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As the years progress, an ever increasing majority of people are forced, through various agencies, into a state of poverty

That would be a very sad fact. Except that it isn't true in the United States. Or globally

What you really want are the cartogram maps (area proportional to population rather than geographical size). Have a look at:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2012/

especially the last 4 on the page.

Here is a better take from a map perspective: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2012/

According to this study, 8% of all accidents (12% of those on limited-access highways) are attributed to insufficient visibility in rearview mirrors when changing lanes. If it weren't a major problem, they wouldn't mandate side mirrors on cars. There are a significant number of collisions caused by tractor-trailer trucks changing lanes into cars too, in the US. I don't know the frequency of other accident types (running off the road/into guardrails, etc.) on such highways, but lane-change maneuvers are statistically one of the most dangerous things you regularly do in a car.

There's also this: http://guides.lib.umich.edu/comics

When I toured the campus a few months back, I was more interested in the 3d lab they have setup across the hall. http://um3d.dc.umich.edu/

Yeah, pretty ridiculous, we arent even near of apocalypse by population... War and weapon technology on the other hand...

Depends on your time frame. 10 years no, 50 years, perhaps (note that the slope of the rise is dropping fast - whether it's fast enough remains to be seen).

"Q: Is Control controlled by its need to control? A: Yes." -Burroughs. http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/777.html Prescient and informative. Upvotes, plz.

http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~fessler/misc/funny/gore,net.txt

Describing his role as congressman, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, who played key roles in the development of the Internet and TCP/IP write:

"He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship. Though easily forgotten, now, at the time this was an unproven and controversial concept. Our work on the Internet started in 1973 and was based on even earlier work that took place in the mid-late 1960s. But the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication. As an example, he sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put to use in areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to natural disasters and other crises."

They go on to discuss the important contributions he made as Senator and Vice President.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_habitat
http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/dtd/A-global-effort-to-develop-self-replicating-space-habitats/76206-8319

From JD Bernal writing in the 1920s:
http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Bernal/world/
"Imagine a spherical shell ten miles or so in diameter, made of the lightest materials and mostly hollow; for this purpose the new molecular materials would be admirably suited. Owing to the absence of gravitation its construction would not be an engineering feat of any magnitude. The source of the material out of which this would be made would only be in small part drawn from the earth; for the great bulk of the structure would be made out of the substance of one or more smaller asteroids, rings of Saturn or other planetary detritus. The initial stages of construction are the most difficult to imagine. They will probably consist of attaching an asteroid of some hundred yards or so diameter to a space vessel, hollowing it out and using the removed material to build the first protective shell. Afterwards the shell could be re-worked, bit by bit, using elaborated and more suitable substances and at the same time increasing its size by diminishing its thickness. The globe would fulfil all the functions by which our earth manages to support life. In default of a gravitational field it has, perforce, to keep its atmosphere and the greater portion of its life inside; but as all its nourishment comes in the form of energy through its outer surface it would be forced to resemble on the whole an enormously complicated single-celled plant. "

Quadrillions of humans could live in style in space habitats in the solar system. It would take another 1000 years of exponential growth to approach that. And then it is somebody else's problem -- perhaps to create virtual universes, travel faster-than-light, or create matter and energy and space from the quantum vacuum, or just migrate into a computational matrix?

As Julian Simon said, the human imagination is the ultimate resource (whether expressed through science or otherwise):
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

The more people, the more imagination. People may consume resources and take up space, but they also produce resources and make spaces worth being in.

The RSV is under copyright, but available and distributable online. It is considered to be heresy by the fundamentalists, since the more accurated translation doesn't feed their biases. That's what the GP was taking a stab at.

The best is:

MacKenzie, I. Scott, Sellen, Abigail and Buxton, Bill (1991): A Comparison of Input Devices in Elemental Pointing and Dragging Tasks. In: Robertson, Scott P., Olson, Gary M. and Olson, Judith S. (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 91 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 28 - June 5, 1991, New Orleans, Louisiana. pp. 161-166.

Unfortunately it's not available online.

http://www.umich.edu/~bcalab/documents/MeyerSmithKornblumAW1990.pdf is freely available and somewhat related, as are:
http://www.mackido.com/Interface/menu_target.html
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/08/fitts-law-and-infinite-width.html

Macs actually started off with a menu-per-window but moved to the current model after doing such studies; you can see images of the earlier implementation here:
http://folklore.org/projects/Macintosh/images/polaroids/polaroids.14.jpg

To someone who doesn't know better, who asks you "did Al Gore invent the internet", you can either say "yes" and talk about his legislation that helped foster that technology, or you can say "no" and talk about people like Tim and Vint. To people like us, the contributions of Tim and Vint are more widely-recognized as the contributions which directly led to the internet existing today. They created the technological foundation, Gore helped with the legislative issues. They're both responsible in their own ways, and no single person can claim to have "invented" or "created" the entire internet as we know it. But in the statement above, it does sound like Al is trying to take majority credit.

It's funny that you should bring up Al Gore and The Internet and Vint Cerf, because...

``Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role.
He said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the
initiative in creating the Internet." We don't think, as some people have
argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet. Moreover,
there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's
initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving
Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and
promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it
is timely to offer our perspective.''

You are talking from an ignorant position, looking at past with rose-colored glasses and seeing some "gilded age" that never actually was.

I don't have the time or inclination to point out all the uprisings to you, or to pick the ones directly related to poverty but feel free to go through them by yourself.
It will take you a while though.

And for those that refuse to work and make their own livings...well, lets also turn the clock back, and stop locking people up for ingesting whatever chemical they want for recreation.
That would free up TONS of jail space for those few that refuse to learn a lesson and attempt to use crime as a means to earn a living.

Sooo... Let me get this straight.

Humanitarian taxpayer dollar for feeding, clothing, educating and keeping the poor healthy is BAD, but it is A-OK to spend that same dollar feeding, clothing, educating and keeping the poor healthy - IN A PRISON.

And since you are suggesting that the drugs convictions are taken off the table - that would be a dollar spent on thieves and murdering thieves.
Instead of on poor single parents and their children.
Who could then grow up to be thieves and murdering thieves.

I.e. Money would be spent on the poor who were dumb enough to get caught stealing your TV/stereo/laptop/car, selling it for a pittance and causing you property damage along the way.
Possibly killing and raping you and your wife/sister/children/mother/father/dog/hamster while they're at it.
Hey... you can't judge people for raping hamsters when they're on all sorts of drugs and the only treatment they can get is a concrete cell.

But wouldn't it be simpler and more effective if you'd simply rape and kill your wife/sister/children/mother/father/dog/hamster, burn your house down and then shoot yourself - leaving all your remaining assets to the local prison population?
You know... cut out the middle man.

. . .some people (mostly women) still change their names. . .

. . .not to mention the difficulties faced by, e.g., Lynn Conway. Being able to generate a new identity for oneself can have advantages.

Lynn was fired, and forced to leave the field of computer science/engineering after telling her bosses at IBM that she was to undergo sex reassignment surgery in 1968. She could re-enter the field only because she could create a new identity (this time as a woman), starting a new career all over again at the bottom of the ladder.

Who is this person, you may ask? As a man, in the 1960s, she invented processor multiple-issue out-of-order dynamic instruction scheduling. After her transition? Oh, nothing . . . only co-authoring (with Carver Mead) Introduction to VLSI Systems which, by promoting the use of standard cells, automated design tools, and silicon foundry services (e.g., MOSIS), revolutionized the field of digital integrated circuits. Virtually every digital chip today is designed in this way; and there are many in the field who cannot conceive of any other way to do design ("Wasn't it always done this way?").

If Lynn could not have generated a new identity and re-entered the field as she did, these critical advances may have been delayed for years.

Here is one set of numbers on natural sources of exposure. http://www.umich.edu/~radinfo/introduction/natural.htm

"Who is supposed to pay for the construction of such a space habitat?"

"Zeitgeist Star Trek"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6cN-1dLoPY
"Captain Picard promotes a Resource Based Economy"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui6g23ygov8

"Where will the materials come from?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_K._O'Neill
"One application O'Neill proposed for mass drivers was to throw baseball-sized chunks of ore mined from the surface of the Moon into space.[50][51] Once in space, the ore could be used as raw material for building space colonies and solar power satellites. "

And from around 1927:
http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Bernal/world/
"Imagine a spherical shell ten miles or so in diameter, made of the lightest materials and mostly hollow; for this purpose the new molecular materials would be admirably suited. Owing to the absence of gravitation its construction would not be an engineering feat of any magnitude. The source of the material out of which this would be made would only be in small part drawn from the earth; for the great bulk of the structure would be made out of the substance of one or more smaller asteroids, rings of Saturn or other planetary detritus."

"What about mission support?"

http://linux.slashdot.org/story/08/04/14/1349202/study-reports-on-debian-governance-social-organization

"Even on such a station, there will be a class system and scarcity, whether anyone likes it or not."

Yes, some people may always choose to be poor and enslaved...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metamorphosis_of_Prime_Intellect

Read James P. Hogan's novels like "Voyage From Yesteryear" for an alternative vision:
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary

"Someone will have to fly the damn thing."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_9000 :-)

"Likewise, unless the powers that be use fascist tactics to control reproduction, procreation will put a further strain on resources."

There is probably room for quadrillions of humans living in space habitats just around the local solar system, so we are nowhere near the carrying capacity of the solar system for human life and life we bring with us, even just considering current or near-future-term technologies. The biggest problem of industrialized societies is actually declining populations...
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-August/004174.html

http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/radmind/

It goes a lot deeper than just the components. It goes down to the minerals and metals that make up those components:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltan#Ethics_of_Coltan_mining_in_the_Democratic_Republic_of_Congo

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/section002group3/coltan_mining_in_democratic_republic_of_the_congo

Apple gets the spotlight thrown on it because of its popular following. But every company that makes anything electronic or that contains electronic components is just as culpable.

http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~fessler/misc/funny/gore,net.txt

Yeah, we know.

It's funny as hell because people get in such an absurd huff over it. Oh my GOD, someone blatantly mocked a politician on the Internets!!! I must set them straight, and cure them of their obvious ignorance!

Thanks for playing, by the way; it's people like you who make trolling work!

http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~fessler/misc/funny/gore,net.txt

The precedent for agreeing to treaties this way goes back to George Washington's neutrality proclamation in 1793. You would have to retroactively impeach EVERY US President first to have a case against Mr. Obama.

In actual practice due to the way the Constitution is written the only thing the Senate has is a veto power over treaties.

http://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/9780472116874-ch1.pdf

someday... From 1929:
http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Bernal/world/
"Imagine a spherical shell ten miles or so in diameter, made of the lightest materials and mostly hollow; for this purpose the new molecular materials would be admirably suited. Owing to the absence of gravitation its construction would not be an engineering feat of any magnitude. The source of the material out of which this would be made would only be in small part drawn from the earth; for the great bulk of the structure would be made out of the substance of one or more smaller asteroids, rings of Saturn or other planetary detritus. The initial stages of construction are the most difficult to imagine. They will probably consist of attaching an asteroid of some hundred yards or so diameter to a space vessel, hollowing it out and using the removed material to build the first protective shell. Afterwards the shell could be re-worked, bit by bit, using elaborated and more suitable substances and at the same time increasing its size by diminishing its thickness. The globe would fulfil all the functions by which our earth manages to support life. In default of a gravitational field it has, perforce, to keep its atmosphere and the greater portion of its life inside; but as all its nourishment comes in the form of energy through its outer surface it would be forced to resemble on the whole an enormously complicated single-celled plant. ..."

The oracle speaks.

I'm not sure I'd agree. Turn on Discovery channel or Animal Planet and look at animal behavior. Many wild animals have a level of male dominance that is pretty extreme - PARTICULARLY among our fellow primates.

And many animals have female dominance, including some primates. There have also been female dominant human societies.

I'd argue that not only is sexism not wholly cultural, but the fight against sexism is mostly cultural.

Providing pissoir's for men only is not sexist because there are real biological differences which make women less keen on their version. Providing maternity wards for women only is not sexist. Sexism is, almost by definition, exactly the bit that's left over after you take out the biological element. That means sexism is cultural 100%.

True. The power law, though, is a particularly dangerous and entrancing trap to fall in to. Almost everything in nature - from pure randomness to highly structured effects - can be fitted to a power law. You often don't even need to do any transformation of the data - simply choosing the wrong set of dependent and independent variables to examine can do it.

My favourite goto whenever this subject comes up is the essay "So You Think You Have a Power Law - Well Isn't That Special?"

That said, I haven't read the current paper. They might have been very careful to avoid the common traps. I won't know until I spend some time tomorrow reading it.

You can argue all you want,

Yay! In that case:

Public schools are funded primarily by local property taxes, which means middle- and lower-class parents are given a choice of either (1) moving to a rich area, or (2) putting their kids through the poorly-funded schools they have access to. It has nothing to do with values; it's just money. Home schooling is a practical alternative if you can't afford the "cost" of a good public school.

But if you want to talk values? The far right has plenty to own up to, too. Teaching creationism is insane and harmful. Pushing religion and sexual ideals onto naive kids is repressive and goes against the values of religious tolerance and freedom that are the ideals of the US.

Lastly, you note:

I don't have kids

So why do you even care about what the schools teach?

You might want to look into something like this or this .
My daughter took one out of this one, specifically one on Physics. She loved it and we plan to do another. My other daughter is looking forward to this one.

You might want to look into something like this or this .
My daughter took one out of this one, specifically one on Physics. She loved it and we plan to do another. My other daughter is looking forward to this one.

To try to get some insight on how many genetic changes there are in insects I churned a few numbers:

1. * Life cycle time is takes a full year for most insects
2. * Number of offspring per female 100 - varies a lot
3. * Number of insects per acre is 10^8 (100 million)
4. * Number of acres grown under GM crops 3x10^8
5. * Mutation rate is about 10^-8 per base pair per generation
6. * The number of genome base pairs 1.4x10^8 (fruit fly)

Multiply that and you get 10^18 insect offspring per year; a mutation rate of about 1 per individual per generation. So the number of mutations is a very large number. This means a large number of ''natural experiments'' done, one of which may result in an insect a bit more resistant to a GM crop, this will give the insect an advantage and so be able to have more offspring all of which carry the advantageous gene. So advantageous genes spread rapidy, through sexual reproduction are combined with other genes and the best combinations flourish.

WARNING: very rough calculations, most insects die before they have the chance to reproduce and so most mutations are 'lost'. The numbers that I obtained are very likely wrong - but even if each one is wrong by a factor of 100, it doesn't make a huge dent in a very large number.

Newt Gingrich:

In all fairness, it’s something Gore had worked on a long time. Gore is not the Father of the Internet, but in all fairness, Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet, and the truth is—and I worked with him starting in 1978 when I got [to Congress], we were both part of a “futures group”—the fact is, in the Clinton administration, the world we had talked about in the ’80s began to actually happen.

Vint Cerf:

Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.

Al Gore's original statement was factual. Somebody at the RNC made a separate statement that was a lie, attributed it to Gore and then attacked him for it. The first link clearly illustrates how it was misquoted once by the RNC in a press release the following week, and then the misquote was reproduced as a quote, because the only people being quoted were the people who were complaining. It was all a game to troll the press and to spend so much time complaining about an imaginary quote that it would take all the time away from talking about the real one.

based on asteroidal ore (1920s): http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Bernal/world/
"Imagine a spherical shell ten miles or so in diameter, made of the lightest materials and mostly hollow; for this purpose the new molecular materials would be admirably suited. Owing to the absence of gravitation its construction would not be an engineering feat of any magnitude. The source of the material out of which this would be made would only be in small part drawn from the earth; for the great bulk of the structure would be made out of the substance of one or more smaller asteroids, rings of Saturn or other planetary detritus. The initial stages of construction are the most difficult to imagine. They will probably consist of attaching an asteroid of some hundred yards or so diameter to a space vessel, hollowing it out and using the removed material to build the first protective shell. Afterwards the shell could be re-worked, bit by bit, using elaborated and more suitable substances and at the same time increasing its size by diminishing its thickness. The globe would fulfil all the functions by which our earth manages to support life. In default of a gravitational field it has, perforce, to keep its atmosphere and the greater portion of its life inside; but as all its nourishment comes in the form of energy through its outer surface it would be forced to resemble on the whole an enormously complicated single-celled plant. ..."

http://www.astro.lsa.umich.edu/~monnier/Publications/ROP2003_final.pdf

Hypercard didn't have any access natively to the serial port or similar interfaces. To do this, one had to write an XCMD (wow, Dr Dobbs has a good archive) resource in pascal or C (or possibly assembly) to talk to the low level system/hardware. This created an additional command / function that Hypercard could call. To an extent, this did cause some fragmentation of the language

Looking at an old archive at umich, you can get an idea of what these xcmds could do.

To do anything beyond the basic capability of Hypertalk, it required you to be able to go in with resedit, download (or write) and add the appropriate additional functionality. This was a tool that was part of a programmer's toolkit - not a user's.

His "new kind of science" is borderline kook, and sometimes just full-on kook. He is a very smart guy, but he spends way too much time in the company of people whose salary he pays.

http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfram/?dupe=with_honor "A Rare Blend of Monster Raving Egomania and Utter Batshit Insanity"

A history of DNS Violence

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~artkuo/Passive_Walk/passive_walking.html

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugexp=kjrmc&cp=4&gs_id=a&xhr=t&q=McGeer+Passive+Dynamic+Walking

This is old news.

I am an Aerospace Engineering/Mathematics Grad Student at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I do more theoretical work now, but I think I can offer a little advice.

If you want to stay state side I would also recommend (in no particular order) you look at U of M, Purdue, Georgia Tech, Cornell (Aero/Mech), Caltech, Stanford (Aero/Mech) and the University of Maryland (more aeronautical).

The biggest thing is to get involved with research projects. Look at current professors and their research interests, see if they have anything related to satellite/rocket design. Do not be afraid to ask/e-mail. Professors and grad students alike love getting undergrads involved, perhaps because they usually come free.

If you do look at Michigan I can recommend looking at Professor Cutler and his RAX project or professors in the Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences (AOSS) department. Several people from my graduating class who took Aerosp 483 went on to SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and Bigelow Aerospace, so there is a network.

For more U of M information look at:
Professor Cutler: http://aerospace.engin.umich.edu/people/faculty/cutler/
RAX: http://rax.engin.umich.edu/
AOSS: http://aoss.engin.umich.edu/

I am an Aerospace Engineering/Mathematics Grad Student at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I do more theoretical work now, but I think I can offer a little advice.

If you want to stay state side I would also recommend (in no particular order) you look at U of M, Purdue, Georgia Tech, Cornell (Aero/Mech), Caltech, Stanford (Aero/Mech) and the University of Maryland (more aeronautical).

The biggest thing is to get involved with research projects. Look at current professors and their research interests, see if they have anything related to satellite/rocket design. Do not be afraid to ask/e-mail. Professors and grad students alike love getting undergrads involved, perhaps because they usually come free.

If you do look at Michigan I can recommend looking at Professor Cutler and his RAX project or professors in the Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences (AOSS) department. Several people from my graduating class who took Aerosp 483 went on to SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and Bigelow Aerospace, so there is a network.

For more U of M information look at:
Professor Cutler: http://aerospace.engin.umich.edu/people/faculty/cutler/
RAX: http://rax.engin.umich.edu/
AOSS: http://aoss.engin.umich.edu/

I am an Aerospace Engineering/Mathematics Grad Student at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I do more theoretical work now, but I think I can offer a little advice.

If you want to stay state side I would also recommend (in no particular order) you look at U of M, Purdue, Georgia Tech, Cornell (Aero/Mech), Caltech, Stanford (Aero/Mech) and the University of Maryland (more aeronautical).

The biggest thing is to get involved with research projects. Look at current professors and their research interests, see if they have anything related to satellite/rocket design. Do not be afraid to ask/e-mail. Professors and grad students alike love getting undergrads involved, perhaps because they usually come free.

If you do look at Michigan I can recommend looking at Professor Cutler and his RAX project or professors in the Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences (AOSS) department. Several people from my graduating class who took Aerosp 483 went on to SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and Bigelow Aerospace, so there is a network.

For more U of M information look at:
Professor Cutler: http://aerospace.engin.umich.edu/people/faculty/cutler/
RAX: http://rax.engin.umich.edu/
AOSS: http://aoss.engin.umich.edu/

"Which would be cool if I had any clue what the 90% of world's population, the unemployed, will be doing with all that time."

"Employment" is a fairly recent idea. What was everyone doing thousands of years ago before "employment"?
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm

By the way, I like J.D. Bernal, who you can add to your list, for this from the 1920s:
http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Bernal/world/
"Imagine a spherical shell ten miles or so in diameter, made of the lightest materials and mostly hollow; for this purpose the new molecular materials would be admirably suited. Owing to the absence of gravitation its construction would not be an engineering feat of any magnitude. The source of the material out of which this would be made would only be in small part drawn from the earth; for the great bulk of the structure would be made out of the substance of one or more smaller asteroids, rings of Saturn or other planetary detritus. The initial stages of construction are the most difficult to imagine. They will probably consist of attaching an asteroid of some hundred yards or so diameter to a space vessel, hollowing it out and using the removed material to build the first protective shell. Afterwards the shell could be re-worked, bit by bit, using elaborated and more suitable substances and at the same time increasing its size by diminishing its thickness. The globe would fulfil all the functions by which our earth manages to support life. In default of a gravitational field it has, perforce, to keep its atmosphere and the greater portion of its life inside; but as all its nourishment comes in the form of energy through its outer surface it would be forced to resemble on the whole an enormously complicated single-celled plant."

original article: http://www.engin.umich.edu/newscenter/feature/smartphonebattery/
research paper: http://kabru.eecs.umich.edu//papers/publications/2011/xyzhang_kgshin_mobicom11.pdf

original article: http://www.engin.umich.edu/newscenter/feature/smartphonebattery/
research paper: http://kabru.eecs.umich.edu//papers/publications/2011/xyzhang_kgshin_mobicom11.pdf

Michigan has been working on this very thing for a large government push to embed smarts into bridges. http://ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=7585

New plants have zero exhaust except for CO2 ... and even that will be stored away in a few years.

Emphasis added, because we have to cut CO2 emissions as fast as we can. Carbon sequestration isn't guaranteed to be available in a few years, or guaranteed to be as cheap or as safe as nuclear (we'd basically be creating new potential "killer lakes"). Meanwhile nuclear plants, while not perfect, are much safer than coal plants, and only emit a few percent of the CO2 from equivalent coal plants.

Learning Mandarin is probably a good idea, I've been doing it myself, but don't expect it to be easy. It is very hard, and not because of that stuff about tones. See How Hard is Chinese or Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard. It has also been a lot of fun and you pick up a lot of Chinese culture along the way.

See

http://www.eecs.umich.edu/virtual/papers/king06.pdf

I would like to have PC's to implement non-interactive boot sequecy from microSD or SDHC type media only. That is because you can manually write-protect those after system preparation.

By non-interactive I mean that boot always from microSD if you don't press some complicated (like A-F-H-L) enough key combinations on the keyboard while POST sequence.

Only if you press that key combination you get to choose other boot media, which you need complete reinstall of the system.

Ofcourse the microSD then would have a boot system like EFI or whatever which enables (chain)booting from HD, PXE, USB, .. but only after the system consistency and security tests have been done.

That microSD would then implement mentioned consistency and security checks, using digital signatures etc. It would also be helpful implementing full HD encryption, diskless systems and because microSD is cheap, easily available, reasonably sized it would be easy to make a 1:1 backup of it once you have OS installed. If it ever got corrupted or broke you just replace and rewrite it after checking crypto checksum created when it was initiated and then reboot with it.

Once the microSD was prepared, you would install the OS(es) and each of those boot sectors would be signed by the keys stored on that microSD. If your OS boot sector(s) were tampered or the like. The boot would not proceed but ask fixing the system with the OS-install media which would then if needed even contact to manufacturer site and verify that the OS-boot secuency is OK or not.

The more I think of it that kind of system would make a lot of sense.

It would be very hard to bypass by unauthorized and malicious code. If anything goes wrong it would be also quite easy and cheap to fix. Also it would be very easy to understand by users and advanced users to tweak it new features.

Cheers,

Does that mean it will be surrounded by guns and tanks pointing at it, or that there will be unwarranted rectal probing for all visitors?

Support exists now:

http://brainarray.mbni.med.umich.edu/brainarray/rgpgpu/