Having spent some time in the academia sausage factory, I think this guy is fairly close to the mark. A lot of time and effort is consumed simply writing grants and genuflecting for government money. A perpetual stream of cheap labor (postdocs) is necessary to keep the cash spigot flowing, even though many of them have zero chance for a real career in their chosen field. I've seen incredibly petty behavior over attribution and credit on papers.
I think most scientific progress happens in spite of the academic system, and not because of it. In some ways the old system of patronage was superior -- you had a direct connection between a king or wealthy merchant who had an interest in something, and the scientists who needed funding to investigate it, instead of a vast bureaucracy that probably consumes more than the total amount it exists to allocate.
"Parasite" may be an unkind word for them, but there are certainly people who produce nothing but expect to be kept in a high standard of living at the expense of those who are productive. This arrangement is not sustainable, despite people thinking that California somehow has a monopoly on tech startups.
The problem with asking a financial advisor is finding a good one. By the time you've learned enough to know the good from the bad, you may as well DIY and save the fees.
Although, there's definitely value in getting help from specialists in certain areas (estate planning, taxes).
There's no substitute for doing your own reading and research. Some good authors to start with are John Bogle, Larry Swedroe, Rick Ferri, Peter Bernstein, Nassim Taleb, William Bernstein, Burton Malkiel, Harry Browne. Don't invest in anything you don't understand, and don't trust any investing concept that can't be explained to you in 5-10 minutes.
The learning process should take you at least 6 months. Whenever you think you've got it figured out (most financial authors present their ideas in a very convincing, absolutist way), keep reading, because the next book might change your mind. In the meantime, put your money in a safe place -- bank CDs or short-term Treasurys -- and don't touch it.
I think the uncertainties inherent in writing software that depends on many other complex libraries/frameworks will tend to discourage strong liability for bugs. The average Win32 program or Java web app has a dizzying list of dependencies and it would be impossible for the programmer sitting on top of that software stack to make any guarantees about the stuff underneath.
In certain highly restricted domains (typically embedded systems), liability for bugs becomes somewhat more realistic.
Bruce Schneier wrote an excellent article on PKI risks (http://www.schneier.com/paper-pki-ft.txt). Should be interesting to see how many of those are addressed as this scheme comes to fruition. It has the potential to become a highly useful backdoor intelligence gathering mechanism. This is a honeypot that the three letter agencies won't be able to resist.
Problem is, precious metals have an expected return of 0%. One gold bar sitting on a shelf is still one gold bar ten years later. Commodities are not necessarily a bad idea to own in moderation, but stocks and bonds are what allow your portfolio to benefit from economic growth.
For those who are enamored with gold and want to invest conservatively, I would look at something like the Permanent Portfolio (http://crawlingroad.com/blog/2008/12/22/permanent-portfolio-...) Not how I would invest personally, but the PP isn't an unreasonable approach.
I know a guy who's really, really into football. Watches hours of games every other night or so, has a "fantasy" team that he's constantly fretting over and checking online stats for, etc.
As far as I can tell, the only thing that distinguishes this obsession from a WoW habit is that more people like to watch football, so it's accepted.
People who get seriously addicted to WoW are usually either looking for any escape from reality, or they have the type of personality which tends to get addicted to something, whether it's online games, math puzzles, tracking railroad schedules, or whatever. There's no question that these people might act in unhealthy ways, but WoW is the symptom of their problems, not the cause.
Not all index methodologies are created equal, the way that Russell handles periodic reconstitution is particularly susceptible to front running. Other indexing methods are not as bad.
I think "godisnowhere" is more an example of a straight-up badly chosen name (identifiers should not be complete sentences) rather than a case where caps are better than lowercase.
I'm not against camelcase and its variants, but there are a wide variety of naming standards using caps, it's quite possible to get mixed up between them and introduce ambiguity or worse (referring to the wrong variable).
It's far from clear that the things you list couldn't have been developed without government intervention.
Unfortunately, without an alternate fork of reality to try the experiment, we'll never know. But the idea that because something was developed using government funds, it could never have been developed without them, is a logical fallacy.
The benefit of the IRL approach is that it gives you an immediate opportunity to show positive qualities which don't always carry over very well into a dating website profile -- and you can leverage any physical attraction right off the bat.
See, the thing about dating sites is: women are in demand, men are not. When you're in a superior bargaining position, it's a lot easier to be picky. So women don't give a second thought about discarding profiles for even the most superficial reasons. Interacting in person gives you a chance to cut through that and sell your good qualities without having to pass a bunch of filters first.
Treasurys are "safe" in the sense that the US will never default, since the government can simply print dollars as needed to cover the debt. So yes, you're guaranteed to get your 1% interest in nominal dollars... the question is, how much are those dollars really worth?
The dollar may not enter a hyperinflationary death spiral as some believe it will, but its days as the default world reserve currency appear to be fading fast.
Don't these societal conditions apply to "good" and "bad" software developers alike? All other things being equal, if you're successful and somebody else fails (selling to the same market), then the most obvious explanation is that you met the needs of your customers better and somehow improved their lives. This is signaled by a monetary reward greater than the guy who failed, and proportional to the value you added.
The general prosperity of society is built up by an uncountable number of these successes and rewards. Hand-wringing about whether your own contribution would be possible absent all the prior contributions is putting the cart before the horse. You aren't illicitly skimming profits from society, you're making valuable contributions in your own right.
It bugs me when stuff like that is described as "xenophobia". It's possible to dislike something (or have a preference for the alternative) without fearing it. Even when the basis for the dislike is irrational -- if you prefer chocolate ice cream does that imply that you fear strawberry?
So, just curious; where's the dividing line between "poor government schlub just doing his job" and "Nazi prison guard who knew he was doing evil", assuming you'd agree the Nazi guard is culpable on some level?
Fact is, government employees can choose to work elsewhere. But as a citizen I'm stuck with my government. That's why you won't see much sympathy for law enforcement in these situations.
Designs are easily copied, physical widgets are not (until we get nano-replicators anyway).
Innovations in design and manufacturing tend to dovetail and drive each other. Doing both under one roof reaps more of a benefit from that dynamic.
There is also a historical argument. The most prosperous, successful countries have had a large industrial base. That doesn't necessarily mean one requires the other, but it does suggest a strong linkage.
I think most scientific progress happens in spite of the academic system, and not because of it. In some ways the old system of patronage was superior -- you had a direct connection between a king or wealthy merchant who had an interest in something, and the scientists who needed funding to investigate it, instead of a vast bureaucracy that probably consumes more than the total amount it exists to allocate.