New we need a real one way mirror.

..end troll headline.. I propose that IP (ideally both patent and copyright) be taxed. Now as a good republican, this feels revolting, but I think it might help. Owners of IP would state the value of their IP. In order to keep the size of government from swelling like a festering bug bite from all the audits, people should be able to purchase the IP at face value into the public domain. This will keep the owners honest while giving potential non-owner innovators a known cost forward. (wheeda turns on lawyer shield. Shields at maximum!) The original owner will be fully compensated for their contribution to society, or even make a hefty profit depending on their stated value, while the rest of the community is able to further leverage the idea. I believe this approach will make being a patent troll very expensive, while busting up the tie that bind innovation. Further more, in this climate, passing a new tax should be relatively simple. Not simple, just relatively simple.

I love the reply all button. When vendors send advertising to everyone without out using BCC, I reply all. The vendors usually stop doing that. I've even replied all with contact information for competitors.

Have you been to Oregon? The fire marshal says its it not safe for the residents of Oregon to pump their own gas without special training. I agree with the fire marshal. ..duck.. ..duck.. ..du... ACK RUNNNN

Rather than holding society back because we don't want people to lose their jobs, we can pay all the current drivers to hold road signs. Of course, I'm not sure why we would need road signs if we have automated driving. Similarly, I would be happier to send my accountant a $1000 check for doing nothing than actually going through all the hassle of actually using an accountant. (flat tax please...)

The other efficiency angle to look at this is traffic density. We can probably triple traffic density using automated cars. Figure out the cost to implement automated car. Figure out the cost to triple the number of lanes on all our freeways. I'll bet getting automated cars working is more financially efficient.

I believe that the way for this to take off, in addition to the tech being worked out, is legislation that requires auto insurance companies to charge auto insurance rates for self driving cars vs human driven cars that is proportional to the relative safety of the two. As small of a cost as auto insurance is, suddenly everyone is going to want a self driving car, not because it is actually cost effective initially, but because people hate pay for insurance. I would say a similar thing happened with fuel costs and Prius'. I own a Prius. I don't actually believe the car is saving me money, I just _hate_ paying for gas.

I would pay and extra $50k for a car that would drive itself.

They make 20k rpm hard drives. I'll bet that is a typo for 30k rpm. I'll bet it should be 30M rpm.

I generally agree that getting rid of most patents, and redoing copyright law would be a good idea. Good luck with that. Getting government to raise taxes should be pretty easy though.

Let patent owners state a value for their IP. Let them be taxed at a certain percent, say 1% per year. Allow anyone to buy the IP into the public domain for the stated price. Ideally this idea would be applied to both patents and copyright. I claim this idea as my own. I had it while taking a shower about eight years ago. Please make use of it.

Lame. I was hoping they were going to assemble a 40U rack. Maybe actually use tools. Maybe a stop watch that works the first time you try to stop it. Lame.

I'm doing my part. Future products at my company won't have serial ports. While my embedded counter part and I've been working on the board, I've had to solder a lot of db9's onto my board, but there is no production connector. I took a survey of our machines in engineering, only one out of 3 had a serial cable attached. I'm sure it is much worse in the field. I refused my coworker's request to put a production db9 on the board, now all that debug info goes over usb. This is way better

Tax patents. Let the patent owner state a value. Have the tax rate be a few percent. If someone wants to use the stuff that is patented, they would pay the patent owner the stated value. The patent would then become public domain. 1. This increases the tax base. 2. Rewards inventors. 3. Gets rid of patent trolls. Or maybe it doesn't, but at least they pay a lot of taxes. 4. Makes it easier for me to develop a product if I know what it is going to cost to acquire the patents.

I grew up SDA (Seventh Day Adventist). I went to K-12-Electrical Engineering degree in the Adventist school system. I grew up in an environment that mocked those silly scientist who believed that the earth was millions of years old. SDAs are semi-fundamentalist who believe that the earth was created ~7k years ago and was once covered by a world wide flood. There are also some good aspects of our religion such as the health message. Some pretty basic science shows that this world origin idea isn't true. Take the decay rate of C14. Take the forest from Germany or Santa Barbra. Prove the world has been around for greater than 7k years. Show the world was never covered by a world wide flood. This is trivial to do even with a fundamentalist science education. In my experience so far (I still go to church), there are a couple religious rebuttals to the above evidence. The first one is that the atmosphere was different before the time of the flood and this is why the C14 dating is "inaccurate". Since the tree rings are bookended for greater than 10k year the record of what the C14 was is recorded and calibrated. If the C14 generation was wonky, it would show up in the tree rings. This rebuttal is just silly. The second religious rebuttal is that some things just have to be taken on faith. Faith is defined as believe in things not yet seen. The other one is that Satan has created false evidence to confuse the scientists. Nice. I asked in Sabbath School once, "What is the continued belief in things that can be seen to be not true?" That wasn't popular... I don't see much religious value in the fundamentalist view of the origins of life. I do see big risks. When I realized that some of the things that I had believed for the first 20 years on my life were bogus, I started wondering what else was bogus. I asked myself if I believe in God. When I tell people in my church that I believe there has been life on the planet for significantly longer than 7k years, they ask me if I believe in God. In people's minds, if you don't believe that the world is only 7k years old, you must not believe in God. If Satan has indeed done anything, it was to weave scientifically disprovable doctrine into the core of my religion. Bummer. I do have faith. I have faith that there is a God. I have faith that there is a heaven. These things are not the realm of science. If a scientist says he has proven there is no heaven, there is a 100% chance that guy is an idiot. Similarly, when a religious nut says they world is only 7k years old because that is what they bible says, they are also just ignorant. I started a small group discussion at my religious college before I graduated. I had two questions, the answers which I currently use to deal with this clash between religion and science. I asked, "Should we even be questioning this stuff, or should be just believe the bible and move on?" The answer from the physic professor who was about to retire was, "If God wanted you to think about this stuff, he would have given you a brain." Sweet. My other question was, "How do you deal with people in the church?" The same retiring professor said, "I keep coming to church whether they like it or not." If you are looking for a science model for your children, find someone who as managed to integrate their belief in God with science.