Technology is layered. The spiffy stuff we can do with with software hasn't come about because of a few orders of magnitude increase in the efficiency of software. It has come about because the hardware has been driving vastly more power into the device. Smart phones were not waiting for inventive programmers. They were waiting for low power and fast chips. Inventive software maybe shaves a year or two off the time when it is useful to a consumer.

I'm not trashing software. Software is important. However, a lot of software is just stuff floating on the surface of a massive tech pyramid that supports it. It gets a lot of attention because it is what we see. The question you have to ask is, do you want your best and brightest putting paint onto the highest level of this tech pyramid, or do you want them advancing the foundation. Good software gets you prettier apps that run a little faster. Good hardware gets you orders of magnitude faster processors that run at a fraction of the power, that are a fraction of the size, and cheaper than the generation that came before. Your spiffy Google glasses or Google contacts lenses are going to exist because someone made a break through in a semi-conducting lab, not because Google wrote some spiffy software.

The Internet has brought us a lot of wonderful and socially useful things. The world is a vastly better place for having it. That said, and this was Neal's point, we have funneled a huge portion of our creative energy into it, to the point that much of the rest of science has gotten the bum shoulder. It is important to have a pile of people running around making the tech useful for the masses, there is only so much you can do if the rate of innovation on all the bits that support that front slow down.

I was actually at his talk. He didn't discount the tech boom. His point is that the tech boom wasn't "big" science. If anything, it might have sucked some of the air out of the room for science. He was arguing that the Intertubes landed out our feet, everyone was like "wow, WTF is this and how can we use!?" and stopped doing a lot of other things. That is almost certainly true. We diverted a huge number of people who might otherwise have been "hard" scientist into working in and around the 'tubes. He was talking more about striving for grand science, not just what we call "tech".

I have friends smart technical friends writing apps for cell phones. My most technically brilliant friends work for Google (an ad company) and Facebook (also an ad company). These people are near Savants with how scary smart they are, and their efforts are their brilliance is being funneled into figuring out ways to make you click on ads. For better or for worse, we have turned a huge portion of our most technical minds to working on shit that, in the grand scheme of things, doesn't mean a whole a lot.

Now, how much of that is a lack of optimism for the future and how much of it is that Google makes a fuck-ton of money? Eh, I think the money probably has more to do with it. That said, I wouldn't totally discount the subtle effect of sci-fi. I know sci-fi influenced me into going into engineering. I wanted carbon nanotube space elevators. The (delusional) dream of working on something like that is the only thing that lured me away from programming and into engineering. If not for sci-fi, there is a non-trivial chance that my path would have sent me down the road of making apps for people's cell phones instead of making the chips that go inside of them.

You are a moron. Of course when someone says that Apple is evil they don't own any of their fucking products. Why would you own products from a company that sucks? If I don't want my balls chained to Apple, then of course I don't own a bunch of Apple crap.

Riiight.They are too stupid to use Apple stuff. You realize that when someone claims ignorance and stupidity in technology that the default response is to shove some Apple products into their face, right? It isn't technical nature of Apple's locked down products that makes them what you give grandma. Apple stuff is literally built so that a moron can use them. They ask themselves, "If I was a moron, how would this work?" and then make it that way. It isn't a bad design philosophy if you are shooting for mass market appeal, but it is about as far from nerd nirvana as you can get.

More to the point, your dull anti-nerd scree is the normal nonsense that slathering Apple fanatics love to babble on about. I am really sorry that you feel like an inadequate nerd, or that you think that being a nerd is a bad thing. My condolences on your insecurities.

Probably they have absolutely no sense of taste either - they think their Dell Inspiron One is comparable to an iMac.

If by "taste" you mean dull conformity to a single aesthetic shared by like half the nation, then yes, people who don't get Apple crap have no "taste". Of course, I suppose you think that someone who buys local coffee instead of that burnt Starbucks crap also has no "taste".

Dude if you think that worshiping elephant gods is fucked up, you should come to America and see some really crazy shit. In my country people worship some sort of zombie god/king. Their religious icon of choice is an ancient Roman execution and torture device. A bunch of sub-sects of this religion practice ritualized cannibalism and blood drinking. They think that their zombie god is going to come back some day and kill everyone, and they think that this is a good thing because it lets them get to their promised land or something equally crazy. I swear I am not making this shit up. These people are craaaazy here. I'll happily take some elephant worshipers over these psycho zombie worshiping cannibals.

The plug in hybrids might make that equation a little sweeter. Pulling from the grid in some states could result in serious saving. Perhaps even more importantly, because they just use their gas engine as a generator, the car is actually a lot simpler. You rip out a huge pile of components when your engine isn't driving the wheels. The engine just runs at one well tuned speed, and electric motors are far far more resilient and long lived than their gas counterparts. The "real"savings might simply be in having a car that very rarely fails and the lower gas costs are just gravy.

I would consider a plug in under two conditions. First, it needs better infrastructure. I park my car on the street and at work. At least one of those places needs a plug for me to consider a plug in. Second, the "this shit don't break" theory is the sound, but I personally want to see a generation or two of cars prove it out. Plug ins are not there yet for someone like me, but given a generation or two and I think it will be far far more common.

1) I'm an American. Of course it is a generalization as I clearly don't fucking want it.

2) We ARE responsible. Do you call out people and politicians who cry out for this shit cowards to their face? If the answer is no, you personally are, in a small way, responsible. Further, as a general public, we absolutely are responsible. Tough on crime/terror/etc cowards get elected. They get elected because Americans are fucking cowards. There is no public discourse talking about how what a bunch of fucking cowards people who want this crap are. There is lots of talk about who is the biggest slut in Jersey Shore, but there is absolutely zero discussion or public berating of people for being fucking cowards whenever they see an airplane. If only we could channel the courage it takes to slam a Big Mac into our collective maws (something that WILL kill you), and use that same courage when it comes to the 'scary' specter of terrorism.

3) So you bitch and moan about stereotypes not being fare, and then threaten to, um stereotype other people if they don't stop? Cool argument bro. I am totally scared off by that threat. I recant my "Americans are fucking cowards" argument.

There, I fixed it for you.

The amount of civil liberty and money pissed away at a way of dying that ranks right up there with shark attacks is very sad commentary on the character of the Americans these days. Far more worthy and braver Americans stormed beach heads where every other man was killed. Braver Americans faced bayonet charges during the civil and revolutionary wars. Vastly more worthy Americans faced down police lines during the civil rights movement and took beatings and risked death during the Civil Rights movement. Now look at us. We are a bunch of fucking cowards that can't hand over our civil liberties and cash fast enough to combat a threat that ranks well below lightening strikes and can't even be shown on the same scale as the threat of eating your fat ass to death.

Fucking pathetic.

I wish the cowards that mew to the politicians to save them from the scary terrorist at least had the decency to be cowards quietly and refrain from voting or traveling. The Americans who don't piss themselves at the oh-so-scary prospect of a 1 in a few million chance that our flight is going to be blown up would be ecstatic if the cowards would kindly fuck off.

Don't call this shit security, paranoia, or anything of that nature. Even calling it paranoia elevates this stupid shit far beyond what it is. Call this action and actions like it what it is... Cowardice. The Americans are acting like a bunch of cowards.

Our rules are the rules of fucking cowards and everyone should be pissed that they need to abide by them.

The US shits its pants when it faces sheep herders armed with box cutters. Nothing is more delicious than the irony of a fat cowardly American happily getting his freedom fondles at a TSA check point, while at the same time stuffing another Big Mac into his diabetic maw. The fucking terrorist are not going to kill you. Grow up and stop being such a fucking child. Diabetes, heart disease, or cancer is going to kill your fat ass. Your shitty eating habits will kill you, your spouse, your children, your friends, and pretty the vast majority of everyone you know. The fucking terrorist are not going to kill you. They are not scary, you are just a fucking coward that shits himself at the absurdly small one in a million chance that you might die in a way more exotic that choking on the food your jammed into your diabetic maw.

If you are a coward, do everyone a favor and instead of making them get molested and spied upon to sooth your child like cowards fears, stop flying and stop voting. You are clearly too pathetic and cowardly to just suck it up and accept that there is an absurdly small chance that you might die to a terrorist. The least you can do is be brave enough to fuck off so that all of the non-cowards don't need pay for your cowardice.

I don't see what the issue is here. Yes, Zynga copies other people's games. Yes, this company was just doing the same thing. What you people are all apparently are missing though is that Zynga is simply applying simple, well know, and accepted legal practice of "I have more lawyers so fuck you because I said so". I really don't see how you can argue with that.

Disclosure: I'm a semi-conductor engineer.

I don't entirely disagree with you. A semiconductor engineer can turn around and apply what he knows to all sorts of engineering. The problem is that, generally, they have a very specific technical knowledge an inch wide a mile deep. If you spent 15 years working on diffusion furnaces, sure, you learned some Engineering 101 stuff that can be applied to anything, but the reason why you were getting your 150k a year salary was because you are a diffusion furnace demon. No one is going to pay you 150k to be another flavor of engineer, and there are not many industries that give two shits about diffusion furnaces or what you learned about them.

There is a lesson here... don't live to your means. Live well below them. The reason why the guy can't get another job is because he physically can't live off anything less than 150k without serious life style changes that would be torturous. If he had instead lived his life like his salary might be cut in half and half again at any moment, he might be sad about losing his fat money sacks, but cheerily transition over to to something else interesting, if not so lucrative.

I can't count the number of engineers I know who spend more than they make because they think they are entitled to it, and spiral into bankruptcy the second the market has a little hiccup when they find it too painful (or simply impossible if they have a big enough mortgage payment) to pull back their expenses. If you live well below your means, you get to retire early or open a business you find interesting, and if you suffer economic hardship your can merrily roll with the punches without feeling like you are forced to "downgrade". If all that extra cash is really burning a hole in your pocket, blow it on one time expenses that don't elevate your standards but instead give you interesting experiences, like travel.

My sympathy of for people who make gobs of money (and anything over 70k is "gobs" in my book) and then implode when they start making what everyone else makes is pretty minimal. Live by mindless consumption, die by mindless consumption.

I don't actually agree with the premise of the article, but your premise is also fucked up. If you are doing iOS apps, you can certainly make your own start up. If you are in the semiconductor industry (as the guy in question is), you simply can't do a start up. To start up a software company you need a coffee machine, your personal PC, and a couple thousand dollars worth of software (if that). To start up a semiconductor fab doing something simple, boring, and low tech, you need a hundred million dollars. The guy in question can't "start his own thing".

Not to shit on iOS apps, but you are talking about the very last fluffy layer of tech. The meat and potatoes of tech is god awfully expensive and so far out of the range of most start ups that it isn't even funny. You could fund literally every single programmer in silicon valley on the capital it takes to make a single 300mm semiconductor fab.

I would really hate to see the American economy devolve to the point where the only thing we are able to grasp at is the fluffy at the top. I am all for entrepreneurship, but some stuff just doesn't lend itself to entrepreneurs. iOS apps are cute and the sort of stuff any idiot with a high school education and some interest and computers can do. The process to make the components that actually go into the hardware that run your cute little iOS app, that is the real engineering that you want to bring in someone with experience for.

You think it was "pretty much paid for"? Are you INSANE? If by "pretty much paid for" you utterly ignore the insane cost of transporting goods and supplies to Japan during war time conditions, the insane cost of the multi-year battle it would take capture the country, and the half a MILLION or so American lives that they expected to lose, to say nothing of the Japanese lives, then, um, yeah... pretty much already paid for.

Fighting for Iwo Jima, an island that was 8 square miles, cost 28,000 casualties (7,000 American and 21,000 Japanese) and took a month, Japan is 150,000 square miles. Seriously.

Further, if you want to talk about immorality, ignore the nukes. The nukes were pocket change. The allies did fire bombing runs that made the nuke attacks look like small potatoes. The only reason why those two cities were picked to be nuked was because the US had made the decision to not firebomb them like they did all the other cities so that they had something interesting to use the nukes on.

Nukes were not the worst atrocities of World War II by any stretch of the imagination. Getting hung up on them is stupid. They were unique in that it was the first time such weapons were used, and the results were far more immediate and dramatic than most atrocities. In terms of actual atrocity though, they don't even score in the top 10. The atrocities that both the US and Japan were willing to commit during a theoretical invasion of Japan would have made the nukes look like an after thought.

Somehow you have convinced yourself that you see hypocrisy. There isn't any. Google set down reasonable rules on how you can link. JC Penny, through another agency, violated those rules and got their rank hurt. Google, through another agency, violated those rules and go their rank hurt.

Google has responded consistently in both cases, even when it is responding to itself. Google isn't some monolith with perfect communication. The right hand did something stupid (hire a shady company and didn't oversee them) and the left hand smacked the right hand for it. This is a good thing.

The reason why people comment on it as being above and beyond kind of cool is that it is Google smacking themselves. It is one things for Google to smack JC Penny. Everyone expects that. It is another thing to smack themselves when one part of the company violates their own rules. This speaks of the quality of the firewall between the search folks and the rest of the company. If Google can confidently smack down its own internal divisions, it leaves you feeling confident that the results are truly as impartial as such a subjective thing can be. Can you honestly see Apple or Microsoft doing such a thing? They would just circle the wagons, justify their actions, and carry on. It is nice to see a touch of corporate integrity, even if it is for the obviously selfish reason of convincing people that Google's search is "fair".

Google considers its reputation to be an asset and guards it like one. It isn't infallible and its reasons for guarding their reputation are clearly selfish and profit motivated, but it is still a good thing. Doing good stuff for selfish reasons is better than acting like an asshole for selfish reasons.

Eh, I normally agree, but I think a smart phone can be different. My smart phone replaced a handful of devices. My Evo replaced my GPS, phone, MP3 player, the need to sync said MP3 player with my computer, the need for a laptop (desktop for power, phone for portability), a printer (no need to print pretty much anything), a notebook, a to-do list, books / squelching boredom of lines implements, uncoupled me from my computer for light computer stuff, and in general makes me a happier person. It isn't like a couch where once you slap down the money and get over the joy of having a shinny new couch you go back to baseline happiness as your brain realizes that it doesn't give a fuck about what the couch looks like it when its ass is planted in it. I think that a smart phone, at least for some people, is an actual permanent boost in your happiness.

Smart phones are one of the very few things that I let violate my "never upgrade rule" on the belief that it is an actual happiness boosting tool. It probably isn't a permanent happiness boost for everyone, but I think for a non-trivial portion of the population it is. Being weary of "upgrading" is a wise idea. Most "upgrades" give you a quick euphoric joy, and then you settle back down to baseline and become pissed if you ever have to downgrade. That is a loss. There do exist things though that make your permanently happier, and those things are worthy of snagging up. Generally things that make you permanently happier are related to human relationships, lifestyle, or health, but for some people there are "things" that can give you a permanent boost. If you are tech-centric, a smart phone might be one of those rare things.