moens

I created 4 reasonably successful companies in my life, and about 12 that fell flat. The first success was in high school. But the first million+ was at age 34. At first I thought the article was a little too academic, but... honestly it fits my life pattern. So... there you have it.

pymnts.com ...I was so hoping for a site on grape meads. Alas.

Beautiful, +1

Yeah, most people did not. I know, I have been saying this for years... ever since I studied ipv6 in the olden days (the 90's). All but one or two people I ever discussed the "trackability of everything" with was like, "What the hell are you tripping on?"

The point is that everyone is a target. For a mugger, an ex lover, a political opponent, a boss, an employee... everyone is a target. That should (IMO) make everyone at least a little wary.

...and for there to be a war on drugs in the first place. Eliminate the fundamentals, and there should be no issues at all, really.

Burns: I actually had the chance to meet Klein, and his research is (IMO) amazing. See his booklet and his product [1] (I use it and it works amazingly well).

Throat: "Garlic Tea" which sounds disgusting... is fantastic for anything in your throat (allergy, cold, injury, etc):

Bring a saucepan of about 4 cups of water to boil. Peal and crush about 10 garlic cloves, toss in water, turn off heat immediately. Let cool to palatable heat. Add a couple table spoons of vinegar (natural, with the "mother" if possible) and raw honey to taste. Magic.

[1] http://www.betterthangreens.com/Amish-B-W-Ointment-Dept/536/ [edit: I pasted wrong link, oops]

"I'm more concerned about the treatment and sales of honey."

Not sure I am more concerned about the treatment of honey than I am about the overuse of pesticides (ethical treatment of bees), but I do agree that honey as a product is important. IMO, one cannot do more to "help bees" than to buy your honey local, natural (non-augmented food sources), and raw ("unheated": less than 118degf, but only to 100degf if possible).

As a beekeeper and an interested party:

CCD: I believe that CCD is primarily caused by increased pesticide usage, glyphosate being the most common.

Are bees treated ethically by big farms: I believe the better question is, "Is our philosophy of farming unethical for any participant?" If the answer is yes (for even one identifiable participant), then I find that it will be unethical for every participant. Answer: optimize for sustainability, not for production alone.

Does the ethical treatment q relate to bees? Absolutely. See these movies... they are pretty one sided, but should be of interest: Queen of the Sun & More Than Honey

Change your inputs (culture), change your outputs (requirements). Ergo, you don't need that kind of money if you live more sustainably. <IdealistRant/>

So, IMO, try bee keeping[1][2] and see if it starts to change your culture :)

[1] http://www.beesource.com/ [2] http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm (not affiliated)

I think this childishness is the essential requirement of centralized power. Our current economic system rises from our (personal) taste for the conveniences of centralized power. For it we are willing to relinquish personal responsibility and individuality.

Many early people groups (nomads, pueblos, even manors and unfederated fifedoms), had optimized for small communities. Presumably they were not aware of the efficiency of centralized power, or capable of the centralization we can accomplish today. Some apparently were aware, and chose the benefits of small communities.

I believe we are now at a crossroads. We choose small communities and relinquish the convenience of centralized power, or we submit to the requirements of centralized power (lack of privacy, lack of individuality, etc).

Surely you're not suggesting that the government and corporate interests are completely unrelated, and no money ever goes back and forth for good or services?

Wasn't it Google that optimized the NSA datacenters as early as 2005? I think its safe to assume that many of Google analytics' bigger customers are not corporate. Not to mention, of course, Google Earth which was developed with CIA money... but also needed some optimization (read, better developers). I am pretty sure that Google Earth was not a loss leader for the company ;)

I think that, amazingly in these times, you're sucking down your naivety cool aid a little too plaicidly to think that advertising cookies are not the optimal tracking method for both corp and govt.

lol... that was funny.

"...large groups of people can work on unknown projects without the public finding out" I completely agree. I have heard the opposite line of reasoning used to "refute" actual evidence many too many times.

I cannot agree more. There will be a lot of so-so, but... there will be some stunners as well. Not sure where all these people end up, but there are some amazingly talented young artists out there... many of whom can and do produce better art than most of what you will purchase at an art auction. They just don't have the name or the history yet!

Often a single collector or gallery will make all the difference for a young artist. One single person that buys enough of their art for them to make it on that part-time coffee house job and still pursue their art.

I have thought many times of moving to another country (India being high on my list) just so that I could learn and practice medicine outside of the US Money/Chemical game called "healthcare."

Yeah, I have two friends who were both long term cigarette smokers quit after using e-cigs for a short period of time.

My understanding is that without the free-based nicotine in most (all?) commercial tobaccos, the addictive nature of smoking is significantly reduced.

Interestingly, one of those friends is now able to smoke socially at will. Flipped some addiction trigger or something. I would love to see a study on this.

IMO the very nature of the centralization of power works against individual rights, one of which is (arguably) privacy. As corporations grow they tend to lose a sense of the customer as a means, and instead choose which type of customer they need in order to maximize profits (or other goals).

Corporations (or any large centralized power base) will optimize for the most exploitable customer or user base, culturing this base if possible. To help broaden a target user base corporations need strong centralized governments more than they need even sizable (but less "culturable") segments of their market base.

Upshot: mature corporations (political parties / religions / etc) will not typically stand up to a centralized government on behalf of a rights-demanding fraction of their market... indeed, typically, they will do the opposite.

Can you recommend a public repo which demonstrates use of the HttpLuaModule? [Edited to add:] Another comment mentions the Lapis framework which gives [me] a good starting point.

@subs: thanks!

heh... missed this rabbit trail. Forgive me for the offense. s/Drunken fool/uncaringly ignorant/. @all, Thanks for the correction whether harsh or gentle, I don't mind. If its called for, tone is less relevant.

Except in every practical way... ergo, the common misunderstanding.

Yeah, I would love to have time to develop this thesis as well. Let me think about it a bit, and I'll try to post a five sentence postulate.

As concerns nature, my observation is that (if I can personify nature, and grant it intention for the argument), it does not mind eliminating large groups of children if some (at least one, I guess) viable children remain. As a matter of fact, eliminating a lot of less viable children in favor of few more viable children is kind of the rule for selection.

So we take a group of strongly viable lines, contaminate them, and (in nature's much longer perspective) make them less viable. Marked for elimination.

We usually think this elimination comes from direct competition, and I would agree that in our experience so far this is the observed case. But what is observable in much GM research is that after three or so generations, animals consuming the GM product stop reproducing. The "why" here is still being researched and is at best poorly understood.

So, I argue that nature in this case is taking the robust path. Eliminating contamination.

No, I believe that we do not understand how far nature has taken us. We assume that genetic material moving around is accidental. I assume that most of the movement is intentional within the evolved system. I assume that we should not move it around without first at least considering that nature could be more advanced that we think it is. We should quarantine our changes.

Yeah... I was not aware of this. Another food source I will have to investigate. Chickens, I have found, love rice.

Forgive me, I did not meant to imply that "geneticists" as a group do it solely for money... that quip was aimed at Monsanto and typical public policy.

As concerns "necessary within the design" I would argue that you do. I am trying to say that as scientists, we like to say, "evolution has taken us [this far] (whatever [this far] is)". But we don't say, "How far could evolution have taken us?" How broad is the existing code base? Is it individual code bases branching into species, or is it all interleaved in some more subtle way?

I tend to believe it is the latter, and the evolution has taken us much farther than we realize.

This is why I believe our current handling of genetic modification is extremely bad practice and can (?) result in a "genetic seg-fault".

Right, I am not and never was a geneticist.

The point I am trying to make is that we assume too much. I would say that this statement, "Nature is much more a script-kiddie than us" is just such an assumption. How much of transgenic communication is accidental and how much is necessary with the design (sorry, probably political phrasing here...) parameters. I would assert that we just don't know yet.

In any case, to use, "Nature is the bigger ignorant hacker, we can be ignorant hackers too if it lines our pockets" is a terrible argument IMO.

I am not saying that we should eliminate genetic research. I am saying that we need to isolate genetic modification from the general genetic pool until we understand what we are doing. Until half a year ago "we" (geneticists) thought that upwards of 80% of the genome was junk DNA... oops, I guess not. I think that we have to be a little more cautious. A lot more cautious.

If (as I feel is the case) genetic material is code, and we (all Earth based life) is a production environment... I just cannot express how sloppy I feel we have been in the last 20 years. Policy, research, implementation... its not like we don't know how to run a clean software environment, how to do safe development... but in the genetic world? Hack, reverse engineer, install trap doors, holy fuck, we brought down a root level dns server? Cool! We are awesome! We must be geniuses!

We are 13 and loving it.

Also, while reading these, take the time to watch "Kingdom of Men" again to get a feel for what the real issue actually looks like. Living organisms appear (IMO, and subtly in other research) to be able to detect code base tampering, and reject it. How do they reject it? Infertility.

I am a farmer and it is difficult as hell to create a non-GMO farm (non-GMO contaminated mulch and compost, non-GMO animal feeds, non-GMO source animals, non-GMO seed). The OP is correct in all points about Monsanto's power over seed production, but misses what SciAm (and almost everyone else) misses:

Genetic material is code being used in a production environment!

As such it needs to be protected. Code contamination (forks) need to be registered publicly and isolated with extreme prejudice from the production environment. We didn't write the code, and as far as I am concerned, I feel that Monsanto as a policy maker (by default or by lobbing) and any of the most advanced geneticists are script kiddies on a Galactic scale. We will get to adequate understanding it time, but that time is not now. Who gives a fk if you or your grandmother can live a longer or more pain-free life if the result is a global genetic seg-fault? I don't.

My answer is to set up my own isolated farm, as free of GM as I can make it. As I see it, existing organisms do have a genetic conversation (via viruses and other single cell organisms) and will resist and correct some amount of genetic contamination. Honestly I have my doubts that even this will work, but its the most I can do.

Food for thought.

Unfortunately I believe @northernmonkey and all OP's are talking about the "average American" and maybe the "average human". After all, in the US anyway, aren't we-the-people the government? That would make the MSM a mouthpiece for... the average American. I believe that is more or less true as sad as it is.

Aware and concerned tech-heads are trying to protect a drunken fool (the public) from a hungry bear (whoever it is that actually runs the intelligence networks). Either one is dangerous enough on its own, trying to save one from the other is like trying to settle a domestic dispute... not sure it can happen.

I don't have an answer, just an analysis.

41 here. I have found the same thing. There are so many things in languages, paradigms, tech as a whole that are familiar... problems that took too long to solve 20 years ago are easier now because I know the feel of the problem, how to approach it, etc.

Pretty sure I cannot put in as many hours though. Wish I had learned to put in fewer earlier.

Dissing "cyber-anarchist hero worship" is awesomely ironic. ;)

Its important to understand that from some people's perspective, the whole point of Federally funded education is indoctrination. In which case it would be very important to identify those who are, "frustrat[ed] with co-workers or the organization."