jmzachary

Let me know how it works. I can't afford that.

"The Essential Drucker" has the best excerpts form "Innovation and Entrepreneurship" in a tidy 3-4 chapters. It's highly recommended if you like reading "The Art of the Start" and those types of books.

All I have to add to this excellent post is "a fool and his/her money are soon parted". It wasn't different back in the 1990's and it's not different now.

This is a good discussion. The flipper mindset is probably localized to software tech, and maybe that mindset is required. The reason is the constant change of technology, the shifting attention span of web users, and the maturity of the field make it harder to build a "normal" sustainable business. So, most people take the path with less friction: build something that gets enough attention to sell, profits optional. Lack of technical depth and, hence, barriers to competition are factors, too.

If these are the 25 leading IT research projects, then the field is dead. Some of these aren't research, and others don't seem to have much depth to them (e.g., "All About Twitter", "Videoconferencing for Dr. Phil", "Drivers Wielding Cell Phones", "Geeks with Glasses"). Still others sound like technical nonsense (e.g.,"Sniffing out Insider Threats", "Analyzing the Dark Web", "Measuring Boredom").

I read page 1 and jumped to page 5 without reading 2-4 without a loss of continuity. Guess I saved myself some time.

Maybe you're running against the rotation of the Earth, thereby causing you to go back in time. It worked for Superman.

"In the summers, Dr. Wheeler would retire with his extended family to a compound on High Island, Me., to indulge his taste for fireworks by shooting beer cans out of an old cannon."

Awesome! People like to shoot that kind of stuff out of PVC pipes around my parts.

I don't, and I think you are correct about the rule. But, I have anecdotal and second-hand accounts that it isn't always the case in practice.

That might be true for small companies, but large companies (Intel, MS, Google, etc.) might realize cost savings by the difference in wages paid to immigrants versus U.S. workers.

I think the immigrant vs. American worker stems from a fear or intuition that there are, indeed, a finite number of jobs and, possibly, that the number is trending down, not up, for the developer/designer kinds of jobs. Let's be honest here, IT, admin, maintenance, and testing jobs are lower caste than architect, design, and coding. Jobs in the first category, on average, pay less than the the jobs in the second. I think the number of positions required in the second category are on the decline. As the computer software industry matures and evolves, we just don't require so many developers. If and when we start moving towards a realized utility computing future (Ref. The Big Switch by N. Carr), we won't need as many maintainers and admins, either. Of course, it doesn't help to watch many of these jobs go overseas, either. Combine that with H1-B visas, and American tech workers can be forgiven for a little bit of xenophobia. But, maybe it's possible that broader economic and industry trends are the real issue. That's my theory, and I could be wrong.

You're not forward-thinking out-of-the-box. These best-of-breed phrases are multi-disciplinary across vertical and horizontal markets.

I know. I caught that. My point is that is the kind of logic that the rest of society might latch onto. The risk is that study drugs are at a non-trivial risk of being perceived as a silver bullet for the larger societal problem of deficient school systems and American competitiveness. Maybe it wouldn't be mandated but it might be encouraged.

This entire discussion is making me want to go take a pill.

"So if my peers are all using study drugs, then I would be compelled to use those drugs to remain competitive. So their use of the drugs would interfere with my freedom of choice."

Not only that, but the playing field among you and your peers returns to parity except the cost is that everyone needs to take study drugs to keep up.

"But winning at ideas is absolute. The faster you find a cure for cancer the better." This would suggest that one could argue that all children should be given these medicines starting in kindergarten. One could argue that on the basis of US competitiveness in a global economy.

Taking these arguments to their logical conclusions gives me flash backs to Huxley.

To the contrary, scientific research is very, very competitive. There is a lot of competition to be first to discovery, first to publish, first to patent, and to win grants. This is especially true for cancer research.

I don't know anything about kratom. If you can legally sell it to enhance mental performance, be my guest. We aren't discussing herbs, though. We are discussing use of medicines prescribed for ADD by people without that condition in order to increase mental focus.

Regardless of your, my, or any other opinions on the matter, the fact is that use of prescription drugs for purposes other than which they are prescribed is illegal. That is my whole point. Doctors get into trouble all the time for writing scripts for pain killers to abusers in exchange for money (or sex). Don't blame me if you don't like the law; I didn't enact it.

BTW, in the same thread, I provide links to research on the long-term effects of Ritalin, a Schedule II drug. Most of the results indicate long-term abusers suffer effects similar to cocaine abuse and depression.

I agree with it, too. I don't see the big deal with myspace or facebook, in a big picture kind of way. Now that people are on it and have built out some social graphs, they're asking "now what?" and there is no good answer. What is the big itch that facebook scratches?

Chia pets were profitable. The pet rock, too. That doesn't mean they were important, except to the people who realized the profits.

Here is some evidence against using these drugs for recreational/non-ADHD use:

http://www.cesar.umd.edu/cesar/drugs/ritalin.asp

http://www.biopsychiatry.com/methylphenidate/ritalin.html

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/4870.php

http://amphetamines.com/methylphenidate/brain.html

Pius is absolutely right. You might look to funeral homes, religious organizations, and Hospice for some ideas on how to handle the topics of terminal illness and death in a tasteful manner. But the core idea isn't a bad one.

"You're using ad hominem instead of logic. And I expect you still haven't said the real reason you are so strongly in favor of drugs, because none of the reasons you have given have made any sense."

Ok, let me rephrase it: "if 'someone' wants to be a dopehead scientist, then go for it." The rest of the quote still applies and is not ad hominem.

No sense to you, perhaps. Something about not using illegal drugs and not using legal drugs illegally makes sense to me. "Off the label" prescriptions are not always legal, btw.

Does the reasoning that it's ok to use Ritalin to give smart people a mental edge imply it's ok for athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs? Why not, if steroids and growth hormones are legal for other uses? Others in this thread have implied that steroids are idiotic.

Because you are all smart people, you realize that once a few people start doping up on Ritalin and getting better results on grant applications, journal papers, and other tasks, that everyone will pretty much have to join the dope show and take the same drugs. Taking these drugs will become a barrier to entry in order to do science. Eventually, those who want a new mental edge will have to find a new drug, then everyone will take that. That will only go a few rounds before people start destroying their brains and their bodies. Scientists will become junkies and that will do no good for anyone in the long term.

Ultimately, if someone wants to take Ritalin or whatever to give them a mental edge, nothing I say here will convince them otherwise. Personally, I don't understand why anyone would need mental enhancement pharma given the assumption that they are already brilliant to begin with. Maybe that's a bad assumption for me to make (oh damn, that was ad hominem :)

I don't know if there is a good reason and I don't know if they are safe for long term use. What I do know is that using them for non-prescribed uses is illegal, as are painkillers, HGH, and other drugs. If you guys don't like that, then lobby the FDA to do studies for general use and make them legal for general use. That's the point of my posts.

So, anyone can take any drug they want, but steroids are idiotic? Why? Are you discriminating between scientists and non-scientist bodybuilders? Or are you singling out steroids as unacceptable and anything else as acceptable?

It's not "wetware hacking" (whatever that means, but it sounds cool). It's biochemistry, and it doesn't always work.

I, too, believe in freedom. But freedom doesn't absolve you of personal responsibility for your actions. If anyone could consume any substance they desire, it would have a detrimental effect on some basic level of social order (and I'm not talking about government or top-down control) and it would have a negative impact on other's freedoms and rights. That's why many drugs are banned and why people aren't allowed to drive while intoxicated (despite it being an act of freedom to live your life as a drunk). And I won't need a lecture on libertarianism, thank you, which many people seem to confuse with lawlessness.

I'm not sure what else there is to debate about Ritalin. If you want to be a dopehead scientist, have at it. When the long-term effects start to manifest themselves in physical or mental conditions we aren't aware of, don't start whining for the FDA or an attorney to sue the drug maker.

Illegal in the U.S. Your country may have different rules.

Taking aspirin is the same as taking Ritalin for ADD. It is not the same as taking it for a use for which it is not prescribed.

Logic notwithstanding, the law sure as hell does matter. Try breaking it, getting caught, and doing time.

"For example, after years of avoiding it, I have quickly settled in to the caffeine routine. Coffee in the morning, occasionally a soft drink in the evening. While this is hardly risky behaviour, it is drug use."

But it's not illegal drug use. You are lumping together taking an aspirin for a headache in with taking ADD drugs illegally to enhance mental focus. Having a coffee is not drug use, despite it having caffeine.

It doesn't matter if you think a lot of illegal drugs are no more dangerous than legal drugs. If you compare the effective and lethal doses of pot and booze, you'll find booze is much deadlier. What matters is the rule of law.

Then let scientists take whatever drugs they want. Pot, heroin, cocaine, PCP, LSD, peyote, mushrooms, Vicodin, whatever. Taking prescribed medication for a use other than for which it was prescribed is illegal. So, by your logic, what's the difference?

The untold story is why do scientists feel the need to take medication to (temporarily) enhance their cognitive capabilities. I conjecture it is oversupply of them competing for fewer dollars and fame-producing discoveries, and/or most of them really aren't that smart to begin with (despite passing tests to get advanced degrees).

This site made me think of Pyle: "I am ... in a world ... of shit!"

Hiring PhDs for this task was their first mistake.

If a product doesn't revolutionize mankind, then it's not worth the valuations. Tech would die without hype. It's the frictional force between us and the fate suffered by aerospace engineering.

A list that excludes Plutarch, Benjamin Franklin, and SICP is utter crap!