WestCoaster

You're arguing over details. We shouldn't spend one dime training these animals to kill each other. Not one dime. Afghanistan is a lost cause, and this military adventure should really be brought to a close.

How presumptuous. How does he know good English protestants aren't naming their children Mohammad? It's a nice name after all.

What did Bill Gates have to do with getting the internet going? Oh thats right. NOTHING! The internet was developed by Universities in collaboration with the US military. By the time Microsoft was on the scene, the internet was being used by thousands of people world wide. Gates did introduce Internet Explorer, a clone of Netscape Navigation, which they forced on all windows users. If thats what it takes to get credit for "getting the internet going" then I guess you score a point .

Where would computers be without transistors, which stemmed out of solid state physics, which stemmed out of quantum mechanics, which in turn stemmed out of advanced mathematics? At the end of the day, all of these technological toys we have today stem out of basic research. You see what I'm getting here? The basic fronter research done by academics at public and private research institutes eventually makes its way down to useful technology. It just takes time. Academia is where basic scientific concepts are established; commercialization comes after. You cannot have one without the other.

The best part is that you're writing that on a computer.