They didn't - they were 'simple' water collectors (such as, I think, already exist), providing a small amount of clean water at dawn but not generating any energy in the process.
This tech, however, would be a nice one to power the Fremen's stillsuits in the same universe - providing additional water from the atmosphere while at the same time powering the various pumps and recycling tech inside of the suit :-) though if I remember correctly Herbert described those as powered by the movements of the user.

It's only a diff of the new fishy 7.2 changes. You can grab the source on the archlinux FTP though.
Presumably the guys in charge of the public crowd-funded audit could also provide a version of the source that would be deemed "trusted" by most people (and those that have already downloaded the source previously can offer confirmation).

What's the value all of the US's cities ? all the buildings, the infrastructure, the work of arts, the land itself (and its capacity to provide food, minerals and resources in general) ? for that matter, what's the value of the people in the US - builders, farmers, doctors, scientists ?

This is what the currency is backed by: the value of the country itself. The US government represent all the people in the US and all those valuable things - land, buildings, etc.... It emits currency and pays with it; that says to the people accepting the currency: yes, we represent all those valuable things, and worst case scenario if we cannot pay you back then we have collaterals - you can take a bit of land instead, or our scientists will work on your project for N years, etc... and it will sure help you more than some gold.

It's not perfect but it sure seems to me that it makes more sense than backing the currency with big lumps of yellow metal with relatively limited uses.

I'm not - why should we settle for small steps, when we already have the capability to make giant ones ? where would we be right now as a species if even half the money spent in DRM schemes/IP protection stuff had been thrown in global network deployment (there are still large parts of the planet's population with no access to the Internet, or even no electricity) and putting online courses/teaching material/culture online ?

While the rest of your post seems pretty reasonable and possibly less utopic/optimistic than mine, this I strongly doubt. It seems to me that the very resources inequalities we're seeing currently - the very fact that some people posess thousands times more money/power than most - is a major part of such an artificially enforced scarcity. It's just concentration of power, and people in power wanting to keep that power.

Maybe I'm just too young / not cynical (call it realistic if you will) enough; that being said, once again, having the capability to diffuse culture massively and willingly limiting that capability seems like a form of madness to me. Makes you wonder what'll happen when material, real-life scarcity will no longer be an issue (and I personally think we're not that far of).

Then leave. Find a job elsewhere. Or even better: spend some of your free time writing and publishing (anonymously, of course - use tor) DRM-defeating software based on what you implemented at work - you already have the tech details since you implemented the DRM stuff (or just publish the tech details anonymously and let others implement the stuff). They can't continue playing this kind of games if no developer are helping them.

And I don't think doing so would stop the release or funding of entertainment stuff, either (be it games, movies or music); people have been making music & art for thousand of years without that kind of shit, and people are genuinely ready to pay for content if it's quality, easily available, and reasonably priced; even if it's available elsewhere for free. They are also ready to pay to finance that kind of development even when a release is not certain (look at the many successful crowdfunded projects). It would certainly decrease the amount of shitty games/movies created, though.

The very fact that we have the technological capability to massively distribute culture at a very low cost and we don't because of greed/artificially enforced scarcity is truly depressing.

Indeed - very few (sane) people dispute the fact that consciousness can be generated with non-biological hardware (using silicon). We know that consciousness is the result of matter and energy - a more interesting question IMO, is: matter down to what level ? does the brain only use "classical" physics principles to generate consciousness, or does it somehow exploit quantum principles (we certainly know that natural selection has made use of those in some cases - see photosynthesis).
Maybe the brain requires quantum mechanics for randomness (where does a new, original idea come from ? it may simply be extremely complex recombination of previously seen concepts and ideal; but then again, it may include a true source of randomness), in which case the only thing required to create consciousness on a silicon medium would be a "true" source of randomness. Such a source of randomness in the brain could also come, for example, from the interaction between cosmic rays and particles in the brain - an interaction we actively correct for in RAM using error checks.

Then again, maybe the brain requires quantum mechanics for something far more fundamental needed for consciousness - in which case the only efficient way to create an artificial consciousness may be to use a quantum computer, and using a "classical" computer may not be possible.

In any case, given the current rate of progress, I'd be very wary of making any assumption about the progress of tech and research, in that domain or any other - time will tell :-) I certainly hope to see the first artificial consciousness in my lifetime, though.

Same here - used to get them very rarely but lately I seem to get about 10 a week. Weird indeed.
And before the conspiracy theory kicks in: I've been up modding anti-beta posts like crazy, don't use beta, and I still just got five more of them.

Wish I had mod points for you.
There is no crime, no matter how grave, that justifies capital punishment. Beyond the obvious (yes, obvious - a society killing criminals has no right to call itself civilized) moral reasons, there is the fact that it has been proven time and time again that capital punishment does nothing to deter crime. At all. Beyond this, there is also the fact that the person you're killing might very well be innocent - no court is perfect.

Most of the comments on this story are really depressing - it reminds me of a quote (from, I think, Henry James):

"America Is the Only Country That Went from Barbarism to Decadence Without Civilization In Between"

On a related subject, I'm personally against the very idea of prison - here too, it has been proven time and time again to actually increase criminality instead of reducing it. However, I don't think there is a better system right now, although I believe being forced to home residence with an electronic ankle collar is a step in the right direction - it should IMO be the only option for non-violent crimes, never prison. For violent crimes prison is probably the best thing we have right now, but in that case it should be an open prison, similar to (I think) some in Scandinavia - a prison that is more like an isolated town where you are free to move about and work and have relative comfort. Something truly better than the shitholes we have right now, a "prison" that would actually improve the chances of the inmates being rehabilitated instead of being pushed even more towards crime.

Eventually, I'm hoping technological advances will provide better alternatives (something akin to Iain M Banks' slapdrones, for examples).

I think not - I may be wrong, but the last time I tried to use a proprietary ATI driver under Xorg it tended to have a lot of bugs - like for example, my resolution had to be a multiple of 16 or 32 (can't remember which) in order to enable anti-aliasing.
It's that kind of shit that made me look for a nvidia card on all my new laptops and desktops in the future - nvidia might not opensource their drivers, but at least they work under xorg, and they also offer proper CUDA support for the same (used it for mining LTC at the time).

Then again, I had a surprise with my latest laptop - it uses Optimus: a "new technology" that includes an on-motherboard intel chipset for common graphics as well as a real nvidia GPU for gaming, the later being used only for graphics-intensive stuff. Sounds like a good idea (especially for battery consumption), but almost no official support for Linux systems. Thanks christ for Bumblebee (http://bumblebee-project.org/) - an attempt at Linux support for Optimus. It requires you to run games and the likes through a wrapper that runs a separate framebuffer using the GPU while running an intel-based Xorg. It works pretty well, but still, it's more a hack than a real support for Optimus.

Why should we be forced to ?
Don't get me wrong, I usually sleep or read entertainment stuff (recently for me: either Pratchett or Iain M Banks - I heartily recommend his excellent Culture cycle, BTW) on airplanes, but what this is about is giving people choice in the matter. If you want to relax and "enjoy the peace and quiet", fine ! if you want to connect to the global planetary network, be it for work reasons or entertainment too, you should be given the choice.

I get what you're saying - but you can't say to people they *have* to relax just because they're traveling. I've co-founded and currently lead a small computer sciences startup and given the choice, I'd much prefer to read or sleep when I'm in an airplane. However, there were several times when I *had* to work (in my current job as well as the previous, more traditional / employed one) during travel to make sure I was ready upon arriving, just because I didn't have time before that to do it

Basically, what I'm saying here is: the more choice people have, the better. They might use the network to read their favorite news site (slashdot or some twitter feeds or other), or they might use the network to work, or they might simply relax using an old-fashioned book. The point is, if you add Internet connectivity to your flight, you are simply giving them more choice in the matter, which is good in my book.

Dupe, there's already another (better I think) submission. Didn't see it, sorry !