To add to what the AC typed above, I would be surprised if the old Slashdot could crash a modern server, after all,
Missing the point. The point is that slashdot used to be a significant place for geeks to hang out and talk. But several years of bad management have caused a lot of the people that made slashdot a special place have moved on. Comment volume has dropped and the quality of the discussion arguably has diminished as well. Slashdot failed to evolve as the rest of the internet grew substantially.
Well, the concept behind a duress password is that they have to actually try the one you give them to verify it, and once they enter a duress password further attempts to get a real one are useless.
So they don't enter one until they've beaten you up for an arbitrarily long time. Long enough to have some confidence you aren't lying to them. How well do you think you will hold up under torture? I'm betting not so well.
(note, there's no reason you can't have arbitrarily many duress passwords, so they'll never be sure that the Xth unique password you divulge is the real one.)
There is also no reason they cannot make your life a (barely) living hell for an arbitrarily long time. Better be sure whatever you are protecting is worth your life or your freedom because that's what it might cost you.
The problem arises when the people breaking in ARE the authorities, as then they don't care if the phone calls the cops, and they will nail you with obstruction and destroying evidence if the device self destructs. In that case it's safer to try the "I forgot" or "I plead the 5th (or local equivalent)" gambit.
Ask the people imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay how well that worked for them. It's adorable that you think your options are any better with "the authorities" than with some random bad guy.
you simply can't say that Slashdot doesn't matter anymore because it doesn't destroy >80% of the sites it links to.
True but there are plenty of reasons I can say Slashdot doesn't matter so much any more. The volume of comments is way down. 200-400 comments per story used to be the norm. Now it's often less than half that and sometimes doesn't even get to 100. There are far fewer well known geeks frequenting Slashdot. It used to be a premier destination and a place to hear what the best and brightest had to say. But years of neglect and bad management have slowly driven away a substantial portion of then user base that once set Slashdot apart from other news/discussion sites. I won't say it doesn't matter at all but it's not the place it once was. Perhaps the new management can fix that though I'm not holding my breath...
Agreed. Slashdot has easily the single best method of moderating out of every major website
Kind of adorable that you think slashdot is still a "major website". 10-15 years ago slashdot kind of mattered. Someone posted a link and it would generate so much traffic it could crash the server (slashdotting). Not so much anymore. Comment volume has dropped substantially, a lot of the "celebrities" (for lack of a better word) that used to read and comment have long since moved on. Many of us (myself included) still find it amusing and fun but slashdot isn't the force in the geek community that it once was.
What made fracking viable was the advent of directional drilling.
If oil is at around $36/barrel. Over 50% of the oil production in the US comes from fracking these days. If oil prices fall below $30 for a sustained period then fracking producers cannot remain in business. Right now the OPEC countries are pumping a lot of oil intentionally to keep prices low and put a squeeze on fracking producers and can do so because of their cost advantage. But this strategy cannot be sustained indefinitely since their oil reserves are finite and the oil that is more expensive to extract is still in the ground. Furthermore most of the OPEC countries set their federal budgets based on oil prices higher than they currently are so there will be political pressure to ease off on pumping sooner rather than later.
New technologies like Fracking always come along to keep cost of extraction cheap.
Fracking has been done commercially since the 1950s so calling it a new technology is not really accurate. There have been some advancements in fracking but what really has made it viable is the worldwide price of oil going north of about $40/barrel. It's more expensive than drilling into big reservoirs of oil like in Saudi Arabia but the technique is nothing new. It's just become economical in the last 20 years as the price of oil has intersected with the cost of fracking.
The whole reason the price of oil has tanked is exactly because it's so cheap to use fracking to fossil fuels...
The reason the price has gone down is because there is a temporary oversupply. Fracking is a part of that but a bigger part is countries like Saudi Arabia intentionally pumping out more oil than demand dictates. Too much supply + not enough demand = low prices. It's a mostly a short term supply and demand thing rather something inherent to the cost of pumping. We had the price 2-3X what it is today not long ago for similar reasons. I expect we'll see prices like that again at some point, though not for a few years probably. Good time to buy oil/gas stocks if you're comfortable owning evil companies.
If Apple creates a circumstance where the only way to get audio off its products is through an interface that is DRM-capable...
Idiotic statement. There is ALWAYS a bulletproof way to get audio off any device that can play it. It won't be a perfect copy but until they can outlaw speakers we can always just do what we did when I was growing up and record it by putting a mic up to the speakers. Works just fine unless you are a snob about it.
The same question could be asked of you. You just "corrected" two fact that were not incorrect.
Disagree. See below.
This is not known. Hydration is driven into rocks by subduction, and water content does decrease the viscosity of magma. So it is a plausible, although unproven, hypothesis that water is needed for plate tectonics.
Your going to tell me I'm wrong by telling me about ideas that you admit are "pausible although unproven" as if they were facts? Curious argument you have there. Water undoubtedly has some effect on the system but the evidence that water is a required factor for plate tectonics to occur is as you say unproven. It's equally plausible that it has little effect on the system. It certainly is not the major driver as that has to be other forces, particularly liquid magma, convection currents, tidal forces and others. The mere presence of water (liquid or frozen) doesn't cause plate tectonics.
Given that the only have a sample size of one planet with plate tectonics which just happens to have water (maybe two as Europa may as well), it would be silly to claim that water is required to make plate tectonics possible. At best we don't know and there is a better than likely chance that it isn't required at all.
Nevertheless, Venus does has the same face toward Earth when the two planets are closest together.
That doesn't mean they are tidal locked. Tidal lock is a very specific thing and it by definition cannot be happening here. It could be orbital resonance or mere coincidence but it definitely is not tidal lock.
and, likewise, you might do research before correcting facts that aren't actually incorrect.
I am not sold on the whole man made climate change argument.
So you are saying you don't believe in science then. Fair enough. At least we understand where you are coming from.
If you have actual evidence rather than vague doubts that man is not substantially responsible for recent climate changes by all means bring it forth. Because so far the evidence seem to pretty clearly point the finger directly at us.
I think its a complex system we don't understand.
It IS a complex system AND we understand quite a bit about it. While there is much more to learn there are many things we are actually quite confident about. The fact that you can't wrap your head around it doesn't mean those who study it don't know what they are talking about.
There exists a good possibility there are drivers such as solar maximums and run away effect that may already have been triggered that are bigger than 'us' and simply cutting emissions might not do it.
Do you seriously think that idea hasn't occurred to climate scientists? There has been substantial research into that exact thing (and many other drivers) to try to determine whether or not their effects are significant. So far there has been no evidence supporting the conclusion that other drivers are more significant than man made pollution for recent climatic changes.
We must master climate engineering if we want to do more than survive and instead continue to thrive. Taking the gas out of economic engine does not seem to me to be the best way to get there.
Who says we have to shoot ourselves in the foot economically? There is massive economic benefit to be had with developing clean energy sources. Pollution costs money in health, maintenance, cleanup and disposal. You don't have to pay to deal with a mess you don't make in the first place. And fossil fuels are hugely polluting - it's not even debated by those who make their living from them. As the saying goes, "if you think the economy is more important than the environment, try counting your money while holding your breath".
Pretty much by definition, when we're closest to Venus, it's directly between us and the Sun, and so we'll be looking at the dark side of Venus, which will always be the same, since it's tidelocked to the Sun.
1) Venus is NOT tide locked to the sun. 2) The orbits of Venus and the Earth do not take the same period so we aren't stuck looking at it from one position. 3) Combining 1 and 2, even when we are closest to Venus we don't see the same side every time even when closest
It's more "Earth-like" high up in the Venutian atmosphere in the same sense that being in the city of Chernobyl is safer than standing right in the reactor. Not exactly where you want to take your summer vacation either way.
Wow you crammed a ton of incorrect information into a single post. Are you trolling or just too stupid to look things up?
On Earth it appears that the oceans put enough water into the crust as to make plate tectonics possible (the water lubricates fault lines. If Venus ever had plate tectonics, it probably stopped when the water evaporated.
And then there is the fact that Venus is tide-locked between the Sun and Earth (always has the save face toward Earth when the two planets are closest together)
Not only is Venus not tide-locked to earth, it doesn't even rotate in the same direction as earth. Venus has retrograde rotation (rotates clockwise when viewed from north pole) and it has the slowest rotation of any planet at 243 earth days for one rotation. It would be impossible for a plant to be tidal locked to another planet. Tidal locking happens in objects that orbit each other. Venus obviously does not orbit Earth.
Earth's magnetic field exists partly because of its rotation, and that magnetic field helps protect its atmosphere. Venus hasn't got the necessary rotation rate.
Earth has a dynamo in it's core whereas Venus does not. Simulations have shown that Venus' rotation is adequate to produce a dynamo but Venus doesn't have one because it has insufficient convection in the core. Venus does have a (comparatively) small induced magnetic field but it is too small to provide meaningful protection from solar wind.
I once speculated about a way to make Venus habitable.
Since you clearly have no idea what you are talking about I suggest you cease doing that until you learn considerably more than you are demonstrating.
Like I said: freedom. As long as humans depend on one another for anything important, the end result will always be a hierarchy of some kind.
That is NEVER going to go away and I would argue it would be bad it it did. I can disprove your thesis with a simple example. A child when they are born is completely helpless. They cannot exist without help from other humans. The idea of building a complete industrial supply chain for each individual person is such an absurd proposition as to be unworthy of further discussion.
"Replicator" is an archetypal example of a fully automated manufacturing system, capable of going from placing an order to delivering the goods without requiring any human labour whatsoever, no matter how it's implemented behind the scenes.
It's also called science FICTION for a reason. It has no basis in physical reality. There is no such thing as a fully automated manufacturing system and there never will be. I run a manufacturing company and I manage automation daily and there is a lot about it you fail to understand. Even if you can automate portions of a supply chain you cannot automate the inputs and outputs (and usually repairs) for any non-trivial problem. Automation also doesn't work economically for problems that are below a certain scale. It doesn't work technologically and it doesn't work economically. What you are proposing would require creating artificial life of equal or greater intelligence to humans with the ability to control physical bodies of comparable or greater capability to humans. At that hypothetical point what is the purpose of the continued existence of humans?
The utility of goods and services follows an s-curve: it asymptotically nears a finite value on either extreme. Economy become obsolete when the increase in utility you could get from economic activity becomes less than the negative utility of having to spend your time and effort for it.
Sounds like you took Economics 101 and flunked it. The problems with this argument are numerous. To start: 1) Humans aren't rational and pure utility arguments don't work in the real world outside of very narrow conditions. 2) Utility of goods and services demonstrably do not always follow an s-curve. 3) Negative marginal utility doesn't automatically mean something isn't still necessary. 4) You are HUGELY oversimplifying economics into a soundbite. The real world doesn't work like that.
A removable battery means the machine is more fire resistant.
Provide objective evidence that by making the battery removable that the device is any more resistant to fire when attached to the device. Bear in mind that NOBODY detaches removable batteries from their phones as a routine matter. A battery that combusts or substantially malfunctions will be dangerous to handle whether or not it is removable. Making it removable does not solve the problem.
And you can make sure it is really powered down, as pointed out the above reply to the AC.
This is a genuine advantage of removable batteries. There are some other advantages as well. I do not see compelling evidence that safety is among them.
I just lost an iPhone because the battery swelled up (didn't burn) and destroyed it two weeks after not using or charging it. If it were removable, it would have just popped the cover off, I could have bought a new battery, and still have a working phone.
How convenient for purposes of this discussion... Honestly I think you are making this up and even if you aren't you are proving my point. Removability does not equate to safety. At best it might safe the device from a few rare failure modes. It won't save anybody from injury.
Non removable batteries are a real danger and should not be allowed.
Billions of non-removable batteries in active service with close to zero problems says otherwise. The rare battery that begins to combust isn't going to be removed from the device while it is malfunctioning in a dangerous manner. Doesn't matter if it is removable or not. Making the battery removable does not solve this failure mode.
If we can prohibit the use of antifreeze in baby formula, we can prohibit this.
WTF? This is irrelevant nonsense. If you want to prove your point show me a study or corroborated example whereby ANYONE was saved from an actively malfunctioning battery by the sole fact that the battery was removable.
If you want better ISP options you want LESS government, not an incompetent government that will certainly monitor and record all traffic after taking over your ISP.
That's cute that you think deregulation of Comcast and AT&T would result in more competition and/or better service. Honestly I have more control over the government than I do over a monopoly utility company. (not that I have much control over either) I very much desire the government to serve as a watch dog when monopolies are involved.
You don't need to have government involved beyond playing referee and setting the ground rules. There is no problem with private companies providing the services. What SHOULD happen however is that companies that provide the wires to your house should never be allowed to be the same companies that provide data over those lines. It's economically inefficient to have numerous lines to the house so that needs to be a single company or preferably two companies that are regulated closely. But there is no reason that we cannot have multiple companies competing for whatever services are provided over those lines. Same for wireless. AT&T can provide the LTE signal but I see no reason for them to be allowed into the data and content business as well.
And I still insist that non removable batteries are dangerous.
Based on what? Who exactly has been injured/killed in a manner that removable batteries would have solved? Failing that what is the theoretical but obviously extremely rare failure mode that having removable batteries would fix?
I don't have an argument that removable batteries are a good idea but I just don't see it as a safety issue.
Personally I couldn't give a rip about the function keys. They generally aren't very useful to me anyway. What I'd like Apple to do is put a proper goddam backspace AND delete keys on their laptops. It's annoying as hell to have to hit Fn+delete on a Macbook.
We need to have the government build the infrastructure once, and then lease space on it to any ISP who wants to compete. It's the only way that makes any sense and the only way that will ever allow any form of competition in this space.
I would suggest a simpler solution is to basically force a separation of pipe providers from ISPs. All that would require is for companies like Comcast to spin off one operation from the other. Having a single regulated private company providing the pipe is far less of a problem if there are multiple service providers competing for the data that goes across that pipe. Right now we have companies like Comcast being the line provider and the data services provider which gives them way more control than is beneficial to customers.
Technology, and specifically automation, holds the promise of self-sufficiency.
No it does not. It holds no such promise whatsoever. Even if it did I'm puzzled why you think that would be a worthy goal.
If you can manufacture everything you need by yourself - if you have a replicator for material goods and a holodeck for services - then economy becomes something you can opt out of. In other words, technology might make people free.
Would you like some pixie dust to go with your unicorn farts? Replicators and holodecks? Seriously? Stop watching TV shows and learn some physics. Basically you are saying that you have some piece of technology that magically can make anything from raw energy. The thermodynamics alone make this an impossible fantasy. Do you have the vaguest concept of the energy requirements for a Star Trek style replicator? But even if somehow it worked, it still wouldn't obviate the need for an economy because you cannot actually eliminate scarcity. The universe is finite and most of it is inaccessible to us and is likely to remain so.
We have a sort of a replicator already. It's called DNA. You can even use it to order "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot" though it takes a bit longer than they show on Star Trek.
I rest my case. If it's something that matters, odds are good that someone will preserve it. Actually many things that don't matter get preserved too. I'm routinely astonished at how sentimental people get. I used to work in the auction business so I've seen some things you wouldn't believe in that regard... People love to collect.
But almost all countries also have a life plus 50 year or more copyright regime. So how should I go about tracking down the author of each such animation and seeking his permission to preserve it?
You're presuming the author wants to have it preserved. They might not. But let's assume they do. You might have to do some leg work to find them. That's part of the deal with copyright. But honestly that may be the easiest problem to solve. How you plan to actually preserve the work could be actually much harder since it was created in a proprietary product depending on what you plan to do to preserve it.
If Google grows a pair as you suggest, then existing vector animations using Flash (Homestar Runner, Weebl and Bob, Animutations, and user contributions to Newgrounds) will become unusable.
Frankly, so what? Flash will still be available for those who want it. And even if it died completely starting tomorrow and we lose a few works of art forever (which won't happen), I would still consider it a fair exchange considering the problems Flash has caused and continues to cause. Those authors made their product in a proprietary format. Live by the sword, die by the sword. If someone cares enough to bother to preserve the animations then they'll be preserved.
To be honest though I haven't even thought about Homestar Runner in over a decade and I've never even heard of those others. Obviously it isn't something I would quickly miss.
True though in practical terms that is of less value security wise than many imagine.
how do I know that my browser is not doing bad things behind my back?
Unless you've audited the code of the browser and compiled yourself it with a compiler whose code you also have audited you cannot know if a browser is doing bad things behind your back. That is true whether or not the source code is open source or closed. Open source does have its advantages but it just changes the attack surface rather than eliminating it.
I'm actually a fairly active Facebook user, and am totally fine with ads as long as they don't blink, move around, obstruct what I'm reading, etc.
My main problem with them is that you do not get ads without the ads tracking what you are doing. Unlike advertising on my TV which isn't particularly directed at me, online advertisers seem to think they have some $diety given right to track my every movement and mouse click. I disagree and I take active measure to prevent it. I am NOT fine with being tracked to that degree. So the ads get blocked and will remain so because I fundamentally cannot trust these companies.
Funny thing is that I would (and do) happily subscribe to various website that provide me services and content I find valuable. I'd be more than happy to break off a few bills for a valuable service if they weren't so damn arrogant and creepy.
Like the good old Google text ads, they were pretty useful even at times.
Maybe to you there were/are useful. To me, not so much. Never clicked on a single one on purpose.
ABP remains active, let's just see what happens and how it develops.
ABP, uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, plus a few other countermeasures are in active use on my machines.
Slashdot Mirror
To add to what the AC typed above, I would be surprised if the old Slashdot could crash a modern server, after all,
Missing the point. The point is that slashdot used to be a significant place for geeks to hang out and talk. But several years of bad management have caused a lot of the people that made slashdot a special place have moved on. Comment volume has dropped and the quality of the discussion arguably has diminished as well. Slashdot failed to evolve as the rest of the internet grew substantially.
Well, the concept behind a duress password is that they have to actually try the one you give them to verify it, and once they enter a duress password further attempts to get a real one are useless.
So they don't enter one until they've beaten you up for an arbitrarily long time. Long enough to have some confidence you aren't lying to them. How well do you think you will hold up under torture? I'm betting not so well.
(note, there's no reason you can't have arbitrarily many duress passwords, so they'll never be sure that the Xth unique password you divulge is the real one.)
There is also no reason they cannot make your life a (barely) living hell for an arbitrarily long time. Better be sure whatever you are protecting is worth your life or your freedom because that's what it might cost you.
The problem arises when the people breaking in ARE the authorities, as then they don't care if the phone calls the cops, and they will nail you with obstruction and destroying evidence if the device self destructs. In that case it's safer to try the "I forgot" or "I plead the 5th (or local equivalent)" gambit.
Ask the people imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay how well that worked for them. It's adorable that you think your options are any better with "the authorities" than with some random bad guy.
Why are duress passwords not a standard feature at this point?
Because they are useless once the party causing the duress becomes aware that such a thing exists.
Agent: "Give me your password" ...
You: "Here you go"
Agent: Clubs you with a wrench. "Give me your REAL password, smartass"
You:
you simply can't say that Slashdot doesn't matter anymore because it doesn't destroy >80% of the sites it links to.
True but there are plenty of reasons I can say Slashdot doesn't matter so much any more. The volume of comments is way down. 200-400 comments per story used to be the norm. Now it's often less than half that and sometimes doesn't even get to 100. There are far fewer well known geeks frequenting Slashdot. It used to be a premier destination and a place to hear what the best and brightest had to say. But years of neglect and bad management have slowly driven away a substantial portion of then user base that once set Slashdot apart from other news/discussion sites. I won't say it doesn't matter at all but it's not the place it once was. Perhaps the new management can fix that though I'm not holding my breath...
Agreed. Slashdot has easily the single best method of moderating out of every major website
Kind of adorable that you think slashdot is still a "major website". 10-15 years ago slashdot kind of mattered. Someone posted a link and it would generate so much traffic it could crash the server (slashdotting). Not so much anymore. Comment volume has dropped substantially, a lot of the "celebrities" (for lack of a better word) that used to read and comment have long since moved on. Many of us (myself included) still find it amusing and fun but slashdot isn't the force in the geek community that it once was.
What made fracking viable was the advent of directional drilling.
If oil is at around $36/barrel. Over 50% of the oil production in the US comes from fracking these days. If oil prices fall below $30 for a sustained period then fracking producers cannot remain in business. Right now the OPEC countries are pumping a lot of oil intentionally to keep prices low and put a squeeze on fracking producers and can do so because of their cost advantage. But this strategy cannot be sustained indefinitely since their oil reserves are finite and the oil that is more expensive to extract is still in the ground. Furthermore most of the OPEC countries set their federal budgets based on oil prices higher than they currently are so there will be political pressure to ease off on pumping sooner rather than later.
New technologies like Fracking always come along to keep cost of extraction cheap.
Fracking has been done commercially since the 1950s so calling it a new technology is not really accurate. There have been some advancements in fracking but what really has made it viable is the worldwide price of oil going north of about $40/barrel. It's more expensive than drilling into big reservoirs of oil like in Saudi Arabia but the technique is nothing new. It's just become economical in the last 20 years as the price of oil has intersected with the cost of fracking.
The whole reason the price of oil has tanked is exactly because it's so cheap to use fracking to fossil fuels...
The reason the price has gone down is because there is a temporary oversupply. Fracking is a part of that but a bigger part is countries like Saudi Arabia intentionally pumping out more oil than demand dictates. Too much supply + not enough demand = low prices. It's a mostly a short term supply and demand thing rather something inherent to the cost of pumping. We had the price 2-3X what it is today not long ago for similar reasons. I expect we'll see prices like that again at some point, though not for a few years probably. Good time to buy oil/gas stocks if you're comfortable owning evil companies.
If Apple creates a circumstance where the only way to get audio off its products is through an interface that is DRM-capable...
Idiotic statement. There is ALWAYS a bulletproof way to get audio off any device that can play it. It won't be a perfect copy but until they can outlaw speakers we can always just do what we did when I was growing up and record it by putting a mic up to the speakers. Works just fine unless you are a snob about it.
The same question could be asked of you. You just "corrected" two fact that were not incorrect.
Disagree. See below.
This is not known. Hydration is driven into rocks by subduction, and water content does decrease the viscosity of magma. So it is a plausible, although unproven, hypothesis that water is needed for plate tectonics.
Your going to tell me I'm wrong by telling me about ideas that you admit are "pausible although unproven" as if they were facts? Curious argument you have there. Water undoubtedly has some effect on the system but the evidence that water is a required factor for plate tectonics to occur is as you say unproven. It's equally plausible that it has little effect on the system. It certainly is not the major driver as that has to be other forces, particularly liquid magma, convection currents, tidal forces and others. The mere presence of water (liquid or frozen) doesn't cause plate tectonics.
Given that the only have a sample size of one planet with plate tectonics which just happens to have water (maybe two as Europa may as well), it would be silly to claim that water is required to make plate tectonics possible. At best we don't know and there is a better than likely chance that it isn't required at all.
Nevertheless, Venus does has the same face toward Earth when the two planets are closest together.
That doesn't mean they are tidal locked. Tidal lock is a very specific thing and it by definition cannot be happening here. It could be orbital resonance or mere coincidence but it definitely is not tidal lock.
and, likewise, you might do research before correcting facts that aren't actually incorrect.
I will as soon as it happens.
I am not sold on the whole man made climate change argument.
So you are saying you don't believe in science then. Fair enough. At least we understand where you are coming from.
If you have actual evidence rather than vague doubts that man is not substantially responsible for recent climate changes by all means bring it forth. Because so far the evidence seem to pretty clearly point the finger directly at us.
I think its a complex system we don't understand.
It IS a complex system AND we understand quite a bit about it. While there is much more to learn there are many things we are actually quite confident about. The fact that you can't wrap your head around it doesn't mean those who study it don't know what they are talking about.
There exists a good possibility there are drivers such as solar maximums and run away effect that may already have been triggered that are bigger than 'us' and simply cutting emissions might not do it.
Do you seriously think that idea hasn't occurred to climate scientists? There has been substantial research into that exact thing (and many other drivers) to try to determine whether or not their effects are significant. So far there has been no evidence supporting the conclusion that other drivers are more significant than man made pollution for recent climatic changes.
We must master climate engineering if we want to do more than survive and instead continue to thrive. Taking the gas out of economic engine does not seem to me to be the best way to get there.
Who says we have to shoot ourselves in the foot economically? There is massive economic benefit to be had with developing clean energy sources. Pollution costs money in health, maintenance, cleanup and disposal. You don't have to pay to deal with a mess you don't make in the first place. And fossil fuels are hugely polluting - it's not even debated by those who make their living from them. As the saying goes, "if you think the economy is more important than the environment, try counting your money while holding your breath".
A change in a climate will invariably lead to extinction of species. Always has, always will.
That's not an excuse to induce climate change when it can be avoided. It's also not an excuse to do nothing about it once we recognize the problem.
But something always survives.
No, SO FAR something has always survived. It's entirely possible for the climate to change sufficiently for nothing to survive.
Earth has faced a lot of very difficult times in its existence and sometimes more than 95% of the species died out. But behold, life is still there.
Maybe you are a nihilist but personally I'd prefer to not rush human extinction along nor that of other species if it can be avoided.
Pretty much by definition, when we're closest to Venus, it's directly between us and the Sun, and so we'll be looking at the dark side of Venus, which will always be the same, since it's tidelocked to the Sun.
1) Venus is NOT tide locked to the sun.
2) The orbits of Venus and the Earth do not take the same period so we aren't stuck looking at it from one position.
3) Combining 1 and 2, even when we are closest to Venus we don't see the same side every time even when closest
in the clouds where it's more Earth-like.
It's more "Earth-like" high up in the Venutian atmosphere in the same sense that being in the city of Chernobyl is safer than standing right in the reactor. Not exactly where you want to take your summer vacation either way.
Wow you crammed a ton of incorrect information into a single post. Are you trolling or just too stupid to look things up?
On Earth it appears that the oceans put enough water into the crust as to make plate tectonics possible (the water lubricates fault lines. If Venus ever had plate tectonics, it probably stopped when the water evaporated.
Water is not and never has been a requirement for a planet to have plate tectonics.
And then there is the fact that Venus is tide-locked between the Sun and Earth (always has the save face toward Earth when the two planets are closest together)
Not only is Venus not tide-locked to earth, it doesn't even rotate in the same direction as earth. Venus has retrograde rotation (rotates clockwise when viewed from north pole) and it has the slowest rotation of any planet at 243 earth days for one rotation. It would be impossible for a plant to be tidal locked to another planet. Tidal locking happens in objects that orbit each other. Venus obviously does not orbit Earth.
Earth's magnetic field exists partly because of its rotation, and that magnetic field helps protect its atmosphere. Venus hasn't got the necessary rotation rate.
Earth has a dynamo in it's core whereas Venus does not. Simulations have shown that Venus' rotation is adequate to produce a dynamo but Venus doesn't have one because it has insufficient convection in the core. Venus does have a (comparatively) small induced magnetic field but it is too small to provide meaningful protection from solar wind.
I once speculated about a way to make Venus habitable.
Since you clearly have no idea what you are talking about I suggest you cease doing that until you learn considerably more than you are demonstrating.
Like I said: freedom. As long as humans depend on one another for anything important, the end result will always be a hierarchy of some kind.
That is NEVER going to go away and I would argue it would be bad it it did. I can disprove your thesis with a simple example. A child when they are born is completely helpless. They cannot exist without help from other humans. The idea of building a complete industrial supply chain for each individual person is such an absurd proposition as to be unworthy of further discussion.
"Replicator" is an archetypal example of a fully automated manufacturing system, capable of going from placing an order to delivering the goods without requiring any human labour whatsoever, no matter how it's implemented behind the scenes.
It's also called science FICTION for a reason. It has no basis in physical reality. There is no such thing as a fully automated manufacturing system and there never will be. I run a manufacturing company and I manage automation daily and there is a lot about it you fail to understand. Even if you can automate portions of a supply chain you cannot automate the inputs and outputs (and usually repairs) for any non-trivial problem. Automation also doesn't work economically for problems that are below a certain scale. It doesn't work technologically and it doesn't work economically. What you are proposing would require creating artificial life of equal or greater intelligence to humans with the ability to control physical bodies of comparable or greater capability to humans. At that hypothetical point what is the purpose of the continued existence of humans?
The utility of goods and services follows an s-curve: it asymptotically nears a finite value on either extreme. Economy become obsolete when the increase in utility you could get from economic activity becomes less than the negative utility of having to spend your time and effort for it.
Sounds like you took Economics 101 and flunked it. The problems with this argument are numerous. To start: 1) Humans aren't rational and pure utility arguments don't work in the real world outside of very narrow conditions. 2) Utility of goods and services demonstrably do not always follow an s-curve. 3) Negative marginal utility doesn't automatically mean something isn't still necessary. 4) You are HUGELY oversimplifying economics into a soundbite. The real world doesn't work like that.
A removable battery means the machine is more fire resistant.
Provide objective evidence that by making the battery removable that the device is any more resistant to fire when attached to the device. Bear in mind that NOBODY detaches removable batteries from their phones as a routine matter. A battery that combusts or substantially malfunctions will be dangerous to handle whether or not it is removable. Making it removable does not solve the problem.
And you can make sure it is really powered down, as pointed out the above reply to the AC.
This is a genuine advantage of removable batteries. There are some other advantages as well. I do not see compelling evidence that safety is among them.
I just lost an iPhone because the battery swelled up (didn't burn) and destroyed it two weeks after not using or charging it. If it were removable, it would have just popped the cover off, I could have bought a new battery, and still have a working phone.
How convenient for purposes of this discussion... Honestly I think you are making this up and even if you aren't you are proving my point. Removability does not equate to safety. At best it might safe the device from a few rare failure modes. It won't save anybody from injury.
Non removable batteries are a real danger and should not be allowed.
Billions of non-removable batteries in active service with close to zero problems says otherwise. The rare battery that begins to combust isn't going to be removed from the device while it is malfunctioning in a dangerous manner. Doesn't matter if it is removable or not. Making the battery removable does not solve this failure mode.
If we can prohibit the use of antifreeze in baby formula, we can prohibit this.
WTF? This is irrelevant nonsense. If you want to prove your point show me a study or corroborated example whereby ANYONE was saved from an actively malfunctioning battery by the sole fact that the battery was removable.
If you want better ISP options you want LESS government, not an incompetent government that will certainly monitor and record all traffic after taking over your ISP.
That's cute that you think deregulation of Comcast and AT&T would result in more competition and/or better service. Honestly I have more control over the government than I do over a monopoly utility company. (not that I have much control over either) I very much desire the government to serve as a watch dog when monopolies are involved.
You don't need to have government involved beyond playing referee and setting the ground rules. There is no problem with private companies providing the services. What SHOULD happen however is that companies that provide the wires to your house should never be allowed to be the same companies that provide data over those lines. It's economically inefficient to have numerous lines to the house so that needs to be a single company or preferably two companies that are regulated closely. But there is no reason that we cannot have multiple companies competing for whatever services are provided over those lines. Same for wireless. AT&T can provide the LTE signal but I see no reason for them to be allowed into the data and content business as well.
And I still insist that non removable batteries are dangerous.
Based on what? Who exactly has been injured/killed in a manner that removable batteries would have solved? Failing that what is the theoretical but obviously extremely rare failure mode that having removable batteries would fix?
I don't have an argument that removable batteries are a good idea but I just don't see it as a safety issue.
then just keep the function keys where they are
Personally I couldn't give a rip about the function keys. They generally aren't very useful to me anyway. What I'd like Apple to do is put a proper goddam backspace AND delete keys on their laptops. It's annoying as hell to have to hit Fn+delete on a Macbook.
We need to have the government build the infrastructure once, and then lease space on it to any ISP who wants to compete. It's the only way that makes any sense and the only way that will ever allow any form of competition in this space.
I would suggest a simpler solution is to basically force a separation of pipe providers from ISPs. All that would require is for companies like Comcast to spin off one operation from the other. Having a single regulated private company providing the pipe is far less of a problem if there are multiple service providers competing for the data that goes across that pipe. Right now we have companies like Comcast being the line provider and the data services provider which gives them way more control than is beneficial to customers.
Technology, and specifically automation, holds the promise of self-sufficiency.
No it does not. It holds no such promise whatsoever. Even if it did I'm puzzled why you think that would be a worthy goal.
If you can manufacture everything you need by yourself - if you have a replicator for material goods and a holodeck for services - then economy becomes something you can opt out of. In other words, technology might make people free.
Would you like some pixie dust to go with your unicorn farts? Replicators and holodecks? Seriously? Stop watching TV shows and learn some physics. Basically you are saying that you have some piece of technology that magically can make anything from raw energy. The thermodynamics alone make this an impossible fantasy. Do you have the vaguest concept of the energy requirements for a Star Trek style replicator? But even if somehow it worked, it still wouldn't obviate the need for an economy because you cannot actually eliminate scarcity. The universe is finite and most of it is inaccessible to us and is likely to remain so.
We have a sort of a replicator already. It's called DNA. You can even use it to order "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot" though it takes a bit longer than they show on Star Trek.
I care enough.
I rest my case. If it's something that matters, odds are good that someone will preserve it. Actually many things that don't matter get preserved too. I'm routinely astonished at how sentimental people get. I used to work in the auction business so I've seen some things you wouldn't believe in that regard... People love to collect.
But almost all countries also have a life plus 50 year or more copyright regime. So how should I go about tracking down the author of each such animation and seeking his permission to preserve it?
You're presuming the author wants to have it preserved. They might not. But let's assume they do. You might have to do some leg work to find them. That's part of the deal with copyright. But honestly that may be the easiest problem to solve. How you plan to actually preserve the work could be actually much harder since it was created in a proprietary product depending on what you plan to do to preserve it.
If Google grows a pair as you suggest, then existing vector animations using Flash (Homestar Runner, Weebl and Bob, Animutations, and user contributions to Newgrounds) will become unusable.
Frankly, so what? Flash will still be available for those who want it. And even if it died completely starting tomorrow and we lose a few works of art forever (which won't happen), I would still consider it a fair exchange considering the problems Flash has caused and continues to cause. Those authors made their product in a proprietary format. Live by the sword, die by the sword. If someone cares enough to bother to preserve the animations then they'll be preserved.
To be honest though I haven't even thought about Homestar Runner in over a decade and I've never even heard of those others. Obviously it isn't something I would quickly miss.
I can choose NOT to run a closed-source app.
True though in practical terms that is of less value security wise than many imagine.
how do I know that my browser is not doing bad things behind my back?
Unless you've audited the code of the browser and compiled yourself it with a compiler whose code you also have audited you cannot know if a browser is doing bad things behind your back. That is true whether or not the source code is open source or closed. Open source does have its advantages but it just changes the attack surface rather than eliminating it.
I'm actually a fairly active Facebook user, and am totally fine with ads as long as they don't blink, move around, obstruct what I'm reading, etc.
My main problem with them is that you do not get ads without the ads tracking what you are doing. Unlike advertising on my TV which isn't particularly directed at me, online advertisers seem to think they have some $diety given right to track my every movement and mouse click. I disagree and I take active measure to prevent it. I am NOT fine with being tracked to that degree. So the ads get blocked and will remain so because I fundamentally cannot trust these companies.
Funny thing is that I would (and do) happily subscribe to various website that provide me services and content I find valuable. I'd be more than happy to break off a few bills for a valuable service if they weren't so damn arrogant and creepy.
Like the good old Google text ads, they were pretty useful even at times.
Maybe to you there were/are useful. To me, not so much. Never clicked on a single one on purpose.
ABP remains active, let's just see what happens and how it develops.
ABP, uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, plus a few other countermeasures are in active use on my machines.