I was referring to the contemporary climate for science. My criticisms did not extend towards the period before 20th century.

You're spot on, except you're not as cynical and bitter.

As Joseph Campbell once observed, civilizations are a collection of myths which everyone in the society accepts/believes. We were raised thinking that science worked like Star Trek, and that blinding genius was what made for great scientific breakthroughs. But what is "accepted" scientific fact? Its basically well designed, reproducible experiments that demonstrate the validity of a theory which is eventually accepted BY a body of academic peers supposedly trained to conduct and recognize that standards were met and valid. Guess what? No body of peers (mediocrities), no scientific validation.

Science always was, and particularly today, a relentless, and excruciating labor of many millions of ants, making progress by each crumb of discovered knowledge. It is a social hive that eventually culminates in something significant and new. When it does, its the queen that gets all the credit, even though she spent all her time popping out worker drones. You cannot even hope to get credit in the science/history books unless you happened to be at the top of the pile at the time, with powerful friends to validate you as the "discoverer".

What made "great" scientists recognized, in the previous century, was not mere genius or relentless work or even showmanship. The only ones that were noticed were the ones who realized the great collection of authorities in the field were dead wrong, and then had the guts and genius to prove they were wrong. They were cowboys like Einstein and Tesla. The days of the cowboys are gone. (And forget about working in a patent office part-time, while working on your breakthrough discovery. Then again, the pay and financial security of academicians/researchers are so bad, the next vanguard of scientists just may require a day job.)

The last scientist I can think of who went maverick and made her mark was Barbara McClintock. She had to stand by her research for decades while it was dismissed by her peers, until they couldn't continue to look stupid and wrong. And who the hell here even knew who she was when I mentioned her? Think of all the people who died in the previous decades from peptic ulcers until an internist conclusively demonstrated that ulcers were induced by bacteria, and simple antibiotics would cure the condition. The bacteria theory for ulcers was around for decades, but guess what? The wrong body of peers were the deans of Internal Medicine and editors of prestigious journals at the time. There are probably many scientific discoveries unknown to us, merely because the first guy to prove it just didn't have the right juice, or some bureaucratic body had a financial interest in dismissing the findings.

Assuming the study's conclusions are valid (and I don't believe anyone should take any studies' results for granted anymore), it only demonstrates that science has become more bureaucratic in the past decades; you need to go to the right schools, know the right people, and managed to get into the right "chairs" to be in position to get "credit" for a scientific endeavor. That takes time, which explains why "older" scientists are credited later in life today. This is not a good thing. Picture being Albert Pujols and never being "allowed" to play in the World Series because he wasn't on the roster of the Yankees, Red Sox, or Braves. In our case today, we are strangling our own advancement by our own bureaucracy (or societal pedigree).

"Without student loans, only children of the wealthy will be able to go to college."

Cut the crap. Many people who weren't wealthy were able to go to college, whether it was by GI Bill subsidy, scholarship, or going to a state university whose operation was subsidized by state taxpayers.

The current student loans regime is obviously a coercive means to place the people taking the loans into indentured servitude. Its obviously made that way by the compounding interest, and penalties for late payments. The banks can't lose because the USG guarantees the loans.

The solution is correcting the student loan program so it cannot become a usurious loan. There should be no increased penalties for late payments. It should just be a percentage taken out of the person's paycheck/salary (structured like a 30 year fixed loan). The collection aspect can be run under the IRS. If the person never makes more than the loan's principal & interest in their lifetime, the bank takes the loss. (The banks will merely have to hire better actuaries to figure out the likelihood of getting paid back by a particular candidate.) When less poor and untalented people get loans, that's great. That's less college tuition inflation, more marginal college bankruptcies, and increased quality of college graduate.

People, student loans systems have worked for decades. Its only in the 1990's and the 2005 Bankruptcy bill when the system began to fall apart. If you think ALL poor people are ENTITLED to a college education (like many European nations and other foreign countries), then try passing a bill to do that. Make the taxpayer foot the bill. Otherwise, stop advocating loan slavery.

I wish I had moderator points to give you. I never understood why armchair economists cannot understand this obvious fact.

But 200 years from now, two vaults of gold won't be worth much. We'll all be transacting in Federation credits, and that's not based material which is easily replicated.

Fiat currency units can be produced at-will (a gov't with a printing press). Precious metal availability is limited what is in existence.

Only Austrian school economists thinks there is an inherent value to precious metals.

...than piss away taxpayers money suing a NASA employee for a relic that won't even cover the cost of one DOJ prosecutor?

NASA can make an example of the next astronaut when there's actually a manned program to produce a lawsuit.

Nippon is the Japanese word for Japanese (people). There's nothing derogatory or offensive with the usage.

Nips does not exist in the Japanese language, and was used as a slur in Anglo cultures, particularly pre-1960's. Nips is non-PC.

In fact, 802.11n gets its maximal bandwidth by using BOTH channels to send network traffic. MIMO is designed to not care which channel a packet is coming from. Dual band simultaneous.

It annoys me that high end (and not so high end) 802.11N routers come with gigabit LAN ports, as if its an "indispensable" feature. When I place that wireless router, its going to be in an elevated location as close to the center of my residence. Usually, it will not be located anywhere close to wired equipment. Stringing 25ft CAT6 cable totally defeats the point of having a wireless router! So why make me pay extra for LAN chips and hardware? I'm still going to buy an 8 port Gb gateway/switch with a wifi router anyway.

It makes me wonder if those people would vote for Uma Thurman, if it meant being forced to watch her Avengers movie straight through again.

Its not Japan outlawing computer virus research. Its only a "timely" story.

What's pathetic is France outlawing individual data encryption. No Frenchman should be criticizing the Japanese with THAT ridiculous law on the books, along with banning clothing.

It should be obvious that the "public" stock markets are a crooked casino run by the investment banks. They own the cops; all the alphabet agencies that claim to "regulate" trading activity. They own all the politicians, who make the laws that determine whether illicit activity is permitted. They even own the Supreme Court, who says a batch of numbers controlled by an oligarchy is a human being in the eyes of the law and the courts. If you're a single person who raises a flag, the SEC will freeze your assets and try to haul you into court. If you're big enough to be a Madoff, then you get to run your scam until you piss off the wrong people. If you're Goldman Sachs, you're untouchable.

The "public" stock market is meaningless. Its not even where all the "big" action is happening. All the real money making is in the derivatives floor. And most of that are private transactions between banks. That doesn't even include the shadow stock market located outside of NY. That's the place where thousands of transactions are being made at hundredths of a second. What is the economic utility in making trading decisions faster than 1 second, before a human being can even initiate a buy/sell decision? And finally, the real money is made on the commodities floor, where collusion between the oil companies, investment banks, and high end speculators can drive up the price of consumer oil by $1/gal. in the middle of an oil GLUT.

Who gives a damn about Linkedin getting an overvalued IPO? The "public" stock market is meaningless compared the trading activity happening outside of the exchanges. The Facebook IPO didn't even happen on the trading floor! It was a "private" sale to avoid gov't regulators. The NYSE significance is trivial to the global economy. That's why the US gov't is going to allow it to be bought by foreign owners. You can pore through company statements, do your due diligence, read the Wall Street Journal, it doesn't matter. What you and the peons think a company's valuation and quality of its leadership is irrelevant. It'll get wiped down to peanuts by the single flick of an unreported derivatives trade.

1) Eucalyptus will be supported for as long as Ubuntu versions are supported. So, for 10.04 LTS server, that will be until 2015. (barring some catastrophic dissolution of the Eucalyptus company.)

2) Eucalyptus is not dependent upon Ubuntu for its existence. Amazon is currently the largest cloud vendor using eucalyptus tools to interface with its services. If Amazon drops eucalyptus (ha ha), then you can start the death clock. You're not going to be able to get openstack to nicely merge stuff with EC2, so its not likely openstack will supplant eucalyptus anytime soon.

3) Canonical has no announced plans to remove eucalyptus from its distributions. Most likely, eucalyptus will be in 12.04, and that means it'll be around for at least 2017.

You can try this one instead.