Although I know you are being sarcastic, I fear not exposing children to men therefore not exposing men to children will have the reverse effect. I don't know of any study that looks into this but I have my suspicions.

When you see someone often you see them, as a person, not just a thing.

Think about it this way, you hear about people dieing in Africa all the time, it is sad yes but doesn't really effect you but how would you feel if it was someone you knew?

I also think people live down to expectations.

how is

Unless I misunderstand this that means, the school will get less/no money more teaching boys. How can that do anything but discourage boys from attending. Encourage and Discourage are 2 sides of the same coin, if you go around saying we really want girls then boys will get the message that they are not wanted, which of course is true since each girl in computer class is worth more to the school. Or if there are limited places then boys will be refused entry in favor of girls.

I don't really see why we need every profession to have equal distribution of the sexes, anyway? Men and women are different, no matter how much the PC brigade want them to be the same. If a girl doesn't want to do computers why does society see the need to brainwash them into doing it.

Also in areas where men are underrepresented. It seems like the law forbids this type of behavior. (I know different country)

from http://www.stuff.co.nz/nationa....

I personally think the gender in-balance in teachers is much more important than the one in technology, teachers are major role models children's lives, and children need role models of both sexes, where who cares who wrote the latest app, or the latest network protocol.

We should tax corporations, because they use the services provided by the country. They use the roads, the legal system, medical facilities, police. They are legal entities with rights.

Sure if capital gains both short and long term, matched income tax it would be fair. But then you get the problem that ordinary people could loose there homes just because house prices when up and they couldn't afford to pay the tax it.

I also believe capital gains tax should be adjusted for inflation, if I bought a house for the value of 100 donkeys and 10 years later sold the value of 100 donkeys I really haven't made any money.

No they don't, they transfer the money to the country with the least tax and pay it there.

How? they set up in the lower tax country and charge an expense to the US country.

E.g. say a company earns $1,000,000 the overseas office charges them a $1,000,000 for an admin fee. so the company ends up paying tax on $0 in the US, and tax on $1,000,000 in the company with the low tax rate.

If you think that allowing an entity control an idea just simply because they "though of it first" is practical solution simply imagine a world where this is the case for everything. The wheel, fire screws, language ... we would go crazy trying to attribute value to people. In fact since every idea is based on others, giving the person who thought of it first indefinite control means you will stifle new ideas. Ok patents have a limited life, but as the pace of technology increases, the length of a patients should decrease, as soon as everybody in the world can improve on an idea, not just the inventor the better. I think 20 years is far too long. I don't think there is evidence that patients increase innovation.(http://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=11&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CFIQtwIwCg&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dq1Pi4w8ddA8&ei=ilOGVKnhDsLs8AWtr4K4Ag&usg=AFQjCNHKvJQ8POQ4jnw6Jlda2o31NmIIYw) or http://www.nber.org/papers/w99...

Knowledge is not like physical things its replication comes without cost and the more people that can use that knowledge the better off everyone will be. That is why we teach our children isn't it? So that they can learn the ideas of the past, in order that they can build on them in the future.

The internet's, power lies in people sharing ideas (not porn, cat movies, or what I had for breakfast) it seems ironic that we have invented a mechanism which drastically increases our ability to share knowledge and people are jumping up and downs saying don't share its evil, its just like stealing.

Don't get me wrong we should compensate the entity that came up with an idea fairly, but I don't think the entity getting the money is the right person to come up with what is fair, they will always want as much as possible. (Neither is the person spending the money)

It really depends on how much "safer" autonomous cars are doesn't it. The current problem with software is that when it fails it fails usually catastrophically, what do you do when you fail, stop that could be dangerous, keep going dangerous too. People don't usually fail as completely as software they make lots of small mistakes but usually do a good enough job.

the road toll is 14.9 per 100,000 per year that is quite low considering how much people drive, you would need a lot of testing, in real life scenarios to convince me that automated car was safer. And each release would need that level of testing. Yes you may get one driver who is bad kill a few people but a bad software release could kill much more.

I am not saying automated cars aren't safer, just that just because they are automated doesn't automatically make them so.

Not true it does have a lot, but only to the point that people don't rebel against it. The trick is to make the people happy enough so they don't rebel while getting as much power as possible. Monitoring everyone greatly increases this power since you can squash dissidents (opponents to your power) much sooner, you can do this by labeling them the boogie man of the time, (currently terrorist) and imprison then for as long as you like without trial, or just assassinate them of course.

The scarey thing is, I think they will do it believing that they are doing for the common good. Your beliefs are obviously right, and your opponents are wrong, they wouldn't be your beliefs if you didn't consider your beliefs right. You wouldn't want someone in power that you think would do the wrong thing, would you?

It actually could, well much more than the current system, given a couple things.

1. The hardware does a challenge response, that way the private key is never given to untrusted hardware software system. Ok the untrusted system could log in once but only once.
2. The USB key doesn't allow the firmware to be reprogramed (https://srlabs.de/badusb/).
3. There is no other way than physically pressing the USB key to activate the challenge response each time.
4. Do not allow a session to remain open indefinitely especially if the same dongle is used to log in form somewhere else.

I have been saying for years that this mechanism would be great for credit cards, and a password replacement, of course you could still have passwords but with this mechanism would be fine for me without them.

You could log in to any site with this, if the system used private/public key encryption simply give the site your public key, and use it to log by encrypting the challenge with your private key. Now if you ever use a password on a website you may as well consider it compromised.

You could have multiple USB keys, if you wanted. You could even allow them to change the private key as long there was a physical block on writing the key, a switch or something.

Agreed, In real life you don't go to jail for 2 year for being rude what makes the internet so special.

Of course its right to use technical means to stop the government accessing your files. It always has been like that, you could always write you documents in code, or hide them and you where under no obligation to reveal the code or location, you have the right to remain silent.

The government has the ability to watch us more than it ever has in history, but it will never be enough.

I think it is less about allowing encryption on cell phones as opposed to having it on by default. Most people will not bother (mainly because they don't understand how easy it is to monitor someone) so it is an indicator to look further if your phone is encrypted, once everyone has encryption turned on it will no longer be an indicator.

Really its the spy agencies own fault they overstepped their bounds, by issuing secret warrants to companies and monitoring everyone, now they get the backlash.

When something you had is taken away it feels much worse than if you never had it in the first place.

So the goal is to encourage people to consume as much as they can. That sounds totally reasonable.

Everybody can be x months away from abject poverty, if they loose their jobs.

Of course I would pay my wife, and she would pay me, problem solved.

No that is the poor pretending to be rich you don't get rich by spending more than you earn.

Yes the rich buy stuff on credit, but it is as an investment, if the cost of borrowing is less than what you expect to get in return, then it is prudent to borrow. Also if it turns out you fail other people bare the burden on you loss. Bankruptcy is not that bad ask Mr Trump.

The poor tend to by on credit not backed by anything, because they have no choice and end up paying higher interest and being able to buy less in the long run.

Although the rich buy more expensive items, the percentage of there total income they spend is much less. If you can barely survive you are spending 100% of your income. Where if you can save you are not consuming so you are not being taxed. A regressive tax is one that taxes a higher percentage of poor persons income than a rich person, not a higher absolute value (http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regressivetax.asp)

Not taxing food is a start at addressing this but there are other essentials that the poor must buy in order function, housing, transport, clothing. A consumption tax should be only taxing unnecessary consumption. Think of it this way you need a certain level "consumption" just to go to work, so really it is an investment for making more money. What percentage of your income do you pay in rent? What percentage of rich persons income do they pay? probably 0% since they will own the property, ok they have to pay maintenance and stuff, but it is probably much smaller as a percentage of their income.

Also there are luxury foods why shouldn't they be taxed?

This system would probably be far too complex to maintain, and the rich are the ones that can afford the accountants in order to avoid the taxes anyway.

Afraid, weary same thing, the reason we have fear is because we need it, we evolved to need and we still need it. Kids don't usually jump of high thing because they are afraid.

If this case if we underestimate the danger, it will be too late, you are right we will not be able to run an hide from this. So a little bit of overreaction is better than a little bit of under reaction.

So be afraid, be slightly afraid.

Being afraid accomplishes lots, it motivates us, it is stops us doing stupid things,
but too much, of pretty much anything including fear can be a bad thing too, it can do the opposite, paralyze us, make us do stupid things.

Maybe if the nurse was a little more afraid she would have followed procedures better. (don't know what went wrong so I am only guessing).

Maybe if we are afraid we have tested this first patient at the border instead of taking his word for it.

Maybe it will stop the US spending billions on fighting terrorism which truly is an insignificant problem, and has very little potential to become bigger. And start focusing more on this which is small but has the potential to become massive.