Bull. Sure those institution work great for general scientific research, but when it comes to applying the science, private companies that profit from the result are the way to go.

Now, what happens when I spend 10 years and thousands of dollars tinkering in my basement to build a next-gen Thingy, and then, since patents don't exist, two weeks after I release my product to the market, company X with billions of dollars at it's disposal come out with an identical copy and a far superior marketing strategy? Well, I don't recoup my costs (not even close) and company X makes all the money. Would company X have developed this technology? No. Will I ever do it again? No. Will a university develop this? No, they have no interest.

Yes, the patent system is broken. Is the solution to completely abolish it? Hell no.

You hit the nail on the head. Thank you.

A small, efficient laptop is not a netbook. A small, efficient, low-priced, low-power laptop is a netbook. Now, low-power is a relative term, so it will gradually increase with time, but by the time you can easily play Civ 4 on any netbook, you will want to play Civ 5 on your netbook because Civ 4 is too old.

Net books are designed to be just powerful enough to surf the inter net . If you make them more powerful, they are no longer netbooks. What you are asking for is akin to wanting to meet a 5' 6" midget.

Uhm, no. The federal government pays the states to build/maintain it.

Income Tax. My effective income tax rate is about 20%, so, since my $60 internet bill is not tax deductible, i'm paying about $15 to the federal government for my internet access. Then, you have comcast paying an additional 30% of that income (minus whatever deductions they get) to the federal government as well. Also, just fyi, anything I buy online that is not tax deductible I'm also paying taxes on.

Just because they can competently build IT infrastructure, doesn't mean that they can competently handle socio-economic issues of said infrastructure.

First of all, being incompetent in one area does not mean they are incompetent in all areas. Secondly, state governments are in charge of roads, not the federal government. And finally, saying that since the federal government does a great job with the military, so they must do a great job with everything else, is like saying Michael Jordan must be one hell of a brain surgeon.

Did you mean recursion?

Well, for my 2 cents, I've been working on a project by myself for the past 6 months, starting from scratch, and it's up to about 85,000 lines of code, and I would classify that as medium-scale. It all depends on what your perspective is I suppose.

But, like you said, a well organized 85k lines is a lot smaller than a poorly written/organized 40k lines.

It. Can't. Be. Automated.

You might as well be comparing effectiveness of recycling aluminum cans and mining for new aluminum. Yeah, the mining operation is going to produce more aluminum per square mile, but does that matter?

What really matters is what the resulting cost is. I have no idea which is more cost effective, I just know that you are looking at the wrong thing. Also, I would surmise that it's is much more likely that we will switch to ethanol _and_ electric (i.e. hybrid vehicles) than switch to electric all together.

Catholic birth control?

Your analogy is flawed. "Should your neighbor be able to build his own chair exactly like yours?" is the question you should be asking.

The difference between your chair and a photograph/essay is that the chair is tangible property while the photograph/essay is intangible property. Now, if you write a book, the content of that book is yours and cannot be taken by someone else who claims it as their own. The individual copies of that book, however (if you choose to sell them) are not yours. If you don't want to distribute copies of your work, fine, but that's not what this is about. Once you start distribution, you can't say "Well, I take that back, I don't want the public to have this work after all."

It's much more likely that the supercomputer is capable of 1.6 billion processor hours per year (or month?) and IBM is gonna be using 1.5% of that capacity. When IBM is done, that 1.5% will be freed up and can be used for something else.

Not to mention that if you are going to shell out for the hardware anyway (i.e. buy a PDA), you could just buy the smartphone outright and not get a 2 year contract...

If Joe User cannot create a password that has less than 12 characters, then the Sysadmin *established* (with an 'e' on the front) a policy that is being *enforced*. He doesn't just go around to each employee and teach them what kind of passwords they should make, he tells the system what kind of passwords will be accepted and how often they expire.