But what does hybridization actually do on the genetic level? Genetic material is extracted from one organism and implanted/replaced into another. Only it's a crap shoot, so while you may have wanted mildew resistance, what you got was smaller yields and tasteless product. Genetic engineering lets you select the specific genes that you want and none of the rest.

So far as we can tell, all life on Earth is related to each other and all of it uses the same genetic machinery. The fact that jellyfish are more distantly related -- yet still related -- doesn't mean their genes are inherently dangerous and can't be used safely to good effect. The fact that two varieties are closely related doesn't mean their hybrid is a good thing to eat, either.

The controls on laboratory genetic modification are far, far tougher than the traditional genetic modification done in someone's backyard garden. The fact that it's done in a laboratory makes the kind of tracking and study you want possible. Nobody publishes a peer-reviewed study when your grandma hybridizes a dozen different plant varieties.

Uh... yeah, thus making it a "recent trend". The AC's critique, which is something of a cheap shot, is that you're looking at a narrow window of time (the PRESENT) and thinking that it represents what the future will be like. Yet maybe the present is actually the outlier and the future will be much different. The reason I think it's a cheap shot is that there's really no other way to do it. Every prediction about the future is subject to the same criticism.

Rolling your own solution isn't free, you know. You have to pay the power bill and the ISP bill. You have to pay for the hardware and replace it when it breaks. If you value your time, managing the system is also a cost. By all means, go for it if that's what you want. But the economies of scale I mentioned mean that a large provider is likely to get those costs lower than you could on a per-user basis.

Yeah, I actually agree with you that this is a problem, but unfortunately not that many people seem to care.

There's plenty of good science that needs to be funded yet doesn't have an obvious connection to a monetary payoff. The fact that investors aren't interested in that kind of science doesn't mean it isn't worth doing; it means markets aren't always good at everything.

And the guy talking about PirateBoxes and Thunderbolt drives isn't extrapolating recent trends into the future?

As I said, "the cloud" is just a new word for a very old idea which used to be called mainframe computing. The balance between mainframes and desktops (here I'll include mobile devices) is dictated by economics more than technology. Mainframes concentrate computing power and storage for many users to take advantage of economies of scale. It's the same reason most people get their power from the electric company rather than running their own generator. You always have that option, but per person served, a large provider can usually do the job for less money.

Also, even if the poster is right and innovation in consumer electronics is almost over, innovation in mainframe technology won't end any time soon. Squeezing an extra little bit of performance or cost savings out of an iPad may not be worthwhile, but it is when you multiply it by millions of users for a mainframe.

Except the actual trend is moving everything to "the cloud", which is just a buzzword for giant mainframes that store not just your two terabytes of data, but two terabytes for everyone on the planet, call it 14 zettabytes. Then they make it available to you instantly on any platform without you needing to do anything to explicitly transfer your data. A kid born today won't know what a USB (or Thunderbolt) drive is any more than they would an 8-track tape.

Much of the scientific research that needs to be done is basic science that shows no obvious signs of "panning out" at all. You do the research because you don't know the answer to some question, like how is the XYZ2 gene involved in development. You have no idea if the answer to that question will actually be useful for some purpose. Like as not, all the answer will do is raise more questions, leading to more research. At the end of the day, even if you haven't made a return on investment, at the very least you've added to the body of knowledge of the human race, which someone else may eventually use for something you never thought of.

Investors have very little interest in research like that, which is why it's traditionally done by governments.

On the other hand, a direct transfer is never faster than the most congested link between you and the server. If you have a reasonably fast connection, the bottleneck is often not your connection. Downloading from multiple peers that are likely taking different paths to reach you lets you reach an high overall speed even if all the peers are congested.

Copyright is a government-enforced monopoly. It's really hard to beat monopoly pricing when it comes to making money, but generally we don't think monopolies are a good idea.

If Domino's had a monopoly on pizza, I'm sure they'd make a lot more money than they do now. And if you came along and said, "Hey, maybe you shouldn't have a monopoly on pizza," they'd be upset at the prospect of losing all that revenue. They'd demand that you provide them with a business model that was just as lucrative. If all you could tell them is that their current revenues were artificially inflated because of their monopoly status, they'd dismiss you as not being serious.

In 2008, you could make a plausible case that the media didn't pay attention to him, but this time you're dead wrong. He was in all the debates and got plenty of face time with major news outlets. He was even the center of his own news cycle when the racist newsletters came up again, a reminder that media attention cuts both ways.