I know exactly what you are talking about, and was quite careful in my phrasing. To artificially restrict processing power on the Internet, one needs to be able to prevent people from arbitrarily adding servers; it really is that simple. However, there is another way for such a restriction to be done, besides what I already mentioned. The existing Internet has certain overall bandwidth limits, and once that is "full", adding more servers won't effectively add useful processing power. So, one also needs to prevent the addition of extra bandwidth (like new fiber-optic lines), to start increasing the value of existing-at-that-time processing power. So that is another thing for ordinary folks to be looking for, in terms of unethical actions by the greedy.
That's the crucial "if". Unlike most other commodities that businesses seek to control and restrict the supply thereof (such as stocks), processing power is expected to keep going up per Moore's Law for several years yet. Anyone investing now is not going to make money. After Moore's Law runs out, however, then it will depend on the total supply of processors that are built and connected as "cloud power". People would have to stop adding more to the Cloud for the Law of Supply and Demand to start increasing the value of that resource. And the only way that could happen is if brand-new businesses have no way of adding servers to the Internet --the design of the Internet itself would have to be changed. Therefore what average folks need to be on the lookout for is attempts by anyone to do just that --redesign the Internet to become a limited resource, rather than a resource to which just about anyone could add more processing power.
My introduction to programming went something like this: I started with a small home computer, pre-IBM-PC. It came with Interpreted BASIC. Lucky me, Consumer Reports recommended that particular computer above the others for 2 years, because the manual, teaching BASIC, was very engaging. But let's back up a bit. A few years before computers started getting into homes, a Logic Game hit the market ("Master Mind") and received a Game Of The Year award. That game made it fun to practice Logic. Computer programming relies a great deal on thinking logically, so practicing Logic is very important --but having fun practicing Logic is better still. Later, I jumped from BASIC into Assembly Language Programming --and once again I was lucky. Not only was the processor of that home computer designed to to make programming it easy, the Book I got on how to do that was among the best in the field. So, what sorts of programs did I write? Games, of course! They can incorporate all the important features of any other application; User Interface, Visual (and sometimes also Audio) Outputs, Data Storage/Retrieval, Occasional Oddball Hardware Manipulation, Algorithms. And, of course, the more-developed a game-under-construction became, the more fun it was to test/play. We All Learn Best By Doing. Later, when I began doing professional work, and it wasn't always fun, I could still "hold my own" because the foundations of that career had been solidly emplaced.
As usual, people spouting nonsense continue to ignore relevant facts. "Peak oil" is about increasing production more than it is about production itself. It is the point at which, despite all the known and even un-known reserves, total production cannot increased. It can only stay roughly the same for a while, after which it declines. And nothing you have written indicates that our oil-production capabilities are actually growing to match world population growth (annual death rate from all causes is roughly 50 million per year, annual global birth rate is about 130 million per year, making the annual growth rate about 80 million per year).
As for fresh water, I know a significant about about desalting, and even about methods that are quite energy-efficient in accomplishing it. The energy for that still needs to come from somewhere, while all those extra people, every year, make their own demands on available energy supplies, for other purposes. Are we increasing our total power production to match population growth? NO.
Regarding synthetic fertilizer, I refer you to ammonium nitrate. Here is a relevant article. Basically, phosphates are not the only nutrients that plants need. So, the more people we need to feed, the more nutrients we need to feed plants, in order to grow food to feed people. The energy consumption associated with making ammonium nitrate can only go up, so long as population increases AND we don't want them to starve.
I see you also made the same Truly Stupid Statement made by so many others who dis the facts regarding world resources. "We have enough supplies that I know of to feed us for at least 200 years assuming our population doubles 3 times." WHAT THEN??? It is like you actively want a Malthusian Catastrophe to be as bad as possible, when it inevitably happens! To see just how stupid that attitude is, read this. Unlimited Growth Is Mathematically Incompatible With Finite Resources, Even When You Include The Entire Universe.
Growing food indoors is yet another way to consume energy (for the grow-lights). You didn't say where you expected it to come from. So now let me mention a phrase you probably don't see very often, "global thermal balance". The average temperature of Earth mostly depends on how much solar energy it receives in the daytime, and how much it radiates to space, mostly at night. If the arriving energy increases, then temperature goes up a bit, and the world tends to radiate a bit faster (maintaining that higher temperature). Likewise, if the arriving energy decreases, then temperature falls a bit, and that is also maintained. This happens every year (about a 1% change) as the world's elliptical orbit changes the distance between the Sun and the Earth.
Well, humans are doing things to add extra energy into the global heat balance, besides what they are doing with CO2, interfering with the normal rate at which heat can escape to space at night. Some of what we produce is irrelevant, because it is directly related to the normal energy cycle (solar, wind, and hydro power). But much of it is a relevant factor. Burning fossil fuel releases energy that was stored away millions of years ago; it is now an addition to the global thermal balance. Nuclear power, whether fission or fusion, also directly contributes to the global thermal balance. One of the more popular ideas for energy production is about collecting solar power in space, and beaming it to Earth --every erg of that would also be a direct addition to the global thermal balance.
The point is, even if we solved the CO2 problem, so long as population increases and we find ways to generate more energy, we will be working to upset the global thermal balance. Right now our total effort is trivial, compared to what the Sun supplies to Earth. In the long run, though, it cannot be blithely ignored.
Overpopulation might lead to a Malthusian Catastrophe well before 2040. In the animal kingdom such an event ("MC") is usually associated with a 99% population drop. Among humans, mostly smarter than the average dumb animal (except when it comes to breeding, apparently), it might be different; the last known MC experienced by humans who used their resources up faster than they could be replaced, happened on Easter Island, and the before-and-after population figures are not well known. Estimates range the population drop from 80% to, yes, 99%. For us today, we are at or past "peak oil", which means we can't use more oil to make more synthetic fertilizer for a growing global population. Fresh water is becoming a problem, two, as many important aquifers continue to be drained faster than they get replenished. The writing is basically on the wall --we can't keep growing the global population, and we can't even sustain the current population for much longer. So, an MC seems more inevitable than not. After which the rate we burn carbon is going to go down a whole lot....
I saw a blog article that tries to reconcile belief in God with known facts. It is called "On Defending God's Reputation From Brain-Washed Idiots". Maybe folks here will find it relevant.
I've never played it, but read enough about it to think it might be a good way to spend time on-line interacting with a physically distant significant other.
The answer to that ancient question, because we can actually do it with today's tech, is "everyone". So all public buildings and public/government vehicles should be wired with webcams that anyone can access at any time to see what Public Servants are actually doing (instead of what they claim to be doing). Remember Heinlein's "Notebooks of Lazarus Long", and the particular quotation "Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny." Cops that can do things without being watched are in a position to abuse power just like any other tyrant.
So I read Stallman's article and am not quite certain that it is completely accurate. I've written a decent amount of JavaScript code, and all of it was built into HTML pages, even if some of it used AJAX to interact with PHP code on the Web Server. It has always seemed to me that that the entirety of the JavaScript code was right there for the user to inspect with a browser's "View Source" option, regardless of whether or not the overall web page was copyrighted. Well, at least it is easy to view the code that doesn't get loaded in a separate ".js" file; you need to use a browser's Developer Tools to access the "include" stuff. I am of course aware that there exists Server-Side JavaScript, and when it is used that code does not get sent to the browser. However, since it runs on the Server, not even Stallman can complain that the user who connected to the Server is being asked/required to run that non-free JavaScript code (But obviously if the web page is copyrighted, it may qualify as including non-free JavaScript code.)
Accuracy aside, there is a different issue that is personally bothersome. I'm a good programmer and have been writing code for a long time, working with a variety of languages --I have actually enjoyed Assembly Language; many can't say that! But I haven't been able to find a "best fit" type of job that lasted more than a few years, and so my income-situation is not the best (nor even remotely near to "the best"). I'm sure it is quite easy for someone who has a decent steady income to write and give away software. But when you need to sell it to put food on the table, copyright is supposed to be an author's friend. As an example, suppose I put a few years of effort into creating a nice unique web site, free for users and paid for by advertisers. Do I want that unique-ness to be copied immediately, all across the Internet, and my ad-revenue proportionately diluted, by giving away the source code? What do I deserve to earn, financially speaking, for those years of effort? Remember the children's tale of the Little Red Hen? The assumption behind Free Software is that what you offer will get improved and come back to you, thereby benefitting you. It ignores the fact that that process takes time that you might not be able to afford!
So, what is the Answer to that conundrum, besides "Obtain the nice-income job that lets you afford to give away software"?
If only because technology marches on. I would think that as long as the human can choose whether or not to activate an autopilot, then its existence doesn't have to be considered a problem. So, along the lines of making fancy tech happen (what nerds do, after all), here's a notion.... When Google decided to compete with Apple's Siri voice-recognition system, an infrastructure was created that might be enhanced to do image-recognition. And Google has vast numbers of images from its Street-View system, probably all linked together in an orderly way (such as the route a autopiloted car might take). From there, the conclusion should be obvious, if not so simple to actually achieve.
"Widely exists" is not automatically the same thing as "cost-effective to obtain and distribute". The main reason the Alberta tar sands are now cost-effective is simply that the overall price of oil has gone up. But that fact, however, also makes other technologies more cost-effective. So, oil and gas can only stay on top of the energy-generation heap as long as they are more cost-effective than, for example, solar panels. Will it be cheap and easy to process methane hydrates? If it was, we'd be doing it on a huge scale already!
1. Disconnect XP system from Internet.
2. Buy a more-up-to-date system, for connecting to Internet.
3. Maybe buy a small local network hub. Connect both machines to it, and use carefully:
3A. Let XP machine be OFF when other machine is connected to Internet.
3B. Use "network connections" in other machine to disable connection to Internet when XP machine is on. This way the Internet machine can gather data that the other machine can access if needed, via the local network.
The article and the parent both have some errors. The article refers to the CoCo as having 512K of RAM, but that was only true for the CoCo3 --older models were designed to max-out at 64K. (There were some 3rd-party kits to get past that limit, and even on the CoCo3 there are 3rd-party kits to raise the RAM limit to 2 megabytes.) The article is also wrong in calling the 6809 an 8-bit processor. Actually, it was partly a 16-bit processor; several of its internal registers were 16 bits wide. Its instruction set also made it easy to write position-independent code, which is one of the keys to a UNIX-like operating system such as OS9. You-all might be interested in knowing that when the Space Shuttles were first built, their on-board computers used 6809s. You can bet NASA chose the best it could get its hands on. Therefore, the parent post is wrong in claiming that it is "pure fanboyism" to say that the CoCo was better than the C64 in technical ability. Both had their good points, but the CoCo was more versatile. One of the neat things about the C64, that the CoCo did not have, was a screen editor for writing BASIC code. This was purely a matter of differences in the software-in-ROM of the two machines. And I personally wrote a screen-editor that replaced the CoCo's line-editing system; when done it still fit in the ROM space, and was actually superior to the C64's screen editor. See the April 1987 issue of "The Rainbow", page144, for a review.
With Russia embracing democracy, more or less, there is less concern about it trying to conquer the world, as seemed to be a prime Soviet ambition. Meanwhile, China's government (not so much its people) is still bellicose, and has been significantly increasing its offensive capabilities in recent years. We can't drop the MAD paradigm just yet, because of China.
There is a fundamental minimum amount of energy associated with flipping a bit. So, the more flipped bits that are involved in communications, the more energy needs to be generated to make those communications possible. Logically, therefore, an Information Economy is also an Increased Energy Usage Economy. Equally logically, since taxing energy usage is already done, the most simple way to do a data-usage tax is to designate a portion of existing (and growing) energy taxes as being associated with data usage. Then use that money for data-associated projects.
Please recall this article about "panspermia". It means that we are practically certain to find Earth-originated life-forms down there in the ocean of Europa. If life originated there independently of Earth, there might not be any evidence of it left!
The actual problem, in terms of what the CongressCritter doesn't understand (unless is deliberately acting on behalf of Big Fossil Fuel), is that the fuel used by bicyclists comes from renewable sources, while the fuel that runs cars --even electric cars-- mostly doesn't. So cyclists don't increase the net CO2 level, while cars do.
In the core of the Sun, where the temperature is many millions of degrees and electrons and protons are squished into degenerate matter, the probability that an electron and a proton will combine via the Weak Force to make a neutron is rather low --in spite of all the energy and pressure available to help. It is so low that a completely different reaction is described: two protons combine to make a deuteron (one proton becomes a neutron during that process, and a positron is emitted instead of an electron being absorbed).
While I also know that certain unstable nuclides are quite willing to capture an electron and thereby convert a proton into a neutron, I have doubts that a stable nickel nucleus can be induced to do it. Furthermore, such a reaction would completely fail to explain how experiments involving palladium and deuterium have generated so much "heat" (not just controversy!), and have even been replicated, as reported in a major physics journal. Then there is also titanium, another metal that has interested various cold-fusion researchers.
So I think a different hypothesis is needed to explain what happens inside those metals. Since the replication-experiments prove that something is indeed happening in there, the experiments need to continue, and the nay-sayers need to shut their yaps. Just remember that humans managed to extract metals from utterly non-metallic rocks for thousands of years before understanding the chemistry behind what they were doing. Knowing the chemistry allows more efficient extraction methods to be developed, and in this case a better hypothesis of cold fusion would lead to improved experiments. But lacking such a hypothesis, it is still possible to get useful results --it will merely take longer. It just doesn't need to take even longer than that, due to idiots who think that just because we don't understand what is going on, nothing can be going on....
An alternate possibility might be a variant of spyware. It would run like a virus detector, except that the programs it prohibits come from a different list, than the lists of malware programs provided by anti-virus vendors.
If you can raise your monitor so that you directly face it without leaning or bending your neck downward, this will help you retain a vertical posture, which in turn leads to being comfortable longer. I've built myself a number of monitor stands over the years; all it takes is 3 pieces of wood (some even looked professional, because I bought quality wood). The one I'm at now lifts the monitor about 10 inches off the desk. Your preference may be different, of course.
The Supreme Court recently invalidated patents on natural things. All Monsanto has done so far, is move various natural genes around, from one life-form to another. That is, there are no synthetic genes in the seeds that were patented. I'm aware that the result is new in the sense that the combination didn't exist before, but no part of it is actually new.
Since I'm quite aware that new combinations of other things are quite often patentable, I won't say that gene-manipulated seeds don't automatically deserve to be patented. But it might be reasonable to limit the scope of the patent. Because, historically, most patented things need to be manufactured to exist in quantity; they don't go out and automatically make copies of themselves as seeds can do.
So, my opinion on this matter is that the patents should not be allowed to cover any "copies" of the seed-genes that Naturally "get away" from Monsanto's (and most any other industry's) normal control-of-supply. If Monsanto can lock down cross-pollination of its patented gene combinations, fine (and good luck!). If Monsanto can produce seeds that grow plants that produce nonviable seeds, fine (also, good luck!). Because either of those would be reasonable ways to keep its patented gene-combinations under control. But trying to claim ownership of the results of perfectly Natural gene-spreading processes, NO.
The giant impact scenario can still make sense. All we need to do is assume both the Earth and the other object formed in the same zone (distance from sun). That's the most critical thing, since we can expect any one zone, all around the sun, to be fairly consistent in its isotopic composition. So, each gathered up lots of debris while forming, and their collision constituted one of the last events that made the Earth a planet (per modern definition: a planet has to clear its zone of all large debris).
I am bothered by the fact that people know full well that many inventions come about from different things being combined together, yet as far as nuclear fusion research is concerned, the researchers are largely divided into camps, each of which thinks its own approach is the One True Way. There are the magnetic confinement people, the electrostatic confinement people, the inertial confinement laser-blast people, the inertial confinement electron-blast people, the inertial confinement sonic-blast people, and so on, and so on, and so on. Bah!
It seems to me that some of those techniques are "complementary", such that if combined in an overall system, the whole would be a more effective means of reaching the goal. Well? (For some particular examples, see this link.)
Actually, the Polywell approach is an attempt to use magnetic fields to mimic the technique of "electrostatic confined fusion" which gained fame under the name "Farnsworth Fusor", was the very first technique to generate controlled-fusion neutrons, and has been constructed and operated successfully by various high-school students for science fairs. The main problem with the Fusor approach is an "inner electrostatic grid" which interferes with the free motion of ions in the vacuum chamber (sucks energy). The Polywell approach doesn't have that grid, but instead has lots of potential "ion leaks" at lots of magnetic cusps. But the leak problem is no worse than has been tackled by the "magnetic mirror" approach to fusion, and so appears to be controllable.
It seems to me that another and even cheaper solution to the problem of long-duration flight is being ignored. Just combine a balloon for lift with propellers for movement. Because most of the need for fuel goes into keeping it aloft --use the balloon for that part. The good old zeppelin shape can reduce the effect of wind on it (not that it needs to be very large, for a reconnaissance drone). And if the balloon was transparent plastic, it would be harder to see from the ground.
Slashdot Mirror
I know exactly what you are talking about, and was quite careful in my phrasing. To artificially restrict processing power on the Internet, one needs to be able to prevent people from arbitrarily adding servers; it really is that simple. However, there is another way for such a restriction to be done, besides what I already mentioned. The existing Internet has certain overall bandwidth limits, and once that is "full", adding more servers won't effectively add useful processing power. So, one also needs to prevent the addition of extra bandwidth (like new fiber-optic lines), to start increasing the value of existing-at-that-time processing power. So that is another thing for ordinary folks to be looking for, in terms of unethical actions by the greedy.
That's the crucial "if". Unlike most other commodities that businesses seek to control and restrict the supply thereof (such as stocks), processing power is expected to keep going up per Moore's Law for several years yet. Anyone investing now is not going to make money. After Moore's Law runs out, however, then it will depend on the total supply of processors that are built and connected as "cloud power". People would have to stop adding more to the Cloud for the Law of Supply and Demand to start increasing the value of that resource. And the only way that could happen is if brand-new businesses have no way of adding servers to the Internet --the design of the Internet itself would have to be changed. Therefore what average folks need to be on the lookout for is attempts by anyone to do just that --redesign the Internet to become a limited resource, rather than a resource to which just about anyone could add more processing power.
My introduction to programming went something like this: I started with a small home computer, pre-IBM-PC. It came with Interpreted BASIC. Lucky me, Consumer Reports recommended that particular computer above the others for 2 years, because the manual, teaching BASIC, was very engaging. But let's back up a bit. A few years before computers started getting into homes, a Logic Game hit the market ("Master Mind") and received a Game Of The Year award. That game made it fun to practice Logic. Computer programming relies a great deal on thinking logically, so practicing Logic is very important --but having fun practicing Logic is better still. Later, I jumped from BASIC into Assembly Language Programming --and once again I was lucky. Not only was the processor of that home computer designed to to make programming it easy, the Book I got on how to do that was among the best in the field. So, what sorts of programs did I write? Games, of course! They can incorporate all the important features of any other application; User Interface, Visual (and sometimes also Audio) Outputs, Data Storage/Retrieval, Occasional Oddball Hardware Manipulation, Algorithms. And, of course, the more-developed a game-under-construction became, the more fun it was to test/play. We All Learn Best By Doing. Later, when I began doing professional work, and it wasn't always fun, I could still "hold my own" because the foundations of that career had been solidly emplaced.
As usual, people spouting nonsense continue to ignore relevant facts. "Peak oil" is about increasing production more than it is about production itself. It is the point at which, despite all the known and even un-known reserves, total production cannot increased. It can only stay roughly the same for a while, after which it declines. And nothing you have written indicates that our oil-production capabilities are actually growing to match world population growth (annual death rate from all causes is roughly 50 million per year, annual global birth rate is about 130 million per year, making the annual growth rate about 80 million per year).
As for fresh water, I know a significant about about desalting, and even about methods that are quite energy-efficient in accomplishing it. The energy for that still needs to come from somewhere, while all those extra people, every year, make their own demands on available energy supplies, for other purposes. Are we increasing our total power production to match population growth? NO.
Regarding synthetic fertilizer, I refer you to ammonium nitrate. Here is a relevant article. Basically, phosphates are not the only nutrients that plants need. So, the more people we need to feed, the more nutrients we need to feed plants, in order to grow food to feed people. The energy consumption associated with making ammonium nitrate can only go up, so long as population increases AND we don't want them to starve.
I see you also made the same Truly Stupid Statement made by so many others who dis the facts regarding world resources. "We have enough supplies that I know of to feed us for at least 200 years assuming our population doubles 3 times." WHAT THEN??? It is like you actively want a Malthusian Catastrophe to be as bad as possible, when it inevitably happens! To see just how stupid that attitude is, read this. Unlimited Growth Is Mathematically Incompatible With Finite Resources, Even When You Include The Entire Universe.
Growing food indoors is yet another way to consume energy (for the grow-lights). You didn't say where you expected it to come from. So now let me mention a phrase you probably don't see very often, "global thermal balance". The average temperature of Earth mostly depends on how much solar energy it receives in the daytime, and how much it radiates to space, mostly at night. If the arriving energy increases, then temperature goes up a bit, and the world tends to radiate a bit faster (maintaining that higher temperature). Likewise, if the arriving energy decreases, then temperature falls a bit, and that is also maintained. This happens every year (about a 1% change) as the world's elliptical orbit changes the distance between the Sun and the Earth.
Well, humans are doing things to add extra energy into the global heat balance, besides what they are doing with CO2, interfering with the normal rate at which heat can escape to space at night. Some of what we produce is irrelevant, because it is directly related to the normal energy cycle (solar, wind, and hydro power). But much of it is a relevant factor. Burning fossil fuel releases energy that was stored away millions of years ago; it is now an addition to the global thermal balance. Nuclear power, whether fission or fusion, also directly contributes to the global thermal balance. One of the more popular ideas for energy production is about collecting solar power in space, and beaming it to Earth --every erg of that would also be a direct addition to the global thermal balance.
The point is, even if we solved the CO2 problem, so long as population increases and we find ways to generate more energy, we will be working to upset the global thermal balance. Right now our total effort is trivial, compared to what the Sun supplies to Earth. In the long run, though, it cannot be blithely ignored.
Overpopulation might lead to a Malthusian Catastrophe well before 2040. In the animal kingdom such an event ("MC") is usually associated with a 99% population drop. Among humans, mostly smarter than the average dumb animal (except when it comes to breeding, apparently), it might be different; the last known MC experienced by humans who used their resources up faster than they could be replaced, happened on Easter Island, and the before-and-after population figures are not well known. Estimates range the population drop from 80% to, yes, 99%. For us today, we are at or past "peak oil", which means we can't use more oil to make more synthetic fertilizer for a growing global population. Fresh water is becoming a problem, two, as many important aquifers continue to be drained faster than they get replenished. The writing is basically on the wall --we can't keep growing the global population, and we can't even sustain the current population for much longer. So, an MC seems more inevitable than not. After which the rate we burn carbon is going to go down a whole lot....
I saw a blog article that tries to reconcile belief in God with known facts. It is called "On Defending God's Reputation From Brain-Washed Idiots". Maybe folks here will find it relevant.
I've never played it, but read enough about it to think it might be a good way to spend time on-line interacting with a physically distant significant other.
The answer to that ancient question, because we can actually do it with today's tech, is "everyone". So all public buildings and public/government vehicles should be wired with webcams that anyone can access at any time to see what Public Servants are actually doing (instead of what they claim to be doing). Remember Heinlein's "Notebooks of Lazarus Long", and the particular quotation "Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny." Cops that can do things without being watched are in a position to abuse power just like any other tyrant.
So I read Stallman's article and am not quite certain that it is completely accurate. I've written a decent amount of JavaScript code, and all of it was built into HTML pages, even if some of it used AJAX to interact with PHP code on the Web Server. It has always seemed to me that that the entirety of the JavaScript code was right there for the user to inspect with a browser's "View Source" option, regardless of whether or not the overall web page was copyrighted. Well, at least it is easy to view the code that doesn't get loaded in a separate ".js" file; you need to use a browser's Developer Tools to access the "include" stuff. I am of course aware that there exists Server-Side JavaScript, and when it is used that code does not get sent to the browser. However, since it runs on the Server, not even Stallman can complain that the user who connected to the Server is being asked/required to run that non-free JavaScript code (But obviously if the web page is copyrighted, it may qualify as including non-free JavaScript code.)
Accuracy aside, there is a different issue that is personally bothersome. I'm a good programmer and have been writing code for a long time, working with a variety of languages --I have actually enjoyed Assembly Language; many can't say that! But I haven't been able to find a "best fit" type of job that lasted more than a few years, and so my income-situation is not the best (nor even remotely near to "the best"). I'm sure it is quite easy for someone who has a decent steady income to write and give away software. But when you need to sell it to put food on the table, copyright is supposed to be an author's friend. As an example, suppose I put a few years of effort into creating a nice unique web site, free for users and paid for by advertisers. Do I want that unique-ness to be copied immediately, all across the Internet, and my ad-revenue proportionately diluted, by giving away the source code? What do I deserve to earn, financially speaking, for those years of effort? Remember the children's tale of the Little Red Hen? The assumption behind Free Software is that what you offer will get improved and come back to you, thereby benefitting you. It ignores the fact that that process takes time that you might not be able to afford!
So, what is the Answer to that conundrum, besides "Obtain the nice-income job that lets you afford to give away software"?
If only because technology marches on. I would think that as long as the human can choose whether or not to activate an autopilot, then its existence doesn't have to be considered a problem. So, along the lines of making fancy tech happen (what nerds do, after all), here's a notion.... When Google decided to compete with Apple's Siri voice-recognition system, an infrastructure was created that might be enhanced to do image-recognition. And Google has vast numbers of images from its Street-View system, probably all linked together in an orderly way (such as the route a autopiloted car might take). From there, the conclusion should be obvious, if not so simple to actually achieve.
"Widely exists" is not automatically the same thing as "cost-effective to obtain and distribute". The main reason the Alberta tar sands are now cost-effective is simply that the overall price of oil has gone up. But that fact, however, also makes other technologies more cost-effective. So, oil and gas can only stay on top of the energy-generation heap as long as they are more cost-effective than, for example, solar panels. Will it be cheap and easy to process methane hydrates? If it was, we'd be doing it on a huge scale already!
1. Disconnect XP system from Internet.
2. Buy a more-up-to-date system, for connecting to Internet.
3. Maybe buy a small local network hub. Connect both machines to it, and use carefully:
3A. Let XP machine be OFF when other machine is connected to Internet.
3B. Use "network connections" in other machine to disable connection to Internet when XP machine is on. This way the Internet machine can gather data that the other machine can access if needed, via the local network.
The article and the parent both have some errors. The article refers to the CoCo as having 512K of RAM, but that was only true for the CoCo3 --older models were designed to max-out at 64K. (There were some 3rd-party kits to get past that limit, and even on the CoCo3 there are 3rd-party kits to raise the RAM limit to 2 megabytes.) The article is also wrong in calling the 6809 an 8-bit processor. Actually, it was partly a 16-bit processor; several of its internal registers were 16 bits wide. Its instruction set also made it easy to write position-independent code, which is one of the keys to a UNIX-like operating system such as OS9. You-all might be interested in knowing that when the Space Shuttles were first built, their on-board computers used 6809s. You can bet NASA chose the best it could get its hands on. Therefore, the parent post is wrong in claiming that it is "pure fanboyism" to say that the CoCo was better than the C64 in technical ability. Both had their good points, but the CoCo was more versatile. One of the neat things about the C64, that the CoCo did not have, was a screen editor for writing BASIC code. This was purely a matter of differences in the software-in-ROM of the two machines. And I personally wrote a screen-editor that replaced the CoCo's line-editing system; when done it still fit in the ROM space, and was actually superior to the C64's screen editor. See the April 1987 issue of "The Rainbow", page144, for a review.
With Russia embracing democracy, more or less, there is less concern about it trying to conquer the world, as seemed to be a prime Soviet ambition. Meanwhile, China's government (not so much its people) is still bellicose, and has been significantly increasing its offensive capabilities in recent years. We can't drop the MAD paradigm just yet, because of China.
There is a fundamental minimum amount of energy associated with flipping a bit. So, the more flipped bits that are involved in communications, the more energy needs to be generated to make those communications possible. Logically, therefore, an Information Economy is also an Increased Energy Usage Economy. Equally logically, since taxing energy usage is already done, the most simple way to do a data-usage tax is to designate a portion of existing (and growing) energy taxes as being associated with data usage. Then use that money for data-associated projects.
Please recall this article about "panspermia". It means that we are practically certain to find Earth-originated life-forms down there in the ocean of Europa. If life originated there independently of Earth, there might not be any evidence of it left!
The actual problem, in terms of what the CongressCritter doesn't understand (unless is deliberately acting on behalf of Big Fossil Fuel), is that the fuel used by bicyclists comes from renewable sources, while the fuel that runs cars --even electric cars-- mostly doesn't. So cyclists don't increase the net CO2 level, while cars do.
In the core of the Sun, where the temperature is many millions of degrees and electrons and protons are squished into degenerate matter, the probability that an electron and a proton will combine via the Weak Force to make a neutron is rather low --in spite of all the energy and pressure available to help. It is so low that a completely different reaction is described: two protons combine to make a deuteron (one proton becomes a neutron during that process, and a positron is emitted instead of an electron being absorbed).
While I also know that certain unstable nuclides are quite willing to capture an electron and thereby convert a proton into a neutron, I have doubts that a stable nickel nucleus can be induced to do it. Furthermore, such a reaction would completely fail to explain how experiments involving palladium and deuterium have generated so much "heat" (not just controversy!), and have even been replicated, as reported in a major physics journal. Then there is also titanium, another metal that has interested various cold-fusion researchers.
So I think a different hypothesis is needed to explain what happens inside those metals. Since the replication-experiments prove that something is indeed happening in there, the experiments need to continue, and the nay-sayers need to shut their yaps. Just remember that humans managed to extract metals from utterly non-metallic rocks for thousands of years before understanding the chemistry behind what they were doing. Knowing the chemistry allows more efficient extraction methods to be developed, and in this case a better hypothesis of cold fusion would lead to improved experiments. But lacking such a hypothesis, it is still possible to get useful results --it will merely take longer. It just doesn't need to take even longer than that, due to idiots who think that just because we don't understand what is going on, nothing can be going on....
An alternate possibility might be a variant of spyware. It would run like a virus detector, except that the programs it prohibits come from a different list, than the lists of malware programs provided by anti-virus vendors.
If you can raise your monitor so that you directly face it without leaning or bending your neck downward, this will help you retain a vertical posture, which in turn leads to being comfortable longer. I've built myself a number of monitor stands over the years; all it takes is 3 pieces of wood (some even looked professional, because I bought quality wood). The one I'm at now lifts the monitor about 10 inches off the desk. Your preference may be different, of course.
The Supreme Court recently invalidated patents on natural things. All Monsanto has done so far, is move various natural genes around, from one life-form to another. That is, there are no synthetic genes in the seeds that were patented. I'm aware that the result is new in the sense that the combination didn't exist before, but no part of it is actually new.
Since I'm quite aware that new combinations of other things are quite often patentable, I won't say that gene-manipulated seeds don't automatically deserve to be patented. But it might be reasonable to limit the scope of the patent. Because, historically, most patented things need to be manufactured to exist in quantity; they don't go out and automatically make copies of themselves as seeds can do.
So, my opinion on this matter is that the patents should not be allowed to cover any "copies" of the seed-genes that Naturally "get away" from Monsanto's (and most any other industry's) normal control-of-supply. If Monsanto can lock down cross-pollination of its patented gene combinations, fine (and good luck!). If Monsanto can produce seeds that grow plants that produce nonviable seeds, fine (also, good luck!). Because either of those would be reasonable ways to keep its patented gene-combinations under control. But trying to claim ownership of the results of perfectly Natural gene-spreading processes, NO.
The giant impact scenario can still make sense. All we need to do is assume both the Earth and the other object formed in the same zone (distance from sun). That's the most critical thing, since we can expect any one zone, all around the sun, to be fairly consistent in its isotopic composition. So, each gathered up lots of debris while forming, and their collision constituted one of the last events that made the Earth a planet (per modern definition: a planet has to clear its zone of all large debris).
I am bothered by the fact that people know full well that many inventions come about from different things being combined together, yet as far as nuclear fusion research is concerned, the researchers are largely divided into camps, each of which thinks its own approach is the One True Way. There are the magnetic confinement people, the electrostatic confinement people, the inertial confinement laser-blast people, the inertial confinement electron-blast people, the inertial confinement sonic-blast people, and so on, and so on, and so on. Bah! It seems to me that some of those techniques are "complementary", such that if combined in an overall system, the whole would be a more effective means of reaching the goal. Well? (For some particular examples, see this link.)
Actually, the Polywell approach is an attempt to use magnetic fields to mimic the technique of "electrostatic confined fusion" which gained fame under the name "Farnsworth Fusor", was the very first technique to generate controlled-fusion neutrons, and has been constructed and operated successfully by various high-school students for science fairs. The main problem with the Fusor approach is an "inner electrostatic grid" which interferes with the free motion of ions in the vacuum chamber (sucks energy). The Polywell approach doesn't have that grid, but instead has lots of potential "ion leaks" at lots of magnetic cusps. But the leak problem is no worse than has been tackled by the "magnetic mirror" approach to fusion, and so appears to be controllable.
It seems to me that another and even cheaper solution to the problem of long-duration flight is being ignored. Just combine a balloon for lift with propellers for movement. Because most of the need for fuel goes into keeping it aloft --use the balloon for that part. The good old zeppelin shape can reduce the effect of wind on it (not that it needs to be very large, for a reconnaissance drone). And if the balloon was transparent plastic, it would be harder to see from the ground.