Government.

You can always choose to walk away from a computing platform.

Walking away from a government is very difficult, sometimes impossible. Try to leave the United States if you have substantial income and assets and you will see this.

Facebook is a pretty good way to keep in touch with friends and share my photographs with them. That's what I use it for. It's also pretty good for non-political special interest groups. As far as I know, there is no political component to Miami YouTube users or the Gringo Gardeners of Costa Rica (where I live part of the year), and so there is no censorship worth discussing. So if Facebook's politics are not congenial to me, I can simply use blogs and web sites that are. No need for government interference for me to do that.

Unfortunately the history of online communities have shown that there is some censorship that can be tolerated. Otherwise every other message would be some kind of noxious advertisement. Censorship of political views is best gotten around by reading web sites that include information from a variety of political views. The left checks the right and vice versa.

I think Goldman's memo is too pessimistic, and I'd like to explain.

The promise of profit enormously motivates people, far more so than any charity or government endeavor. So with the profit motive, people are motivated to work the long and tedious hours needed to find cures.

Obviously, if we cure the related disease, and it eventually goes away, we have no more revenues. But the whole business model of drug companies generates money to do the research to create the next generation of drugs. We grow to trust brands. So if FooCorp Unlimited makes a successful cure for hepatitis, we will consider FooCorp's cures for arthritis, AIDS, etc over others. In other words, FooCorp is building a brand, and until the end game where all diseases is eliminated, there will be profit to be had.

In the example given, the cure for hepatitis generated $12 billion in one year, and two years later was still generating $4 billion. That doesn't exactly sound like chump change. That sounds like a highly profitable product lifecycle, and since it cures the disease they can build a brand as they find more cures for other diseases.

This is really no different from a car company, say Ford. As our story begins, Ford makes cars. The public starts preferring SUVs, and so Ford starts making SUVs. Eventually it completely abandons car production in favor of SUVs, because that's where the fickle taste of the customer takes them. That's no different from drug products becoming useless because they have cured the diseases.

So in short if a drug maker creates a cure, it can still be highly profitable, and the business can continue to do well over time as it plows revenue into additional research to create new cures.

Also remember that diseases mutate eventually, requiring new or substantially modified cures. The story of disease, sadly, isn't going to end so easily. As long as the profit motive incentivizes cures, we will see them developed, and in the long run, everybody benefits from that.

My first BBSs were single line and used my own software written in Basic and then Turbo Pascal. I loved to be original and people enjoyed my software, even when it wasn't as reliable as it should have been. Back in the day, if your software crashed, your BBS would be down until you got home ...

I eventually bought someone's failed BBS project through The Recycler, yesteryear's equivalent of Craigslist. It had a six-line serial adapter and Microport Unix. I never liked Microport but it did work, after a fashion, and my six lines were quickly humming. Unfortunately, as we say in the Internet world, the revenue model was never what it should have been, although I remember being thrilled when my first subscriber check – $60 for an entire year! – came in, from one of my favorite users. I wanted to be a general purpose home for eccentrics, with both dating and discussion parts equally balanced. I have never had a more successful social life before or since. We would have roughly monthly meetings at various local venues, and a pretty substantial number of people would turn out. It was relatively easy making a geographically based community, because most people lived nearby thanks to free local calls and pricey "local long distance" ones.

There were a couple of bad apples, who trolled like crazy, but it was definitely a fun environment, and my six lines were always busy. I had the first three lines for the paying users, two for non-payers and one for administration. I set up a "holding tank" for new users and those who had been troublesome, which was a forerunner of today's ultra-complex moderation systems. It didn't work all that great since I have never been a big censorship supporter.

I still remember the one user who loved Werner Erhard's The Forum and kept posting about it, even though people were totally sick of the topic from minute one. I eventually set up the typo corrector (which changed "teh" to "the" and other similar conveniences) to change Forum to Murof. Made him mad as a hatter, but all in good fun.

Even though the system vanished due to a failing disk drive in the 1990s I still have fond memories of it. And I still have friends who are former users. Wish I'd kept a copy of the software. It did some pretty cool things. For instance, the dating questionnaire let you answer questions in your own words if one of the prepared answers didn't work for you.

What I really find sad about today's environment is that we are no longer open to much unique, different or eccentric. I tried creating a social network of my own, but I wasn't able to get anyone excited about it. It was unique, and different, and just not what people wanted. The world wanted the uniformity and impersonality of Facebook, not the informality and homey atmosphere I wanted to provide. The big city, not the small town.

Nowadays I'm a photographer instead of a programmer, with almost 2000 friends on Facebook. So you can teach an old dog new tricks. And honestly, I'm glad my photographs never crash.

How much electricity could be generated by a network of solar panels built for the same cost?

(Genuinely don't know the answer, but curious if it would be more or less than the electricity generated by this project.)

>Do you believe rehabilitation is impossible or do you want revenge?

I don't believe that someone who commits mass murder can be rehabilitated, no. It isn't about revenge; it's about public safety.

Someone once pointed out that hoping a rapist gets raped in prison isn't a victory for his victim(s), because it somehow gives him what he had coming to him, but it's actually a victory for rape and violence. I wish I could remember who said that, because they are right. The score doesn't go Rapist: 1 World: 1. It goes Rape: 2.

What this man did is unspeakable, and he absolutely deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison. If he needs to be kept away from other prisoners as a safety issue, there are ways to do that without keeping him in solitary confinement, which has been shown conclusively to be profoundly cruel and harmful.

Putting him in solitary confinement, as a punitive measure, is not a victory for the good people in the world. It's a victory for inhumane treatment of human beings. This ruling is, in my opinion, very good and very strong for human rights, *precisely* because it was brought by such a despicable and horrible person. It affirms that all of us have basic human rights, even the absolute worst of us on this planet.

This is precisely why I lost all interest in Oculus the instant I heard that it had been acquired by Facebook.

Why would Comcast mess you over more than AT&T DSL/Landline?

Down here in South Florida, Comcast is 10x faster than AT&T at about the same price, and they have always billed me honestly. AT&T, by contrast, has added huge, incomprehensible fees to their bills, making $50 or so in announced charges turn into $80.

D

I'm not sure what to think about this unless I can see some examples of what we're talking about. Does anyone have a link?

Great, now even more of us will be unemployed. Won't even be able to get a job tending bar, when a robot can replace us.

You think the economy is bad now, wait until unemployment is 60%. /Yes, I know I can always train for a better job and work harder, but that doesn't change the numbers. In the future there won't be jobs for most people. What will society look like at that point, with a massive unemployed underclass?

Are you trolling? You actually think its a good idea to waste taxpayer dollars going after weed?

Take half the money, divide it into 3 piles, for the 3 stakeholders:
1) Shareholders in the form of a one-time dividend.
2) Employees get a one time bonus
3) Customers get a gift card based on their purchases in the past quarter.

Apple is still left with 50 Billion, and keeps everyone happy.

When they hit $100B again, rinse & repeat.

I meant that I've had some flavor of Apple Pro product under my desk for 10 years, upgrading every 1-3 years. Not the same machine all that time

Could this be the processor for a new Mac Pro? Or will Apple wait for Ivy Bridge.

I've had a Mac Pro (or its predecessor) under my desk for over 10 years now; upgrading regularly. Even if its not the top selling Apple Product, its still the machine that Pros are looking for.