So are diseases and genetic defects, for example - thining out the herd through evolution, making sure the survivors have the most updated genes to fight the current diseases, themselves constantly evolving. Would you suggest that we stop treating them ? thinking like that, we should also stop extracting problematic wisdom tooth for people, because that also is part of the "cycle of life".
We have consciousness. This allows us to go beyond our mere nature and try to decrease suffering, for everyone of us. Aging implies suffering. And beyond this, aging should IMHO become a *choice*, not something that is imposed upon us.

In my mind, the very expression "cycle of life" evokes something almost sacred/religious (or at the very least romantical) in nature. There is no sacred "cycle of life". We are the product of randomness, and our consciousness a response born from the process of evolution to a universe where anything can happend, at any time: self-awareness, the ultimate (for now at least) way of surviving in such an universe, by allowing our species to react at time scale inferior to a generation - by being aware, we can analyze our universe, understand it, and overcome potential species-wide issues at the scale of a lifetime, instead of relying on genetic evolution over larger timespans. If one day we finally get our collective asses to space and start colonizing other planets, then even a nuclear winter following a meteor event (such as the one that wiped out 75% of earth's species at one point) becomes survivable for us. Such a thing would be highly unlikely without self-awareness.

And precisely because we are self aware, we should in my opinion consider aging as a remnant of our animal origin: something to be fixed. Eventually, even our very bodies ought to be replaceable. I know *I* certainly long to see in wider wavelengths, to feel and experience more and thus to become more aware. It is the essence of transhumanism, and in my view what we should aim for.

As for the ressources issue, we have an entire solar system full of ressources, and an exponential tech development curve to match it. Even on earth, tech such as transmutation will eventually make ressources wars pointless, and scarcity itself could become a thing of the past. I'm not saying we'll see it for sure during our lifetime, but I definitely wouldn't bet it won't happend. I was born during the eighties, and the tech progress I've witnessed during my (admitedly short) lifespan is simply staggering - a lot of the SF stuff I read as a child is already a common part of life. We live in a time of miracles, and I think it's only the tip of the iceberg and we'll see incredible, profoundly changing progresses during the upcoming century.

This is beautiful :-)
With a quite different atmosphere (yet still relevant IMHO), a quote I really like from Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon (a really good series of books):

The personal, as everyone's so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous, marks the difference – the only difference in their eyes – between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it's just business, it's politics, it's the way of the world, it's a tough life, and that it's nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.

HTML5. Flash is bundled separatly, but modern mobile browser have started to implement the getUserMedia stuff for webcam/micro access (without using flash).

If you are an European citizen, then please sign this.

This is a citizen's initiative to explore basic income guarantee - if it gets 1M+ signatures before January 2014, budget will be allocated to this.

Planescape torment is an amazing example of character development and profound plot. So are both baldur's gates, as well as Arcanum, for example.

The "storytelling capabilities of the two" have already met, lots of time. It's just that the games that are "profound" and have complex and far-reaching plots are a small minority of the games being released (I guess because that's not what most people want).

(disclaimer: I am French)

The entire French police force is slowly but surely switching to Linux and more generally Open Source software, as are all public schools (although Microsoft did and still does try its usually dirty tricks to prevent that). The entire national assembly (main house of parliament) entirely runs on Linux, from Desktop machines for the députés to servers hosting the live feed/on demand videos. Open Source projects (originating from companies as well as universities and such) regularly obtain grants/funds from official bodies (and in fact, creating an Open Source project is a very favorable point to obtain a lot of those innovation funds). Strong recommendations have been emitted to use only open and standard file formats in all administration, and several projects for laws have been proposed to enforce this, as well as the use of Open Source software in all public administration (not sure any of those were actually passed, though). Skype is also officially forbidden in high-level universities and official research organizations, essentially because it is closed source and thus theoretically prone to potential spying/security issues.

Seems to me that France is *already* embracing Open Source with open arms.

Actually, there was at least one occurence where someone hacked a service through the Minitel.
The guy that did it is named Laurent Chemla and was at the time charged with "stealing energy" because there wasn't even any law against hacking at the time :-)

He went on to create Gandi, and also wrote an essay called "Je suis un voleur" (I'm a thief), where he compares what he's doing (selling DNS) with simply stealing money as he is/was selling the simple procedure of adding a record into a database for ludicrous amounts of money. He also draws a pretty interesting parallel between the avent of the Internet and the fictional invention of a teleporter to describe how the emergence of a global network has/should impact society. A very interesting read: http://www.confessions-voleur.net/confessions/