Wow! I wish I could rate your post higher than 5 Crudpuppy!

The fact that you disagree with a central theme of a book does not mean you cannot gain a lot by trying to understand where the writer is coming from!

Ayn Rand books highlights some of the (real and potentially serious) flaws in an increasingly socialist philosophy.

Her suggested soultions are incredibly unrealistic and overly extreme..., her writing style is boring and overly repetitive..., most of her characters are simply implausible.

But, being able to understand where she is coming from, without being carried away to the extreme by her evangelism, will greatly enrich your ability to understand and interact with econonic and political issues in your own society.

Thanks Deadstick.
That link is really helpful. :)

While, in the short term, you may not be able to negotiate the price you are hoping for. In the long term, an attitude of noticing and fixing problems that improve the quality of work your team, and your boss, are doing is always noticed! And with the right mindset, you can always turn that noticing into profit/ benefits/ extra days off etc.
And, if nothing else, it provides a huge boost to your CV when you are looking for your next job.

I came in as a developer to a finance team in international bank a few years ago. Going way beyond my 'job description' of designing reporting systems as directed, I always tried to understand the reasoning behind any new system or change requests coming from my bosses.
  As a direct result of this, I have been able to suggest many improvements in the way those accounting and finance teams work. Making their lives much easier, becoming a bit of a finance expert in the process, and making them look so good in the eyes of their own bosses that a global project based on the system I designed and built has being implemented.

You may ask how all this has benefited me. It's true my rates only went up about 15% in this period. However, I used the value I had created as a reason to be able to change the time I arrive in the office to anything between 9:30 and 11:30 am. To me, those extra hours in the morning are extremely valuable. I could have also got other benefits from my extra value but this was the most important one to me and what I focused on getting.

Also, when I gave notice three months ago that I was going to leave . Even though they had hired a replacement, whom I have given full training. The fact that I have accumulated so much value and knowledge meant they offered to rehire me for a better role with an 80% raise!
I refused it (as the reason I'm leaving is not just financial). So instead, I agreed to come in as a consultant three times a week, still with the 80% raise, one weeks notice period, and with the clear understanding that as soon as I get a new job I'll be leaving.

These are not the kind of things that happen to people who want to do only what is in their job description.

It helps if you realise that your boss is also just a regular guy who is trying to get through his own work day as smoothly as possible as well. And who probably is having his own issues with his own boss.
If he has been trying to get extra budget for a new server because the last one is so old his iphone is more powerful than it is, and you come to him asking for payment (or a raise/ or budget for a new project) because you've created a nice doohickey that will reduce the amount of time you and your team spend doing a job which currently already leaves you with a lot of downtime. His reaction may be less than enthusiastic.

So how do you 'reward' it?

It's just a clump of neural cells. It's not like it has a pleasure centre or anything.

To be honest this guy's (Kevin Warwick) previous work tends to lend a suggestion of dubiousness to the whole thing.

His first project was "interfacing" the human body with a machine by sticking a RFID chip in his arm and waving it in front of a reader! That's just as high tech as putting a wireless card in your wallet and tapping it on a reciever.

In this case, it sounds like all he has done is set up a bunch of neural cells which he uses as tangled cables:
1. Send input through here
2. Find out where output comes from
3. Plug control there

I may be oversimplifying, but without giving the cells some sort of feedback for them to know whether thier result is right or wrong, you will simply end upwith random connections being made until the robot no longer works.

It seems like he is getting really good at sticking biological bits into machines (and vice versa) but not making any real progress in actually getting useful information across that barrier.

(Even his robot hand experiment is just a variation of the mind control gamepad computer game manufacturers have been working on, only in his case he transmits the signal over the internet.)

While there may be a number of people whose way of life consists of draining the resources of others to make thier own life better. Those are not the only people who need, or want, help.
        There are also people who may have been very productive for most of thier lives but due to accident, misfortune, or even temporary stupidity, may be in need of a little help to get back on thier feet. With this help, they could return to being productive members of society for the rest of thier lives, without it, whatever potential for production they still had will be lost permanently.

        While I definitely don't subscribe to the agenda which says "everyone is entitled to a certain level of enjoyment out of life, irrespective of what they put into it". Nevertheless, a good safety net means that you get more productive members of the society than you would otherwise.
A side effect of a good safety net though, is that it is very difficult to separate the permanently unproductive from those of temporarily reduced productivity.

        Besides, if you believe that people who can't survive on thier own (irrespective of how they got that way) shouldn't be helped to survive by others, why should cute animals be any different?

Is there any reason we can't start with 1 - 2 ton asteroid chunks?

We have already been able to land delicate equipment on Mars (a planet with significantly less atmosphere) using some parachutes and ballons.

I'm sure that should be able to provide a cheap option for precious mineral recovery.

Blame lazy reporters!

Do you really believe the writer of this pseudo-science article had to rush to meet an important reporting deadline so they wouldn't get scooped by another network?!?

Government is corrupt. government is rife with crony insiders from wall street and the casino banks who rotate in and out of government and are in the positions of ultimate economic authority, including at the Fed. All policies come from there. They also lobby/bribe off other government employees..politicians and 'regulators", to look the other way or to sponsor new legislation or remove old legislation that gets in the way of their skimming con games.

Government is 100% at fault, being so corrupt. Corporations are *corrupt by design*, the nature of the beast, it is the government's job to regulate them. None of those entities could do squat unless they were allowed to do it. They couldn't come up with toxic waste derivatives and sell them, or nuthin. the government should have said "WTF are these CDOs and so on? Are you crazy, this is bullshit, these are not "products", GTFO of here right now". These corporations couldn't manipulate the (now scam and counterfeit since 1913) money supply, manipulate the markets, without government lack of oversight, no matter how much tax money is stolen from the "people" for them to do their jobs correctly. Oh, but they are well paid, now government employees at the Fed level make way more than most non government workers and have carved in stone pensions and health insurance and other sorts of goodies.

    These are corporations and receive government charters to function as corporations.. they have to "incorporate", the government could say "no", and either not grant the corporate charters for scam businesses like these, or actually remove them if malfeasance is found, but they do neither, they just steal tax payer money and re-allocate it further upstream to those guys, and let them continue with their mass thievery. It's a mostly closed good ole boy loop, with "government" being the enforcer, the entity with dudes with guns who tell people what they can and can't do. Now, they tell the "people" to always support those billionaires and make them even richer.

  That's all they do, make already rich corporations richer, and get everyone else to believe they are "in debt" to them via constant mass brainwashing.

And so on, and man am I disappointed, it's like all those articles I did, all the typing..gone, worthless, waste of time.

Anyway, thanks for making me realize this, how much of a waste of time and effort it is here.

...is that stupid looking. Government sure does come up with some harebrained excuses to drop tons of cash on fatcats all the time...

Hey, here's a thought....don't invade other nations where the locals don't like you and resort to any weapon they can come up with to stop you. Of course I know this doesn't make the fatcats any *more* money, but really....

Look at those pics....geez....the "insurgents" will enjoy their skeet shooting. And the oil companies will enjoy their profits, after first having to transit five other fatcat DOD "contractors" pockets first. What is it in ashcanistan now, 400 bucks a gallon for fuel delivered, something like that? Can you imagine the fuel an even slightly armored flying dork mobile like that will need to burn to get off the ground and stay aloft?

Can't have PETA showing up (unless it is those nekkid gurl protesters all decked out in animal body paint...)

Helium balloon for the GPS bug tracker spoofing win!

..and here I thought they just liked the taste of my corn, squash and tomatoes..learn new stuff ever' day.... /me heads to the farm n feed for USB spray.....

I could have saved confederate money and old stocks from the great depression blowout. They sold a bundled thick stack of either for ten cents at the five and dime back then.

Coulda woulda shoulda

Army surplus rifles and pistols were wicked cheap back then as well.

I have no idea what is worth saving today, but I have hung on to my old first computer, a mac 512k, and then a few more very slightly newer like an LC and some others I forget now.

Scrounger's guide to Sat TV

http://www.nmia.com/~roberts/scrounge

Free to air Sat receivers

http://www.tech-faq.com/free-to-air-receivers.html

If you don't want to go TV, you can make spiffy outdoor table canopies from them, or use them for home solar thermal alt energy projects, once you have a tracker. I've seen them used for the tops/roofs on backyard small buildings as well.

Certain rights are granted. For example, copyright.

Of course you could argue that it should really be called copyprivilege...