So you want communism? Will you abolish the state and thus get rid of all taxes? Marx wrote in his newspaper thatit is duty of every individual to stop paying taxes, he was even brought to court for that, before they threw him out. As to promoting Leninism.... I would give a lot to meet you in a dark alley sometime...

"We cannot manage our very complex, highly sophisticated capital structure with what's coming out of our high schools," said Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve."

That's a red herring, because we don't need to; we need to manage it with what's coming out of our universities.

When he talks about eliminating inequality by bringing the top down, he doesn't mean bringing down the 1%ers like himself and Gates. He's talking about bringing down all the skilled workers in the top 5-10% down to the level of unskilled workers. This doesn't actually reduce income inequality (it actually makes it worse), so he's full of crap. This has long been Greenspan's desire; it annoys him to no end that people who do things can aspire to salaries as high as lower-level banksters.

"Society" is willing to pay for a college degree; people with degrees make more over their lifetime than people without degrees. Unfortunately, the dismal science of economics tells us that given such a situation, we should expect the cost of college to rise to the present value of all that extra income, leaving the hapless student with no gain.

So because death always wins at the end you want others not to try and not to work towards increasing their own lifespan? Yeah, death always wins, as long as we let it, it wins. We will all die, no question about it. What are you going to do about it, just return to the slime you came out of? You won't even try?

Those who will try, do you know what will happen once (not if, once) they succeed? They will be called 'the rich' (and they may as well be, it will be painfully expensive to achieve those results) and the rest will go to WAR to get a piece of that cake, which they did not bake, which the likes of you are spitting upon in its general direction.

Don't pretend you won't be on this or some other forum should this happen within your life time, yelling and screaming that the rich are the bastards that prevent the rest from having something that they have achieved. Your position right now is most likely in direct contradiction to your future position, should that future materialise, where you will be willing to do just about anything, including murder and theft, anything to get a piece of that.

Obvious AC whoosh is obvious.

Strat :)

Guilt for what? Clearly you don't understand why people who are rich are rich in the first place, they are not your 9-5 workers, they are where they are because they always thought outside of your particular box.

They have no guilt, they should have no guilt. If anybody is driven by guilt, it should be those who steal, not those who produce, and the most of those who steal are government and the mob.

Evolution is not more important than individuals, isn't it comparing apples and oranges? I agree with TFA, death is wrong. The author is 27 (I count, since he says in 2045 he'll be 58) and that's much younger than I am and he is thinking about it now, which shows his personal progress, which always a good sign.

In any case, saying that some complex environmental process, like evolution, is more important than lives of individuals that exist strikes me as very foolish. You don't know what will happen in 2 years time, we could have a massive war or disease that would eliminate 90% of population right there, given how interconnected the world is. Should we be waiting for evolution to produce humans that can withstand wars, diseases, environmental changes?

Why?

Who says that humans have any more entitlement to live on this planet than bacteria? And at the end bacteria will win out, and is that a better outcome from our own perspectives? Why should we root for bacteria than for ourselves? You think that evolution will give humans a better chance, I think you don't what you are talking about, evolution could as well lead to our extermination and let jellyfish populate most of the planet. Maybe even ground crawling jellyfish, and from my perspective I prefer to be here rather than having some jellyfish supersede myself.

Anyway, we have brains that allow us to modify our environment and those of us with any sense at all should do everything possible to ensure that our own lifespans are increased. Not lifespans of whatever may or may not come after us, but ourselves. If we don't do that and just disappear into the nothing sooner rather than later, as everything does, then there is no major distinction between us and the rest of the slime out there. As a thinking creature, I refuse to accept that. If we can't figure this out, then too bad for us of-course, but to consciously deny ourselves that very possibility, of extending our own lifespans is nothing but defeatism. The poor of mind and spirit can have that, let them perish. Those who want to reach for more than what we are given by the system that surrounds us must fight to take what we can.

The singularity is a fascinating idea that ain't going to happen. Vernor Vinge himself did a much better treatment on what happens in this case.

We're already living in the Age of Failed Dreams. Advancements in technology, aside from computing, have all but halted. Flying cars? We can barely improve planes; yes, that IS your fathers airframe. Cheap and limitless energy? Nope. Life extension? John Adams died at 90 over 200 years ago, and he wasn't THAT unusual; many more live that long today, but few live much longer. Progress on stopping disease has even stopped and regressed. And most notably for the purposes of the singularity, strong general AI hasn't progressed much.

I see we have another liberal scholar. It's probably good you posted AC too, I wouldn't want that drivel associated with any online personality either.

I'm so sick of that BS. If I injure myself, my insurance will kick in and society will not foot any bills. And before you claim insurance is society paying, it is not as the actuaries already charged me a rate for expected claims coverage.

Non free countries force riders to wear helmets. I happen to live in a somewhat free country. You can keep your non free country that tells you what you can and cannot do based around someone's irrational fear of having to provide some medical coverage or whatever. When are those civilized country going to force you to wear protect during casual sex because it might cost society money with maternity leave and delivery fees. That entire line is BS and should never be spouted by anyone intelligent who isn't a greedy bastard more concerned with what they might have to share the cost of then people's freedoms and rights..

I look for people who are interested in software development, who are willing to take the opportunity to learn on the job and can demonstrate that they can learn, that they are intelligent and that they understand that if they do not possess the skills that allow me to bill my clients for their work, they will not get paid until they acquire those skills. I train my people the way I see fit and within a few weeks they become productive members of the team, at which point they can start commanding a wage.

I have very little interest in their academic achievements, the degree does not matter to me one bit. However I do have a few examples that show that people that drop out of the school that they started are in some cases very flaky. Seriously, I wouldn't have thought that previously, but I have examples where people that were drop outs in computer science also drop off the radar at work! Even the talented can be the most flaky people apparently, it's kind of surprising.

OTOH people who are still students, even if their education has nothing to do with computing, are actually hard working and they show up, which apparently not everybody can do - SHOW UP. It's quite amazing, honestly.

In that regard, the analogy fits. But what good is that? If that's the best you can do for an analogy, you may as well give up.

Give up on what? Copyright is only a legal construct too. Like it or not, it's valid and the premise is valid.

Look, if you can't think up a proper analogy for copying bits, don't bother. Analogies are usually garbage and unnecessary, anyway. How about just arguing your damn points without bringing up unrelated junk?

I don't need an analogy for copying bits. I gave a good and accurate analogy concerning the act of conversion which is theft by law. I do not care if you download something, take a CD or DVD from the store or whatever, you are taking it without the legal right to do so and those who would have received compensation normally are entitled to that compensation when you do.

Like I said, your hand waiving is intellectually lazy. I will add that you are doing a poor job at both rebuttal and forwarding any counter points.

Sorry, you missed the sarcasm. My overly subtle point was that this solar crap cooker isn't designed for disaster relief (pun intended) because one of it's major selling points, biochar is close to irrelevant in that context. In other words, you don't sell disease prevention by selling long term fertiliser benefits. Another point being that disaster relief doesn't reliably coincide with near constant sunshine.

You are right, I missed your sarcasm but as I said before, long term fertilizer benefits is nothing more then safe handling of the byproduct. If you compost, you have raw sewage to deal with and disease. With this, you end up with something that can be stored and used or sold to aid in the relief.

On motorcycle protection: Given the trauma causes in 2&3 wheel vehicle accidents, wearing a helmet is the most intelligent thing you can do. I'd personally feel more naked without a helmet & track style protective gear than with a helmet and not a stitch. Wearing one turned a minor accident into something that I walked away from instead of a fatality.

Most people will go their entire life without a single accident on a 2or3 wheeler (3wheelers are actually outlawed here unless you had one from before they were outlawed). A large percentage of those who will, will be little more then dropping the bike at slow speeds. That being said, I agree that a helmet will save lives and mitigate trauma damage, it is just that I was raised not needing to wear one and I'm simply not comfortable wearing one. I ride in jeans, every once in a while a leather jacket, and generally no helmet. Done it for over 30 years, even on the trails as a kid. I like the wind in my hair while cruising. I know the dangers, I just view it like when I skydived, an acceptable risk to get the expected enjoyment.

The guys I ride with don't really have a sign off, but V+

I don't have a link to the actual device used but it is similar to this except the enclosure was optional and therefore a bit smaller.

http://iqgistics.com/gps-solut...

More here
http://www.globalstar.com/shop...

This happened about 2004 or so and my friend was the one who purchased and monitored everything as it was his kid. I don't remember it being 11 inches long but I think it was from the same company as the domain looks awfully familiar.