Starship Exeter is great in and of itself and also in that it shows what a shoe-string budget the Original Series had. Enterprise, unfortunately, requires a larger budget, both because of the sets and special effects and because of the salaries for the actors and actresses.
I think if the fans can really pull it off, it would show that advertising revenue, and thus annoying adverts, aren't really necessary. We are stuck in this business model purely because of past momentum and the obsessive absurdity of the advertising industry. If we could make them obselete through ploys like this, they would lobby Congress to make it illegal.
I guess it is like the old joke about, if pro- is the opposite of con-, what is the opposite of progress...
I think you're certainly right here and some of the responders have missed the point. Yes, prison is about punishment, but the punishment is to be locked up and not free for a certain term. I don't recall any judge sentencing anyone to be pounded in the butt for a specific term.
What if you were to be imprisoned for a relatively minor offence for a period of about 3 months? Does that mean it is okay for you be anally raped for the whole time and, most likely, contract HIV and die a slow, horrible, lingering death? No wonder most of the world thinks Americans are a bunch of savages.
Actually, the technology has existed for a few years now to do this with icing on cakes. I was able to put the stanza of a poem on my groom's cake by giving them a pdf file of the poem stanza text and a graphic. They then printed the icing out onto the cake. It was quite neat and did a very good job, though naturally you still neat artistic skill for any of the frilly edges and 3D creations. And, before anyone asks, the poem had nothing to do with Nantucket;-) !
So, you are saying that Greyhound and Yellow Cab pay per-mile for the roads that they travel on? When did this happen? And Southwest Airlines has never been bailed out before, like all the other airlines?
The question is about the overall transportation system, not some specific companies that can make money based on the use of the transit system. Comparing Greyhound and Yellow Cab to San Francisco's BART or DC Metro is not an "apples to apples" comparison since those companies do not have to pay per-mile for the roads that they use. We all pay through various means for the roads that we all use.
There have been privately-funded roads before in America, but that was before the invention of the automobile. The Lancaster Turnpike, for example, was 62 miles of hard road - hard road being almost unheard of then - that one paid directly to travel on to get from Philadelphia to Lancaster. In fact, the term "turnpike" comes from the manner in which the pay road was set up. A set of pikes were pointed at you and, of course, your horses at the entrance of the road. After you paid the toll, the pikes were turned and you could then pass and travel on the road. We have nothing like this now, nor is it even desirable given modern life and technology.
I'd like to address both your comment and a couple of the AC posters below. Math and Science are necessary in Civics since training in math and science teach you how to think logically. Obviously, if there is a question concerning the first amendment, a rocket trajectory problem or a time-harmonic magnetic flux problem is not going to help you directly. But understanding how to think carefully will.
Now, as to some AC posters wondering how Fundamentalists are demanding the weakening of science and math education, perhaps the precise word demanding is too active of a verb, except of course in the case of evolution. The problem lies in the attitude that fundamentalists take toward science and mathematics. I'm a Christian myself, but I had the incredible misfortune of being raised by a fundamentalist father and had to go to a fundamentalist church. The whole attitude is one of mindless acceptance of dogma that even often contradicts both the direct reading of scripture, the way divine revelation has been taught for the past two thousand years, and just basic logic, such as is commonly used by many Christian writers of old.
Fundamentalists take a very scoffing view of anything that resembles even slightly complicated logic. They want their beliefs plain, simple and mindless. This is what they call "faith", though most people of faith (or lack thereof) would refer to this as blind stupidity. Therefore, they not only hate math and science ("traditions of men"), they hate any form of religion that does not give simplistic answers to complicated problems.
So, to make what has been a long story short, the attitude that the study of mathematics and the sciences provides would stoke one's curiosity when studying other subjects, instead of having one mindlessly accept what one is told and not look more deeply into the subject matter.
I hope this isn't getting too offtopic, but I remember that one of the big problems with polygraphs was the need for baseline values to determine truth and lying. Apart from the fact that you would respond differently when deliberately telling a lie because it is part of the procedure and when telling a lie to deceive, the baseline questions usually show the prejudices of the interrogator. For example, an interrogator will often ask "have you ever smoked before?" or "have you ever tried marijuana?" assuming, of course, that everyone has tried these. Therefore, if you say no, they assume that your response is the baseline for lying since obviously anyone who says they haven't is lying. And it is an unfalsifiable position.
The human race would be so funny if they weren't so dangerous.
I'm still upset that they haven't gotten around to banning my computer game "Central Committee Fish-Slap Dance". What does someone need to do to get noticed by them???
While I know what you say is true, _every_ time I read it I can't help but want to vomit. I personally cannot belive that the "representitives" of the US population has been totaly bought off that every copyright is not life+70. I never new that a copyright owner could benefit from a copyright for 70 years after his/her death. How can anyone benefit from something for 70 years after their death?
I wonder if one could make a good argument against the Constitutionality of both the 90-year-after-death and 70-year-after-death copyright laws using the 14th Amendment. Let's take the case of Dylan Thomas and George Burns. Now, assume arguendo that both Dylan Thomas and George Burns are born on the same day and create a piece of writing on the same day (though obviously different from the day in which they were born). Now, Dylan Thomas dies at the age of 29 and George Burns dies at the age of 100. Under the 70-year-after-death law, Dylan Thomas's copyright will expire when George Burns is still alive (though admittedly not for much longer). This is clearly discriminatory since the amount of copyright protection is based solely on one's ability to stave off death.
Basically, the only fair way to have a copyright is to make it a fixed-term copyright, like with patents and the original American copyright terms.
I, for one, welcome our new...oh never mind... I'll never trust a robot with a gun. It's like trusting a redneck buffoon with the presidency of the United States...oh wait...
Now, now. Bush is not a redneck buffoon. He is a blue-blood Yaley frat-boy buffoon pretending to be a redneck buffoon. Get it right man!:-p
Then, of course, there is the cluster that runs off of Windows XP. It's commonly called the Grendel cluster.
Or perhaps in the movie they can have a bunch of large Scandanavian men drinking mead in Beowulf's mead hall and seeing whose cluster can calculate next weeks weather patterns faster...
I would agree with you completely here. My wife and I are considering home schooling partly for this reason (of course, there are several others). I also think that for a child to spend all day and only socialize with people exactly the same age as he/she is not a natural way for someone to develop. One needs to socialize with people of varying ages and experiences.
And speaking of the "old golden days", and since this is/., I remember an old Twilight Zone episode from the early 60's in which a man was complaining about how horrible everything was and how things were so much better back in the 1890's.
what if the parallel universe you pop out through the wormhole into is made completely of antimatter.
Simple. You just find someone from your universe who is willing to fight with his opposite number in the anti-matter universe for all time, inside the portal between the two universes. Then, you just blow up the portal with your phasers and both universes are safe.
"You can't escape me! I'll chase you into the very fires of Hell!"
Actually, it is not just with airlines. Have you tried getting a P.O. Box in America (those of you who live there, of course)? Whenever I move, I have to try two or three post offices since there is always some pathetic little worm who starts babbling about "9/11" as if terrorists are going to start swarming en masse into their podunk little town, and refusing me a post office box is some great victory for American national security. Oops, make that "Homeland" security (I guess Fatherland and Motherland were already taken).
Anyway, I believe this is quite likely the result of some pathetic little person at AA who wants to feel powerful. Which is also, BTW, another reason why it is important to be careful about exactly what powers you give to law enforcement officials. Sometimes abuse of authority comes simply from someone wanting to feel big and strong.
You seem to have missed the point entirely. The point is that, in an impoverished society, crime becomes considerably more rampant. There is not a 1-to-1 correspondence with people who do not receive benefits and people who commit crimes. But, by lessening the overall impoverishment of the society, the overall crime rate will lessen.
In a like manner, if you fund the police well enough, you will get a marked drop in crime. Basically, if there are good civil institutions in place, we can all live much more peacefully. You also seem to be oversimplifying the situation. Not everyone is a brutish animal who will hurt people if they don't get what they want. Plus, there are people who will wind up commiting crimes, not because they are necessarily bad people, but because they are desperate and do not have much choice.
Further, you are also ignoring the fact that, for example, businesses and corporations operate based on the precise manner in which the law is set up, as do people who are trying to survive. Exactly what are considered fraudulent business practices, for example, is specifically codified. Businesses and corporations use these laws to maximize profit. In countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, for example, certain corporations conduct their business in a manner that would be considered highly exploitive here. As a result, ordinary people in these countries are very poor, especially in the village areas, and there is a lot of crime. If your only choice was to starve or to rob a store, what would you do?
You are also ignoring the fact that people can only accomplish so much based on their available opportunities. There are plenty of opportunities that are simply unavailable to just about everyone. For example, people who grew up in a poor area and whose father raped them repeatedly as a child, refused to help them in the least when it came to going to college, and forbid them to work when they were young are basically SOL when it comes to making anything of themselves in life. Or, at the very least, they have a much harder time of it, but will still never be nearly as successful as someone who was born into a good condition.
How does that put them on the left of Stalin? Those are all left-wing things (yes, Hitler was a socialist!), and they are thus to his right.
Hitler was a Socialist? WTF are you talking about? Hitler used the corporate power behind the Third Reich to produce munitions, tanks, basic military supplies, etc. Neither he nor IG Farben were trying to redistribute wealth throughout Germany (pillaging the wealth of the Jews is not Socialism). This is simply another childish way to try to say "ooohh, liberals bad, we good!"
I assume - and I have to assume since you merely asserted Hitler was a Socialist and somehow think that the use of an exclamation point improves upon your argument - that you are suggesting Hitler was a Socialist because the English version of the acronym "Nazi" stands for "National Socialist German Worker's Party" (iirc). Hitler was simply trying to throw in whatever buzz-words would appeal to the masses at the time.
In any event, it is a rather absurd argument since you are trying to base it solely on what something is named. By the same "logic", we should have nothing to worry about when it comes to the mainland Chinese government since mainland China is referred to as the "People's Republic of China". After all, if China is a republic, what are we worried about? And then there is North Korea, or the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea". Why should we worry if Kim il Jong has nuclear weapons? After all, they are a democratic-republic, so we can trust them.
I could go on with other examples if you really wanted, but I see no real point. I hope this little educational experience has been enlightening. Now, for the bonus question which will put you at the head of the class, which former US President, along with his father who was a US Senator, was found guilty of trading with the Nazis under the Trading With The Enemy Act of 1942?
So, it's really a protection racket, eh? Give me money or {I'll make your life hell, you'll have to pay more to defend against me and those like me,...}.
By the same argument, you could say that paying taxes to keep up the police departments is a protection racket. Perhaps we should get rid of the police as well?
Why not keep working after 65 if you can't afford to retire?
Probably because noone will hire you and the company you work for will get rid of you since it is better for them to hire someone young, vibrant and cheap. Plus, when you are 65, your health starts to deteriorate, more or less so depending upon who you are. What you are suggesting is a neat little "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" idealism that has nothing to do with reality. My stepdad used to think this way. Now that he actually is 65 and has to deal with all the associated problems, he sees that this is a rather silly notion. Actually, the problems with keeping a job that are associated with age began at about age 55-58 for him.
I really don't see what is wrong with having a society that does not automatically throw away anyone who is not a high producer, either because they are old or disabled. Does American society really have to be based on a kind of "hook and bloody talon" capitalism? Is the value of a human being only in what he/she can immediately produce? A society based on this sort of idealogy is doomed by its own moral depravity.
Man dreams of space, begins pouring concrete for launch pad. Big deal. Does he have a ship? A design? Anything?
Um, there are plenty of available designs (SpaceShip One comes to mind). Whichever one he uses, he will have to buy it from the company that engineered it and can manufacture it, as I doubt he can put one together in his garage. So long as he has the money, he can make it work.
"Blue Origin operation, headquartered in a warehouse on East Marginal Way in Seattle"
Haw Haw.
Haw Haw??? Jiminey Cricket, man, are you the assistant writer for Jack Chick?
Economics and the existance of the economy is based on exchange, not greed. Economics is the study of choice and policy within a given theoretical framework, not the study of greed with the implicit assumption of taking from the have nots. Once/when we "truly understand the mind," the economy will simply be better, not obsolete.
This isn't inconsistent with the idea of "how much one man needs." Indeed, with perfect information, we might be able to do better in allocating income in a more "fair" way (I'll leave it to the reader to determine what "fair" is).
Sorry, I'm not trying to be mean. In theory, this would a great way to efficiently allocate resources, assuming that we were ants or individual "cells" in some sort of overall body, similar to the Gaia planet in one of Asimov's books (why can't I remember which one?).
The problem with this idea is the same problem that exists for any kind of pure socialism. We are human beings and too many human beings are abysmally selfish.
The main problem that I have with this kind of technology is that it will be used as yet another way for people in positions of power to control other people. It is part of the perennial problem of the advancement of science. Most of the people who work to advance the overall knowledge of the human race tend to be idealists. Then, when new toys have been developed by engineers, arrogant and powerful people use them to control others or to enrich themselves, all the while thumbing their nose at the very people who helped create them. When they get their new toys, it is like giving them to a barbarian who then goes "look what Grog do with big boom-stick!"
So anyway, while it is interesting to advance the overall understanding of the mind, some people are just going to use this to make the world worse for everyone else.
Not so simple- if your NEIGHBOR buys their seed, and you have the same type of crop, cross pollination by the wind could turn you into an Intellectual Property Pirate.
If this were the case, I would countersue them claiming that their GM plants had infested and infected my pure natural plants. If you are a certified organic farmer, perhaps this would be even easier.
They are a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Excellent! This, I believe, is right on the money. One of the things that always annoyed me about computer über-geeks was that they assumed that anyone who was not a computer expert was an idiot.
Believe it or not, there are a lot of people who are highly intelligent, even technically oriented, that do not know much about computers. For example, most mathematicians, physicists and chemists do not care too much about computers. As far as computer usability is concerned, they are little different than "joe/jill average". A chemist needs Chemdraw and similar programs, a physicist needs Maple, Mathematica and Matlab (MMM...), and a mathematician just needs LaTex to publish his/her work. Apart from that, they need what everyone else needs.
>Real physicists like Stephen Hawking, and fictional ones like Quinn Mallory, are very cool!
The problem is, we think they're cool, while most kids think the opposite.
Actually, I think the main problem is that most people in America only care about making lots of money and screwing as many people (girls and/or boys depending upon sex and personal preference) as they can. Very few people can get above their base animal nature and actually do something that is not related to material wealth or pleasure. This is partly why pure sciences, like physics, are studied by so few Americans. I remember when I was studying for my engineering bachelor's degree and mentioned (when it was an appropriate part of the conversation, of course) that I was about to go to graduate school in physics. Most people laughed and thought that this was a ridiculous waste of time. They didn't see that actually learning something is good in and of itself. It doesn't have to get you a better job or a higher salary.
The other problem, of course, is that physics requires a great deal of work and sitting down and solving problem after problem. Since most Americans have the attention span of a rock, this is not generally going to happen. It is a waste of time to try to make physics "cool". The reason why kids don't go into physics is a basic societal problem and that has to change before anything else can be done.
Slashdot Mirror
Enterprise, unfortunately, requires a larger budget, both because of the sets and special effects and because of the salaries for the actors and actresses.
I think if the fans can really pull it off, it would show that advertising revenue, and thus annoying adverts, aren't really necessary. We are stuck in this business model purely because of past momentum and the obsessive absurdity of the advertising industry. If we could make them obselete through ploys like this, they would lobby Congress to make it illegal.
I guess it is like the old joke about, if pro- is the opposite of con-, what is the opposite of progress...
What if you were to be imprisoned for a relatively minor offence for a period of about 3 months? Does that mean it is okay for you be anally raped for the whole time and, most likely, contract HIV and die a slow, horrible, lingering death? No wonder most of the world thinks Americans are a bunch of savages.
Replacement gyro - $5,000
Replacement screw - $0.05
Replacement nut - $0.05
House call - $1,000,000,000.00
Being able to view the known universe in far greater detail than anything on Earth and obtain valuable scientific data - priceless
Actually, the technology has existed for a few years now to do this with icing on cakes. I was able to put the stanza of a poem on my groom's cake by giving them a pdf file of the poem stanza text and a graphic. They then printed the icing out onto the cake. It was quite neat and did a very good job, though naturally you still neat artistic skill for any of the frilly edges and 3D creations. ;-) !
And, before anyone asks, the poem had nothing to do with Nantucket
Southwest Airlines?
Yellow Cab?
So, you are saying that Greyhound and Yellow Cab pay per-mile for the roads that they travel on? When did this happen? And Southwest Airlines has never been bailed out before, like all the other airlines?
The question is about the overall transportation system, not some specific companies that can make money based on the use of the transit system. Comparing Greyhound and Yellow Cab to San Francisco's BART or DC Metro is not an "apples to apples" comparison since those companies do not have to pay per-mile for the roads that they use. We all pay through various means for the roads that we all use.
There have been privately-funded roads before in America, but that was before the invention of the automobile. The Lancaster Turnpike, for example, was 62 miles of hard road - hard road being almost unheard of then - that one paid directly to travel on to get from Philadelphia to Lancaster. In fact, the term "turnpike" comes from the manner in which the pay road was set up. A set of pikes were pointed at you and, of course, your horses at the entrance of the road. After you paid the toll, the pikes were turned and you could then pass and travel on the road. We have nothing like this now, nor is it even desirable given modern life and technology.
Now, as to some AC posters wondering how Fundamentalists are demanding the weakening of science and math education, perhaps the precise word demanding is too active of a verb, except of course in the case of evolution. The problem lies in the attitude that fundamentalists take toward science and mathematics. I'm a Christian myself, but I had the incredible misfortune of being raised by a fundamentalist father and had to go to a fundamentalist church. The whole attitude is one of mindless acceptance of dogma that even often contradicts both the direct reading of scripture, the way divine revelation has been taught for the past two thousand years, and just basic logic, such as is commonly used by many Christian writers of old.
Fundamentalists take a very scoffing view of anything that resembles even slightly complicated logic. They want their beliefs plain, simple and mindless. This is what they call "faith", though most people of faith (or lack thereof) would refer to this as blind stupidity. Therefore, they not only hate math and science ("traditions of men"), they hate any form of religion that does not give simplistic answers to complicated problems.
So, to make what has been a long story short, the attitude that the study of mathematics and the sciences provides would stoke one's curiosity when studying other subjects, instead of having one mindlessly accept what one is told and not look more deeply into the subject matter.
The human race would be so funny if they weren't so dangerous.
I'm still upset that they haven't gotten around to banning my computer game "Central Committee Fish-Slap Dance". What does someone need to do to get noticed by them???
I wonder if one could make a good argument against the Constitutionality of both the 90-year-after-death and 70-year-after-death copyright laws using the 14th Amendment. Let's take the case of Dylan Thomas and George Burns. Now, assume arguendo that both Dylan Thomas and George Burns are born on the same day and create a piece of writing on the same day (though obviously different from the day in which they were born). Now, Dylan Thomas dies at the age of 29 and George Burns dies at the age of 100. Under the 70-year-after-death law, Dylan Thomas's copyright will expire when George Burns is still alive (though admittedly not for much longer). This is clearly discriminatory since the amount of copyright protection is based solely on one's ability to stave off death.
Basically, the only fair way to have a copyright is to make it a fixed-term copyright, like with patents and the original American copyright terms.
Just an idea...
Now, now. Bush is not a redneck buffoon. He is a blue-blood Yaley frat-boy buffoon pretending to be a redneck buffoon. Get it right man! :-p
Another overly broad patent issued...
Washi wani Jong-gwo-ren Internet! (okay, I know my pinyin is really muddled!)
Or perhaps in the movie they can have a bunch of large Scandanavian men drinking mead in Beowulf's mead hall and seeing whose cluster can calculate next weeks weather patterns faster...
And speaking of the "old golden days", and since this is /., I remember an old Twilight Zone episode from the early 60's in which a man was complaining about how horrible everything was and how things were so much better back in the 1890's.
Simple. You just find someone from your universe who is willing to fight with his opposite number in the anti-matter universe for all time, inside the portal between the two universes. Then, you just blow up the portal with your phasers and both universes are safe.
"You can't escape me! I'll chase you into the very fires of Hell!"
Anyway, I believe this is quite likely the result of some pathetic little person at AA who wants to feel powerful. Which is also, BTW, another reason why it is important to be careful about exactly what powers you give to law enforcement officials. Sometimes abuse of authority comes simply from someone wanting to feel big and strong.
In a like manner, if you fund the police well enough, you will get a marked drop in crime. Basically, if there are good civil institutions in place, we can all live much more peacefully. You also seem to be oversimplifying the situation. Not everyone is a brutish animal who will hurt people if they don't get what they want. Plus, there are people who will wind up commiting crimes, not because they are necessarily bad people, but because they are desperate and do not have much choice.
Further, you are also ignoring the fact that, for example, businesses and corporations operate based on the precise manner in which the law is set up, as do people who are trying to survive. Exactly what are considered fraudulent business practices, for example, is specifically codified. Businesses and corporations use these laws to maximize profit. In countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, for example, certain corporations conduct their business in a manner that would be considered highly exploitive here. As a result, ordinary people in these countries are very poor, especially in the village areas, and there is a lot of crime. If your only choice was to starve or to rob a store, what would you do?
You are also ignoring the fact that people can only accomplish so much based on their available opportunities. There are plenty of opportunities that are simply unavailable to just about everyone. For example, people who grew up in a poor area and whose father raped them repeatedly as a child, refused to help them in the least when it came to going to college, and forbid them to work when they were young are basically SOL when it comes to making anything of themselves in life. Or, at the very least, they have a much harder time of it, but will still never be nearly as successful as someone who was born into a good condition.
Hitler was a Socialist? WTF are you talking about? Hitler used the corporate power behind the Third Reich to produce munitions, tanks, basic military supplies, etc. Neither he nor IG Farben were trying to redistribute wealth throughout Germany (pillaging the wealth of the Jews is not Socialism). This is simply another childish way to try to say "ooohh, liberals bad, we good!"
I assume - and I have to assume since you merely asserted Hitler was a Socialist and somehow think that the use of an exclamation point improves upon your argument - that you are suggesting Hitler was a Socialist because the English version of the acronym "Nazi" stands for "National Socialist German Worker's Party" (iirc). Hitler was simply trying to throw in whatever buzz-words would appeal to the masses at the time.
In any event, it is a rather absurd argument since you are trying to base it solely on what something is named. By the same "logic", we should have nothing to worry about when it comes to the mainland Chinese government since mainland China is referred to as the "People's Republic of China". After all, if China is a republic, what are we worried about? And then there is North Korea, or the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea". Why should we worry if Kim il Jong has nuclear weapons? After all, they are a democratic-republic, so we can trust them.
I could go on with other examples if you really wanted, but I see no real point. I hope this little educational experience has been enlightening. Now, for the bonus question which will put you at the head of the class, which former US President, along with his father who was a US Senator, was found guilty of trading with the Nazis under the Trading With The Enemy Act of 1942?
By the same argument, you could say that paying taxes to keep up the police departments is a protection racket. Perhaps we should get rid of the police as well?
Probably because noone will hire you and the company you work for will get rid of you since it is better for them to hire someone young, vibrant and cheap. Plus, when you are 65, your health starts to deteriorate, more or less so depending upon who you are. What you are suggesting is a neat little "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" idealism that has nothing to do with reality. My stepdad used to think this way. Now that he actually is 65 and has to deal with all the associated problems, he sees that this is a rather silly notion. Actually, the problems with keeping a job that are associated with age began at about age 55-58 for him.
I really don't see what is wrong with having a society that does not automatically throw away anyone who is not a high producer, either because they are old or disabled. Does American society really have to be based on a kind of "hook and bloody talon" capitalism? Is the value of a human being only in what he/she can immediately produce? A society based on this sort of idealogy is doomed by its own moral depravity.
Um, there are plenty of available designs (SpaceShip One comes to mind). Whichever one he uses, he will have to buy it from the company that engineered it and can manufacture it, as I doubt he can put one together in his garage. So long as he has the money, he can make it work.
"Blue Origin operation, headquartered in a warehouse on East Marginal Way in Seattle"
Haw Haw.
Haw Haw??? Jiminey Cricket, man, are you the assistant writer for Jack Chick?
This isn't inconsistent with the idea of "how much one man needs." Indeed, with perfect information, we might be able to do better in allocating income in a more "fair" way (I'll leave it to the reader to determine what "fair" is).
Sorry, I'm not trying to be mean. In theory, this would a great way to efficiently allocate resources, assuming that we were ants or individual "cells" in some sort of overall body, similar to the Gaia planet in one of Asimov's books (why can't I remember which one?).
The problem with this idea is the same problem that exists for any kind of pure socialism. We are human beings and too many human beings are abysmally selfish.
The main problem that I have with this kind of technology is that it will be used as yet another way for people in positions of power to control other people. It is part of the perennial problem of the advancement of science. Most of the people who work to advance the overall knowledge of the human race tend to be idealists. Then, when new toys have been developed by engineers, arrogant and powerful people use them to control others or to enrich themselves, all the while thumbing their nose at the very people who helped create them. When they get their new toys, it is like giving them to a barbarian who then goes "look what Grog do with big boom-stick!"
So anyway, while it is interesting to advance the overall understanding of the mind, some people are just going to use this to make the world worse for everyone else.
If this were the case, I would countersue them claiming that their GM plants had infested and infected my pure natural plants. If you are a certified organic farmer, perhaps this would be even easier.
They are a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Believe it or not, there are a lot of people who are highly intelligent, even technically oriented, that do not know much about computers. For example, most mathematicians, physicists and chemists do not care too much about computers. As far as computer usability is concerned, they are little different than "joe/jill average". A chemist needs Chemdraw and similar programs, a physicist needs Maple, Mathematica and Matlab (MMM...), and a mathematician just needs LaTex to publish his/her work. Apart from that, they need what everyone else needs.
The problem is, we think they're cool, while most kids think the opposite.
Actually, I think the main problem is that most people in America only care about making lots of money and screwing as many people (girls and/or boys depending upon sex and personal preference) as they can. Very few people can get above their base animal nature and actually do something that is not related to material wealth or pleasure. This is partly why pure sciences, like physics, are studied by so few Americans. I remember when I was studying for my engineering bachelor's degree and mentioned (when it was an appropriate part of the conversation, of course) that I was about to go to graduate school in physics. Most people laughed and thought that this was a ridiculous waste of time. They didn't see that actually learning something is good in and of itself. It doesn't have to get you a better job or a higher salary.
The other problem, of course, is that physics requires a great deal of work and sitting down and solving problem after problem. Since most Americans have the attention span of a rock, this is not generally going to happen. It is a waste of time to try to make physics "cool". The reason why kids don't go into physics is a basic societal problem and that has to change before anything else can be done.
Just my 2 cents.