That's his point - for the purposes of using the makerbot, it is dead time. You can't iterate before you have something, and you can't have something for 5 hours with a 33% chance that hardware failure was the problem and not the design.

That's basically the same as having to wait 5 hours, right?

How many amateurs are willing to burn virtually all of their free time for a day to do those things? Very few. Comparing your professional abilities and patience to his amateur abilities and patience is unfair (to put it very kindly).

That might have been true a few years ago...

Are you kidding me? Just imagine what advances will come to mankind when one alien orders from another alien on ebay and paypal keeps both the item and money when there's a "dispute".

I think that's the point, but it can also prove the opposite. Full honesty and a good record will help both sides.

Looks like everything's in order. From a technical and possibly legal perspective, then, everyone is barred from laughing at GP's post until further notice.

I'm pretty sure word on stuxnet broke well before the Mandiant report showed a clear link to the Chinese government. It's hard to hide something that does physical damage to your enemy's hardware.

That's cute. Companies have been patenting genes for a while now, ones found in the wild without any modification by the company. If that doesn't count as prior art, I don't see how nests or hives would.

6 figure salaries in an area where cost of living makes that a lot of money. But don't let your ignorance stop you from commenting.

I work for a large company that hires based on talent. We can't get enough workers, H-1B or not. We don't discriminate based on age or anything else, just skill. The stories in my area are the same for all companies: we can't get enough skilled programmers.

This headline will just serve as an excuse for people to post rants about how their talent is being overlooked because of the foreigners invading our shores while ignoring the fact that many people who try to work as programmers are just terrible (see: fizzbuzz).

Just because it's simple doesn't mean it's obvious and should be able to be patented. You need someone who knows the field to determine whether it's obvious or not, and if you have someone who knows the field looking at the working code, they could do just as well looking at the application (once it was translated into English, anyway).

It's weird that you have content as a public member but require a getter for position. Seems like you should be consistent one way or the other.

I'm sure he'll spare no expense, maybe make them dependent on something that only he can give them, and then certainly make them all the same gender. Given all that, what's the worst that could happen?

No real scientist would do that.

The way it currently works is that generics don't need to go through the same trials because they're the exact same chemical and re-proving that it's safe and effective doesn't add anything. If it would add something, then we probably improve the required trials so that one set is good enough.

The other argument against requiring generics to go through trials is that cheap generics are an important part of healthcare. If you don't have the insurance to pay for the latest and greatest, you can use the generic instead and it will cost you $10 / month.

In pharma, that red tape is known as "making sure the drug doesn't outright kill you." It's not perfect and it's currently being gamed, but the red tape is absolutely necessary.

The other problem with pharma is that the red tape is only necessary for the first person to do it. Thus, if the patent system goes away but the red tape stays there, then innovation will disappear completely because everyone will jump on the new drugs with generics and no need to recoup the costs of making sure it doesn't kill people.

There are things that need fixing with pharma, but simply eliminating red tape and patents certainly won't do it.