Don't be so quick to defend Bush 41. Remember this golden oldie?

"THE American way of life is not up for negotiation." That was the stance struck by the elder George Bush at the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

While I think it is inaccurate to equate the two parties on environmental policy, I think this quote from Bush 41 best summarizes what we Americans as a whole really think about the environment: it's nice to have around for postcards and stuff, and ought to be the beneficiary of a few feel-good measures, so long as they're painless - but anything that costs real money or jobs is simply inconceivable. Any President who asks us to sacrifice for the future will simply be playing Carter to the inevitable Reagan who will come along to tell us that nothing we could ever do is bad, and everything will work to the greater good so long as we simply help ourselves and feel great about it. And that man will win the next election, in a landslide, every time.

It's not even that ridiculous of a proposition. Florida was just a swamp before air conditioning - in 1900 the entire population of the state was only 500K. Likewise phoenix was just a desert (state population, 122K). By nature, these places are hardly habitable.

There is a video of someone throwing around my model, without the keyboard, here.

After something like 20 years I finally found a system that won't run Debian unstable right now. My Panasonic Toughpad FZ-G1 magnesium tablet + iKey Jumpseat magnesium keyboard. Systemd and GDM break. Bought (for less than full price) because I am a frequent traveler and speaker and really do need something you can drop from 6 feet and pour coffee over have it keep working.

But because of this bug I have ubuntu at the moment, and am not having fun and am eager to return to Debian.

That's an interesting story, do you know what he was thinking? For example was he trying to rationalize all his purchases as business expenses? Or what?

But the goal of interrogation is not simply "terminating" people, it is to get something from the prisoner. If what the prisoner says makes no difference, then they have no incentive to reveal information. The prisoner has to believe there is some way to stop the pain.

Keep in mind Zuckerbergs billions came from people investing in his company, it didn't come from actual sales of a product.

Initially, but (sad to say) facebook's revenue - and growth - are actually enormous.

The science is settled. What remains is to rally people to action en masse - more like "putting bums on seats" than proving theorems.

Apple shouldn't allow the upgrade to be installed on a device which can't run it properly

Humbug! Let Apple recommend whatever it likes, but let me make the final call. It's still my device, remember?

I almost see your point, but if economic warfare breaks out between China and the US, the whole economy will be wrecked. Stores won't even have shoes to buy.

As a kid, I remember fearing growing up because grownups like to watch the news, which is boring.

A bit older, I feared having to work year round, and not get summer vacation.

Or look at all those commercials (e.g. 1, 2) for middle-age people reassuring themselves they'll never get old, never look old or slow down. (Or, heaven forbid, die.)

Personally, yes, I have become less into my job and more into my family and hobbies over time. I think that is common. But don't worry, nobody will force you to follow that pattern if you don't want to!

It is not people "refusing to act their age" that bothers me, if that's genuinely how they feel and what they want to do. Decide each day what you want to do and do it - and this should include goals and plans for accomplishing things in the future. But I am convinced that idle worry about who you will be, or what you will want in the future is just a waste of the present.

I would like to hear somebody explain logically why they think the behavior of other modern non-human species provides more insight into human behavior, than simply studying human behavior directly.

Come to think of it, and more fundamentally, even sharing a home directory to clients using NFS over WiFi does not work at all. Just loading firefox loads something like 50 MB of profile data from disk, NOT including the program itself, and latency kills nfs throughput. (Again, you can dink around with the settings endlessly, to little effect that I've seen).

WiFi really only works for newer things designed to be cloud-friendly.

Try streaming mpeg-ts captures from broadcast TV over wireless. They put Netflix to shame.

Another think that hardly works at all over wireless is remote X clients. X is amazingly sensitive to latency. (Yes, you can try to set up NX etc...)

Do you think there is any chance that NFC might allow micropayments on the Web to become a reality? I don't like what the ad-driven Web has become, and I'm allergic to auto-recurring subscriptions.