I live a couple hours train ride from Geneva. Am I allowed to participate or listen in on the WIPO talks in any way?

It gets rated as a troll, because there isn't a "-1 stupid" moderation.

Of course the U.S. government is full of corruption. Does the post actually contribute in any way to a meaningful dialog regarding the nature of that corruption as it applies to this issue, or (even better) towards a meaningful discussion regarding correction of the problem?

While others have made the comment that this is probably more about power, let's not forget that this could simply be a matter stupidity, incompetence, and/or exploitation of stupidity and ignorance.. All of these things are also rampant in our government. It's very likely that this simply the product of a scared, ignorant legislator who isn't thinking about the real repercussions of his legislation, or who is terrified of the changing nature of society. it's even more likely that this legislation created to exploit the fears of an impressionable and fearful constituency. I personally rather doubt that the legislations authors have any great plans for their creation. I'm of the impression that more governmental harm is accomplished through incompetence and neglect than as a result of dark designs of those in power.

Whatever the intentions of the bills creators, it's far more important and productive to rationally assess the harms of such a bill, to defuse the fud underlying the bill, and of course to campaign vigorously against these dangerous politicians, regardless of whether they are dangerous because they are stupid or because they have villainous intentions, and regardless of whether they are democrats or republicans. If your choice from the democratic party is this bad, vote in an independant next time. We desperately need more of those.

It's time to bring a little rational though to government policy, instead of treating everything as an emotional, idealogical issue. It's sad that so many issues in American politics wind up being a debate between "let's have a rational conversation about this" versus "No, my faith says you're wrong".

This finding is just another piece in a century's worth of evidence that drup prohibition just plain does not work. It doesn't reduce drug use, it doesn't reduce addiction rates, it doesn't reduce the harms inflicted on society due to drug abuse, it doesn't protect kids... In short, it doesn't accomplish any of the things it claims to accomplish. It does do an enormous amount of harm.

If these teabaggers actually cared about small government, privacy, individual liberty, government staying out of health care, etc, they should start fighting drug prohibition, asset forfeiture, and all the screwed up big government, big brother crap that comes out of drug prohibition. The reason why they don't is of course obvious: These teabaggers are essentialy modern day brownshirts screwing up democratic processes in an orgy of racism: usually as subtext, but more and more out in the open. The modern system of drug prohibition is of course our strongest form of institutionalized racism. These guys don't mind big government poking around in our private lives, and making decisions about our health, as long as they are targeting hispanics and blacks vastly more than whites.

It is of course an indisputable fact that the first Marijuana laws were nothing more than a legislative method of screwing hispanics in California, but I always figured the racist outcomes of drug prohibition were an accidental by-product of faulty and emotional thinking. Nowadays, when I see the overlap between the hard-line prohibitionists and the teabaggers, I start thinking, yeah, maybe deep down a lot of it is just plain racially motivated. Maybe.

I do regret letting this post devolve into a flaming of tea baggers, but I just can't help myself. I find it awesome that they chose to name themselves after the practice of laying your testicles on something. I always knew all those right wing fundamentalists were total perverts. I don't live in the states, but can I suggest that those of you living there start going to teabagger meeting with large photo collections of your testacles layed out on various things? Start whipping that tea-bag out and laying it on the speaking podium or coffee machine and taking pictures.

Broken modding here. The parent is a well written, thoughtful post. I don't have any expertise with which to judge the ideas themselves, but they are at least interesting, and original within this thread. I didn't find anything remotely similar to flamebait... Maybe debate-bate, but isn't that what we're striving for here? Someone mod parent up pls.

So a lack of basic understanding of conservation of momentum (angular momentum in this case) rates a +4 interesting mod? Wow.

I'd love to hear a plausible explanation of how a sun could reverse it's spin (someone banked a sun off of it with reverse spin? A giant cosmic swizzle stick?). Reversing the orbit of an orbiting body seems much more likely.

No, I make it seem like Thomas Jefferson foresaw the danger of the patent system transforming into the counter productive system it has become. Which in fact is the case.

I am not against patents, nor was T.J. However I agree with his sentiment against the patenting of ideas.

I was always under the impression that patents were to protect novel ideas that were unlikely to be obvious to anyone that was working in the field. This I find acceptable usage of patents!

You have always been mistaken. The purpose of the patent system is to encourage investment into research and development, and thus encourage and promote human progress and invention. Allowing ideas to be patented slows innovation, while allowing the patent of an invention which has required much time, effort, and or money to develop, provides a financial incentive for for R&D, and thus encourages innovation.

Thus patents should protect inventions which require a significant amount of research and development, not ideas. To quote Thomas Jefferson:

It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.

If you wish to correct your ignorance, I can suggest the book "Math you can't use" as an excellent text on the subject.

Well, I live in Switzerland, which has decent labor laws (compared to the U.S.), so that makes things easier. There is however a competing workaholic culture. Fortunately, I'm good at what I do, and hard to replace, which again makes things easier. I'm a programmer, and I see my job as solving problems, designing solutions, and writing and debugging code. Everything else is necessary baggage to keep me productive. My employer profits most when I'm most productive, so I express my demands as my ways of ensuring productivity.

I have found that it's important to set boundaries right at the start. I let people know firmly when I can get something done, and I don't let them wheedle me down to a shorter deadline. I do work overtime from time to time when there is an externally imposed deadline, who`s importance is clear, and where it's clear that the crunch is not due to managerial incompetence. When management is to blame, I just state the reasons why the work can't be done when they want it, and leave it implied that they would have to hire additional programmer if they want work done faster.

What I've noticed is, barring a really competent and human boss, most bosses and coworkers will only show you as much appreciation and gratitude as you demand. If you try to be helpful and be a team player all the time, people come to just expect this off of you. Then when you try to take your weekend for yourself you're seen as slacking off. On the other hand, if you make a point of always taking your weekends, leaving when it's time for you to leave, and make sure to point out that "okay, I'll work over the weekend for this special case, but I'll be taking a long weekend next weekend to make up for it", people actually appreciate you more.

Of course you should also be careful no to go too far and become the arrogant asshole coworker who never pitches in when things are tough. Maybe you can get away with it, and often people are rewarded for that kind of behavior, but the world has too many of that kind of person already.

For concrete suggestions, I have a few policies that you may or may not be able to use:

• I lost my cell phone a while ago. I still haven't replaced it. I don't miss it. If I ever do, I won't bother telling work I've done so.
• I have told everyone that email is an unreliable medium for contacting me. I check it less than once a day. I justify this as being an enormous interuption and productivity destroyer. If something is urgent, call me or stop by my office. If not, email it, but median response time is 3 days (can be as long as a week).
• I don't work on weekends (sometimes I actually do, when I'm in danger of not meeting my own time commitments, but I don't tell my employer). When I agree to work weekends, I make sure to arrange the comp time.

In exchange I have the following internallized commitments:

• I'm careful about promises: make conservative delivery promises, and I work overtime if I screw up my estimates (but I don't let on that I'm working overtime). The better I am about making promises, the less my private life suffers.
• I try not to waste time at work: no surfing, no chatting. When I'm on the clock, I'm being productive. Scheduled, reasonable breaks when necessary to keep me focused.
• Time estimates include time for testing. This minimized the chances of urgent last minute work to fix something I screwed up.
• Do good work, make sure it's not worthwhile replacing me with someone who is willing to work overtime.
• Within my constraints, be as helpful and cooperative as possible.

I'm aware that the work situation in the U.S. is a bit tougher. You should also consider:

• Get more politically active. Do what you can to influence your politicians, especially at the state and local level (where you have more influence) to do more to protect workers rights. Learn how other countries do it, so you can make concrete suggestions.
• Consider unionizing

Sounds like their may be a few companies using that technology.

I think the summary meant to say "Sounds like there may be a few companies using that idea

The poor choice in wording of the summary reflects the problem with the patent system today. While it makes sense to make technology patentable, since it takes time and research money to develop technology, and a patent system should server to encourage research and development. What we have now is the patenting of ideas, which just slows progress, and that of course is the problem. If we're going to change the system, we have to make sure that people see the distinction.

Okay, so I figure there must be a body of Slashdot participants which actually know something about nuclear power, so maybe this is a productive place to start this thread:

Usually the anti/pro nuclear power debate centers around the risk of radiation leaks or something going wrong at the power plant, i.e. the danger of catastrophic faults. Besides attempting to refute the emotional fears of the anti-nuclear proponents, the pro-nuclear guys always focus on the cheapness of the power.

Okay, so here's my question: As I understand it, nuclear reactors have a limited lifetime, after which they have to be decommisioned. At this point, can anything be done with the old nuclear site? My probably out-of-date understanding is that there's nothing left to do but fill the plant with concrete, and fence it off for next X thousand years until the radiation decays. Is that still the case?

Also, what's the deal with the waste from the modern plants, and the waste storage? Has anyone done a good analysis of the real costs of nuclear power, in the long term (i.e. total cost of a nuclear plant, including the storage and cleanup from here to human extinction)? I'd love to see that.

That was pretty funny. If I had the mod points, I'd give em to you, off topic or not.

Am I the only one one imagining a zombie robots movie? Zombie transformers maybe...

Wow, so that gets moderated as trolling eh? My intent certainly wasn't to troll. I though it was an interesting and informative post, as these things go.

I take the poor reception as sign of the intolerance we (culturally) have towards atheism; even on /. . Oh well, intolerance is one of the self-preservation characteristics of the religion meme. That's well known.

How long has science been the major influencing power?

What does that matter? For the dominant part of human history we've been short-sighted, slave-trading, murdering intolerant bastards. I'm of the opinion that science has mitigated that behavior and religion exacerbated it. It's not coincidence that even religions which teach peace and tolerance get abused to goad people into commiting genocide and murder. As the most salient contemporary example, Jesus was a total hippy pacifist, but the christians have been some intolerant murdering mofos, even to minority Christian sects.

The reason this is no coincidence is because religion has essentially the opposite paradigm from science. The fundamental principle of science is to ignore your preconceptions and make conclusions based on the evidence. The fundamental principle of religion is faith: ignore the evidence and believe what the book or the scary old bearded dude or whatever tell you is the truth. Faith teaches people not to think for themselves. Practicing faith is the same as practicing ignoring evidence. It's anti-scientific. Religion tells you not to worry about open questions, that's God's domain. Science teaches you that the open questions are the interesting and productive bits. Religion also teaches in-group out-group mentality. It allows for the thought that "God is on our side", or "We are god's chosen people", or that those dark skinned guys are the sons of Ham, and therefore meant (by GOD!) to be slaves.

Your comment that religion has a been a major influence for a long time is totally unimportant. A far more important question is has it been a positive influence? If so, does it continue to be a positive influence? If science and religion are antithetic, which is more beneficial? For example, if you are seriously ill, would you rather be treated by a doctor trained in modern medicine and the scientific method, or a priest? or a mullah? or a rabbi? or a witch doctor?.

Getting back to the original topic, I think Dawkins is an excellent popular scientist. His anti-religion stance stems fundamentally from a love of science, a deep love and respect for the beauty and power of the scientific method, and love of truth and the glory and beauty of nature. It really shines out in his discussions. We can have tremendous love and respect for the universe and the world around us without imposing a silly and incomplete mythos on it.

bertoelcon's stupid and poorly thought out comments aside, it is possible to be intelligent and religious. Donald Knuth is probably my favorite example, but note that he's a mathematician, not a scientist. I think it's an important distinction. There have, and surely are now people who benefit from having an external faith mechanism. But I think they would benefit more from a more truth based approach to life. A personal faith or philosophy that allows them to seek truth, while being content whatever is, is.

We have evolved genetically, sociologically, politically and in terms of religion. We went from believing in lots of gods to believing in a few gods, to believing in one god (well one god with a trinity, and/or prophet, and/or saints which are kinda demigods, or one god who is many gods if you're a hindu...). I think a very reasonable next step is to advance to believing in no gods.

Continuing in the vein of non-physicist scientists who are inspirational, I propose Jane Goodall. Check out her TED talk, it's fantastic.

The message that I get from the video, and I hope the message that kids will get, is that the U.S. legal system is seriously out of step with cultural and technological innovation, and requires serious overhaul, especially with regard to copyright law.