Any species that doesn't feel a very strong need to reproduce will eventually die out. Wanting "Babies, BABIES, BABIES!" is a required long term survival trait.

What is considered "fit" isn't so simple as a longer neck or stronger muscles.

Technology and social structure are PART of evolution. As a matter of fact it seems that such things outweigh almost any of the other "natural" advantages a species might have.

At the end of the day, we squabble, and we can be short sighted, but the human race is the most evolved and complex species to ever walk this planet. From an evolutionary standpoint we're crowding everything else out. Honestly I don't think most species will survive long-term unless they are of use to us - either as pets, food, or work animals.

Hey, I hang out with a lot of creative people. Not Elon Musk, but Steve Jobs for more than a decade, and lots of people at least as smart that you don't know. They can be really brilliant, and successful, and they can still make really stupid mistakes and sell them to the rest of us pretty well because they believe in themselves completely and they have a track record. I've done that too.

That's the hyperloop. Something Elon never meant to stand behind (and still really isn't), just put out there to torpedo a worthy project that he didn't believe in.

Anyone who looks at the hyperloop design can see it's not a no-brainer. It has safety issues up the wazoo :-) It's going to take a long time to get right.

Meanwhile, little Switzerland can have incredible trains everywhere and the United States can't get it together, and unlike with rockets and cars Elon's not helping this time. And I am not sure that the "lease" part of his solar business is a great thing for the world either.

Although the hyperloop is possible and might even be practical someday, let's please be honest about the reason it was created. Elon Musk just wanted to kill the California high-speed rail.

That might have been OK if there was a hope that we could actually replace it practically with a hyperloop. But given the history of bleeding-edge rail - ride any maglevs lately? We haven't even had much success with monorails outside of theme parks and Las Vegas - we don't really have any working system to replace high-speed rail. Hyperloop should really be called "Pipes that carry People" and we need decades of work on it before considering intercity lines.

There's no shortage of pretty good beer in the US (heck I make my own). The problem is that only a small percentage of people actually want it. Anything beyond Budweiser or Coors Light is considered "weird tasting". That's changing, but for the most part people are drinking that "mass marketed barley water" by choice, not out of lack of options.

We're holding a conference on file sharing in Baltimore later this summer and we were wondering if you'd like to be a guest speaker?

Thanks.

Don't confuse knowing the difference with caring about it. I've using Linux since the late 1990's. I have a CS degree and am a programmer for a living. I understand very well the "free in beer vs free as in speech" argument.

HOWEVER, most people really only care about the "zero cost" definition of free. And when it comes to open source most only care about the source actually being available, not whether its under the GPL or not.

"Libre" as it is applied by the zealots is a concept that only a very small subset of computer users care about - even if they understand it. You're not going to get them outraged by explaining it.

Consider the opposite: lets say Ubuntu listed software as "Free", but when you clicked install it prompted you for payment credentials for $5, with the justification being that you're free to modify the source and do as you wish, but the software has a monetary cost. THEN you'd see outrage because it'd be stepping on the definition of free that people actually care about.

This, this, a thousand times this.

You can look at the source code all you like, but unless you can *use* that source code to build your own binaries and redistribute them, then that means absolutely nothing in terms of security.

The products you buy off the shelf may or may not have any relation to the code you looked at.

That's why Free Software is so important for security-sensitive applications. Not only do you get to look, you get to modify it and redistribute.

Yes, I pay taxes. My salary doesn't come from THOSE taxes though (income taxes). It comes from different taxes - namely, property taxes.

So I guess you could say I shouldn't be billed property taxes. Ok - what about someone who works where I do but lives in a different jurisdiction (very common)? That jurisdiction isn't going to give up THEIR revenue because he works for a different one, and it wouldn't be fair to the other employee that they still have to pay property taxes while I don't because I live in the same jurisdiction where I work.

Or consider someone who is renting - they're not paying property taxes anyways - but his landlord certainly is, and you can bet it's folded into his monthly bill. Why should I get to own a house tax free whilst he's having to foot his landlord's taxes as part of the payment?

I know, I know. We could hire someone to figure out all these exceptions and such, and then straighten it all out. Make sure that Federal government employees don't pay Federal income taxes but still pay state, and state employees pay federal but not state. And local government employees pay both but no property tax *IF* they're living in the same jurisdiction they work in.

Congratulations - you just rehired those recently laid off IRS employees that you thought weren't needed under this new "simple" system.

Trust me it's really popular to call new sources of revenue (or old ones renamed and raised) as "fees" rather than taxes. That way politicians get to proclaim in their campaigns that they've never voted to raise "taxes". Sure your bill is higher, but it's the "fees", not more taxes.

"Lower tax brackets" (or rather, their effect on taxes) are a persistent myth.

There are tax brackets, but you're only taxed at the higher rate for overage from the previous tax bracket.

http://blog.taxact.com/how-tax...

You do realize there's all sorts of levels of "government" right?

I work for a local (county) government myself. My salary is mostly funded by the county's main source of income: property taxes (with a bit extra from sales taxes).

Income tax goes to the federal and state government. Why would I not pay taxes to those entities when my salary isn't being funded by it?

Or if you go to state employees - why withhold the federal government's taxes when their salary is funded mostly by state income taxes (and vice versa)?

If I had a nickel for every time some internet genius thought there was some simple fix to all of government's problems I'd be rich enough to all ALL of our taxes.