Are you able to play FPSs without motion sickness? And with a mouse? I've heard from others that for games in the first person perspective, VR is only fine if you're character is in a fixed, seated position.

Agreed. The history of mathematics is interesting in itself, but should we as a society place so much emphasis on who was "first!"? It's simple chest thumping. Some may argue that it serves as a motivating factor, but I personally think that's a terrible idea as this is--in my experience with others at least--short lived and not very satisfying. Not to mention, just about every sensible person will find there are much better ways to feed that kind of impulse.

Instead, teach the joy of doing mathematics for its own sake. Compared to this sort of happiness, the egos of men aren't of much consequence.

Look, I love a good amount of "pointless" fun and frivolity, but my experience as a life long American is that 95% of people here don't want to ever talk about anything serious or consequential. I'm not talking about being a killjoy, a downer, or trying to shove unorthodox political views down someone's throat (most of the people I talk to share my general political views). Rather, let's say that just a couple of times a day I try to bring up a serious political issue that might affect how someone votes. By and large, whether offline or online (most of the day I'm working in a social environment with a variety changing faces), the response I usually get is either a kind of cold silence--as if I've destroyed the mood--or that I'm a loser for actually caring about something (i.e. sort of like "why are you talking about something serious when we could be having fun? We must be having fun at ALL TIMES!").

I have not experienced other cultures (never had the opportunity to leave the U.S.) and of course this is just my personal experience, but can any Europeans or other Americans chime in if they've experienced this sort of thing with Americans? If so, that could explain a lot about why our democracy is so dysfunctional (among other reasons, of course).

With some exceptions, I will vote for anyone who presents a compelling case that they support effective Campaign Finance Reform (e.g. public funding of elections, disclosure, rolling back Citizens United, much stricter lobbying laws, closing the revolving door, etc etc). I am actually left leaning--much farther left than the corporate Democrats, but if a candidate supports CFR I will vote for them even if they are Republican or Libertarian.

This is because I know nothing I care about will be addressed meaningfully until wealth has a lot less of a sway over the political process.

There are apparently over 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the US--that's over 1 out of every 100 Americans (see here http://www.truckinfo.net/truck... ) . And while I assume this technology will initially support the driver rather than substitute them, eventually they *will* be substituted.

Now, I am not saying that I am against this technology or the vast multitude of other technologies that are replacing formerly human work--I think technology is a great thing which, used properly, can make life dramatically more enjoyable. However, I don't believe man at the individual level is infinitely adaptable to system that requires he/she hold an economic worth in order to survive (and live a good life) when technology is increasingly rendering nature's several billion year old creations uncompetitive. Our economic system as it currently is will leave these people unable to support themselves, and then you have poverty, crime, and death (and since I have empathy and I am not a sociopath, I think this needs to be avoided...)

Some US conservatives I know claim that this will not happen and man is infinitely adaptable as an individual (and a very small handful of others say the poverty, crime, and death is a good solution). Some US liberals I know claim that we should just drop technology altogether and return to a "simpler time." All three of these "solutions" are incredibly stupid, so fortunately most respond with "I don't know." I personally look forward to a future where both technology and an "innate human worth" (rather than a solely "economic worth") can be embraced, but that inevitably means many people won't be working or will be working very little.

But if the many "trust fund baby"/never-had-to-work-a-day-in-their-lives people that are peppered about my area are any indication of what this future will be like, then it doesn't sound so bad: writing poetry or doing other forms of artwork all day, running very small (and unprofitable) "hobby farms," socializing all day, etc etc (no, they didn't turn to drugs or other antisocial activities because there was "nothing to do"...that stuff stems from poverty, not unemployment)

Yeah, nevermind that workaholism makes the overwhelming majority of people miserable--certainly that couldn't be more of a reason (or even a sufficient reason) to be concerned. Would someone please think of the upper class's ability to maximize profits by squeezing the life out of the working cla--I mean the Economy, would someone please think of the Economy?

The last submission was met with positive/encouraging comments and a little skepticism, but now we have individuals overwhelmingly complaining that this is a "democrat PAC", a "leftist cause", or that it is somehow infringing on free speech rights. This is all absurd. A "democrat PAC" would not give you the option of limiting your pledge only to Republican candidates. The disgust with the influence of money in politics is not a "leftist" thing--there is just a minority trying to make it another left vs right thing by instilling the usual tribalistic hatred (most of the right hates money in politics just as much as the left does and knows how badly they are screwed by it). And the reforms the Mayday PAC supports do not infringe on free speech rights unless you believe there should be no equality to free speech--that the size of one's wealth should make one's voice much more likely to be heard.

As for the skepticism of whether or not it will work (assuming you think it's a problem in the first place--if not, enjoy your plutocracy):

First, what do you propose as an alternative? Unless you're advocating for a revolution, the solution needs to work within the system itself. Americans are very concerned about the influence of wealth in politics, but in order to transform that concern into a change in policy there need to be promising alternative candidates running on that issue (the current selection of candidates are quite reticent about it and rarely act on it because they know it threatens their re-election). Candidates that would actually like to remove the corrupting influence of wealth in politics cannot compete because one needs a lot of money to run a meaningful campaign (and the reforms supported by Mayday give such candidates a means based on support at local levels--e.g. matching funds systems). Therefore, these candidates rarely get any media attention and thus very few even know they exist or have any confidence in their success. What Mayday is trying to do is give candidates running on an issue that many Americans are concerned about a fighting chance within a system whose design is antithetical to resolving that issue. I'm all ears to your alternative solutions.

Second, while the skepticism is warranted, it is redundant. There is no solution to this problem that won't be unbelievably difficult in practice--Lessig is calling it a "moonshot" for a reason. If you look at each solution in isolation, all of them seem unreasonable and they always will until one of them by chance stumbles upon success. But this does not mean you should not act. Some solutions are less unreasonable than others and I believe Mayday PAC is one of them because it is one of the few that are working with the constraints and realities of the system in mind. And as a "kickstarter" it has been designed to reduce the risk to you as a supporter--the worst that can happen is that they raise $12 million dollars, the candidates they support are duds, and you lose $20. In the other negative case, you get to keep your $20.

But given the pent up disgust with politicians being unresponsive to the concerns of everyone except the large donors, I think Americans will respond very well to compelling candidates that make the issue of money in politics a top priority (and yes, "compelling," among other things, means well-financed--even if indirectly through a small dollar funded Super PAC) and whose financial backing does not compel them to act otherwise.

PR in the US is often just propaganda. It is another avenue through which wealth can be used to exert undue influence over policy by shaping public opinion, deceiving, astroturfing, etc etc. It is justified under Free Speech, but there is no concern for equality: if you have more money, your voice (or the people you pay to spread "your voice") is much more likely affect change. In my opinion, this is wrong.

I recommend reading the book Deadly Spin by Wendell Potter which shows just how insidious this practice is. The author used to be a top PR executive at several insurance companies but "found his conscience" and is speaking out against it.

Why would you assume he means to destroy what remains of democracy? I interpreted it as meaning that we're focusing too much attention on the the symptoms of a much larger problem: the way that wealth can be used to direct or at least sway the political system. This is systemic "corruption" in the sense that the intent of the system is to serve the public good.

The "hacking at the branches of a problem when the culprit lies at the root" (or something along the lines of that) is an expression used by Lawrence Lessig and the "Rootstrikers" group he started (the originator of that expression is someone else, I forget who), both of which are trying to enact campaign finance reform, reform lobbying, end SuperPACs, etc etc. I assume he is referring to the same general problems and solutions (solutions which are actually more democratic in the way th theyat, e.g., raise money for campagins)

I don't think this person sees "the root" as the concept of Government itself.

If I had mod points I'd give them to you. Whenever some naive free market idealist gets modded +5 saying the problem is government granted monopolies (a particularly insidious claim due to its speciousness and thus its ability to deceive the uninformed) and the solution is the enticingly simplistic "deregulation" (ignorning hundreds of years of precedent with similar public utilities and the successes of other first world nations that acknowledge this fact), it drives me mad.

A public funding system like a $100 per-citizen tax rebate (Lessig has proposed something similar) for use in campaign contributions would easily quell any fears of not being funded (if everyone who voted in 2012 saves themselves $100 and uses their rebate, it ends up being quite a bit of money--more than was spent in 2012 I believe). This is the kind of reform the backed candidates are being "sent" to enact. Not to mention, being responsible for such landmark reform is sure to keep you popular with your constituents for many terms. And I think you're a bit too cynical to think all of the backed candidates will be so self-serving, unless they were chosen from the current crop of money hustlers (you'd have to be an idiot to select from them and Lessig is not an idiot).

Also, it's very odd that you consider small dollar donations from a large number of average citizens as a "power grab" in the same sense as large (massive) dollar donations from a small number of citizens (as is the case with The Heritage Foundation). If the former is anything of a power grab, it's power that ought to be restored to them.

Right, an individual passing through the revolving door does not represent a conflict of interest, but rather just the hiring of experienced/knowledgeable individuals. Here are some cherry picked statistics to prove my point /s

Please tell me this isn't where the PR spin is headed, because I fully believe people will buy it (if it's repeated often enough and made tribal). I mean, the spindoctors have already convinced too many people that bribery is "free speech" and 99% of climate scientists are frauds.

Vim has to be one of my favorite programs but I rarely use it for any "ambitious" coding project because it lacks critical features that an IDE provides (the plugins don't cover these gaps either). Right now I'm using Netbeans with the jVi plugin (provides a subset of common vim behavior) for c++ programming and it works well, but if an IDE plugin could simply embed instances of vim into the program itself and have it work seamlessly with the existing IDE features (e.g. advanced code understanding of inheritance hierarchies and type deduction) that would be the ideal. With this in mind, the following from the website sounds really promising:

What significance does death being natural have here? It is your own assumption that something which is natural is automatically good or at the very least should be followed. Now I completely agree that the preservation of many of the things I care about on Earth is maintained by nature in somewhat of a fragile equilibrium, but there are far too many exceptions to make such a generalization. "Nature could decide" to incinerate all of it in the next 10 minutes--is that a good thing to you? And our tendency to fuck things up simply means we need to be more careful. Not to mention there are creatures on Earth that do not undergo senescence, so even assuming the appeal to nature was ever a valid reason for anything, it would be somewhat wrong to apply it here.

Why are you so certain that the desire for an extended lifespan is motivated purely by fear? For example, I personally accept that my death by old age is quite likely and I've decided that what is inevitable (or at least is quite likely to be) is not worth worrying about any more than is innate. However, I would still like to live longer simply because life is so enjoyable. There are so many things to experience that I'll never have the time to, so many things to learn, so many things to explore (on this planet and otherwise, in the mind...), etc etc. I want to live longer not out of negative emotions, but of positive. You state that death motivates you to live your life to the fullest--that's great if that's what works for you, but not all of us need that. We'll go on living just as happy as otherwise (and perhaps less anxiously than you) because life on its own can be just great.

Lastly, you keep describing those that fear death as immature babies. What relevance does this have? Even assuming these people are "immature" and childlike, this lends no reason to the debate--it's pointless. Or is this how you intend to motivate them to agree with you? By attacking their egos? "I've given up on the desire to live longer because someone on the internet called me a baby!" How about using some reason.

I still use Google Voice because it's free (well, I suppose it's not free because they are collecting my data, but I have a feeling the carriers are doing the same anyway). How can you beat that? Sure, I'm only able to use it at home and through WiFi hot spots, so it's only a little bit better than a landline, but I'm not getting gouged by the cell phone companies for a couple of GB a month.

Now someone will respond to this and tell me what great cell phone service they have that's not available in my area and is still garbage for the price ("See? The system works for me. Why isn't it working for you?")