Well, they could sign away the copyright and release the source code for any software they no longer want to support.

Given that the sentence was a direct quote from the site's actual terms, its not clear why you think Americans are to blame for it. Unless of course you are claiming that a UK company has to rely on Americans to draft their TOS.

Even RAID0 would be something, at least part of the data would be recoverable after the loss of a drive, but we don't even have that - we have a single drive and a head crash can destroy everything on that drive.

And the cloud backup, well that's just a big myth. Much like many of the mythical promises of cloud computing.

One problem is that society has become increasingly risk adverse in many ways - I doubt the Apollo program would pass a NASA safety review today. And we waste billions of dollars to ostensibly prevent a terrorist attack against an airliner, yet we have no problem facing a far higher risk of dying when we drive to the airport.

The other interesting thing about humans is that they are all independent beings, so some of them can be thinking about and working on one thing, and others can be working on something completely different... at the same time!

I think the death of the sun is the least of our worries -- it seems far more likely that humans will have been wiped off the planet by an asteroid collision. And that could happen at any time with little warning - even if we see it coming a decade in advance, there's very little we can do to preserve humanity in such a short time as we have zero real experience in creating a long term colony off the earth.

I can say with some certainty that the earth will not run out of fossil fuels in my lifetime, and probably not the lifetime of anyone reading Slashdot today. Fossil fuels will become increasingly expensive to extract after we hit the peak for each type, but coal reserves alone are huge and should last us until the end of the century. And while an life-ending asteroid strike is unlikely in my lifetime, it could happen tomorrow.

The research existed, Cerf had access to it, but they didn't allow it to be used.

If your house is burning down and the fire chief prevents you from using the fire hydrant in front of your house even though you have the right equipment to hook up to it, wouldn't you say he's standing in the way? He's not just declining to help, he's actively preventing you from using tools and knowledge that you have because he's afraid that other people will see you do it and then they'll know how to fight their own fires.

I read the summary, and it seems to be aligned with the headline:

Vint Cerf's offhand observation in a Google Hangout on Wednesday that, back in the mid 1970s, the world's favorite intelligence agency may have also stood in the way of stronger network layer security being a part of the original specification for TCP/IP

It was "bleeding edge" in 1975 back when TCP/IP itself was still in its infancy, but would have been refined over time.

You don't grow the embryos all at once - you do it over several generations, so first you grow enough childcare providers and educators to handle the next generation. So you have 200 people to run the ship, then grow 200 children (so each ship staff is responsible for raising one child, though there will be dedicated childcare centers, etc to help out) to act as dedicated childcare providers/educators and 15 years later when they are ready to do their jobs, you can raise 800 more (4 per dedicated childcare provider, stagger them a year or so apart). 15 years after that you have raised 1000 people that can raise children (200 30 year olds, 800 15 year olds), so you can raise 4000 more children to raise and prepare to be colonists.

I don't think you'd want to allow any "natural" procreation - sterilize the men and use the genetically diverse embryos when a couple wants a child.

I would assume that they embryos would be inseminated and implanted into the human colonists, so people wouldn't have to follow a chart to decide who they can procreate with, all procreation comes from the stored embryos hand picked to ensure genetic diversity. Though I don't know how long embryos could be stored in a freezer.

How significantly? The frozen embryo plan seems to make the population more manageable -- They could keep a constant 100 (or 1000 or whatever) colonists on board for the first 250 years, then in the last 50 years or so, they can start implanting and growing the fetuses (or grow them in the baby-o-matic artificial uterus) to build up the population before landing. Or maybe just wait until after landing and an initial colony is built.

They'll need a lot of room for supplies and equipment so the fewer humans they have to keep alive during the journey, the more supplies they can bring.

Redundancy. Overpopulation is not the reason -- that's a self-correcting problem.

Having all of humanity stuck on a single planet in a single solar system leaves mankind open to extinction from a rare planet ending or even a more rare solar system ending event. Though we probably need to get out of the Galaxy for true redundancy. I don't think there's any way to avoid the eventual end of the universe, whether its ends in a big freeze or big crunch...But we have a bit of time before that happens, so it can be left for future generations, as long as we don't end up killing ourselves or depleting our resources before we can get off the planet.

I'm pretty sure the fossil record is complete enough to rule out modern humans suddenly popping up from seeded embryos.

Is C# so broken that they need to replace it? What advantages does F# offer over C#? Will F# replace C#? Or is F# just an open source iteration of C#?

I run Ubuntu on my home and work desktops and manage a dozen Ubuntu desktops at work (mostly developers and customer service reps).

I thought Linux was the kernel so why isn't android a "Linux OS"?

Yeah, now there are 3 groups of Burning Man hipsters - those hipsters that are cool enough to enjoy event and go every year, those hipsters that are way too cool to ever go to Burning Man and take great delight in telling you all the reasons they won't go (most of those things (except the heat, dust and sometimes mud) don't actually exist at the event), and of course, the group that says "Well burning man was cool back in XXXX, but it's too commercialized now" where XXXX varies from 1986 to last year, depending on when they last attended.

I don't think I'd enjoy Burning Man, but I have friends that attend every year and sounds like they have a fantastic time. To each his own.

I am straight (though I'm not sure that sexual orientation really matters since it's a matter of supporting human rights -- I could be against homosexuality yet still support homosexual marriage) and I think that if you don't believe in someone's views (especially a public figure like the CEO of a well known organization), you definitely should speak out against his views and not support his product.

Everyone should have the right to support whatever cause they want to support, just like everyone should have the right to *not* support that cause or the people that support it or even outright protest it. Some supporters of gay marriage have also faced outrage and boycotts, so why should opponents of gay marriage not expect the same? Or should we all just keep quiet when some cause offends us?

Oh, I thought it was limited to specific designated accounts. If it works with any 30 (or whatever) number of accounts, then this seems less useful since, thanks to password sharing and social engineering/phishing, an attacker is likely to already know 30 passwords. Once he has 30 password in hand, he'll be able to solve the equation himself and can attack the rest of the database as usual.