Ramming speed, Mr Sulu!

yup, Thunderbirds again

5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... Thunderbirds are go!

you insensitive clod

uprate the parent - it's got pointers to the benchmark (i.e. the trial in S. Africa last year) for pigeon data speeds, in contrast to the claims of the story.

Re your final point, about "famine is mostly an economical problem these days, bringing in the likes of monsanto to 'solve' this will not bring relief to the starving and ill nourished people of the world".

It's worth remembering that whatever problems we have now will be exacerbated by:

• a growing world population (up from about 6 billion at the start of the century to around 9 billion by 2050?)
• a shift in desired diet as developing countries become wealthier (people tend to eat more meat as they become richer, meat uses more grain and multiplies the demand on food supplies)
• restricted resources (land suitable for growing food is fairly fixed, available water is constrained) mean we need to do more within the limits of what we have
• other random impacts from freak weather events, biofuel production, and 'futures' speculators

so we should be exploring a range of solutions, understand the benefits and disadvantages of each possible solution, and expect to use a complicated range of them. GM may well form part of that portfolio. Expecting a single "magic" solution such as the whole world reverting to subsistence farming or turning vegetarian seems quite unrealistic to me.

But maybe (given the tone of the debate so far), I've got unrealistic expectations of this forum...

Pigs have often been allowed to forage for mast, then penned up and fed corn and maybe some sweet feed for some weeks before slaughter. Remember that a hog is an omnivore, so free ranging hogs eat some really NASTY stuff!
Even today, farmers who slaughter their own hogs for private consumption will replace the commercially prepared feeds with corn.
Would it work for rabbits? Probably.

No they can't. They can only seize it if it is illegal, by itself, for the owner to possess. Now, if they find drugs as well they can probably do so under the right circumstances.

Owning a firearm, in and of itself, is not illegal for most people. This, of course, excludes certain persons such as felons, the mentally unstable and most legal, yes legal, aliens.

It is not the governments purpose to "save" or "fix" the economy, nor does it have the ability to do so. It never had that ability, and it never will

Of course it is, unless you live in some non-existent libertarian utopia. Governments continually bail out and stimulate economies, and their voters expect them to.

That's how modern society works, whether you like it or not.

No, as opposed to swarming for some other reason such as protection from predators, attacking Japanese fishermen, or as part of their agile software development process.

thin clients are OK but ultra-thin clients are likely better - see for example:

• Wikipedia on thin clients
• Sun's "Sun Ray" client hardware

You get low-cost screens, the ability to add a user-tagged card that carries session info with them, and a few other advantages.

Not sure about the touch-screen aspect, as I've never looked into that.

have fun!

just a small build on this point - it's about what the end-user community needs, not wants.

Sometimes you'll have to work with them to explain why an alternative is better overall, when they are sure that their option is what they want (=need, as far as they are concerned! and they've designed the app for you! with diagrams...)

Aldrin's got a useful contribution to the debate - go to Phobos first (easier to reach and leave since it isn't at the bottom of a gravity hole).

This was discussed recently here: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/06/26/0410259