There is a reason we send men to the moon. The value of there observation and ability to adapt and re-task (currently) is far superior to machines. As for unmanned attack aircraft. There is a delay from the remote control site to the plane. That delay both ways says that the ability to pull 15g's to get out of a bad situation probably will present itself too late, or because of the delay you will need that speed of evasion.

Not to mention the de-humanizing effect we have seen already with the video game war where the warrior has no skin in the game. The human equations that should be there as a deterent to war, aren't. That is probably the biggest risk and failing of this direction. Of course those who just want to win and don't care of the cost to the other side, that can engage in riskless carnage, will attract the very people that would naturally be culled out through the process of war. That culling of sociopaths is part of our natural evolution. If you take away their natural predators (man, the other side) then as with all species they will overpopulate and strain and break there ecosystem.

As exampled by Walmart and the Wall family having more wealth that what is it 40% of the rest of the country. Maybe we should broaden the anti-trust laws or modify them so that companies that try and take over hardware stores, grocery stores, clothing stores, sporting stores, appliance stores, building supply stores, automotive supply stores, nurseries .... are trying to monopolize the retail space at the expense of hundreds of thousand mom and pop stores and hundreds of thousand US jobs. The too big problem also is a problem for companies that succeed. Thats why we had anti-trust legistlation. It needs to be updated.

The ideas presented are some of the most thoughtless brainstorming I have ever heard. Brainstorming is good but some filtering should be the next step and certainly before you tell anyone your ideas.

First. Put computer into guns. Like they can't be hacked, turning your gun into your own worst enemy, shooting where you dont want or not shooting when you do.

Have building sensing. As if sensor signals can be suppressed or overridden. Like the Drones snagged by Iran which tricked it into landing inside Iran, intack if the stories are to believed. Or the hacks to turn the traffic lights to your advantage.

Lets say you have building sensing through some suppression signal. What would be the default behaviour. If you did not get the signal then allow firing, or not allow firing. Well probably the signal would allow firing (the default). Maybe a little aluminum foil on the antenna would trick the gun into allowing firing.

Biometrics, only prevents someone else from picking up you gun and using it. Doesn't help if its your gun that you want to clear out a school with.

Maybe some combination of all those things would be good. It would make the cost of a gun prohibitive and we would have fewer guns which translates to fewer gun deaths.

The problem is loosing your child. China's one child policy has left much of the country with families with one child (little emperors) that know that they can just leave there parents which for a Chinese family is a horrible idea, unthinkable, especially a son. So you have children that know they have presure that threat to disown their parents as extreme leverage. So the "Just kick him out" is truly a scary , not to be considered because of the consequences action. No wonder the father took indirect steps to make his son want to stop game playing. The Chinese do things indirectly and communication is an art in a way that we don't fully understand. So assuming the same value system, and behaviours we would take in the West have any resonance in the East.

There are differences in the brain wiring between males and females generally as shown by numerous studies. The way they approach problem solving and focus. Add to that the existing evovled male and female sub-cultures and you are looking at very different value systems and skill sets. Which implies that they will perform differently in the same tasks. It may be the that way education has evolved favors the skill sets and approaches that females are better at, including reward systems, types of tasks assigned, and expectations.

It may also be that the job market seems to be rewarding college degrees less and mayb the male culture, not seen the garanteed payback is not as motivated to continue, where the female culture is seeing the long term value of education for quality of life, child rearing, and the communal, network time that is college.

Its not sexist to recognize differences. The differences are not good or bad, just differences.

When you bring science into it, I have heard that at least in one case, the round-up corn which is GMO and resistant to round-up the weed killer, is easier to keep weed free, but the crop havested has higher concentrations of round-up in it which is not healthy. So GMO may not be all bad but not all GMO crops are good from a health standpoint.

Lets just hope that no one decides that you should be sterilized, or your head drilled and you pleasure removed. When people usually think of these things, its always someone else who is deserving. What happens, like it did in Germany, It would end up some government functionary would decide you would benefit from such a change, because they did not like your attitude, habits, political or religious affiliation or maybe race. There would be a rule, some criteria for deciding who. Like we have problems with the no-fly lists, your name might just end up on the list of those to be, "Bettered".

I bought a Soda Stream and when I opened the box there was a piece of paper saying that you are licencing the soda stream technology, not buying it. I looked and there was small print in a pargraph on the side saying the same thing. I think it said it was a transferable licence and that you could only use it for the purposes intended by soda stream.

This is the first attempt I have seen that a kitchen appliance is being sold with the idea that you are not buying the appliance, and will never own it, just licence it. That strikes at the heart of the 'buying' something at the store. This is an attempt at a business model that maintains control of your carbonated water maker in perpetuity. I look forward to the test for this business model in court.

No the gun and the bullets killed the kids, the gunman used the killing machines and pointed them in the right direction with the intent to kill. If the killer had had a knife, at least he would have had to work for those kills, it would have taken more time, more kids might have been saved, the teachers would have had a chance to get between him and the kids and maybe subdue him.

Guns are efficient , impersonal tools that allow people to engage in killing in very impersonal ways, like a video game. I suspect we have more death and injury from guns because they can reach out and kill without the shooter being at risk or having to work for the kill. Too easy, to impersonal so we end up at risk.

I for one when I have to go to the bathroom really badly can miss the combination on the bathroom a few times before success. I suspect if there is a shooter around the same would hold. Also if a gun wielding person (don't want to leave out the ladies) comes into the classroom, what would you think he would do if he saw the teacher start opening the safe?

I am sick and tired of the NRA knee jerk activists that are first to scream, don't call attention to the fact that we want to keep our guns, lots of guns, semi automatic people killing guns because of a flawed Supreme Court decision, in the face of yet another MASS shooting of innocent people in public areas, Theaters, Malls, Schools. Its not just the people that do the killing, its the guns, the gun culture, the easy access to guns. Criminals can get easy access to guns because there are so many around to buy or steal. If they were rare, the price would be higher and you would have fewer criminals being able to afford guns (free market supply side economics at work, how can you argue with that). The specious argument that it is people not guns that do the killing, I would argue that a person without a gun would not be able to go into a school and kill 20 children , or into a theater and mow down rank after rank of people in a easy, impersonal way.

Lets have some sanity about guns as a privileged and not a right or if you like a right that is regulated in a sane way that prevents or make this kind of travesty rare.

The gun lobby has no solution to this problem. They are silent on the matter and want you to be silent too.

The difference is the University programs are designed to (one might argue against particular schools or programs but in general). give an overall coverage of all the important areas of the topic to give a well rounded person in the field. It is possible to read the text books yourself, but doing the projects and getting the feedback and someone to answer the questions is a more complete and concentrated study.

You can fill in a gap here and a gap there but if you have no immediate need you probably won't go through the trouble to really study something, and the more important point, is often you don't know what you should know to be able to ask the question of find the information you need or a different better way to approach some problem.

So they are not equivalent but the information is out there.

University education is not just to get a job. The unfortunate misconception is that that is the only reason you go to school. Or to state it a different way, Universities are not trade schools, never have, nor should never be.They teach fields of study, how the think, review the theories, ideas and practices of a field, give you access to other fields of study so you understand more than just one field.

You learn how to think critically, how to do research, how to present ideas clearly (or at least those are goals). So in the end you come out a better more well rounded person with skills that are applicable in many fields of endevour.

I have noticed a very big difference in self taught and university taught programmers. The difference can be striking with the university taught, having studied multiple languages and problem spaces are more easily able to learn new things and are not trapped in a single language/tool space for solutions.

That is not to say self taught programmers are bad, many are quite capable but would be much better deeper level programmers if they had also sudied, say OOP or OAD and Data Structures and Analysis of algorithms, and some AI and some Business Programming and Some Database design and programming. Usually the biggest deficit I see is the Data Structures and analysis of algorithms part with is much more difficult to pick up DIY unless the programmer is very motivated.

The problem is that many employers are wanting to get programmers on the cheap (offshore presure) and don't and can't see the value of real engineering that goes into programming. To them is all code and one program is like the next. Not so my friend.

Your kidding right? Evolution as a process, like most scientific theories it has predictive and explanatory power. We see that evolution happens, take drug resistant bacteria. We see how with selective breeding in just a few thousand years we can have widely divergent dog breeds and types of plants. In our world of computers, Genetic algorithms can solve difficult problems by just following those parts of genetics that combine parts of solutions and introduces mutations and a survival rule that culls the herd. It works, I have done that. I have come up with 'intelligent' answers to problems that the only driving principle was survival, not some unseen intelligent force. So we know that the process of Evolution is a fact and practical. The teaching of creationism on the other hand is a cop out. They claim the world is 6000 years old, they claim dinosaurs co-existed with man (and woman), that man (and woman) suddenly appeared full sized and full figured in God's image (he must have been a Black Man then). That the scientists have it all wrong about radioactive decay and tree rings and layers of sediment to show when things happened. They are much like some segments of the political parties that have no problem of making up facts to fit their theories. And also we know they think that Rape is part of God's design.

I'm sorry but there is no equivalence here. None. It is the same equivalence that is being drawn by those in politics that say that both political parties are the same. A little rational thought is in order.

I applaude the UK for this position. It is about time. One of the tenates of the Anglican Church is that you can use your rational mind to interpret the scriptures. You can see here that the Church of England's influence has had a rational effect on the Government that we don't see here in the Evangelical, bible belt, earth was created in 4006 BC. states (like Louisiana) that is just starting to require teaching creationism in schools.

I hope we catch the rational bug soon.

Go UK