This sounds similar to my idea for establishing a special top-level domain for scientists to register a permanent domain name, which I posted back in February. Except, with my system the ID incorporates the scientists name and birth date, identifying information that is already commonly used when referring to historical figures. (OK, all the Wangs may need to include the exact time of their birth, down to the second in order to get a unique ID.) With my system the ID is itself an IRI so it can be used in RDF and RDFa information. And it allows for the creation of actual web sites that sit under that IRI, with additional information about the scientist. All using standard, common web technologies. Finally, I am not going to be trying to make money off of this system by selling registrations. Once a law is in place creating the .sci TLD and specifying that the domain names will be sold for perpetuity (rather than requiring renewal each year), then the regular, existing domain registration system can be used. No need for massive non-profit organizations with signatories and memberships. No worries that said non-profit organization - and thus their system - will cease to exist in the future.

I have voted democrat or independent all my voting life and I have never been so disappointed or felt so betrayed as I am/have with Barack Obama. I am now pretty much convinced that he is either a republican plant or truly one of those liberal elitists that the GOP was yammering about. The difference between a "liberal" and a "liberal elitist" is that a "liberal" truly believes in helping the common person and generally thinks the reason we even have governments is to pool resources in an effort to help said common person. A "liberal elitist" is actually a rich person who thinks that the wealthy should be aided and abetted in getting even more wealthy by just about any means possible BUT the best way to do that is to appeal to the sensibilities of the regular "liberals." In other words, a "liberal elitist" is just a republican who tells a different set of lies. Republican politicians tell lies designed to appeal to conservative voters and "liberal elitists" tell lies designed to appeal to regular liberals.

That said, I have seen absolutely no evidence that Barack Obama has done anything to stir up hate between the races. The GOP and the conservatives have done a pretty good job of that on their own. So, the "us" you are referring to must be people who listen to the fear-mongering, conservative talk-radio hosts. Because I don't know a single soul who is afraid of race riots when/if Obama looses. Not even my more conservative friends at work. This talk of fear of race riots is actually pretty racist at its core. It says that black people can't handle a peaceful exchange of power. The same peaceful exchanges of power we have had about every four to eight years for over two-hundred years. Remember, it was the conservative voters who started marching in the streets with rifles on their shoulders when Obama was elected. Sure, no one got shot, but that is about the strongest sign of people not accepting the peaceful exchange of power that I have ever seen.

Exactly! Too many people seem to want simple solutions to complex problems. We can't fix the patent system by making it too scary for honorable but relatively poor inventors to sue big corporations who use their invention without permission. Nor can we fix it by totally eliminating software patents. Some software inventions are truly worthy of patents. As with almost every problem for which we already have laws: The solution lies in more correctly enforcing the existing laws rather than making up new, simpler laws that cause more problems than they solve.

Just remember that every modern factory and gizmobowatzit was built using stone tools. Indirectly, of course. But anything can be built starting with stone tools. (And stone tools were made using plain rocks!) We already did it. And most of the problem was in figuring out the next thing we wanted to make, not in the actual making. So, it doesn't take shipping entire forges and factories up to the moon. Just a few tools and some know-how. Now, I am not advocating sending actual stone tools. Just that one doesn't need to send complete factories either. You figure out a happy medium of weight and utility, then get started.

It never ceases to amaze me how many arguments on /. and elsewhere are based entirely on false dichotomies. It would be amusing if it weren't so damaging.

Research has been done on this issue. I have read it right here on Slashdot. Yes, I am too lazy to look it up.

Young women, just getting out of high-school have been shown to have a perception that programming is full of dorks and geeks. Dorks and geeks who will stare at them but not know how to interact with them. Now, this perception is mostly manufactured by Hollywood but young high-school aged girls and boys are very susceptible to the stereotypes fed to us by Hollywood. The perception is so strong that merely decorating a room with a couple of Star-Wars posters was enough to affect young-women's perceptions as to whether they would like to pursue a given career. If you don't fix the public perception that all programmers are geeks and dorks then you will never attract high-school girls to the field.

I suspect that the stereotype is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy as well. Not a lot of young, high-school aged boys like to associate or be associated with dorks and geeks. So it may be that only the more dorky and geeky boys are choosing the field merely because of the stereotype. It is amazing how powerful the urge is to be who everyone expects you to be, when you are that age. I haven't seen research on this one, but I imagine if you remove the constant reinforcement of that stereotype by Hollywood, you would see more girls and less dorky guys entering the field.

An ex of mine got a degree in CS, back in 1996, in order to get on the Y2K bandwagon. She worked mostly with COBOL and some crazy scripting language I had never heard of. According to her, there were a lot more women where she worked than are typically reported in programming shops today. Why? Because a lot of these women came to programming later in life. After they had gotten over their stereotypes of what programmers were like. To them, programming was nothing more than yet another white-collar job that paid a lot more than being a secretary.

As a former network manager (most of who's job was supporting various special purpose software products) I can tell you that I got sick to death of supporting software where it was obvious that design decisions were based on what the programmer knew he could do easily. Sure, you wrote a program that could do "D" but my users had to go through "W" then "L" and then "R" to get there. Oh, it all made perfect sense from a programming perspective. I could easily see why a programmer would add that feature in that particular manner. But it made even educated users feel like idiots trying to figure out the logic of how they were supposed to do things. I have overheard minor religions being invented while users try to figure out why in the world they have to go through "W" then "L" and then "R" to just get to "D" when they are sitting at "C" right now. It was so bad that it is the major contributing factor for my decision to get out of the IT field. I got sick and tired of trying to make software just simply do what the vendor said it would do.

So, I am a firm believer in writing the USER documentation before writing a single line of code. If you can't explain how a user is supposed to get from "C" to "D" in a simple, coherent, manner which is somewhat consistent with how they got from "B" to "C" then you aren't finished designing your program yet. Have your grandmother read the manual. If it doesn't make sense to her then you got more work to do. Sure, your code may be elegant, with clojures and functional programming all over the place. Your class structure may be the envy of all who maintain it. Sure you may be able to refactor the holy hell out of it and every bit of the code is reused three times. But if users can't use it then what the F is the point?

Agreed. There needs to be a site, similar to Creative Commons, where they list prewritten and pre-vetted agreements that crowd-funded researchers "sign" onto. These agreements would lay out, in very explicit terms, exactly what the researchers intend to do with the "work product" from their research. I would not want to fund research that is just going to enrich some professor after he retires. Neither will I trust vague, open-ended promises that the research will be "open." But you give me a legally binding agreement that has been signed by all parties, scanned, and posted on the internet... then I will trust you to not just take my money and run.

Thank you. I will definitely look into Processing. After a quick glance it seems to meet many of my immediate needs, even lots of documentation and support. Definitely worth further exploration.