My question for pdf format saving...can you edit it after it is in pdf format? No other linux office app that can save to (well, actually print to) pdf format can then open and edit same pdf. It is one way.
I like pdf generally but for the inability to edit it (unless one has windoze or a mac and shells out for the Adobe pdf suite.
And just where do you get this? The Geneva Convention specifically protects POWs against such behavior. It doesn't matter whether it was us (the USA) or anyone else that does it, it violates the intent, spirit, and letter of the Geneva Convention. I see no where in my original post where one could possibly construe that what you describe (machine-gunning POWs is Okey-dokey regardless of who does it... I certainly do not recall any such incident from history myself, but I DO recall more than one such incident, clearly documented, where the Germans did this to US POWs). No matter, it was a violation of the Geneva Convention, period.
Very well. The usual problem is that (unlike you, it seems) people who "dislike" the ACLU generally refer to them as "commies" or worse and would be happy if they went away, generally because they are protecting the rights and speech of a minority that said person would otherwise have no problem with crushing/squelching/trampling upon.
I wondered if you were in this mindless, dangerous group and it appears you are not.
It isn't the military that interprets and administers the Geneva Convention. They are held liable to its strictures, generally after the fighting/war has ceased and the winner, a Geneva Convention signee, takes action. In any case, it is irrelevant that a laser weapon might be able to blind/dazzle unintended targets nearby. Similar collatoral damage comes with ALL weapons, from dumb bombs, to precision munitions, to rifle bullets. A weapon CANNOT be made to strictly keep casualties restricted to lawful combatants. If civilians are in the vicinity of a fight, they WILL get hurt or killed amongst the chaos of the fight. Shrapnel, never INTENDED to kill them WILL because one cannot control shrapnel. A rifle bullet can pass through the correct and intended target and fragments or the whole bullet could strike a passerby. A precision munition may well hit exactly its intended target but the shrapnel and debris cannot be controlled and any nontargets in the area are in danger.
All that is required to meet the strictures of the Geneva Convention is to keep to the rules in good faith. Soldiers/armies cannot be held criminally accountable if they make a true and good faith effort to obey the Convention. War kills more than kill or destroy the intended target soldiers and machinery. Innocent bystanders always get nipped too. That is the nature of war. If you INTENDED to hit the innocent bystanders THEN you are acting as a criminal. That being the case, it is reasonable for countries to take responsibility for unintended casualties and apologize and compensate surviving victims as soon as the situation permits. This is reasonable and helps prevent the creation of ever more hate-filled enemy soldiers/terrorists that must then be dealt with.
Interesting...you generally dislike the ACLU (Why? Because they actually DO protect the real rights of citizens? Protect minority rights?) but then state that they usually choose arguments that are winnable. Clue: those fights are winnable because they are right. They are winnable (and won) because the only people that truly get to make judgements about what is and is not Consitutional are ultimately the Supreme Court judges. The ACLU wins becuase 1) they are right, and 2) those with a Constitutional clue and a true hold on the morality of protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority agree with the ACLU in the end.
If this weren't the stone cold fact, then the ACLU wouldn't win. They win because they are right and the majority-based public opinion world doesn't get to determine what is and is not a Constitutional right.
He is merely acting on the inside for Microsoft, trying to push Palladium. Since he works for the government (and Microsoft), he can be seen as "legitimate" and help push companies to continue the Microsoft way, "upgrade" to the coming DRM-friendly, supposedly secure, next big M$ operating system. With people like this in the guv'mnt, it will slow or stall any attempts to open up guv'mnt computing the correct way for citizens and continue to help M$ maintain its illegal monopoly.
His part of the guv'mnt works to help M$ while the DOJ attempts to punish M$ (hobbled/crippled by M$/Big Business-loving Bush) for illegal activities past and current.
He is to be ignored. This catastrophism is an ongoing thing and is mere hyperbole. The digital sky is NOT falling and it will not unless we DO adopt a Palladium monoculture with DRM for everyone. The sky that would fall would be competition, GPL, more civil rights, etc, all in favor of Big Business and Big Business alone.
Since recent US laws permit the prosecution of hackers no matter where they do their deeds, our Justice Department is now legally authorized to go after the Italian government. Illegally hacking a website is illegal whether it is done by a government or by some script kiddie. You cannot apply two different standards to the two. What is illegal under the letter and spirit of the law remains so regardless of who violates it.
Trying to tell people not to have sex is like telling them to stop eating. It IS necessary - no matter what you think. It is necessary and driven on an instinctual, biological imperative level. How else do you explain the "need" to murder men and women (most particularly and predominantly women) for having sex or sexual affairs in countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc? They are NEVER short of people to murder because they had sex (or even held hands for that matter). If the clear and present threat of being stoned to death post haste isn't enough to prevent the activity, simply admonishing against it on the false BELIEF that it is truly a open "choice" rather than a very powerful, basic DRIVE isn't going to work. Period.
Since "Just say no" DOESN'T WORK/CANNOT WORK (no matter what, there will be many, many people- the normal ones at that - who do it anyway). If you must, admonish against it but keep in mind that it is nonetheless a total and absolute right for people to have sex (a "choice" guided by biological imperative) and accept that reality. Thus teach birthcontrol because no matter what, there will always be a significant number of people who will do it no matter what you say. They have a right to do it and they have a right not be be murdered, directly or by proxy of WRONG and Dark Age nonsensical beliefs about the "evils" of birthcontrol and REAL disease prevention.
To conclude, the Vatican takes advantage of the ignorance and fear of many in the 3rd World by warning them of nonexistent hellfire and damnation if they use condoms, take a bc pill, etc. This is tantamount to murder. They KNOWINGLY use the ignorance and fear of the uneducated for the sake of "sexless" old white men (yeah right...boy-toy alterboys and homosexual priestly encounters have ALWAYS been a large part of the Catholic hierarcy "tradition").
You are blinding yourself. It matters not a whit if the wheat on the plot is growing well, what matters is the runnoff from all that fertilizer and pesticide is entering the water table and poisoning the water. The water is choking on nitrogen and other toxins such that there more algae blooms (toxic to humans and fish alike), less oxygen in the water (toxic to fish, crawfish, etc)...poison by any other word is poison.
Have you never heard of the problems involved in hormone mimetics? That's right, many of the pesticides used mimic hormones like estrogen and testosterone which affects human and non-humans that ingest it (via water or eating the treated foodstuffs). It leads, to among other things, extra limbs and other deformities in frogs, screwed up sex ratios in alligators and turtles, probable increase in breast and testicular cancer in humans (male and female), more rapid sexual maturation in girls (not a good thing for them physically/biologically). Problems from pesticides are legion and take longer than a few months to show in many cases. Humans being idiots and basically selfish, don't care if they aren't being obviously hurt RIGHT NOW. "F*ck future generations. F*ck my kids. F*ck ya'll because at least I'm getting fat off food NOW - I'll worry when it's too late and I have cancer or my kids (or their kids) have developmental abnormalities". This is the attitude which is the problem. It needs to change.
You don't solve a problem by throwing ever more tonnages of chemicals at it. You solve it by having less children, using less, expecting less. You can easily be comfortable without consuming everything in site. Leave a little for others (human and non-human).
There comes a point when the cost/benefit of extracting more oil is so unbalanced as to make continued extraction stupid (we are approaching that point - one solid projection based on USGS data indicates the inevitable decline in world oil production REGARDLESS of technology starts in 2011).
Your resource argument is rather bland and ugly. What about fish? They replenish themselves but at a rate slower than we are consuming them. There is NOTHING you can do about that other than reduce fish catches. The same starts to hold true for your wheat. An acre of land can only support a certain fixed amount of productivity increase until it is tapped out and overuse of fertilizer and pesticide is NOT an answer, these are problems to be corrected, not continued.
Technology requires resources and it gets more expensive with each innovation. Think of technology as a pyramid with a wide base and a narrowing peak. Once the support base taps out, the top comes crumbling down so that further tech advancement becomes impractical due to there not being the resources to support it because we overconsumed already. It would be NICE to be able to have that next techie toy that will "fix" everything, problem is, to get it means you have to kill people by denying them resources required just to live. Sorry, not OK.
The answer is to change the way things are done before it is forced by a hard, immovable wall of reality.
You forgot to mention the fact that "modern" farm practice does more harm than good. Heavy fertilizer utilization pollutes water. You also heavily deplete the soil you are using such that you have to use more and more fertilzer as time goes on. You also left out that pesticide means increased toxins for you to consume and for the environment to absorb. Then, there is the ever present evolution problem...insects and other "pests" DO develop resistance to the pesticides.
So, poison the land and water with nitrogen from overused fertilizer. Poison the water and yourselves with pesticide (and "weed" killer chemicals). Good plan.
Then there is the simple fact that it would be a miserable existence for people to be packed so tightly. No privacy, no quiet, no solitude, no peace. It would become a rapid breeding ground for mass murder and other violence.
The earth isn't going to go anywhere (to die), WE are.
The earth will not "expire", though many invaluable species will die, invaluable habit will be destroyed, and so forth. What WILL happen is the human population will crash in a very ugly way. The 3rd World would be less affected by a collapse as they are already close to rock bottom. It is the developed nations, with the US at the pinnacle, that are going to have a very nasty crash.
It is unacceptable to waste/consume/waste resources at the rate we in the US do and it will lead to irreparable harm on the overall world ecosystem BUT the ultimate, and much deserved, outcome will be collapse of human "civilization". The human population will drop precipitously (maybe not by 2050 but it is absolute certainty that without substantially change in practices it WILL happen in the not distant future), below preindustrial levels, because the environmental damage and depletion will support much less and it will take a long time for earth to recover...perhaps longer than the human species lifetime because evolution will act to reproduce a new biodiversity without regards to what is best for us. Empty niches, depleted and descimated by human overconsumption and greed, will be filled - that is what evolution and life does, it fills available niches. It will take a long time and I believe that humans will not recover to anything remotely like today's tech levels before it all comes to a end (there are two articles out there - can't presently find the refs - dealing with the "useful" lifetime of earth. One gives life 1 billion more years before the oceans are fully subsumed into the earth's mantle based on the current rate of ocean water loss due to subduction. Complex life like horses and dogs and humans will be dead LONG before the last oceanic water is lost to the mantle. Another study gives the earth 2 billion years tops based on the changing sun - it gets hotter and hotter all the time and LONG before it goes Red Giant stage, the earth will be rendered dead).
This may be why we detect no radio signals from advanced tech alien lifeforms in the galaxy. By the time they are approaching the means to be able to do this, they have totally screwed up their own nest (like us) and drive themselves into ignomie instead.
Two ways: 1) a sheet of frickin' ultra-dense, ultra-heavy, neutronium for flooring, or 2) centripedal frickin' force. I'd say it is easier to do the centripedal frickin' force thing.
At least one of the manned Mars rocket designs includes spinning two habitation pods at the ends of tethers for artificial frickin' gravity. As for the space station...donut shape ala _2001:A frickin' Space Odyssy_ is a nifty way. Big and ambitious. Building such a beast would take time so Nasa should be happy with such a project: they'd be exposing astronauts to zero-g for extended periods of time while it is built to the point it could be spun up. They'd be happy because they caused chronic wasting in their astronauts, and we'd end up with, ultimately, a space station with artificial frickin' gravity.
The answer is technically complex but is there: artificial frickin' gravity. Nasa blows this off with every opportunity. Design a space station intended for long-term habitation and what the they do? Design a system gauranteed to destroy all muscle mass and assure lots of bone loss. One word...BRILLIANT!
You want/expect people to spend any real length of time in space then you HAVE to design for artificial gravity, period. It wouldn't have to be much. You need just enough to allow exercise to continually put stresses on bone and tissue.
This is basic stuff that Nasa ignores again and again. In any case, the Russians should have all the data you could possibly want about the detrimental effects of weightlessness. They still hold the long-term stay in space records, so by all means, duplicate their work again and again, ignore their data or think it will somehow turn out different when WE do it.
Take a look at Venus. About the same mass as Earth, lots of volcanic activity spewing mucho greenhouse gases. Surface temp at ~900 degrees. No particularly high atmospheric loss. It is also closer to the sun so it also picks up a higher solar wind density.
Its atmosphere, for all practical purposes, is not going anywhere. Venus has a runaway geochemical cycle, Mars practically lacks a cycle entirely.
New licenses make up for the weaknesses of both the BSD and GPL/LGPL licenses. BSD licenses give away the whole candy store, letting leeches like M$ take other people's code without paying them, then charging an arm and a leg for something their own coders are incapable of producing themselves.
The GPL is anti-money, making it almost impossible for most coders to make any money unless they can nab a consulting job or in-house deal where code release is unrequired.
I like licenses along the lines of the QPL (QT license), though it has fixable flaws. Nail big money-maker companies for licensing fees (only frickin' fair) but allow joe schmoe to have at the code as he see's fit.
All they have to do to make the QPL the best of an intractable situation is to eliminate the need to decide up-front whether or not the code you produce is going to be for sale. It should be left to be decided after the benefits, perhaps originally unknown, of the software are realized after its creation - then pay the license fee for commercial development to QT. Instead, they expect you to know up front whether or not you will sell your code and pay or not accordingly. Silly rule.
All the pollution in the world will not induce an atmosphere to leak into space, that is the sole domain of gravity. Mars has what, 1/3 the gravity of earth? It will definitely tend to lose atmosphere, especially the lighter elements and volatiles, MUCH faster than the earth does (yes we lose atmosphere).
Nay, there may have once been life on Mars, and may yet still be deep in the crust where there is still latent heat to maintain liquid water, but the death of surface life is more likely due to simply the barely existence geochemical cycle on Mars. The geochemical cycle is absolutely required to maintain water on the surface and to keep generating atmospheric components, particularly CO2 and other gases. No geochemical cycle, no life.
One need in no wise postulate "advanced" civilizations self-destructing, etc, to explain a situation like Mars. Simple geology, chemistry, and physics will do.
It IS possible, by the by, that life on earth did get seeded from early life on Mars (meteorite impact ejecta). There could have been a time when there was no life on earth (yet...given good conditions it is likely inevitable to evolve) and Mars supplied a jumpstart. Life would have simply evolved first on Mars. Mars, being less massive, would have cooled faster from a molten ball. This would have produced a period of livability before the earth was ready. As the earth cooled enough for livability, a semi-continuous rain of organisms from Mars (ejecta) would have eventually found a fertile, livable home.
If life is found on Mars and is found to be significantly similar to earth life, it would be a strong support for my hypothesis...the other being that life evolved there totally separately and that life, in general, is more the same than different in regards to amino acids, nucleic acids, etc. What would be THE evidence in support of Mars life first, then earth, would be if any life found on Mars used the same, or substantially the same...evolution DOES change things...amino acid coding method. If the codons are substantially the same, then the life is connected.
Err...even non-autonomous or non-semiautonomous devices act unpredictably sometimes. It is simply called a hardware or software fault. A cruise missile is not the only type of weapon that can make a boo-boo (thus far they have not) - simple laser-guided weapons can make boo-boos, as can dumb gravity bombs, with or without erroneous action on the part of a pilot.
Actually, I would say that the robot was making a real bid for "fittest". He is assured survival if he doesn't fight. He was escaping from a gladiatory battlefield where "death" is highly likely.
[insert tongue in cheek] If he'd made good his escape, I would definitely deem him fittest of them all. Of course, this does depend on intention. Did he just get lost (a moronic act mixed with blind chance), which would ultimately lead to his demise and the conclusion that he was not most fit, or was he seeking freedom intentionally (under the circumstances, a definite fitness plus)? [/insert tongue in cheek]
How about this last mile solution: wrt the recent report of laser tunneling from Australia, how about simply providing users with a data laser and setup a receiver near a landline optic fiber backbone. User encodes their laser beam and tunnels it the arbitrary distance to the receiver laser which injects it into the fiber optic line. Upon receiving data, the laser near the fiber (a laser router) tunnels the appropriate beam to the appropriate home.
Get a pcmcia network laser or a usb or firewire laser (big pcmcia card or periph) and tunnel your connection that "last mile" to the net. Screw paying for a T1 line, or holding your breath for some ISP to provide a wireless link, or a DSLAM for DSL. Tunnel your internet.
Your "information" isn't stored in individual atoms. You are not a form of holographic storage device. Information is stored in very stable macromolecules such that even if this atom or that atom is replaced, the connections are the same (a covalent bond between a carbon and nitrogen atom is the same no matter what. This bond is no different than THAT bond - no information is stored in that bond). It is like trying to claim that synthetic vitamin C is not the same as "natural" vitamin C. They ARE the same. They are handled, seen as, and behave the same no matter how the vitamin C was synthesized. There is no information of note in the combined atoms of one molecule vs another. YOU are macromolecules such that the individual atoms are irrelevant in and of themselves.
Not so fast Clarence! Not ALL your cells replace. Many cells are no longer dividing nor capable. Certain tissues (blood, mucosa, liver, skin, and the like) do constantly replenish with less and less fidelity as time passes but there are many critical cells and tissues that do not replenish and you are flat stuck with them.
Re:Gentoo really is excellent...
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Gentoo Linux 1.2
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You all make me SICK! I WISH I could try it but those, like myself, stuck with a lowly 56k dialup would be insane to try it. What would it be, a week before everything was downloaded and built into a useful system?
I miss my broadband. Oh yeah, my dialup (Purdue) limits dial-ins to 90 minutes at a time so not only is there a 56k bottleneck, there is also the 90 minute disconnect and redial to deal with (and a busy signal for anyone trying to call me or the wife).
Yup, you Gentoo or Lunar users make me wanna puke.
Hmmm. What games are you referring to? The games I play do not constantly harrass me into having to renegotiate the use terms. Those not-agreed-to but renegotiated via amendments and letter to the company terms only showed up during the initial install. Never ever do they show up again when I start the game.
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My question for pdf format saving...can you edit it after it is in pdf format? No other linux office app that can save to (well, actually print to) pdf format can then open and edit same pdf. It is one way.
I like pdf generally but for the inability to edit it (unless one has windoze or a mac and shells out for the Adobe pdf suite.
And just where do you get this? The Geneva Convention specifically protects POWs against such behavior. It doesn't matter whether it was us (the USA) or anyone else that does it, it violates the intent, spirit, and letter of the Geneva Convention. I see no where in my original post where one could possibly construe that what you describe (machine-gunning POWs is Okey-dokey regardless of who does it ... I certainly do not recall any such incident from history myself, but I DO recall more than one such incident, clearly documented, where the Germans did this to US POWs). No matter, it was a violation of the Geneva Convention, period.
Very well. The usual problem is that (unlike you, it seems) people who "dislike" the ACLU generally refer to them as "commies" or worse and would be happy if they went away, generally because they are protecting the rights and speech of a minority that said person would otherwise have no problem with crushing/squelching/trampling upon.
I wondered if you were in this mindless, dangerous group and it appears you are not.
It isn't the military that interprets and administers the Geneva Convention. They are held liable to its strictures, generally after the fighting/war has ceased and the winner, a Geneva Convention signee, takes action. In any case, it is irrelevant that a laser weapon might be able to blind/dazzle unintended targets nearby. Similar collatoral damage comes with ALL weapons, from dumb bombs, to precision munitions, to rifle bullets. A weapon CANNOT be made to strictly keep casualties restricted to lawful combatants. If civilians are in the vicinity of a fight, they WILL get hurt or killed amongst the chaos of the fight. Shrapnel, never INTENDED to kill them WILL because one cannot control shrapnel. A rifle bullet can pass through the correct and intended target and fragments or the whole bullet could strike a passerby. A precision munition may well hit exactly its intended target but the shrapnel and debris cannot be controlled and any nontargets in the area are in danger.
All that is required to meet the strictures of the Geneva Convention is to keep to the rules in good faith. Soldiers/armies cannot be held criminally accountable if they make a true and good faith effort to obey the Convention. War kills more than kill or destroy the intended target soldiers and machinery. Innocent bystanders always get nipped too. That is the nature of war. If you INTENDED to hit the innocent bystanders THEN you are acting as a criminal. That being the case, it is reasonable for countries to take responsibility for unintended casualties and apologize and compensate surviving victims as soon as the situation permits. This is reasonable and helps prevent the creation of ever more hate-filled enemy soldiers/terrorists that must then be dealt with.
Interesting...you generally dislike the ACLU (Why? Because they actually DO protect the real rights of citizens? Protect minority rights?) but then state that they usually choose arguments that are winnable. Clue: those fights are winnable because they are right. They are winnable (and won) because the only people that truly get to make judgements about what is and is not Consitutional are ultimately the Supreme Court judges. The ACLU wins becuase 1) they are right, and 2) those with a Constitutional clue and a true hold on the morality of protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority agree with the ACLU in the end.
If this weren't the stone cold fact, then the ACLU wouldn't win. They win because they are right and the majority-based public opinion world doesn't get to determine what is and is not a Constitutional right.
He is merely acting on the inside for Microsoft, trying to push Palladium. Since he works for the government (and Microsoft), he can be seen as "legitimate" and help push companies to continue the Microsoft way, "upgrade" to the coming DRM-friendly, supposedly secure, next big M$ operating system. With people like this in the guv'mnt, it will slow or stall any attempts to open up guv'mnt computing the correct way for citizens and continue to help M$ maintain its illegal monopoly.
His part of the guv'mnt works to help M$ while the DOJ attempts to punish M$ (hobbled/crippled by M$/Big Business-loving Bush) for illegal activities past and current.
He is to be ignored. This catastrophism is an ongoing thing and is mere hyperbole. The digital sky is NOT falling and it will not unless we DO adopt a Palladium monoculture with DRM for everyone. The sky that would fall would be competition, GPL, more civil rights, etc, all in favor of Big Business and Big Business alone.
Since recent US laws permit the prosecution of hackers no matter where they do their deeds, our Justice Department is now legally authorized to go after the Italian government. Illegally hacking a website is illegal whether it is done by a government or by some script kiddie. You cannot apply two different standards to the two. What is illegal under the letter and spirit of the law remains so regardless of who violates it.
Trying to tell people not to have sex is like telling them to stop eating. It IS necessary - no matter what you think. It is necessary and driven on an instinctual, biological imperative level. How else do you explain the "need" to murder men and women (most particularly and predominantly women) for having sex or sexual affairs in countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc? They are NEVER short of people to murder because they had sex (or even held hands for that matter). If the clear and present threat of being stoned to death post haste isn't enough to prevent the activity, simply admonishing against it on the false BELIEF that it is truly a open "choice" rather than a very powerful, basic DRIVE isn't going to work. Period.
Since "Just say no" DOESN'T WORK/CANNOT WORK (no matter what, there will be many, many people- the normal ones at that - who do it anyway). If you must, admonish against it but keep in mind that it is nonetheless a total and absolute right for people to have sex (a "choice" guided by biological imperative) and accept that reality. Thus teach birthcontrol because no matter what, there will always be a significant number of people who will do it no matter what you say. They have a right to do it and they have a right not be be murdered, directly or by proxy of WRONG and Dark Age nonsensical beliefs about the "evils" of birthcontrol and REAL disease prevention.
To conclude, the Vatican takes advantage of the ignorance and fear of many in the 3rd World by warning them of nonexistent hellfire and damnation if they use condoms, take a bc pill, etc. This is tantamount to murder. They KNOWINGLY use the ignorance and fear of the uneducated for the sake of "sexless" old white men (yeah right...boy-toy alterboys and homosexual priestly encounters have ALWAYS been a large part of the Catholic hierarcy "tradition").
You are blinding yourself. It matters not a whit if the wheat on the plot is growing well, what matters is the runnoff from all that fertilizer and pesticide is entering the water table and poisoning the water. The water is choking on nitrogen and other toxins such that there more algae blooms (toxic to humans and fish alike), less oxygen in the water (toxic to fish, crawfish, etc)...poison by any other word is poison.
Have you never heard of the problems involved in hormone mimetics? That's right, many of the pesticides used mimic hormones like estrogen and testosterone which affects human and non-humans that ingest it (via water or eating the treated foodstuffs). It leads, to among other things, extra limbs and other deformities in frogs, screwed up sex ratios in alligators and turtles, probable increase in breast and testicular cancer in humans (male and female), more rapid sexual maturation in girls (not a good thing for them physically/biologically). Problems from pesticides are legion and take longer than a few months to show in many cases. Humans being idiots and basically selfish, don't care if they aren't being obviously hurt RIGHT NOW. "F*ck future generations. F*ck my kids. F*ck ya'll because at least I'm getting fat off food NOW - I'll worry when it's too late and I have cancer or my kids (or their kids) have developmental abnormalities". This is the attitude which is the problem. It needs to change.
You don't solve a problem by throwing ever more tonnages of chemicals at it. You solve it by having less children, using less, expecting less. You can easily be comfortable without consuming everything in site. Leave a little for others (human and non-human).
There comes a point when the cost/benefit of extracting more oil is so unbalanced as to make continued extraction stupid (we are approaching that point - one solid projection based on USGS data indicates the inevitable decline in world oil production REGARDLESS of technology starts in 2011).
Your resource argument is rather bland and ugly. What about fish? They replenish themselves but at a rate slower than we are consuming them. There is NOTHING you can do about that other than reduce fish catches. The same starts to hold true for your wheat. An acre of land can only support a certain fixed amount of productivity increase until it is tapped out and overuse of fertilizer and pesticide is NOT an answer, these are problems to be corrected, not continued.
Technology requires resources and it gets more expensive with each innovation. Think of technology as a pyramid with a wide base and a narrowing peak. Once the support base taps out, the top comes crumbling down so that further tech advancement becomes impractical due to there not being the resources to support it because we overconsumed already. It would be NICE to be able to have that next techie toy that will "fix" everything, problem is, to get it means you have to kill people by denying them resources required just to live. Sorry, not OK.
The answer is to change the way things are done before it is forced by a hard, immovable wall of reality.
You forgot to mention the fact that "modern" farm practice does more harm than good. Heavy fertilizer utilization pollutes water. You also heavily deplete the soil you are using such that you have to use more and more fertilzer as time goes on. You also left out that pesticide means increased toxins for you to consume and for the environment to absorb. Then, there is the ever present evolution problem...insects and other "pests" DO develop resistance to the pesticides.
So, poison the land and water with nitrogen from overused fertilizer. Poison the water and yourselves with pesticide (and "weed" killer chemicals). Good plan.
Then there is the simple fact that it would be a miserable existence for people to be packed so tightly. No privacy, no quiet, no solitude, no peace. It would become a rapid breeding ground for mass murder and other violence.
The earth isn't going to go anywhere (to die), WE are.
The earth will not "expire", though many invaluable species will die, invaluable habit will be destroyed, and so forth. What WILL happen is the human population will crash in a very ugly way. The 3rd World would be less affected by a collapse as they are already close to rock bottom. It is the developed nations, with the US at the pinnacle, that are going to have a very nasty crash.
It is unacceptable to waste/consume/waste resources at the rate we in the US do and it will lead to irreparable harm on the overall world ecosystem BUT the ultimate, and much deserved, outcome will be collapse of human "civilization". The human population will drop precipitously (maybe not by 2050 but it is absolute certainty that without substantially change in practices it WILL happen in the not distant future), below preindustrial levels, because the environmental damage and depletion will support much less and it will take a long time for earth to recover...perhaps longer than the human species lifetime because evolution will act to reproduce a new biodiversity without regards to what is best for us. Empty niches, depleted and descimated by human overconsumption and greed, will be filled - that is what evolution and life does, it fills available niches. It will take a long time and I believe that humans will not recover to anything remotely like today's tech levels before it all comes to a end (there are two articles out there - can't presently find the refs - dealing with the "useful" lifetime of earth. One gives life 1 billion more years before the oceans are fully subsumed into the earth's mantle based on the current rate of ocean water loss due to subduction. Complex life like horses and dogs and humans will be dead LONG before the last oceanic water is lost to the mantle. Another study gives the earth 2 billion years tops based on the changing sun - it gets hotter and hotter all the time and LONG before it goes Red Giant stage, the earth will be rendered dead).
This may be why we detect no radio signals from advanced tech alien lifeforms in the galaxy. By the time they are approaching the means to be able to do this, they have totally screwed up their own nest (like us) and drive themselves into ignomie instead.
Did you say "65 minutes of suck"?! Hell, her music sucks royal ass but her? I'd let her suck me for 65 minutes. How do I get in on that?
Two ways: 1) a sheet of frickin' ultra-dense, ultra-heavy, neutronium for flooring, or 2) centripedal frickin' force. I'd say it is easier to do the centripedal frickin' force thing.
At least one of the manned Mars rocket designs includes spinning two habitation pods at the ends of tethers for artificial frickin' gravity. As for the space station...donut shape ala _2001:A frickin' Space Odyssy_ is a nifty way. Big and ambitious. Building such a beast would take time so Nasa should be happy with such a project: they'd be exposing astronauts to zero-g for extended periods of time while it is built to the point it could be spun up. They'd be happy because they caused chronic wasting in their astronauts, and we'd end up with, ultimately, a space station with artificial frickin' gravity.
The answer is technically complex but is there: artificial frickin' gravity. Nasa blows this off with every opportunity. Design a space station intended for long-term habitation and what the they do? Design a system gauranteed to destroy all muscle mass and assure lots of bone loss. One word...BRILLIANT!
You want/expect people to spend any real length of time in space then you HAVE to design for artificial gravity, period. It wouldn't have to be much. You need just enough to allow exercise to continually put stresses on bone and tissue.
This is basic stuff that Nasa ignores again and again. In any case, the Russians should have all the data you could possibly want about the detrimental effects of weightlessness. They still hold the long-term stay in space records, so by all means, duplicate their work again and again, ignore their data or think it will somehow turn out different when WE do it.
Take a look at Venus. About the same mass as Earth, lots of volcanic activity spewing mucho greenhouse gases. Surface temp at ~900 degrees. No particularly high atmospheric loss. It is also closer to the sun so it also picks up a higher solar wind density.
Its atmosphere, for all practical purposes, is not going anywhere. Venus has a runaway geochemical cycle, Mars practically lacks a cycle entirely.
New licenses make up for the weaknesses of both the BSD and GPL/LGPL licenses. BSD licenses give away the whole candy store, letting leeches like M$ take other people's code without paying them, then charging an arm and a leg for something their own coders are incapable of producing themselves.
The GPL is anti-money, making it almost impossible for most coders to make any money unless they can nab a consulting job or in-house deal where code release is unrequired.
I like licenses along the lines of the QPL (QT license), though it has fixable flaws. Nail big money-maker companies for licensing fees (only frickin' fair) but allow joe schmoe to have at the code as he see's fit.
All they have to do to make the QPL the best of an intractable situation is to eliminate the need to decide up-front whether or not the code you produce is going to be for sale. It should be left to be decided after the benefits, perhaps originally unknown, of the software are realized after its creation - then pay the license fee for commercial development to QT. Instead, they expect you to know up front whether or not you will sell your code and pay or not accordingly. Silly rule.
All the pollution in the world will not induce an atmosphere to leak into space, that is the sole domain of gravity. Mars has what, 1/3 the gravity of earth? It will definitely tend to lose atmosphere, especially the lighter elements and volatiles, MUCH faster than the earth does (yes we lose atmosphere).
Nay, there may have once been life on Mars, and may yet still be deep in the crust where there is still latent heat to maintain liquid water, but the death of surface life is more likely due to simply the barely existence geochemical cycle on Mars. The geochemical cycle is absolutely required to maintain water on the surface and to keep generating atmospheric components, particularly CO2 and other gases. No geochemical cycle, no life.
One need in no wise postulate "advanced" civilizations self-destructing, etc, to explain a situation like Mars. Simple geology, chemistry, and physics will do.
It IS possible, by the by, that life on earth did get seeded from early life on Mars (meteorite impact ejecta). There could have been a time when there was no life on earth (yet...given good conditions it is likely inevitable to evolve) and Mars supplied a jumpstart. Life would have simply evolved first on Mars. Mars, being less massive, would have cooled faster from a molten ball. This would have produced a period of livability before the earth was ready. As the earth cooled enough for livability, a semi-continuous rain of organisms from Mars (ejecta) would have eventually found a fertile, livable home.
If life is found on Mars and is found to be significantly similar to earth life, it would be a strong support for my hypothesis...the other being that life evolved there totally separately and that life, in general, is more the same than different in regards to amino acids, nucleic acids, etc. What would be THE evidence in support of Mars life first, then earth, would be if any life found on Mars used the same, or substantially the same...evolution DOES change things...amino acid coding method. If the codons are substantially the same, then the life is connected.
Err...even non-autonomous or non-semiautonomous devices act unpredictably sometimes. It is simply called a hardware or software fault. A cruise missile is not the only type of weapon that can make a boo-boo (thus far they have not) - simple laser-guided weapons can make boo-boos, as can dumb gravity bombs, with or without erroneous action on the part of a pilot.
Actually, I would say that the robot was making a real bid for "fittest". He is assured survival if he doesn't fight. He was escaping from a gladiatory battlefield where "death" is highly likely.
[insert tongue in cheek] If he'd made good his escape, I would definitely deem him fittest of them all. Of course, this does depend on intention. Did he just get lost (a moronic act mixed with blind chance), which would ultimately lead to his demise and the conclusion that he was not most fit, or was he seeking freedom intentionally (under the circumstances, a definite fitness plus)? [/insert tongue in cheek]
How about this last mile solution: wrt the recent report of laser tunneling from Australia, how about simply providing users with a data laser and setup a receiver near a landline optic fiber backbone. User encodes their laser beam and tunnels it the arbitrary distance to the receiver laser which injects it into the fiber optic line. Upon receiving data, the laser near the fiber (a laser router) tunnels the appropriate beam to the appropriate home.
Get a pcmcia network laser or a usb or firewire laser (big pcmcia card or periph) and tunnel your connection that "last mile" to the net. Screw paying for a T1 line, or holding your breath for some ISP to provide a wireless link, or a DSLAM for DSL. Tunnel your internet.
Your "information" isn't stored in individual atoms. You are not a form of holographic storage device. Information is stored in very stable macromolecules such that even if this atom or that atom is replaced, the connections are the same (a covalent bond between a carbon and nitrogen atom is the same no matter what. This bond is no different than THAT bond - no information is stored in that bond). It is like trying to claim that synthetic vitamin C is not the same as "natural" vitamin C. They ARE the same. They are handled, seen as, and behave the same no matter how the vitamin C was synthesized. There is no information of note in the combined atoms of one molecule vs another. YOU are macromolecules such that the individual atoms are irrelevant in and of themselves.
Not so fast Clarence! Not ALL your cells replace. Many cells are no longer dividing nor capable. Certain tissues (blood, mucosa, liver, skin, and the like) do constantly replenish with less and less fidelity as time passes but there are many critical cells and tissues that do not replenish and you are flat stuck with them.
You all make me SICK! I WISH I could try it but those, like myself, stuck with a lowly 56k dialup would be insane to try it. What would it be, a week before everything was downloaded and built into a useful system?
I miss my broadband. Oh yeah, my dialup (Purdue) limits dial-ins to 90 minutes at a time so not only is there a 56k bottleneck, there is also the 90 minute disconnect and redial to deal with (and a busy signal for anyone trying to call me or the wife).
Yup, you Gentoo or Lunar users make me wanna puke.
Hmmm. What games are you referring to? The games I play do not constantly harrass me into having to renegotiate the use terms. Those not-agreed-to but renegotiated via amendments and letter to the company terms only showed up during the initial install. Never ever do they show up again when I start the game.