I'd even say there has been very little fundamentally new stuff for the last 100 years.

Depends on what area of technology, and what you consider "new" as opposed to a "technical refinement" or "manufacturing advance". Does the transistor count, or is that just an incremental improvement on vacuum tubes? The physics required to build, say, an iPhone were mostly understood by the 1920s, and I don't think there was any theoretical work suggesting that it was impossible. On the other hand, the concept of ubiquitous handheld multi-functional computing and communication devices connected by a global network containing nearly all human knowledge required levels of technology that couldn't even be guessed at.

If you consider the life sciences instead, our background knowledge is as far beyond 1920s biology as the iPhone is beyond the telegraph, and revolutionary discoveries and technical advances are still being made.

Free market indeed, it's funny when the market is far freer in a politically communist nation

China has a huge number of trade barriers, including price caps on pharmaceuticals. The other half of the "free(er) market" you're describing is a failure to enforce IP rights (or, possibly, failure by companies to file the relevant patent applications in China, but that seems unlikely), so that pharma companies are having to compete with generic products that would be illegal in the US. You can applaud this if you like, but it's not generally considered a good environment for inventing new drugs.

Of course an experimental ebola vaccine wasn't worth that much in 2010 since the Africans needing it then didn't have lots of cash to pay for it.

Also: it's experimental, which by definition means that someone has to invest a lot of time and money figuring out if it actually works. Drug companies license experimental therapies like this all the time. Nine times out of ten (probably more), they're buying something that turns out to be worthless. When they actually get hold of something that really works, of course it looks like a steal in retrospect, but there's no way to predict that in advance. (Although I do sometimes wonder why academic IP holders don't push for profit-sharing agreements more often.)

"The soldiers most likely to take their own lives were men with past suicidal behavior and a history of psychiatric disorders and criminal offenses, including weapons possession and verbal assaults."

Thanks, Watson.

Hang a long conductor down towards Earth, and harvest the voltage potential.

Buy a VPS for $2 a month and relay to it over a VPN tunnel; Comcast won't be able to get their grubby paws on it.

Seriously, linking to a PDF article?

Then what do you do when it starts throwing errors? The ISP won't help you.

Think about it (if you can):
Wanting something is enough to make it happen.
Wisdom of crowds.
Scientists don't know everything.
You'll be famous.

Sounds like the recipe for external validation that every GenY and Millenial are craving.

So, basically, we should criminally prosecute anyone whose views disagree with your political biases?

Suddenly this is the new thing. You could simply say "the thief" or "the bad guy" or "the spy", but then you wouldn't sound all Matrix.

Lighten up, Slashdot.

Except its kickstarter, so some douchebeard will keep all or most of your money while mailing you a Debian CD in return.

Yes, that is actually before the US entered WWII and long before the invention of the cyclotron.

Huh? The cyclotron was invented in 1932. Obviously a relatively primitive instrument (it would easily fit on my kitchen table), but the underlying design is still in use.

Call me when I can install an OS as a server, and not have to worry about GUI crap, hotplug nonsense, the *Kits, and 100 other dependencies.

From my experience, the boneheads were almost exclusively in the HR agencies.

About a year ago, in my previous job, I was recruiting for some Linux Kernel/Drivers/Embedded C (with a bit of C++) people. I was dealing with some of these boneheads but I made sure I had a very good, strongly-worded chat with them to explain the types of candidates I was looking for, making it absolutely clear that I needed people who were proficient in C, not just C++.

The reply that took the biscuit was, "To be honest, you'd be better off looking for C# programmers."