It's amazing how many prophets we have here on Slashdot! However, I don't think they are any better at prophesying than Harold Camping was in foretelling the end of the world. Of course Apple will greatly encourage the use of their App Store because they make money from it. That does not mean however they will prohibit Slashdot nerds from installing whatever software they wish. They will just make it harder, but not impossible for the ordinary user to do that.
The end of the world happens for you when you draw your last breath and your body releases your soul. For a lot of people on this earth the world ended on this day, May 21. So for these people the prophecy did come true, but for the rest of us this prophecy will also come true in due time. Harold Camping correctly prophesied to the fate of every human being, but he got the timing wrong for those of us who are still here breathing.
.....small, simple apps that do one thing. Do it exceedingly well, and do it quickly is a huge thing....
How about the idea of small modular apps that can be added to as needed. For example, a simple photo edit application that does most of the common things that people need to do most often. Anybody who needs to do more than the basics, can buy an additional module doing various specialized functions that are integrated with the main application. Sell the main application for five dollars and also each add-on module. If the application has say 10 modules, that together do most or all of what Photoshop does, it should be a big seller. That way, people can buy whatever functionality is needed at any time.
If someone discovered a simple technology whereby all secrets, no matter by whom they are held, could become known by anyone, would that be a good thing or would it be terrible? If all the thoughts and intentions of people could be read like an open book, some sort of universal mind scan technology, who would benefit more from this, those intent on doing evil or those intent on doing good?
Here is somebody who can read Arabic and claims that these symbols in the original text are in Arabic, not in Greek as is the rest of the New Testament.
How can an opinion be substantiated? Is an opinion not by definition an unprovable idea? If I express the opinion that Democrats are worse than Republicans, how can that be substantiated?
That is precisely why an my karma is in the cellar. Anyone who disagrees with the crowd anywhere, even on Slashdot, will get moderated into oblivion. I really think they ought to have a disagree option in the moderation system.
Nowhere ever, even once, has a crowd of people ever come up with anything great or outstanding. Progress in almost every human endeavor is made by people who are willing to swim against the current carrying all the dead fish that are floating downstream.
How will the police officer know that the electrons in your battery came from an untaxed source? Wouldn't it be simpler to have some sort of a weight-mileage-based tax? Every time you get a new sticker for your license plate, the DMV would read the odometer and charge you the appropriate tax. Even with the tax, electricity would be vastly cheaper than current gas prices.
Another advantage is that we would not be subsidizing terrorism from certain oil-rich countries.
I was thinking more in terms of a computer that you could talk to in order to tell it verbally to do a trend analysis on the million data points and possibly where to find those data points. The computer that would have a vocabulary of a two-year-old along with the ability to understand commands wouldn't be bad now would it?
Programming a computer is almost as tedious as it was when computers had a set of binary switches on the front panel. Speech to text programs, if they are trained to a particular speaker, are not bad, but they are still making a lot of mistakes. Computers are still a long ways off that will understand any human spoken language spoken by anyone. The dream of a telephone, where a person can speak English into at one end and flawless Chinese or French comes out at the other, is still a distant dream.
It is too bad that we still need keys at all. Even the most powerful computer is still incredibly dumb compared to my 17-month-old grandson. Last weekend we were in the kitchen and I asked him to show me his toy box with the new truck he just got. He had no trouble toddling all the way down the hall, into the living room straight to the toybox, and with a big smile on his face hold up and show me his new toy.
It seems to me that by now we should be able to talk to our computers at least as well as to a two-year-old. I wonder how far we are away from that.
---So even if you could travel at 92% light speed, you'd still die before you got there.---
So then we would have to conquer death first it seems to me. It turns out that someone on this earth did that already. His name is Jesus Christ. He made the seemingly preposterous claim to be God himself come to earth in human form. As such he made the promise that anyone who believes him will also permanently escape death and be resurrected in a body that transcends time and space, just as he was.
Anyone who carefully studies what his body was like after the resurrection, will realize that it was recognizable as human, but also had powers and abilities which we deem supernatural. He was able to transcend the limits of time and space. He had a body of flesh and bone, no blood. In our earthbound natural thinking, we cannot see how this can be.
Of course most of/.ers don't believe in anything supernatural. What we call supernatural is obviously beyond the reach of our science right now, but that does not mean it's not real. Jesus Christ demonstrated a technology so far beyond our own, all most people do is label it myth and fiction.
When Jesus finally left the Earth for "heaven" wherever that is, he did not need a huge rocket or spaceship. There was no searing flame, no earthshaking thunder or anything else that we have come to associate with space travel. His technology was even far beyond the imaginations of Star Trek.
Someday, those who trust and believe God, will be able to explore the ENTIRE universe God has created. Traveling to a planet 20 light years away will be easier for the resurrected, transcendent, eternal human beings, than it is today for a person to go from the kitchen to the living room.
I was able to buy those things at the corner drugstore and use them to make gunpowder with those ingredients. My parents got me a Gilbert chemistry set, which would be required by the EPA to be disposed of by men in hazmat suits today. Any parents that did such a thing today (if they even could) would be hauled off to jail for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. I had a glass bottle containing 5 pounds of mercury. Now and then I would enjoy the feel of it, pouring some of it from one hand to the other, before putting it back into the bottle one squiggly little silvery drop at a time.
It is my generation that survived going to the moon and other dangerous stuff. I feel sorry for the kids growing up nowadays. What can they do to learn by doing? Can they enjoy riding around town in the back of their dad's pickup truck on a warm summer day? Can they feel the warm breeze ruffling their hair as they ride a motorcycle or even their bicycle down the road without a suffocating helmet?
Highschoolers can do simulated chemistry and physics experiments on sophisticated computers, but they don't actually get to smell that hydrogen sulfide or burning sugar and jump out of the way as the heavy steel ball rolls down the inclined plane missing its container and falls to the floor.
Oh yes, they can now walk down the street yakking on their cell phones and play video games all night instead of reading a book. Fun!
---In November, many of those unemployed folks are going to be at the polls. We shall see......
I hope that all incumbents will be thrown out of office and we get some new blood in there. In the long run, the new politicians may not be any better, but at least it will take them a while to reestablish all their bribery connections. If this happens, at least it will send a message that the people are fed up with business as usual and with the people of both parties currently in office. Maybe after that shakeup, politicians everywhere will listen just a little tiny bit better to those they are supposed to represent, the voters, not the corporate fat cats with their huge bankrolls.
E-books have many advantages, but they also have at least two big disadvantages. The first is that you can't sell a used e-book. This is not as important for cheaper paperback products but a significant disadvantage for more expensive books like textbooks. The second disadvantage is that you cannot lend an e-book to a friend.
If all books become only e-books, libraries will go extinct eventually. Also normal printed books don't require any additional equipment. Everybody's got a pair of eyes. All e-book readers have ever seen so far are rather fragile, but printed books are incredibly rugged. They can take abuse that will kill an e-book reader many times over.
Many people have shelves full of decades-old print books. I cannot imagine that there will ever be decades old e-books because electronic devices don't last very long and become obsolete almost by the time you walk out the shop door with one
For me the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages, especially for ever buying a dedicated e-book reader device. At least an iPad can be used for all sorts of other purposes that are often accomplished by a computer.
Only paperless books and the paperless office will happen sometime after we have paperless toilets.
---I simply disallow any electronic devices during exams---
When your students get out into industry, having a real job in the real world, will they not be allowed to use every tool that exists for their work? All electronic devices are tools are they not? Is the entire Internet really not much more than a huge sophisticated library that can be used to get the needed information to help solve problems? Why do colleges and universities artificially limit the tools that the students will use routinely after they graduate? Is a college education not designed to teach people how to solve problems using whatever tools are applicable and available?
It is of course a lot more work to structure your tests and assignments in such a way that the student who has truly learned to solve problems can demonstrate to you that this is true. Multiple guess and true false tests are easy to develop and grade, but rarely if ever test anyone's ability to really solve a problem. Testing for rote knowledge that anyone can look up when they actually need the information is easy. Testing for real knowledge and problem solving ability, independent of the tools used, is difficult. It is your job to teach your students how to think and solve problems. It is also your job to determine if you are really successful at this. That is a lot of hard work for you, the professor.
----When i give my address to an ISP its for billing and maintenance ONLY---
Why do ISPs have to maintain records connecting an IP address with your name and street address? Are they required to do so by law? If not, it seems that an enterprising ISP could get quite a few extra subscribers by advertising that they do not keep any records on the connection between an Internet address and the real physical address of a customer.
When such an enterprising ISP provider then gets a subpoena for this information, they can honestly tell the judge or lawyer that they do not keep this data, at least not for more than a month or two. Is the perpetual keeping of this connecting information really at all valuable to any ISP? It seems that combing through a pile of records by the ISP is not exactly free either. Would it not be cheaper for them to simply send a form letter to the requester of a subpoena stating that they never record or no longer have the requested information.
Mark 8:35 For whoever will save his life shall lose it; but whoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gospel's, he shall save it. Mark 8:36 For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Mark 8:37 Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Mark 8:38 Therefore whoever shall be ashamed of Me and of My Words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man shall also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.
No amount of money can buy happiness because only God can and does give blessings to anyone who believes Him and because of that belief does the will of God.
----They tend to hang on longer and die for other reasons---
In the United States life expectancy is about 77.5 to 80 years. That is the same as what God said through the psalmist about 3000 years ago.
Psalm 90:10 The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away. Psalm 90:12 So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.
Despite all modern medical knowledge and scientific research, the human lifespan today is no better than what God said it would be.
The world average lifespan is 67.5 years which is actually less than what was given to the people who lived 3000 years or more before our time. Now about all of this research can do is to make this allotted lifespan healthier and more pain-free, but not extend it much if at all.
---Both ASC and ESC research may have the potential to cure diabetes, Alzheimer's, etc. ----
If such research really could come up with viable cures for such diseases, then any one of the super rich megacorporation pharmaceutical companies would be doing this without the help of a single cent of federal tax money. They could use as many embryos as they could get a hold of because of the law only applies to the use of taxpayer funds.
They could come up with a patented drug or process and make millions. Obviously they don't see a big pot of gold at the end of this particular research rainbow, otherwise they would be doing this research themselves or at least funding it to be done at advanced university laboratories.
----gloss over the major role that natural selection plays which is not random---
The problem is that natural selection can only confer advantage on a completed working, functional part of an organism. A partially completed, partially evolved organ or system does not confer reproductive advantage and will therefore be invisible to the mechanism of natural selection.
For example, a partially completed red blood cell containing incomplete hemoglobin will not fulfill the oxygen carrying capability and therefore will not confer an evolutionary advantage by the mechanism of natural selection. A large number of changes have to happen all at once in order to get a complex working structure such as the oxygen transport mechanism found in living organisms.
Therefore, although natural selection is a established scientific fact, it is insufficient by itself to explain how many of the complicated mechanisms of life could have arisen by the small incremental changes that natural selection is capable of. Darwin himself admitted this to be true.
If you will simply search for the word "design" or "designed" in this thread, you will find that its repeated use in the numerous reference to the awesome complexity of the human brain, is unavoidable even by ardent evolutionists.
----What authority does the federal government have to regulate the Internet?---
In 1934, after the growth of radio, Congress established the Federal COMMUNICATIONS Commission. This commission was given broad authority over all COMMUNICATION that crosses state lines. Since the Internet is nothing more than another communications system, as is the wireless telephone, all these forms of communications fall under the jurisdiction of the FCC. Theoretically at least, being an arm of the government, the FCC is supposed to serve the common good, not the pocketbooks of the communications providers.
Before broadband services became common, people communicated by telephone, including dial-up computer connections to the Internet. There were efforts then by the phone companies to disallow or charge more for modem connections than for ordinary voice service. Was that horrible idea squelched by government regulation or the free market?
So now the communications companies are at it again, trying to squeeze more dollars out of their customers by charging more or less for different kinds of information traveling over their wires. If the FCC did apply the same rules on the communications providers of the Internet as they do over the communications providers of the telephone system, there is really no one except Congress that could change this. Even the courts would be hard-pressed to challenge the authority of the FCC given to them by Congress long time ago.
----But university isn't free. It can cost a lot of time and money----
In today's world, as in the past, it's always about the work a person eventually earns their living by, that is the number one reason for getting an education. In our world, a degree from a prestigious university will get a person in the door, thereby given the chance by an employer to demonstrate or not the ability to perform a given job.
In times past, throughout most of humanity's history, the employers themselves would train an apprentice to do a given work. This model would still work in many professions or industries, but with the rise of large corporations, the burden of training for a given job is no longer on the employer like it used to be. It is now placed on the shoulders of society as a whole and those seeking work. The corporate employers no longer have to bear the burden of educating the workers, thus making larger profits themselves.
No matter how smart or skillful a person is, they will not be considered for employment unless they have some sort of paper that attests to the fact that they have warmed a chair in an approved school for a certain length of time. The only alternative for a smart and skilled person not possessing said paper is to become an entrepreneur unless they are related to the CEO or other higher up management of a company.
Even Jesus Christ, not being educated by "approved" teachers, would not likely get a job in a modern factory making furniture.
Until this system of filtering for employment is changed, the uncredentialed Internet educated genius is not likely to get a decent job.
In a way, I agree with you. You can't change human nature, at least not easily. However, it would send a message to all politicians especially in the federal government, that the voters are very unhappy with the direction they are steering his country. It would tell them to truly represent the people, as they are supposed to, rather than whoever paid their re-election expenses.
Also, meaningful election reform, such as limiting the amount of money any particular person or group of persons can contribute to a particular candidate would go a long way, to keep our elected officials tuned to the needs and desires of their constituents. It would take a constitutional amendment, to prevent activist judges from simply declaring such a reform unconstitutional.
The only reason that voting is not working, is because people are voting for the same politicians year in and year out. One of the definitions of insanity is: "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result each time".
A simple solution is not vote for anyone currently in office, regardless of whether they are a republicrat or a democan. Give the newcomers, many of which have a better idea, a chance. The voters simply need to clean house once and for all. With all new blood into elected offices, it will take a while at least before the corrupt old boy network can be reestablished.
Slashdot Mirror
It's amazing how many prophets we have here on Slashdot! However, I don't think they are any better at prophesying than Harold Camping was in foretelling the end of the world. Of course Apple will greatly encourage the use of their App Store because they make money from it. That does not mean however they will prohibit Slashdot nerds from installing whatever software they wish. They will just make it harder, but not impossible for the ordinary user to do that.
The end of the world happens for you when you draw your last breath and your body releases your soul. For a lot of people on this earth the world ended on this day, May 21. So for these people the prophecy did come true, but for the rest of us this prophecy will also come true in due time. Harold Camping correctly prophesied to the fate of every human being, but he got the timing wrong for those of us who are still here breathing.
.....small, simple apps that do one thing. Do it exceedingly well, and do it quickly is a huge thing....
How about the idea of small modular apps that can be added to as needed. For example, a simple photo edit application that does most of the common things that people need to do most often. Anybody who needs to do more than the basics, can buy an additional module doing various specialized functions that are integrated with the main application. Sell the main application for five dollars and also each add-on module. If the application has say 10 modules, that together do most or all of what Photoshop does, it should be a big seller. That way, people can buy whatever functionality is needed at any time.
If someone discovered a simple technology whereby all secrets, no matter by whom they are held, could become known by anyone, would that be a good thing or would it be terrible? If all the thoughts and intentions of people could be read like an open book, some sort of universal mind scan technology, who would benefit more from this, those intent on doing evil or those intent on doing good?
Here is somebody who can read Arabic and claims that these symbols in the original text are in Arabic, not in Greek as is the rest of the New Testament.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtquNNEO7Fw
How can an opinion be substantiated? Is an opinion not by definition an unprovable idea? If I express the opinion that Democrats are worse than Republicans, how can that be substantiated?
That is precisely why an my karma is in the cellar. Anyone who disagrees with the crowd anywhere, even on Slashdot, will get moderated into oblivion. I really think they ought to have a disagree option in the moderation system.
Nowhere ever, even once, has a crowd of people ever come up with anything great or outstanding. Progress in almost every human endeavor is made by people who are willing to swim against the current carrying all the dead fish that are floating downstream.
How will the police officer know that the electrons in your battery came from an untaxed source? Wouldn't it be simpler to have some sort of a weight-mileage-based tax? Every time you get a new sticker for your license plate, the DMV would read the odometer and charge you the appropriate tax. Even with the tax, electricity would be vastly cheaper than current gas prices.
Another advantage is that we would not be subsidizing terrorism from certain oil-rich countries.
I was thinking more in terms of a computer that you could talk to in order to tell it verbally to do a trend analysis on the million data points and possibly where to find those data points. The computer that would have a vocabulary of a two-year-old along with the ability to understand commands wouldn't be bad now would it?
Programming a computer is almost as tedious as it was when computers had a set of binary switches on the front panel. Speech to text programs, if they are trained to a particular speaker, are not bad, but they are still making a lot of mistakes. Computers are still a long ways off that will understand any human spoken language spoken by anyone. The dream of a telephone, where a person can speak English into at one end and flawless Chinese or French comes out at the other, is still a distant dream.
It is too bad that we still need keys at all. Even the most powerful computer is still incredibly dumb compared to my 17-month-old grandson. Last weekend we were in the kitchen and I asked him to show me his toy box with the new truck he just got. He had no trouble toddling all the way down the hall, into the living room straight to the toybox, and with a big smile on his face hold up and show me his new toy.
It seems to me that by now we should be able to talk to our computers at least as well as to a two-year-old. I wonder how far we are away from that.
---So even if you could travel at 92% light speed, you'd still die before you got there.---
So then we would have to conquer death first it seems to me. It turns out that someone on this earth did that already. His name is Jesus Christ. He made the seemingly preposterous claim to be God himself come to earth in human form. As such he made the promise that anyone who believes him will also permanently escape death and be resurrected in a body that transcends time and space, just as he was.
Anyone who carefully studies what his body was like after the resurrection, will realize that it was recognizable as human, but also had powers and abilities which we deem supernatural. He was able to transcend the limits of time and space. He had a body of flesh and bone, no blood. In our earthbound natural thinking, we cannot see how this can be.
Of course most of /.ers don't believe in anything supernatural. What we call supernatural is obviously beyond the reach of our science right now, but that does not mean it's not real. Jesus Christ demonstrated a technology so far beyond our own, all most people do is label it myth and fiction.
When Jesus finally left the Earth for "heaven" wherever that is, he did not need a huge rocket or spaceship. There was no searing flame, no earthshaking thunder or anything else that we have come to associate with space travel. His technology was even far beyond the imaginations of Star Trek.
Someday, those who trust and believe God, will be able to explore the ENTIRE universe God has created. Traveling to a planet 20 light years away will be easier for the resurrected, transcendent, eternal human beings, than it is today for a person to go from the kitchen to the living room.
...When I was a kid....
I was able to buy those things at the corner drugstore and use them to make gunpowder with those ingredients. My parents got me a Gilbert chemistry set, which would be required by the EPA to be disposed of by men in hazmat suits today. Any parents that did such a thing today (if they even could) would be hauled off to jail for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. I had a glass bottle containing 5 pounds of mercury. Now and then I would enjoy the feel of it, pouring some of it from one hand to the other, before putting it back into the bottle one squiggly little silvery drop at a time.
It is my generation that survived going to the moon and other dangerous stuff. I feel sorry for the kids growing up nowadays. What can they do to learn by doing? Can they enjoy riding around town in the back of their dad's pickup truck on a warm summer day? Can they feel the warm breeze ruffling their hair as they ride a motorcycle or even their bicycle down the road without a suffocating helmet?
Highschoolers can do simulated chemistry and physics experiments on sophisticated computers, but they don't actually get to smell that hydrogen sulfide or burning sugar and jump out of the way as the heavy steel ball rolls down the inclined plane missing its container and falls to the floor.
Oh yes, they can now walk down the street yakking on their cell phones and play video games all night instead of reading a book. Fun!
---In November, many of those unemployed folks are going to be at the polls. We shall see ......
I hope that all incumbents will be thrown out of office and we get some new blood in there. In the long run, the new politicians may not be any better, but at least it will take them a while to reestablish all their bribery connections. If this happens, at least it will send a message that the people are fed up with business as usual and with the people of both parties currently in office. Maybe after that shakeup, politicians everywhere will listen just a little tiny bit better to those they are supposed to represent, the voters, not the corporate fat cats with their huge bankrolls.
E-books have many advantages, but they also have at least two big disadvantages. The first is that you can't sell a used e-book. This is not as important for cheaper paperback products but a significant disadvantage for more expensive books like textbooks. The second disadvantage is that you cannot lend an e-book to a friend.
If all books become only e-books, libraries will go extinct eventually. Also normal printed books don't require any additional equipment. Everybody's got a pair of eyes. All e-book readers have ever seen so far are rather fragile, but printed books are incredibly rugged. They can take abuse that will kill an e-book reader many times over.
Many people have shelves full of decades-old print books. I cannot imagine that there will ever be decades old e-books because electronic devices don't last very long and become obsolete almost by the time you walk out the shop door with one
For me the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages, especially for ever buying a dedicated e-book reader device. At least an iPad can be used for all sorts of other purposes that are often accomplished by a computer.
Only paperless books and the paperless office will happen sometime after we have paperless toilets.
---I simply disallow any electronic devices during exams---
When your students get out into industry, having a real job in the real world, will they not be allowed to use every tool that exists for their work? All electronic devices are tools are they not? Is the entire Internet really not much more than a huge sophisticated library that can be used to get the needed information to help solve problems? Why do colleges and universities artificially limit the tools that the students will use routinely after they graduate? Is a college education not designed to teach people how to solve problems using whatever tools are applicable and available?
It is of course a lot more work to structure your tests and assignments in such a way that the student who has truly learned to solve problems can demonstrate to you that this is true. Multiple guess and true false tests are easy to develop and grade, but rarely if ever test anyone's ability to really solve a problem. Testing for rote knowledge that anyone can look up when they actually need the information is easy. Testing for real knowledge and problem solving ability, independent of the tools used, is difficult. It is your job to teach your students how to think and solve problems. It is also your job to determine if you are really successful at this. That is a lot of hard work for you, the professor.
----When i give my address to an ISP its for billing and maintenance ONLY---
Why do ISPs have to maintain records connecting an IP address with your name and street address? Are they required to do so by law? If not, it seems that an enterprising ISP could get quite a few extra subscribers by advertising that they do not keep any records on the connection between an Internet address and the real physical address of a customer.
When such an enterprising ISP provider then gets a subpoena for this information, they can honestly tell the judge or lawyer that they do not keep this data, at least not for more than a month or two. Is the perpetual keeping of this connecting information really at all valuable to any ISP? It seems that combing through a pile of records by the ISP is not exactly free either. Would it not be cheaper for them to simply send a form letter to the requester of a subpoena stating that they never record or no longer have the requested information.
---A decent lawyer ---
I did not now there was such thing, at least not in the USA.
Jesus the Christ said:
Mark 8:35 For whoever will save his life shall lose it; but whoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gospel's, he shall save it.
Mark 8:36 For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
Mark 8:37 Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
Mark 8:38 Therefore whoever shall be ashamed of Me and of My Words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man shall also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.
No amount of money can buy happiness because only God can and does give blessings to anyone who believes Him and because of that belief does the will of God.
----They tend to hang on longer and die for other reasons---
In the United States life expectancy is about 77.5 to 80 years. That is the same as what God said through the psalmist about 3000 years ago.
Psalm 90:10 The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.
Psalm 90:12 So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.
Despite all modern medical knowledge and scientific research, the human lifespan today is no better than what God said it would be.
The world average lifespan is 67.5 years which is actually less than what was given to the people who lived 3000 years or more before our time. Now about all of this research can do is to make this allotted lifespan healthier and more pain-free, but not extend it much if at all.
---Both ASC and ESC research may have the potential to cure diabetes, Alzheimer's, etc. ----
If such research really could come up with viable cures for such diseases, then any one of the super rich megacorporation pharmaceutical companies would be doing this without the help of a single cent of federal tax money. They could use as many embryos as they could get a hold of because of the law only applies to the use of taxpayer funds.
They could come up with a patented drug or process and make millions. Obviously they don't see a big pot of gold at the end of this particular research rainbow, otherwise they would be doing this research themselves or at least funding it to be done at advanced university laboratories.
----gloss over the major role that natural selection plays which is not random---
The problem is that natural selection can only confer advantage on a completed working, functional part of an organism. A partially completed, partially evolved organ or system does not confer reproductive advantage and will therefore be invisible to the mechanism of natural selection.
For example, a partially completed red blood cell containing incomplete hemoglobin will not fulfill the oxygen carrying capability and therefore will not confer an evolutionary advantage by the mechanism of natural selection. A large number of changes have to happen all at once in order to get a complex working structure such as the oxygen transport mechanism found in living organisms.
Therefore, although natural selection is a established scientific fact, it is insufficient by itself to explain how many of the complicated mechanisms of life could have arisen by the small incremental changes that natural selection is capable of. Darwin himself admitted this to be true.
If you will simply search for the word "design" or "designed" in this thread, you will find that its repeated use in the numerous reference to the awesome complexity of the human brain, is unavoidable even by ardent evolutionists.
----What authority does the federal government have to regulate the Internet?---
In 1934, after the growth of radio, Congress established the Federal COMMUNICATIONS Commission. This commission was given broad authority over all COMMUNICATION that crosses state lines. Since the Internet is nothing more than another communications system, as is the wireless telephone, all these forms of communications fall under the jurisdiction of the FCC. Theoretically at least, being an arm of the government, the FCC is supposed to serve the common good, not the pocketbooks of the communications providers.
Before broadband services became common, people communicated by telephone, including dial-up computer connections to the Internet. There were efforts then by the phone companies to disallow or charge more for modem connections than for ordinary voice service. Was that horrible idea squelched by government regulation or the free market?
So now the communications companies are at it again, trying to squeeze more dollars out of their customers by charging more or less for different kinds of information traveling over their wires. If the FCC did apply the same rules on the communications providers of the Internet as they do over the communications providers of the telephone system, there is really no one except Congress that could change this. Even the courts would be hard-pressed to challenge the authority of the FCC given to them by Congress long time ago.
----But university isn't free. It can cost a lot of time and money----
In today's world, as in the past, it's always about the work a person eventually earns their living by, that is the number one reason for getting an education. In our world, a degree from a prestigious university will get a person in the door, thereby given the chance by an employer to demonstrate or not the ability to perform a given job.
In times past, throughout most of humanity's history, the employers themselves would train an apprentice to do a given work. This model would still work in many professions or industries, but with the rise of large corporations, the burden of training for a given job is no longer on the employer like it used to be. It is now placed on the shoulders of society as a whole and those seeking work. The corporate employers no longer have to bear the burden of educating the workers, thus making larger profits themselves.
No matter how smart or skillful a person is, they will not be considered for employment unless they have some sort of paper that attests to the fact that they have warmed a chair in an approved school for a certain length of time. The only alternative for a smart and skilled person not possessing said paper is to become an entrepreneur unless they are related to the CEO or other higher up management of a company.
Even Jesus Christ, not being educated by "approved" teachers, would not likely get a job in a modern factory making furniture.
Until this system of filtering for employment is changed, the uncredentialed Internet educated genius is not likely to get a decent job.
In a way, I agree with you. You can't change human nature, at least not easily. However, it would send a message to all politicians especially in the federal government, that the voters are very unhappy with the direction they are steering his country. It would tell them to truly represent the people, as they are supposed to, rather than whoever paid their re-election expenses.
Also, meaningful election reform, such as limiting the amount of money any particular person or group of persons can contribute to a particular candidate would go a long way, to keep our elected officials tuned to the needs and desires of their constituents. It would take a constitutional amendment, to prevent activist judges from simply declaring such a reform unconstitutional.
---- If just voting is not working ---
The only reason that voting is not working, is because people are voting for the same politicians year in and year out. One of the definitions of insanity is: "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result each time".
A simple solution is not vote for anyone currently in office, regardless of whether they are a republicrat or a democan. Give the newcomers, many of which have a better idea, a chance. The voters simply need to clean house once and for all. With all new blood into elected offices, it will take a while at least before the corrupt old boy network can be reestablished.