Absolutely not. That is a horrible idea. It would nearly eliminate basic science research. Anything that lacks a direct and immediate application would simply not get researched, or have minimal research at best. Consider things like the LHC. A multi-billion dollar investment, funded by multiple governments. Nothing coming out of there will have applications in the next several decades. What company, or even group of companies, would pay for something like that? It's basically throwing away money! Yet... it is among the most important research being done at present. All because the government isn't interested in immediate profit.

I think what you meant to say is that government officials shouldn't be allowed to make money off of their political influence. Get rid of campaign funding and the likes and it solves the problems of politicians trying to push fake/corporate agendas.

For as long as there are human drivers on the road, I think that's inevitable. But in the long run, once there are nothing but automated cars, and humans couldn't take over if they wanted, there would be no reason for speed limits, stop lights, etc.
However, how long it takes authorities to recognize this is a totally different question. I suspect it wont be until our grandchildren are our age that we'll see a push for that model. Which is really too bad, considering the amount of money we could save on infrastructure and traffic police sooner than later.

This is actually the second bit of recent news that supports the same notion. https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20130917-a-jewel-at-the-heart-of-quantum-physics/ is the other. Neither time or location are important to the math, which is a shocking result.

We can't see the windows code. We can see the linux kernel code. That's the difference. And now that he's admitted to adding a back door, there will be plenty of people digging through the code to remove it. Whether they can check those changes back into the main repo, or have to start a whole new branch is a different issue. But regardless, it's more than we can with windows.

These children our going to grow up in the current world, not their parents world. Why do people feel that it's so detrimental that kids grow up the same way they did? I see this a lot on forums, and many people (even in this thread) seem to agree with it, yet it doesn't make much sense. It would be like if bill gates parents only allowed him to play marbles, rather than learning about computers. Or if all of our parents decided we weren't allowed to learn to program - simply because it wasn't what your parents did when they were growing up.

More importantly, while it might not seem like it, the skills that those kids are learning with modern tech now will be detrimental to their future employment. Much like you learning to use computers as a child became detrimental to yours. If anything, I feel these parents are harming their children by putting such extreme limitations on them.

You say "OR" as if it isn't the rich and privileged getting us into these wars.

Actually, if i recall correctly, the media was all over "ameri-fries" and people yelling that if you don't trust your '''commander in chief''' that you're free to move. Illegal wiretapping and spying on citizens literally the same topic we had in 2002, but the news is actually covering it MORE now. That said, I full heartedly disagree with your assessment.

Only difference I see is that with a dem being in office now BOTH sides are up in arms about these issues. And I honestly feel that if Romney were in office today we would have a repeat of 2002 instead of this unified hatred that we have at present.

It's fairly conspiracy-theory-esque but I'm pretty sure that a large enough portion of our government has been bought out by the military industrial complex that it would be impossible to actually change any of those things, and likely dangerous to even try. I wouldn't be surprised if Obama earnestly intended on changing those things, only find that it would be more impossible than expected.

Either way, though, the practical matter is that he didn't, and wont, and we can only hope that the next person in line will.

Thanks for the info, smarty. Does it mean you're going to actually do something about it? No. Just some fine that pales in comparison to what they made from breaking that law, and zero incentive to actually stop. Just like always. Just get back to jailing kids for downloading MP3's. THOSE are the people who really need to be punished. ...

The common sense and experience principle is that the competent one's are too valuable to lose to promotions, and thus only the one's competent enough make their way up the ladder.

Though, coming from the engineering field into technology I've noticed a striking difference in how that works. In tech people are very big on praise and namesake. Which tends to lend itself to those golden few actually making it ahead. It's actually somewhat refreshing.

Yes, I thought about this after having already posted my comment. Printers that can do electronics != printers that can do nano scale. My point was that once combined microchips wouldn't be far behind.
As for multimaterial, yes, they can. I'm not real sure how well/readily they switch from on to the other, but they do exist. But even if they couldn't, a series of 3d printers could be used to make a new one. The chips are the only sticking point, that I can think of.

You seem like you might be surprised to learn that they can already print electronics. They can even print at the nano scale, too. Making the possibility of printed processors and micro-chips not that far off.

And I think the managerial: ???? covers "Abort, Retry, Fail?" - as , in my experience, managers never understand that part of the process. ;)

Step 1: use 3d printer to make more 3d printers.
Step 2: stop paying to use first 3c printer.
Step 3: managerial: ?????
Step 4: profit.

http://gizmodo.com/government-lab-admits-to-using-quantum-internet-for-two-493293340

How about you make your own browser that doesn't follow any standards rather than making the rest of our lives hell?