I would like to be spied on by a free market intelligence agency, where I pay a subscription to be spied on, and can optionally opt-out. Ideally, this agency would be run by Cowboy Neal.

I don't think they can actually do that.

That's hilarious. Sure, why not throw in a a few more of false dichotomies? Banning censorship in science is like mandating that puppies need to be murdered, and candy should be taken away from children. Why not? Right?

We've got that one, and the christmas special. Then it's another year of waiting. Those bastards at the BBC just love screwing with our heads.

If sports teams couldn't get tax payers to flip the bill for stadiums, there would be fewer stadiums. At least fewer in small towns where the taxes are unsustainable.

I draw the line at slashdot becoming a pony cartoon. Anything short of that I think I'm okay with... especially if it pisses off the hipsters.

The only outcome of censorship, logically, is less of whatever it is you are trying to censor. So yes, if the objective is more science, and you would hope it would be, then you do not want the government interfering with it.

You know, reading Chinese state media is always funny to me. They're always so friendly when they talk about changing the way the monetary system works, and they do the same thing on other topics.

It's a false dichotomy to assume that having DRM in the standard makes the web any more or less free. What you get it useless, easily bipassable security features that placates content providers for the time being. At some point, I think they're all going to give up DRM, and we'll regard it as silly as the pay walls nobody ever uses, that are built into the http.

DRM doesn't change anything meaningful.
You still have a choice as to whether or not you're going to use it on your site. If you don't like DRM, fine. Don't implement it. The web will not cease to exist because people want to stream movies on Netflix using standards compliant code.

It would work, too, if the value of these services was not in a perpetual downward spiral. In order to make this happen, you would need some compelling reason this was a sensible investment. Honestly, while I think the idea is pretty cool... I'm just not seeing how it could possibly work. Maybe if you had a whole bevy of similar or inter-related services offered by commodity providers?

Right. And Lycos and the other second generation search engines were always getting hacked. My big concern here, is that Watson is a great AI, but it doesn't have anywhere near the experience in ranking that Google does. I'm sure IBM has the ability to retrofit it if they want to, but knowing the answer to a question, and judging the quality of a website are two completely different things.

Very good point. Ever since I started my company, my workload has doubled. I'm still writing the same amount of code as I ever did, but I'm also doing every other job role that's required. I find that I do my best work when I'm working a double shift on Indian time, which works out to about 9 hours off a normal daytime schedule. I work through the night when it's nice and quiet, and I'm awake early enough in the morning to take frenzied client phone calls (they always call early). My wife never sees me, but I've managed to stay in business for eight months so far, so I'm doing okay with it.

I dunno. Sounds like it could be a fascinating field.

That more programmers will wake up from the delusion that they have to work nine to five, and that suddenly, I'll have a lot more competition from people just as talented and driven as I am... in the same areas I specialize. That's a pretty frightening thought, even if it is unrealistic. Most programmers don't actually make it to that point in their career at all, so in all reality, I that's not the kind of thing I lose any sleep over.

people need to start getting smarter about how they get their educations, and classify their incomes.