I wish I could mod you up. There are so many assumptions flying here. Buddhist cosmology has it that humans lifespan will increase to over 100K years in the future. Many a cyborg technology will be the thing. (Get me a T1000, maybe.) Nobody knows, for certain. Yet people will argue for the fun of it, I guess.

With all the complaints, I do wonder what percentage of US readers of this site are programmers, designers, computer scientists, etc., that are employed by the US Government. I would not be surprised that we are the majority. Still "the needs of the one" are still relevant also.

To quote: "but as an aggregate group do lean towards certain behaviours and interests." I believe the key is right there in the phrase "aggregate group". I attempted similar strategies to get my daughter involved in tech since she has the mind for it. I tried to provide my daughter lots of opportunities to learn coding and design. She enjoyed it but never established any passion for the field. That may have been because I only ever involved her and not necessarily her friends, also. She is a very social person (which I am not) so I probably erred by not including her friends.

She went her own way (and good for her), graduated from university, and is now an editor for a financial newsletter. She does know her tech stuff, though. I am more proud of having introduced her to SF&F, gaming, and comics. Her company did a financial review of software gaming field and used her as a resource. So, it's all good. She's going to find her own path. Being a good "backup" is no small thing. Enjoy being a dad!

Exactly. I posted this same think with links to his books above. That would be awesome.

Like in Peter Hamilton's Commonwealth Sage, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C..., or his Night's Dawn Trilogy, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.... That would be truly awesome.

Well, it's even "worse" than that. The group often has to define the goal and the requirements for the customer. If you have no experience leading a team or being a team member of a project that needs to be defined, the process detailed and agreed upon, etc., you are just a "coder", which is just the last and easiest part of the project.

All of your premises assume that the ideas of "Haves" and "Have nots" are even valid. I would, ultimately, say those ideas are incorrect. No one "gets out alive" so to concentrate on that which cannot be kept is ultimately unwise. The idea that "those that die (or live) with the most toys win!" is quite ignorant. The idea that having or not having something is improving or worsening your life is a waste of good time. It's all relative and therefore mental gymnastics at its worst. Time to Wake up.

Indeed. In 1984, I bought a complete Pioneer stereo system (FM Receiver, 200W Amp [0.02% THD - woot!], Cassette Tape (i repeat, Tape) Deck, 2 Speakers (a yard-high each), all total for about $2000) and was bummed that I didn't have enough money for a Reel-to-Reel unit. The whole thing (along with my record and tape collection) took up most of one wall in our living room. In 1985, the whole thing could be had for about $500 in something the size of a car radio, with BETTER SOUND. Egads. But I still remember that wall of stereo stuff quite fondly.

Wish I could mod you up.

Better yet. Some guy calling himself a "scientist", in the WaPo Comments here to a similar article with this conclusion: " the perfect alignment of variables that must all fall into place for this explanation to work is virtually impossible on the regular basis required to satisfy the frequency of the event. There is a different reason; they don not know what it is."

When I was young, many years ago, I thought ignorance could be overcome by education. Now, some 60+ years later, I begin to think that is not the case. /sigh

A guy named Richard Alpert (a Harvard Psychologist) teamed up with a guy named Timothy Leary (another Harvard Psychologist) to do experiments with LSD to do just that. He later changed his name to Ram Dass. In his book, "Be Here Now", he wrote that (short version) he couldn't figure out how to STAY high so he went to India hoping to find that answer.

Well, the irony is that outside of the US, discrimination based on color of skin is quite rare. Discrimination based on "tribe" and gender seems to be everywhere, though.

If copyright issues are your biggest complaint, you have a pretty good life. I am betting you have electricity, running water, and toilets, things much of the "free world" doesn't have, much less relative freedom of speech. You simply have no idea what life is like outside your environment. Please do travel outside your local country. Hopefully, it will be an eye-opener (and heart-opener) for you.

Wish you were correct. I live in the western part of Fairfax County, Virginia. We lose power for 1-4 hours about every 6 months and for over 24 hours about once every 2 - 3 years. (During one outage, very early in the morning, I decided to go to the local donut shop for coffee and donuts. As I was leaving my neighborhood, I realized that the outage was only about 3 blocks square with my house near the "epicenter". It could be ME that's causing all these power problems. :P)

in Blade Runner, he essentially only kept the title character and the title and

in Prometheus, he essentially just re-gurgitated "Alien", what could go wrong?