Its not a matter that its "inhumane" to use ar-15 bullets on a deer. In many states, its *illegal* to use an ar-15 to hunt deer. The rationale for the law is that .223 bullets shot out of an ar-15 will not "drop" a deer dead. The bullet will fly through the deer, and the deer will run away and eventually bleed to death.

A FMJ .223 bullet shot out of an ar-15 is *not* "low power". It has enough energy to fly through a (sheet rock) wall, and through a car door. (Police and soldiers are taught to "take cover" behind the engine block of a car, not merely behind a car door.)

A military issue firearm is *not* (significantly) *deadlier* than a civilian version. The military issue "assault" rifles are capable of firing more than one bullet per trigger pull. Theoretically, it makes it more deadly than a civilian issue rifle, but NO (new) automatic rifles are allowed to be sold to civilians. The Aurora nutjob did not shoot up the theatre with a "military issue" assault rifle.

The only thing that currently makes a civilian copy of an "assault rifle" deadlier than a hunting rifle is that they can carry a 30-100 bullet magazine. I personally would not object to a law that banned selling firearm magazines with more than 10 bullets. Only police and gang bangers "need" to avoid reloading after shooting more than 10 bullets. I have no doubt that the body count would have been lower if Holmes didn't have a 100 bullet drum, and had to reload after every 10 shots.

1) The PPC code never gets inserted into other machine's architectures. So in that sense, it can't possibly "bloat" the kernel. Now there could be design issues with PPC that end up being carried into future Linux kernels, but those are much harder to root out without breaking something.
2) How else can Linux keep its reputation for being able to operate obsolete stuff, long after the commercial vendor has abandoned it?
3) Anything that's in the kernel (like PPC support), has an "active" maintainer for it. As long as there's an active maintainer, there is no reason to remove anything which was built into the kernel. When there's no more active maintainer, then the feature is deprecated. Eventually, a Cardinal in the LKML group gets motivated to eradicate obsolete stuff. Then it gets cut out of the kernel.

In which "era" do you base your impression?

The real reason HURD has moved so slowly (besides managerial incompetence) is that HURD has ceased to be a product with a deadline. HURD is now an operating system research project, with the goal of tinkering with it long enough to publish a paper on their findings or dilettante OS topic.

HURD was originally designed with the presumption that microkernel architecture would be more desirable (operate more efficiently) than a monolithic kernel (that has been the basis for almost every commercial OS since UNIX). You can't really make a breathtaking, next generation OS if the basis that it operates upon either works like crap, or requires different paradigms to communicate from kernel to OS tasks. The lost decade of the 2000's has been spent finding a "suitable" microkernel replacement to MACH. (Which is decidedly unsuitable, since it was designed in the 1980's, and is better off replaced, than kludged.) You can compound the failure with the fact that it has to conform to GNU's operating charter (translation: there might have been a suitable commercially developed microkernel, but if it didn't license it GNU v2.0 (now v3.0), it was unacceptable. That's okay; I'm only speaking hypothetically about the existence of a suitable microkernel for HURD.)

The most striking irony is that HURD may be the empirical demonstration that microkernel architecture is a research dead end, and there aren't any that can even match monolithic kernel designs. The other irony is that hypervisors, which to me seem to be a form of microkernel, have long outdistanced traditional microkernel efforts, although I couldn't tell you why they would still be unsuitable for HURD (besides the license).

Nevertheless, I was pretty shocked that the "core" developers are still actually documenting their progress. They're actually pasting in snippets of their IRC conversations into the wiki documentation (from days ago!).

So, yeah, there's a reason why the "core" people involved are telling volunteers to fuck off. If you can't speak Microkernel Chinese, they don't even want you generating background noise. I'd say the definition of clueless newbies would be someone from 15+ years ago trying to participate in HURD today.

The industry term is "features" phone. It was a gross disservice to omit them as a choice; much more so than omitting windows phones.

I can still play my mp3s, watch (some) videos, read pdfs (on a tiny 2" screen), store & transfer large data files, write notes, set alarms, take pictures, and use (stereo) bluetooth devices, just like a "smart" phone.

And as much as I would like having an android phone, I prefer spending a mere $7/month for phone service.

After looking at the article, the number is 17,352. The original poster botched the cut-and-paste.

"Where Late, the Sweet Birds Sang", by Kate Wilhelm
      Post apocalyptic future, where remnants of humanity survive by cloning. You'll probably appreciate the novel less if you don't like "hard(ish)" science fiction. Should have a basic understanding of genetics and cloning. (Only one post here mentioned her name, but no specific recommendations.)

I dunno if this one counts. At one time, this work was put on the same famous scale as Dune, but since it hasn't been mentioned...

The llluminatus Trilogy, by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.

You should have a collegiate level literary reading background, or you won't get ANY of the jokes. Its starts out with a mindboggling stream of consciousness, which introduces a hundred characters in the books, but they abandon the technique midway into the first chapter. (Call it a test to weed out the weak.)

Also, its not Isaac Bailey, its Elijah Bailey, of the "Caves of Steel" series. (Unless its some post 1980's Asimov sci-fi pulp continuation of the detective series theme...)

Damn you. I've read both of them, but its been so long ago, I've forgotten the names and titles as well. For some reason, I think the first one was written by Gordon Dickson. (Another guess would be Walter M. Miller, Jr., but I don't think it was him.) It was a short story, possibly a novella. And it was done a long time ago; 1950's-1960's era. The second one, I think it might have been "Protector" by Larry Niven. It ended up getting melded into the Ringworld mythos. But as I recall, the aliens got that way by becoming addicted to an alien root, so I'm thinking it could have been an earlier, derivative work by Niven.

1) There is nothing in Quantum Physics theory which directly invalidates anything postulated by Einstein in his significant scientific work. Einstein, the scientist, did nothing to disprove quantum physics. Einstein merely did not consider quantum scientists' findings as "scientific proof".

2) Only a scientist who is not human would not have human biases. I guess that means no human qualifies as a scientist. OR perhaps that all scientists are presumed to have biases, and is the process (scientific method) that is supposed to weed out incorrect conclusions tainted by bias. Einstein did not produce flawed research claiming to invalidate quantum theory.

3) The idea that Einstein could have contributed more to humanities' scientific knowledge by ACCEPTING most aspects of quantum theory AND THEN applying it to his later work is pure conjecture. Conjecture made by politicians who coincidentally are physicists who utilize quantum theory to further their own work. (hint, hint)

4) Einstein, with his beliefs, has done more to advance scientific knowledge than you, with your condescending viewpoint.

I was referring to the contemporary climate for science. My criticisms did not extend towards the period before 20th century.

You're spot on, except you're not as cynical and bitter.

As Joseph Campbell once observed, civilizations are a collection of myths which everyone in the society accepts/believes. We were raised thinking that science worked like Star Trek, and that blinding genius was what made for great scientific breakthroughs. But what is "accepted" scientific fact? Its basically well designed, reproducible experiments that demonstrate the validity of a theory which is eventually accepted BY a body of academic peers supposedly trained to conduct and recognize that standards were met and valid. Guess what? No body of peers (mediocrities), no scientific validation.

Science always was, and particularly today, a relentless, and excruciating labor of many millions of ants, making progress by each crumb of discovered knowledge. It is a social hive that eventually culminates in something significant and new. When it does, its the queen that gets all the credit, even though she spent all her time popping out worker drones. You cannot even hope to get credit in the science/history books unless you happened to be at the top of the pile at the time, with powerful friends to validate you as the "discoverer".

What made "great" scientists recognized, in the previous century, was not mere genius or relentless work or even showmanship. The only ones that were noticed were the ones who realized the great collection of authorities in the field were dead wrong, and then had the guts and genius to prove they were wrong. They were cowboys like Einstein and Tesla. The days of the cowboys are gone. (And forget about working in a patent office part-time, while working on your breakthrough discovery. Then again, the pay and financial security of academicians/researchers are so bad, the next vanguard of scientists just may require a day job.)

The last scientist I can think of who went maverick and made her mark was Barbara McClintock. She had to stand by her research for decades while it was dismissed by her peers, until they couldn't continue to look stupid and wrong. And who the hell here even knew who she was when I mentioned her? Think of all the people who died in the previous decades from peptic ulcers until an internist conclusively demonstrated that ulcers were induced by bacteria, and simple antibiotics would cure the condition. The bacteria theory for ulcers was around for decades, but guess what? The wrong body of peers were the deans of Internal Medicine and editors of prestigious journals at the time. There are probably many scientific discoveries unknown to us, merely because the first guy to prove it just didn't have the right juice, or some bureaucratic body had a financial interest in dismissing the findings.

Assuming the study's conclusions are valid (and I don't believe anyone should take any studies' results for granted anymore), it only demonstrates that science has become more bureaucratic in the past decades; you need to go to the right schools, know the right people, and managed to get into the right "chairs" to be in position to get "credit" for a scientific endeavor. That takes time, which explains why "older" scientists are credited later in life today. This is not a good thing. Picture being Albert Pujols and never being "allowed" to play in the World Series because he wasn't on the roster of the Yankees, Red Sox, or Braves. In our case today, we are strangling our own advancement by our own bureaucracy (or societal pedigree).

"Without student loans, only children of the wealthy will be able to go to college."

Cut the crap. Many people who weren't wealthy were able to go to college, whether it was by GI Bill subsidy, scholarship, or going to a state university whose operation was subsidized by state taxpayers.

The current student loans regime is obviously a coercive means to place the people taking the loans into indentured servitude. Its obviously made that way by the compounding interest, and penalties for late payments. The banks can't lose because the USG guarantees the loans.

The solution is correcting the student loan program so it cannot become a usurious loan. There should be no increased penalties for late payments. It should just be a percentage taken out of the person's paycheck/salary (structured like a 30 year fixed loan). The collection aspect can be run under the IRS. If the person never makes more than the loan's principal & interest in their lifetime, the bank takes the loss. (The banks will merely have to hire better actuaries to figure out the likelihood of getting paid back by a particular candidate.) When less poor and untalented people get loans, that's great. That's less college tuition inflation, more marginal college bankruptcies, and increased quality of college graduate.

People, student loans systems have worked for decades. Its only in the 1990's and the 2005 Bankruptcy bill when the system began to fall apart. If you think ALL poor people are ENTITLED to a college education (like many European nations and other foreign countries), then try passing a bill to do that. Make the taxpayer foot the bill. Otherwise, stop advocating loan slavery.

I wish I had moderator points to give you. I never understood why armchair economists cannot understand this obvious fact.

But 200 years from now, two vaults of gold won't be worth much. We'll all be transacting in Federation credits, and that's not based material which is easily replicated.

Fiat currency units can be produced at-will (a gov't with a printing press). Precious metal availability is limited what is in existence.

Only Austrian school economists thinks there is an inherent value to precious metals.