Well, I know the pond is there... but are there fish in it? I don't know until I see one jump.

Of course it will end. The sun will consume it eventually. This is on a time scale that is of no consequence to us.

Could a big rock come along and smack us? Yup. But we don't have to leave here to be able to stop it.

Could we one day leave and have every single colony wipe itself out? Damn straight. Maybe something/someone will come along and wipe out the colonies. Who knows. Maybe a plague could travel between them on ship and take everyone out.

That said, leaving Earth != insured survival.

No he didn't - the nature of the Singularity was never really described. The nuking found on the planet was done by a high tech human Juan something or another so as to fool the others into thinking that aliens were to blame.

Fool. The future of humanity depends on figuring out how to properly steward the resources we have.

Anything less, and we are simply a cosmic horde of locusts, nothing more.

If we are quiet, maybe we'll get lucky and they won't notice us....

It costs about $2 including stamp, envelope, paper, and ink.

Let's see, wife having a baby in the ruins. To deliver the baby I get to choose between a general practitioner and.... you.

I'll go with the GP, thanks.

Let kids remain deaf so that we can have our own little group.

Wow. Just listen to yourself for a moment... (ducks)

They don't cherry pick, they vacuum up every bit of data they can find, on every single human being they can find. This is their job.

And I must say it is far simpler and clear to use.

Two cents complete.

After 20 years in C++ land I have been writing a lot of Java lately, and it is pretty nice.

...why haven't they been doing this from the start?

Yen.

Next question.

In this case, microwaved spam.

Replying on a GUI. Jesus wept.