You say that now. And you may still hope for your brain to be uploaded into a synthetic brain. But there is a time to die. It's built into our animal bodies. We have a Sony warranty coded into our DNA. You will change your mind, but you may not be able to express it when you do. You may be as atheist as I am, but I still wonder what's on the other side from time to time. It's literally impossible for me to imagine what it is like because the act of imagining is using my mind. But I have little trouble imagining suffering and a lingering life without sufficient quality.
I read a story revisiting the Obamacare desth panels issue. Turns out while everyone was denying it, it's more true than anyone wanted to believe. This legislation which passed before most anyone actually read it (proof that idiocracy is here) turns out to have provisions to make decisions about when to discontinue care for people who can't afford it.
I'll be the first to tell my own "I wish my mother was dead" story because watching my mother die wasn't just painful for her and the whole family, but it was ridiculously humiliating for her as well. I identified with her very closely as she lost it all except her mind. When word finally came out, my first thought was "finally." I wasn't able to be sad since my sadness over her suffering had already brought me to peak sadness. Her death was a relief to her and to everyone who cared about her. But that's ONE story of ONE family in ONE circumstance. It's an anecdote. It's not quite justification for eugenics. (yeah, I expect response after using that word)
I suspect we will hear more stories like this to make a government program such as this more acceptable to people. It isn't acceptable. It will never be acceptable. These are decisions for individuals and families to make; Not government and not business. Are we ready to give up our humanity so easily?
The prophylactic use of antibiotics has long been identified as a problem and yet people couldn't manage to stop their ridiculous fear of "getting sick." You know, getting sick once in a while isn't so bad. Keep your immune system strong and healthy and getting sick is a minor inconvenience. Instead we've got a system of marketing driven by ridiculous fears. Sure, wash your hands. But with anti-bacterial soaps all the time? What could possibly go wrong? Certainly not a weakened immune system resulting from a decreased demand load right?
And the crap they allow in the livestock industry? Holy crap. How is that NOT supposed to get into our water and our food?
"Before antibiotics any little cut was a possible death sentence." Really? I wouldn't go quite that far. Conventional remedies took care of the vast majority of such things when I was a child. Iodine, mercurochrome, hydrogen-peroxide and all manner of antiseptics seem to do the job nicely. Of course things needed near-immediate attention and all that but so what? Why do we have to believe "give me a shot and I'll be just fine!" and continue on as if there would be no other effects?
One of the real kickers for me is the scares we've had over the past what? 20 years now? Talking about superbugs and MRSA and all that? Name one thing that has been done to really combat the trend? I know what *I* have done -- I have ensured my practices are nearly opposite of what ever soccer mom does. You won't find "anti-bacterial soap" in my home. There is only the standards like Irish Spring and Ivory. I will not feed into the unrealistic fear pushed onto the public to sell more product. And when I do take medications, I will be sure that (1) I actually need it and (2) it will be far more effective on me because I don't have any acquired resistance.
It's the fact that such attempts are verboten which is a problem. If research is done and it turns out it's completely false, the issue can be put to rest. But past research into the question had yielded some results but the results have since been pushed away and the careers of those who did the work trashed. Even older research (from nearly 100 years ago) is certainly not being considered as valid.
Would you agree that the effective prohibition of such research is a problem?
So instead of real research, we have stats. We have school stats. We have social stats. We have crime stats. The stats lead to obvious conclusions about a great many things which most people will find unpleasant to accept. But without real studies on real individuals, there will always be the conjecture about what causes it.
An obvious observation. But the opposite approach is actually needed. We are all individuals. We have much inherited though there is some individual potentials as well, though perhaps not as much as we like to think. Why does Johnny A get diabetes when eating exactly the same as Johnny B? Why does Johnny C have no trouble in test scores while Johnny D has problems even though they are in the same class with the same teacher and they live in the same neighborhood? It oversimplifies but I'm talking about individual merit and how it can be traced back to its contributing factors. THAT is where people are having trouble.
It's perfectly okay for some people to collect statistics and informaiton and even to draw conclusions based on them but not others. Ever ask yourself why that is?
"Science is unfair"? Is that what you're trying to say? I agree. But so too is the idea that it is fair to take away from one to give to another. If you agree with that, they you probably also agree that more white people are needed in the NBA and that we should lower the goal so that everyone can dunk equally. Additonally, we need more black physicians and lawyers and architects. We should lower the requirements for those professions so that we can better accomodate equality. (fun fact, we already do that to some degree today... lower test scores can work for some people but not others.) I don't expect you to agree with the latter, so I have to wonder if you truly believe what you're saying in the former.
Equality is a tricky problem because reality does not respect our idealism. Physics doesn't Women in combat? Sure, men and women can fly drones equally, but can they carry the same gear? The same distance in the same amount of time? Not usually and not with their sexual health intact. Excuse me for going to sexual equality for the moment because it's far easier to draw obvious examples of truth.
You seem to be implying that I seek to group people into four convenient groups. I don't. I abhor the notion. I hate it so much that I think the government needs to cease any and all race based questions and special considerations immediately. Let fairness and nature go where it leads. But we should be allowed to know and to discuss things. Looking at my once +5 Interesting now down to +1 Interesting, it would seem that we are not yet allowed to discuss and objectify.
You can suggest that we diverge from a mean and it wouldn't be inaccurate to say so, but then there are trends which can be losely tied to genetic factors among many others which place people from the beginning above or below the mean.
There are many factors, but to simply ignore one or two of them because they are politically incorrect [excuse me: "clashes with idealism"] to talk about them is to wilfully deny applicable data.
And yet there is genetic code we all share and code that exists everywhere but with the more originals. I didn't quite mean to draw lines except to say that "these are homosapiens, and these are homosapiens+something(s) else." I wouldn't say they are just as distant. And it's true to say that some black African people are varied as well. But how much variation should be considered or counted? I find it much more convenient to identify what they don't have as a means ot identifying. And that was more or less what I was getting at.
Please do not misunderstand. I have done much soul searching on the subject and I'm quite settled into the fact that I'm not racist. I recognize we have all manner of mixing among humanity that that a "pure human" is extremely rare. So let's dispose of that nonsense.
What I'm getting at is that the only "pure human" seems to be the black African human. Everyone else is kind of based on that but also mixed with something else, or as suggested, mixed with several possible somethings else. So while I agree we're all "human" can we yet admit that we're not all fully the same species? I know it's forbidden, often career ending to bring up such notions, but without recognition of reality as it is presented to us, we can make no serious scientific progress in our understanding of things.
I admit and recognize that if we admit to differences among us, we then get into uglier topics such as "who is better" and things like that. True. But don't we already dance around that reality as well? We readily support positive reputations among groups. "Better at sports" or "better at math" and so on right? And where money is applied, those details never escape reality which can otherwise never be openly admitted. Betting of all types whether it is sports gambling, insurance and commodities markets all take certain factors into account that, in other areas of life would result in a political sh!tstorm.
Forced inconsistencies of understanding, of teaching, of speaking and of thinking make this mildly autistic boy uncomfortable because his take on reality doesn't fit with politics. It helps me to understand what it must feel like to be in an unpopular group in certain political historic times and places. I can't yet play a "minority card" to defend myself and must instead feel shame for my 'affliction' which doesn't help. But wouldn't it be nice if we could grow up about certain things? Then perhaps we can ALL make some serious progress.
For a simple example of the kind of progress I mean, let's look at food. If we're not all exactly the same species, the surely we must all recognize that not all foods are good for all of us. We have some acknowledgement that some people handle alcohol better than others, some tend to have more obesity than others or that one type of food or another tend to result in a higher incident of problems here or there or even certain types of 'intolerance' here and there. And once we accept we're not quite homogenized, we can make serious progress on human health.
Damnit, we're all human. But we have differences. Failure to recognize them fully leads to more harm than good, I feel, in all sorts of ways for every one of us. And if it turns out there is a more perfect human-blend out there, I'm prepared to accept that as a reality even if I'm not a member of that group. I don't expect to be. I know I'm not the strongest anyone, not the smartest anyone, not quite the best at anything. But without a greater understanding of what factors into potential as a human, how can any of us best make use of what we have if we constantly deny that we're different? We're literally holding everyone back in this "common core" view of humanity that just doesn't really work or help anyone.
The assumption, which I hold to be quite valid, is that as with all other government weapons systems, the fear is that they are to be used on the people of the U.S. As they continue to pass laws which enable them to do so, the concern deepens. And I'm somewhat left confused about any law that has ever been written and simply not implemented. Laws start with a desire or need to address a concern. Lately, it has been about enabling the government to do more than they have been allowed to do in the past.
In short, they have been passing laws which enable the military to operate within the US and to act against the people of the US. Legislators wouldn't go through the trouble of writing and passing such legislation if they didn't plan to use it.
Is this what you would call "spin control"? People have gradually been more educated on the nature of spin and are no longer quite as affected. Ok, so people ARE affected still but fewer than ever before. And besides that, no matter what the NSA "reveals" it will be fact-checked against everything we know, leakers from insiders and, of course, from Snowden and his documents.
When I was younger, I once reflected that the nature of a government can be determined by which directions it points its guns. Fondly, I used China and the USSR as examples where the guns pointed inward. But now, in the USSA (not a typo) we've got an unprecedented amount of guns and ammo pointing inwardly at us. I just never thought I would use the gun pointing direction thing to describe what's wrong with the USSA.
On one hand, I can't disagree that encryption in automotive control systems is very important.... critical even. On the other hand, to potentially make cars more expensive to adjust, repair or update is an attack on the consumer and should not be tolerated. Copyright is abused far too often as the real cause and intent would not be allowed by most legislators.
This is due to their complicity with the NSA so it's hard to argue that they should be compensated for losses unless they had complete assurance that "no one would find out." In which case, the NSA failed to live up to their end of the bargain.
I'd like to say "I told you so!" to all those people out there who responded with doubt that the NSA's activities will undermine the value of US products and services, but it's out there now. Cisco is down 10% and falling.
These things have been going on since forever and it has always been a well-known secret. But as times get increasingly desperate, governments and banks get increasingly worse about trying to squeeze money through taxes and fees respectively.
But this is how you know when things are about to turn bad. Just as with the 2008 collapse, weird things were going on with banks. "Economists" on the news would stand up there claiming everything is doing well and that anyone who says different is a nut job. And what did I read the other day? Something about letting banks, once again, repackage risky debt into commodities again? We know that's a huge part of what went wrong in the first place. So why do it again? They know the end is close and they are just trying to get their last bit before things shut down finally.
Yeah, I know... all doom and gloom. But just because the truth tastes bad doesn't mean it's not the truth. We've seen it before. We saw what they did. We see they want to do it again. What does anyone THINK is going to happen?
Yes, because when a few report on something while the rest actively ignore it means there is bias. You should wake up a bit. You understand, for example, in the US, they censor the race of criminals when they are black as a matter of policy and it has been admitted by the "unbiased press." The reasons for doing so it simply trying to not make things even worse.
I, like so many tech-people here, see things in a more simple way. First you must acknowledge and identifiy a problem. Then you can act to resolve or manage it. The rest of humanity seems to believe the head-in-sand approach is far better.
It's hard to put people into prisons when they live in "exclusion zones" where police and fire people are actively prevented from entering. If you think there isn't a crime problem in Sweden, you would be quite mistaken.
They confuse me. On one hand (or both), I really love looking at them. On the other, I have to imagine they are quite a burden. Men are burdened but not quite like that and it's usually quite manageable. I like things the way they are -- I'm not complaining. But they do confuse me a bit.
No one in government believes in the free market. And none of the businesses that benefit from corporate welfare believes in the free market. Let's just skip beyond that argument because it is demonstrably false.
I agree with you at some level. But what I think we need is a DC standard for SOME things and an AC standard for others. For example, everywhere an AC/DC power supply is used (and that's almost everywhere) DC should be available in the home. Lighting is an obvious exception to that unless you recognize that all LED bulbs must convert AC to DC to make use of it and that much efficiency is lost due to conversion.
Some devices are better off remaining as AC and for the transmission of power, AC is just better as well. But we do need more DC at home powering our computers, our lights, our TVs and more. The efficiency would save a lot of money.
Is it "the games"? Is it "the critical apps"? There's a VM for that... there's a separate machine for that. Don't be a sucker. Not saying that Linux can't be targeted, but I will say there is much low-hanging fruit to get to before they get to you. And especially if you're running MSIE? Really? At least go with a browser with NoScript available. Things are getting serious. You should be too.
Gas is quicker responding and more short-term. Nuclear is a long-haul technology. You don't just decide one day "hey, let's make a nuclear reactor" and then have it start up the following year. The time for planning and building reactors is NOW because of the amount of time and planning required to make it happen when you need it in the future.
As for shale gas, it's a matter of time before increased demand makes the price too high. Additionally, it's still burning stuff which puts more crap in the air. We don't need more of that. (Doesn't matter which side of the global warming issue you are on, putting crap into the air is just bad.)
The delays are not surprising. It's just sadening. Companies need to be less concerned about "quarterly" and "annual" figures and more concerned about re-establishing the 5-year plans.
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You say that now. And you may still hope for your brain to be uploaded into a synthetic brain. But there is a time to die. It's built into our animal bodies. We have a Sony warranty coded into our DNA. You will change your mind, but you may not be able to express it when you do. You may be as atheist as I am, but I still wonder what's on the other side from time to time. It's literally impossible for me to imagine what it is like because the act of imagining is using my mind. But I have little trouble imagining suffering and a lingering life without sufficient quality.
I read a story revisiting the Obamacare desth panels issue. Turns out while everyone was denying it, it's more true than anyone wanted to believe. This legislation which passed before most anyone actually read it (proof that idiocracy is here) turns out to have provisions to make decisions about when to discontinue care for people who can't afford it.
I'll be the first to tell my own "I wish my mother was dead" story because watching my mother die wasn't just painful for her and the whole family, but it was ridiculously humiliating for her as well. I identified with her very closely as she lost it all except her mind. When word finally came out, my first thought was "finally." I wasn't able to be sad since my sadness over her suffering had already brought me to peak sadness. Her death was a relief to her and to everyone who cared about her. But that's ONE story of ONE family in ONE circumstance. It's an anecdote. It's not quite justification for eugenics. (yeah, I expect response after using that word)
I suspect we will hear more stories like this to make a government program such as this more acceptable to people. It isn't acceptable. It will never be acceptable. These are decisions for individuals and families to make; Not government and not business. Are we ready to give up our humanity so easily?
The prophylactic use of antibiotics has long been identified as a problem and yet people couldn't manage to stop their ridiculous fear of "getting sick." You know, getting sick once in a while isn't so bad. Keep your immune system strong and healthy and getting sick is a minor inconvenience. Instead we've got a system of marketing driven by ridiculous fears. Sure, wash your hands. But with anti-bacterial soaps all the time? What could possibly go wrong? Certainly not a weakened immune system resulting from a decreased demand load right?
And the crap they allow in the livestock industry? Holy crap. How is that NOT supposed to get into our water and our food?
"Before antibiotics any little cut was a possible death sentence." Really? I wouldn't go quite that far. Conventional remedies took care of the vast majority of such things when I was a child. Iodine, mercurochrome, hydrogen-peroxide and all manner of antiseptics seem to do the job nicely. Of course things needed near-immediate attention and all that but so what? Why do we have to believe "give me a shot and I'll be just fine!" and continue on as if there would be no other effects?
One of the real kickers for me is the scares we've had over the past what? 20 years now? Talking about superbugs and MRSA and all that? Name one thing that has been done to really combat the trend? I know what *I* have done -- I have ensured my practices are nearly opposite of what ever soccer mom does. You won't find "anti-bacterial soap" in my home. There is only the standards like Irish Spring and Ivory. I will not feed into the unrealistic fear pushed onto the public to sell more product. And when I do take medications, I will be sure that (1) I actually need it and (2) it will be far more effective on me because I don't have any acquired resistance.
It's the fact that such attempts are verboten which is a problem. If research is done and it turns out it's completely false, the issue can be put to rest. But past research into the question had yielded some results but the results have since been pushed away and the careers of those who did the work trashed. Even older research (from nearly 100 years ago) is certainly not being considered as valid.
Would you agree that the effective prohibition of such research is a problem?
So instead of real research, we have stats. We have school stats. We have social stats. We have crime stats. The stats lead to obvious conclusions about a great many things which most people will find unpleasant to accept. But without real studies on real individuals, there will always be the conjecture about what causes it.
An obvious observation. But the opposite approach is actually needed. We are all individuals. We have much inherited though there is some individual potentials as well, though perhaps not as much as we like to think. Why does Johnny A get diabetes when eating exactly the same as Johnny B? Why does Johnny C have no trouble in test scores while Johnny D has problems even though they are in the same class with the same teacher and they live in the same neighborhood? It oversimplifies but I'm talking about individual merit and how it can be traced back to its contributing factors. THAT is where people are having trouble.
It's perfectly okay for some people to collect statistics and informaiton and even to draw conclusions based on them but not others. Ever ask yourself why that is?
I agree and I agree. But there is no compensation without first having some identification and acceptance of some reality.
"Science is unfair"? Is that what you're trying to say? I agree. But so too is the idea that it is fair to take away from one to give to another. If you agree with that, they you probably also agree that more white people are needed in the NBA and that we should lower the goal so that everyone can dunk equally. Additonally, we need more black physicians and lawyers and architects. We should lower the requirements for those professions so that we can better accomodate equality. (fun fact, we already do that to some degree today... lower test scores can work for some people but not others.) I don't expect you to agree with the latter, so I have to wonder if you truly believe what you're saying in the former.
Equality is a tricky problem because reality does not respect our idealism. Physics doesn't Women in combat? Sure, men and women can fly drones equally, but can they carry the same gear? The same distance in the same amount of time? Not usually and not with their sexual health intact. Excuse me for going to sexual equality for the moment because it's far easier to draw obvious examples of truth.
You seem to be implying that I seek to group people into four convenient groups. I don't. I abhor the notion. I hate it so much that I think the government needs to cease any and all race based questions and special considerations immediately. Let fairness and nature go where it leads. But we should be allowed to know and to discuss things. Looking at my once +5 Interesting now down to +1 Interesting, it would seem that we are not yet allowed to discuss and objectify.
You can suggest that we diverge from a mean and it wouldn't be inaccurate to say so, but then there are trends which can be losely tied to genetic factors among many others which place people from the beginning above or below the mean.
There are many factors, but to simply ignore one or two of them because they are politically incorrect [excuse me: "clashes with idealism"] to talk about them is to wilfully deny applicable data.
And yet there is genetic code we all share and code that exists everywhere but with the more originals. I didn't quite mean to draw lines except to say that "these are homosapiens, and these are homosapiens+something(s) else." I wouldn't say they are just as distant. And it's true to say that some black African people are varied as well. But how much variation should be considered or counted? I find it much more convenient to identify what they don't have as a means ot identifying. And that was more or less what I was getting at.
Please do not misunderstand. I have done much soul searching on the subject and I'm quite settled into the fact that I'm not racist. I recognize we have all manner of mixing among humanity that that a "pure human" is extremely rare. So let's dispose of that nonsense.
What I'm getting at is that the only "pure human" seems to be the black African human. Everyone else is kind of based on that but also mixed with something else, or as suggested, mixed with several possible somethings else. So while I agree we're all "human" can we yet admit that we're not all fully the same species? I know it's forbidden, often career ending to bring up such notions, but without recognition of reality as it is presented to us, we can make no serious scientific progress in our understanding of things.
I admit and recognize that if we admit to differences among us, we then get into uglier topics such as "who is better" and things like that. True. But don't we already dance around that reality as well? We readily support positive reputations among groups. "Better at sports" or "better at math" and so on right? And where money is applied, those details never escape reality which can otherwise never be openly admitted. Betting of all types whether it is sports gambling, insurance and commodities markets all take certain factors into account that, in other areas of life would result in a political sh!tstorm.
Forced inconsistencies of understanding, of teaching, of speaking and of thinking make this mildly autistic boy uncomfortable because his take on reality doesn't fit with politics. It helps me to understand what it must feel like to be in an unpopular group in certain political historic times and places. I can't yet play a "minority card" to defend myself and must instead feel shame for my 'affliction' which doesn't help. But wouldn't it be nice if we could grow up about certain things? Then perhaps we can ALL make some serious progress.
For a simple example of the kind of progress I mean, let's look at food. If we're not all exactly the same species, the surely we must all recognize that not all foods are good for all of us. We have some acknowledgement that some people handle alcohol better than others, some tend to have more obesity than others or that one type of food or another tend to result in a higher incident of problems here or there or even certain types of 'intolerance' here and there. And once we accept we're not quite homogenized, we can make serious progress on human health.
Damnit, we're all human. But we have differences. Failure to recognize them fully leads to more harm than good, I feel, in all sorts of ways for every one of us. And if it turns out there is a more perfect human-blend out there, I'm prepared to accept that as a reality even if I'm not a member of that group. I don't expect to be. I know I'm not the strongest anyone, not the smartest anyone, not quite the best at anything. But without a greater understanding of what factors into potential as a human, how can any of us best make use of what we have if we constantly deny that we're different? We're literally holding everyone back in this "common core" view of humanity that just doesn't really work or help anyone.
Having to comply with terms of service, regardless of whether or not money gets involved is normal.
The assumption, which I hold to be quite valid, is that as with all other government weapons systems, the fear is that they are to be used on the people of the U.S. As they continue to pass laws which enable them to do so, the concern deepens. And I'm somewhat left confused about any law that has ever been written and simply not implemented. Laws start with a desire or need to address a concern. Lately, it has been about enabling the government to do more than they have been allowed to do in the past.
In short, they have been passing laws which enable the military to operate within the US and to act against the people of the US. Legislators wouldn't go through the trouble of writing and passing such legislation if they didn't plan to use it.
Just saying...
Is this what you would call "spin control"? People have gradually been more educated on the nature of spin and are no longer quite as affected. Ok, so people ARE affected still but fewer than ever before. And besides that, no matter what the NSA "reveals" it will be fact-checked against everything we know, leakers from insiders and, of course, from Snowden and his documents.
When I was younger, I once reflected that the nature of a government can be determined by which directions it points its guns. Fondly, I used China and the USSR as examples where the guns pointed inward. But now, in the USSA (not a typo) we've got an unprecedented amount of guns and ammo pointing inwardly at us. I just never thought I would use the gun pointing direction thing to describe what's wrong with the USSA.
On one hand, I can't disagree that encryption in automotive control systems is very important.... critical even. On the other hand, to potentially make cars more expensive to adjust, repair or update is an attack on the consumer and should not be tolerated. Copyright is abused far too often as the real cause and intent would not be allowed by most legislators.
This is due to their complicity with the NSA so it's hard to argue that they should be compensated for losses unless they had complete assurance that "no one would find out." In which case, the NSA failed to live up to their end of the bargain.
I'd like to say "I told you so!" to all those people out there who responded with doubt that the NSA's activities will undermine the value of US products and services, but it's out there now. Cisco is down 10% and falling.
These things have been going on since forever and it has always been a well-known secret. But as times get increasingly desperate, governments and banks get increasingly worse about trying to squeeze money through taxes and fees respectively.
But this is how you know when things are about to turn bad. Just as with the 2008 collapse, weird things were going on with banks. "Economists" on the news would stand up there claiming everything is doing well and that anyone who says different is a nut job. And what did I read the other day? Something about letting banks, once again, repackage risky debt into commodities again? We know that's a huge part of what went wrong in the first place. So why do it again? They know the end is close and they are just trying to get their last bit before things shut down finally.
Yeah, I know... all doom and gloom. But just because the truth tastes bad doesn't mean it's not the truth. We've seen it before. We saw what they did. We see they want to do it again. What does anyone THINK is going to happen?
Yes, because when a few report on something while the rest actively ignore it means there is bias. You should wake up a bit. You understand, for example, in the US, they censor the race of criminals when they are black as a matter of policy and it has been admitted by the "unbiased press." The reasons for doing so it simply trying to not make things even worse.
I, like so many tech-people here, see things in a more simple way. First you must acknowledge and identifiy a problem. Then you can act to resolve or manage it. The rest of humanity seems to believe the head-in-sand approach is far better.
It's hard to put people into prisons when they live in "exclusion zones" where police and fire people are actively prevented from entering. If you think there isn't a crime problem in Sweden, you would be quite mistaken.
I usually feel uncomfortable in my chair with Kat Dennings too... usually have to cross my legs or throw a blanket over my lap.
The Asgards are skinny little grey people.
They confuse me. On one hand (or both), I really love looking at them. On the other, I have to imagine they are quite a burden. Men are burdened but not quite like that and it's usually quite manageable. I like things the way they are -- I'm not complaining. But they do confuse me a bit.
No one in government believes in the free market. And none of the businesses that benefit from corporate welfare believes in the free market. Let's just skip beyond that argument because it is demonstrably false.
I agree with you at some level. But what I think we need is a DC standard for SOME things and an AC standard for others. For example, everywhere an AC/DC power supply is used (and that's almost everywhere) DC should be available in the home. Lighting is an obvious exception to that unless you recognize that all LED bulbs must convert AC to DC to make use of it and that much efficiency is lost due to conversion.
Some devices are better off remaining as AC and for the transmission of power, AC is just better as well. But we do need more DC at home powering our computers, our lights, our TVs and more. The efficiency would save a lot of money.
Is it "the games"? Is it "the critical apps"? There's a VM for that... there's a separate machine for that. Don't be a sucker. Not saying that Linux can't be targeted, but I will say there is much low-hanging fruit to get to before they get to you. And especially if you're running MSIE? Really? At least go with a browser with NoScript available. Things are getting serious. You should be too.
Gas is quicker responding and more short-term. Nuclear is a long-haul technology. You don't just decide one day "hey, let's make a nuclear reactor" and then have it start up the following year. The time for planning and building reactors is NOW because of the amount of time and planning required to make it happen when you need it in the future.
As for shale gas, it's a matter of time before increased demand makes the price too high. Additionally, it's still burning stuff which puts more crap in the air. We don't need more of that. (Doesn't matter which side of the global warming issue you are on, putting crap into the air is just bad.)
The delays are not surprising. It's just sadening. Companies need to be less concerned about "quarterly" and "annual" figures and more concerned about re-establishing the 5-year plans.