cares about a quality product, I'd buy something made by him over something from Bill Gates if I had a choice, but I'd never want to work for him and my Father would not place a good candidate under him but encourage them to go elsewhere.
Bill Gates isn't much better, I have a friend in seattle that worked for microsoft for a year. Nobody there had a social life, just sixty hour weeks living like monks doing product testing and development all day long. Not even paid that well either, he does his product testing with underpaid temps without bennies...wonder why windows still crashes? there's your answer.