I thought this was a pro-Snowden claim. Am I on the other side of 'your' planet? YES!

The computer store on El Camino Real in Los Altos used to have an Apple 1 in the display case showing a price tag of one million dollars. This was about 1988. I believed it.

This is a very dumb article. First off, just because he argues that the livespan of intelligence is not infinite, it is finite, as if he knew the number. Second, his basic argument is that entropy reduces the differenctial between the energy levels of point A and point B. Sure it dies. And the amount of energy differential approchases zero. BUT IT NEVER GETS TO ZERO. And the level of energy differenctial needed to support intelligence will probably 'approach' zero also, but never get to zero. Even today artificial intelligence requires a tiny fraction of the energy (differential) that it needed five decades ago.

This guy must be assuming also that Physics will stop dead; that nothing will ever be discovered. What about alternate universes? How's your predictor function there?

No thanks; not well done.

I am sweet on a lady who has had her tubes tied. I figured out that a doctor could make a small incisionand extract a few of her eggs from her ovaries. Then he fertilizes them in a test tube with my sperm. Since her vagina is all messed up we'll have to get my other girlfriend to carry the foetus for nine months. A baby girl with two mothers would be wonderful. In Thailand everything is possible.

Or when the war breaks out the government might pay us to make a baby boy as cannon fodder. So much for your eternal sterilization program.

Personal point: I moved to Thaiand in 1990. In 1994, faced with a medical 'crisis', I chose to stay here. I found that I would rather die in Thailand than live in the United States of America. I guess that means that I would rather die in Thailand tomorrow than live forever in your USA.

OK, I'll accept that. Or you could spell it "outlaw" if you wish. Yes, I'm an outlaw. I think I'm a nice guy, but I am fundamentally un-authoritarian. I am dis-obedient, always have been. "If they give you lined paper, write the other way." Even if only one percent of the population is dis-obedient, that's a lot of trouble for you.

OK, that clears it up. Nobody but a grovelling jerk would submit to a legal anti-aging treatment. "High. We're going to keep you alive forever, and in exchange for this we're going to cut your balls off." Flights from San Francisco to Asia will be booked solid. (I've had seven children with five mothers so far, and have no plans to stop. My children will eat your children.)

I think my basic point revolves around the idea that human bodies are designed to produce children. Any attempt to prevent this, whether with pills or surgery or chastity, can be bypassed naturally. Even today birth control is primarily the woman's responsibility, because she's the one who gets pregnant and she can never quite believe what he says when she asks "Have you been fixed?"

In your future utopia he will say "yes" and produce papers and documents and a medical X-ray that all proves - well, it proves nothing, actually. You can fly overseas and buy a copy of any document published anywhere, with the original name changed to your name. You gonna put his virility status on his passport, while there are hundreds of places he can buy a fake passport?

Documens can be faked. Databases can be faked. Internet domain names can be subverted. I can agree to anything as long as some poor slob walks into the hospital and signs my name to the consent form.

You're imagining a classic illegal environment. It wo't work.

When babies are outlawed, only outlaws will have babies.

Do we want the kids to be perfecty prepared to build 1990's technology? Remember, you are reading this on a WEB PAGE. Web pages were not even invented until the mid-1990's.

I sympathize with those who want kids to be prepared. But we used to call computer technology, and what we should today call cell phone technology, is changing so fast that almost anything you learned in school will be obsolete before you can get a job using it.

For example, in college I learned FORTRAN and CDC 6400 assembler language. My first computer job I worked in RPG (Report Program Generator) and IBM 360 assembler language. I had the mental focus, and the learned disrespect for computers, but the actual coding learned was history. Ten years later we gave up on punched cards. What will today's programmer do when a speaking AI robot creates custom-made apps?

I have been programming for forty-five years. Teaching kids how to program is like learning to read Latin - historically interesting, but in the market place completely useless.

"You can tell people not to reproduce"? Ha ha. My American wife and I had two children. That's all. At about age 40 I left her and moved to Thailand. I've had five children since then. She got to keep the first two.

You can pass a law restricting reproduction. It will work just as well as your anti-drug laws, your copyright laws, and your immigration laws. You gonna pass a law against sex???????? Holy Shit what a dumb idea! People who OBEY THE LAW just don't think the way the rest of us think.

Slashdot is so American it's pitiful. Ninety percent of the world runs on 220 volt 50 cycle power.

- Andy (Thailand)

My lenovo laptop runs Ubuntu Linux. I like to make my own choices.