What point are you trying to make, exactly? All you are saying is that my brain says, "hey, there is a vehicle in front of you slowing down, and there is a vehicle beside you so you can't change lanes, so you need to slow down too" instead of "hey, that Red Honda Civic in front of you is slowing down, oh and by the way, you better store the fact that there is a motorcycle beside you in your long-term memory."

You would be similarly amazed at how many blue cars there are on the road that you didn't recall seeing if you look for them. The point is, it doesn't matter what type of vehicle you see, as long as you see a vehicle. That's the point the GP was trying to make.

So, in other words,

"My accounting program isn't broken just because users can enter letters in the number-only fields. I explicitly say in the instructions that in number-only fields, only numbers should be used. Companies who buy this program should get people capable of reading instructions and following them."

In other words, it's broken.

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."