So you say he wasn't -- very clearly and obviously -- lying?

Because if he was lying, your criticism of me makes no sense. If he was not lying, then please defend his claim that asking for a voter ID is for the purpose of suppressing black votes. Or that Republicans are all white. (?) Or that Romney hid his money in the Cayman Islands (he paid taxes on that money, as federal law requires; nothing was "hidden"). He lied.

It's not enough for me to say "I disagree." That's bullshit. He is not saying, "I think the free market doesn't work, and here's why." That would be something to disagree with. He is stating, as facts, things which are false, which he either does or should know are false, as a teacher promoting these ideas in a classroom.

It's typical and sad that you criticize me for not being "sociable" for calling a lie a lie, whereas this guy gets no criticism for telling those lies.

That's sort of the point though. Most of Yahoo's properties have been stagnant for years, some even for over a decade.

I've been playing fantasy football on yahoo since 2000. The update is awful, and most of the users hate it. It's added no discernible functionality, but changed a user interface that has been in place for at least ten years. While you can deride users for being 'change resistant', the fact is a consistent, usable interface is a feature.

Lots of times power users, or IT workers don't realize just how offputting a major UI revamp can be. While we get caught up in things like, "Agile", "Features", "Web x.0" most users just want to be left alone.

Really, though, I think this whole "I'm taking my ball and going home" attitude is quite dumb. If you're willing to leave and learn a new platform in protest, why not stay and learn the new upgraded platform where your data already lives?

Users will stay with a platform they know, even if it isn't feature rich. The opportunity cost of switching to another platform is losing the time they've invested in learning the original platform. Once that cost is forced upon them, they might as well investigate other platforms, either out of spite, or simply because they've got to learn something new anyway.

If I were there, I'd have called him out as a liar and a racist, because that's what he is. It is racist to say that requiring voter ID is racist, because what you're actually saying is that black people are less capable or interested in simply following the rules to vote than white people are.

You do not actually believe that a comparison of a professor making up bullshit about Republicans being racist, and expressing purely ignorant nonsense that doesn't stand up to the slightest amount of intellectual examination, is similar to a professor promoting the free market. I sugggest you stop pretending you do.

While Pohl did frequently collaborate with C. M. Kornbluth, "The Marching Morons" is by Kornbluth alone.

Jack Vance
Fred Pohl
Iain Banks
Richard Matheson

I don't think we've seen this many giants in the field all pass away the same year before.

If no one else has mentioned it, read Pohl's story "Tunnel Under the World," which is still a great work.

Seems Napster was setting up peer to peer connections around 1998 or 1999.

I'm not sure how this invention isn't obvious after Napster.

Inevitable discovery is a defense, a way of overturning a patent. But people often overestimate what's inevitable. Many good ideas aren't discovered for generations even though all the pieces were in place.

I've got nothing against patenting good ideas, but the techniques described in the patents involved seem inevitable to me.

But then again juries don't usually include computer engineers so everything computer seems like magic to them.

So business should just be able to use someone else's research as they see fit?

Perhaps business does its own research.

There are many problems that have obvious solutions no matter who does the research. Some solutions are inevitable. They aren't supposed to be patented.

Welcome to the Business States of America.

Hardly. As far as I can tell, VirnetX is basically a combination of academics and lawyers that won against a real business like Apple.

Ever think that maybe that prosperity was a result of theft and maybe it needs to be spread around instead of kept among white people? What's the racial makeup of those "scientists and engineers" anyway? How's the diversity quotient?

Prosperity is mostly a result of applied cleverness and knowledge and not theft. Iron and carbon don't become steel without cleverness and knowledge. Niagra falls doesn't create power for factories without cleverness and knowledge. Fast computer chips don't exist without cleverness and knowledge.

We've tried spreading cleverness and knowledge through public education.

Some people just don't seem to want what the government gives away for free.

And obviously there are a lot of homeless people who need psychiatric help, but after Regan, they're never going to get it.

This is one of those myths that just won't die.

Defunding of psychiatric hospitals generally occurred AFTER those hospitals lost patients that were allowed to leave after the Psychiatric_survivors_movementsuccessfully fought for deinstitutionalization.

Mental hospitals lost about 80% of their residents when those patients were given the choice to discharge themselves.

Allow me to modify the bit you quoted, then. I usually try to be more careful, and I apologize:

...If he would at least qualify his criticism of private space industry's probability of establishing a Mars colony...

Why do we decry the ability of the private sector to do stuff in space? I'm not saying "they absolutely will establish a Mars base!", I'm taking issue with anyone saying outright that it can't be done. It's a silly statement, regardless of whether it's made by a well-respected Doctor of Philosophy in Astrophysics, or someone who is somewhat less qualified.

Don't get me wrong, I like the guy, and he's curt and painfully correct on many far more controversial topics. I just think that on this statement, there is room for disagreement.

...but there was only progress because there was a huge push to out-compete the Soviets. It's not as if NASA grew engineers in a lab, they hired them from the public sector. They did create the field (easy to do in a vacuum), but not most of the technology. I'm all for upping NASA's budget (I'd pay an extra grand a year in taxes without complaint), but that's not going to happen. Saying that private industry *can't* do spaceflight is as silly as predicting that they couldn't have done commercial air services. We just need to be supportive of whoever is succeeding as much as we're collectively able to be.