I wouldn't bother. Just use QEMU. It's slower but it works.

I don't think proprietary software is worthwile on Linux. No, I'm not an RMS type that would completely boycott proprietary anything on philosphical grounds. It's just that my experience is that if I can't compile it from source on Linux it sucks.

First... you have to be running the same distro as the author or.. no support and maybe a 40% chance it will even work.

Ok, for the Pi everything is probably Raspbian so that might not be a problem.

But.. a year later... it doesn't work if you download any updates because it is dependant on some old library version or the distro has moved some file or something like that.

If you get source code... just recompile and it works. You get about 5 years before Linux has changed too much to use that same source code without modification.

Get a community to maintain the source code... it's more like 25 years.

Now.. proprietary software on Windows.. 10 to 20 years before you can't use it anymore.

ln -s /dev/null beacon.csv

"Because it's both insanely expensive as well as utterly pointless."

So the greatest aspiration of humanity should be to get fat sitting in a chair observing the universe from afar? Why not just go extinct imediately? What's the point?

If we aren't moving towards a future then what's the point of the present?

I like the way that kid thinks!

Really? Rovers can dig under the surface better? Citation needed!

Rovers have brought us some great information but now we are hitting the limits of what they can do and all we are getting in re-runs of the same great discoveries.

Robot scratched the surface of a rock.. found evidence of ancient water. Robot sampled surface soil... found products of broken down organics. It was news years ago. And yet it's still all we hear today.

Robot digs some feet down and finds things that haven't been sterilized by UV... Nope... not happening.

Sure, Tang is cool I guess. I am a bit more excited about microwave ovens, better integrated circuits which enabled personal computers and important things like that which came out of the Apollo program but hey.. if Tang is what floats your boat then whatever.

"Yeah! Because we just left the ISS floating around up there doing nothing sciencey for YEARS before somebody said "let's try to grow some plants!" "

No but it hasn't been doing the "sciency stuff" it was supposed to. It was sold to the public as a development platform to develop the technologies needed to live for long periods in space. That's what NASA said they were going to do anyway.

Growing plants in zero G being a great example of this as they provide food and oxygen. What it has been used for however is to give private companies a taxpayer funded zero G labratory to study how various crystals form and other chemical reactions without the influence of gravity.

Don't get me wrong.. there are some great material science and drug applications there but the goal of developing tech for living beyond the Earth seems to have been mostly forgotten since the thing was launched.

" ...only the really old live, then we run out of viable sperm and eggs in a few generations"

I would think that a man who's aging has been reversed would continue to produce viable sperm. Eggs... well.. that could be a problem.

"Even at our current growth rate there's not enough for everyone. Not enough food,"

BS! There is plenty of food. What there isn't is a decent distribution system. More than enough to feed the starving is constantly being thrown away because it is too expensive to ship or it's genes are patented and stuff like that.

We have all sorts of spinoff technologies from the manned space program. It was hardly useless.

What scientifically USEFULL information are those robots providing? If nobody is going there we aren't actually USING that information are we?

Don't get me wrong.. I do value information simply for the sake of knowing about the universe we live in. I don't want to see the robotic progams ended completely. We should always be sending a probe or two out beyond the reaches of our farthest manned program. Keep the discoveries coming!

But.. how many more reports of 'Amazing new evidence found that Mars was once warmer and wetter' do we really need? When do we get someone up there with a shovel to look beneath the sun-sterilized surface? When do we get actual permanent habitats anywhere outside of Earth?

We don't even seem to be even working towards this kind of goal anymore. How about some balance between information for the sake of enlightenment vs hard tangible, practical goals?

Look how many years we supported the ISS before anyone even tried to grow a plant in it? WTF? Isn't that the kind of resarch it was supposed to be for?

Doesn't matter to me. I only pay taxes in one nation. I only get to vote in one nation.

Not that I can really do anything about my own nation doing jack shit for 40 years but I can do even less regarding all the others!

Why bother. Would the other guy have done better?

Yah, it's the one that sent real people to another world 40 years ago and has only managed to send R/C devices since.

Again, if everything that could have some important use to the military is kept from the public then the rest of us do what? Go back to living in caves? Oh, wait.. those might be good bomb shelters...

People have been building their own mills for far less than your $2,500 for a long time now. With the 'maker movement' cheaper, more available mills are a given regardless of anything DD does. Then there is all of the used factory equipment that is becoming available quite cheap at auctions as the manufacturing industry keeps dying. Check out Craigslist some time. I'm constantly seeing metalworking shops that are going out of business selling off their tools in my area.

Surely somebody would realize they can make a gun on one without DD specifically calling their mill a gun making device! All I see that is unique coming from DD in regard to making a metal gun is marketing fluff.

'...article keeps mentioning how this technology â" used commonly as an acoustic filter â" has "military applications."'

Sure. Soldiers communicate. So do civilians. A soldier has to shit too. I guess if they were stealing the recipee for Charmin that would also be military secrets.