Abiogenesis is very difficult to study. It left no evidence, and all early forms of life have long since been consumed by their more-adapted descendants. There are hints here and there in the biochemistry, like ribosomes being composed largely of RNA, but not enough to reach any firm conclusions.
Republican politicians do not just have to think about the will of the voter. They have to think about the will of the Republican base, because voter appeal won't matter if they don't get on the ballot at all. The republican base is not representative of the population in general, and they are always assessing if candidates are sufficiently devout.
My hope is that there will come a day when home users no longer have a reason to print in color. I base this possibility upon a typical home user, my mother.
Mother does not believe in data. Mother maintains draws full of photo albums, even though they could be scanned, because computer images are not 'real.' Mother did not stop printing off digital photos to go into these albums until some years after we got our first decent digital camera. Mother still refuses to allow the disposal of the albums that are only prints of digital photos which we still have.
Mother's children all have tablets to look at photos on.
I think a big annoyance to users of professional laser printers is the Bucket of Doom that must be very carefully removed from time to time, which gives them a chance to see all that toner that has not ended up on the page where it belongs.
Non-profit status can be abused. Look look at any pastor of a mega-church for an example - lavish buildings, a mansion to live in, a private jet, huge salaries for themselves and their family, expensive 'missioning' holidays to exotic locations, all with tax-exempt non-profit status.
The validity of the law ends not at national boarders, but at the ability of a nation to enforce them. We like to say that a country has no external jurisdiction - but counterexamples abound.
"through groups of citizens harassing anyone who departs from the groupthink."
That's always been the historical norm. The idea of tolerating dissenting ideas has really only existed since the Enlightenment, and even then only in certain cultures, and even the only sporadically. In most historical cultures and many current cultures, there are actual laws that allow for heretics to be punished.
My objection to copyright law lies in the enforcement mechanisms. Infringement is too easy and too common to hope to enforce without draconian measures or a severe relaxation of legal protections. Like the DMCA: It was found to be far too impractical to actually prove infringement in a court of law in each case, even up to the low standard of civil action, so the DMCA was passed allowing copyright holders to have things pulled from the internet without having to actually go to all the trouble of a fair trial: They just have to allege infringement and down it comes, and it's up to the accused to then undo the damage.
And potentially much better performance. Freenet's heavy focus on anonymity and censorship-resistance comes with performance compromises. Similar concepts, but designed for different applications.
Freenet attempts to provide an extreme level of privacy, resistant to all forms of monitoring and censorship. Useful features, but they come with severe performance costs. Freenet is slow.
Even with the DRM, the pirate community is hurting from Netflix and iTunes. Lost a lot of good pirates to the lure of legal convenience.
Piracy wasn't just about the free stuff - a good part of the lure has always been convenience. No need to go to the store, or manage a shelf of discs, or deal with some obnoxious online service. Search, download, enjoy. It's only in the last few years that the legal option has been able to match that.
I find it interesting that with the advent of global mass media and just a larger population, the payback time for the media industry has actually gone down. Many movies, even blockbusters, make back their entire production budget in the first two weeks after release. Age of Ultron has taken in four times the production budget so far, and that's before it hits the big money of blu-ray sales. Software has a commercial lifespan of maybe a few years. TV shows exist as fads, heavily-promoted for a time and then forgotten to make room for the next one. And yet the duration of copyright has just gone up and up and up.
Piracy could be seen as a loaded term - but it's also one that has been very easy to reclaim, because pirates are just cool. There's a very large community based around sharing data, and they are proud to call themselves pirates. The most successful copyright-infringement site in the history of the internet is called The Pirate Bay. You can't reject the term, it's too late for that, but you can embrace and reform it.
Ok, if you want to be pedantic, humans require some animal product to be healthy. Eggs and dairy suffice. Vegans know the importance of paying attention to diet to avoid various deficiencies, and may need supplements. Vitamin B12 is an important one.
If you want to increase yield that much, there's a very simple way: Remove the animals. The amount of land required to grow feed for a farm animal could also be used to grow a lot more food than the animal produces in meat.
Humans need some meat to be healthy. But they don't actually need very much. The developed-world diet is very high in meat simply because it's very tasty.
Gamers are not as stuck as they used to be, mostly thanks to Valve. Their games library is still comparatively limited, but a surprising number of the big titles are available. Left4Dead 2 certainly runs very nicely, and just about anything made by Valve will be available for linux. I've also had surprisingly few graphics-drivers and library version nightmares. Every game I've got off Steam for linux has run fine first time, except for one. Some sort of tower-defense/fps hybrid.
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Abiogenesis is very difficult to study. It left no evidence, and all early forms of life have long since been consumed by their more-adapted descendants. There are hints here and there in the biochemistry, like ribosomes being composed largely of RNA, but not enough to reach any firm conclusions.
"That is tantamount to keeping your child at home and not educating them, which is child abuse."
Or as it's called in the US, constitutionally protected freedom of religion.
Republican politicians do not just have to think about the will of the voter. They have to think about the will of the Republican base, because voter appeal won't matter if they don't get on the ballot at all. The republican base is not representative of the population in general, and they are always assessing if candidates are sufficiently devout.
At the heart of the watch beats the same quartz crystal that operates those cheap £2.99 watches from the supermarket, and with equal precision.
My hope is that there will come a day when home users no longer have a reason to print in color. I base this possibility upon a typical home user, my mother.
Mother does not believe in data. Mother maintains draws full of photo albums, even though they could be scanned, because computer images are not 'real.' Mother did not stop printing off digital photos to go into these albums until some years after we got our first decent digital camera. Mother still refuses to allow the disposal of the albums that are only prints of digital photos which we still have.
Mother's children all have tablets to look at photos on.
You have to be careful not to put all your uranium bricks in one box.
I think a big annoyance to users of professional laser printers is the Bucket of Doom that must be very carefully removed from time to time, which gives them a chance to see all that toner that has not ended up on the page where it belongs.
Color laser printers are fast, reliable and give excellent print quality in both crispness and color production.
Why are they not in common use? Because they are bloody expensive!
I have a five-year-old laser printer. It started complaining about an empty cartridge four months ago. Still going though.
I think it isn't 'empty' so much as 'expired.' Nothing a shake can't fix.
Non-profit status can be abused. Look look at any pastor of a mega-church for an example - lavish buildings, a mansion to live in, a private jet, huge salaries for themselves and their family, expensive 'missioning' holidays to exotic locations, all with tax-exempt non-profit status.
The validity of the law ends not at national boarders, but at the ability of a nation to enforce them. We like to say that a country has no external jurisdiction - but counterexamples abound.
Because you'd still be trying to build an object larger than the earth. It's going to be rather expensive.
"through groups of citizens harassing anyone who departs from the groupthink."
That's always been the historical norm. The idea of tolerating dissenting ideas has really only existed since the Enlightenment, and even then only in certain cultures, and even the only sporadically. In most historical cultures and many current cultures, there are actual laws that allow for heretics to be punished.
My objection to copyright law lies in the enforcement mechanisms. Infringement is too easy and too common to hope to enforce without draconian measures or a severe relaxation of legal protections. Like the DMCA: It was found to be far too impractical to actually prove infringement in a court of law in each case, even up to the low standard of civil action, so the DMCA was passed allowing copyright holders to have things pulled from the internet without having to actually go to all the trouble of a fair trial: They just have to allege infringement and down it comes, and it's up to the accused to then undo the damage.
My Lenovo Thinkpad running xubuntu doesn't suspend right. I just set it to hibernate instead - that works fine. Just takes a little longer to wake.
And potentially much better performance. Freenet's heavy focus on anonymity and censorship-resistance comes with performance compromises. Similar concepts, but designed for different applications.
Freenet attempts to provide an extreme level of privacy, resistant to all forms of monitoring and censorship. Useful features, but they come with severe performance costs. Freenet is slow.
Even with the DRM, the pirate community is hurting from Netflix and iTunes. Lost a lot of good pirates to the lure of legal convenience.
Piracy wasn't just about the free stuff - a good part of the lure has always been convenience. No need to go to the store, or manage a shelf of discs, or deal with some obnoxious online service. Search, download, enjoy. It's only in the last few years that the legal option has been able to match that.
I find it interesting that with the advent of global mass media and just a larger population, the payback time for the media industry has actually gone down. Many movies, even blockbusters, make back their entire production budget in the first two weeks after release. Age of Ultron has taken in four times the production budget so far, and that's before it hits the big money of blu-ray sales. Software has a commercial lifespan of maybe a few years. TV shows exist as fads, heavily-promoted for a time and then forgotten to make room for the next one. And yet the duration of copyright has just gone up and up and up.
Piracy could be seen as a loaded term - but it's also one that has been very easy to reclaim, because pirates are just cool. There's a very large community based around sharing data, and they are proud to call themselves pirates. The most successful copyright-infringement site in the history of the internet is called The Pirate Bay. You can't reject the term, it's too late for that, but you can embrace and reform it.
Freenet includes a lot of privacy measures. This comes with a severe performance cost, so it's slow and painful to use.
Ok, if you want to be pedantic, humans require some animal product to be healthy. Eggs and dairy suffice. Vegans know the importance of paying attention to diet to avoid various deficiencies, and may need supplements. Vitamin B12 is an important one.
If you want to increase yield that much, there's a very simple way: Remove the animals. The amount of land required to grow feed for a farm animal could also be used to grow a lot more food than the animal produces in meat.
Humans need some meat to be healthy. But they don't actually need very much. The developed-world diet is very high in meat simply because it's very tasty.
These are pets. As long as the basic behavior traits are mostly the same, the owner will just project the details.
Gamers are not as stuck as they used to be, mostly thanks to Valve. Their games library is still comparatively limited, but a surprising number of the big titles are available. Left4Dead 2 certainly runs very nicely, and just about anything made by Valve will be available for linux. I've also had surprisingly few graphics-drivers and library version nightmares. Every game I've got off Steam for linux has run fine first time, except for one. Some sort of tower-defense/fps hybrid.