There is one thing that could be done. Pull CO2 out of the atmosphere on a large scale. That would take enormous amounts of carbon-free electricity.
Maybe someday we will have the technology to store all that carbon in a solid black substance and bury it underground
If we are finding rocks from Mars on Earth, it is likley there are rocks from Earth on Mars and possibly fossils from Earth on Mars. And I wonder about bacteria from Earth on Mars. It is possible. This complicates the "finding life on Mars" projects. Is it martian life or transplanted life from Earth?
There will always be uncertainty, but if we can find some trace of life on Mars and it isn't directly associated with a meteorite with a composition that could indicate it is from Earth then that would probably be good enough to rule out direct transport from Earth... but it wouldn't rule out that it was transplanted life unless it was completely different than anything we have or had on Earth. So if it is bacteria or other simple life it is going to be nearly impossible to rule out transplant theories with limited evidence.
But even the result of finding life on Mars that reproduced or flourished there in the past would be a great milestone of discovery and I think we can safely rule out mere contamination by meteorites just by looking at the geology of where we find it.
Are we supposed to celebrate abortion?
No. Nor should we celebrate people shooting each other. Having the right to bear arms and having the right to an abortion don't mean we have to celebrate when people do bad things just because they had a legal or civil right to the means.
The sooner we can stop trying to take away people's rights because we are afraid they are going to do something bad and focus on making the world a better place where people don't need guns or abortions but can rest assured they have a right to them the better off we will all be.
The same goes for drug use which should be recognized as a constitutional right for the same reason abortion is. People have a right to privacy of their own bodies. And people have a right to privacy in their effects. People must have a right to choose encrypted communications using whatever method they choose. Making people into criminals merely for choosing privacy isn't some borderline legal issue... it is the fulfillment of the dream of a total police state where privacy itself is made illegal and a punishable offense. Choose Liberty.
All of those are extensions of Google's online ad business. And that is their business, search is not.
Without the search business people's attention would be funneled by other companies like Comcast or Verizon into other vertically integrated content/ad networks. Search is very very much core to Google's business. It is the one place people visit almost every day for something and ads are merely the way they monetize that.
An interesting experiment for Google might be to allow people to pay a monthly fee to access search and every website that they serve ads on and make them ad-free (conditional that no other ads are shown or something like that) and then they could pay content websites where their ads would otherwise be shown based on people's interest in that website rather than on clicks. It turns the model around, but it could be of interest to people. More like the HBO model of entertainment without overt advertising support. Like I said an interesting experiment. Of course even if it worked to any extent it would just make advertising more focused on product placement rather than overt ads.
Seriously, why would SpaceX give a shit about promotion on Slashdot?
Don't worry - the AC is just upset that Musk and Co. are building the future whist he merely spends his life complaining about things in front of his terminal.
Seriously. SpaceX is cool for what they have already accomplished reducing launch costs significantly. If they can reduce costs even further it will enable far greater space exploration and much more sustainable utilization of space. If SpaceX can actually land some of these rocket stages so they can reuse the rockets eventually and make good on reducing costs even further, then that is a giant leap forward on par with all the great milestones. People are excited about SpaceX and the new space race for all the right reasons.
That's true too, but taken alone the secret ballot has a long long history of being used as cover to stuff ballot boxes or otherwise miscount votes and steal elections. Although there are real benefits to a secret ballot it leaves the entire system vulnerable to conspiracies by small groups of people. Hundreds can steal votes from millions. Whereas the theoretical benefit of a secret ballot is that it allows people to vote without personal consequence such as voter intimidation. So, the math wins in my estimation. It is more democratic to put your faith in the integrity of millions of people to resist intimidation and other forms of manipulation than to put your faith in the integrity of a select few.
If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law. -- Roy Santoro