I think wind turbines are pretty cool. Where can i sign up to have one put in my back yard? Seriously, let me have free power for my home and i'll gladly let the power company use the land for free.

Can you imagine toyota demanding a transfer fee or the right of first refusal when you want to sell your car?

I'd be quite surprised if Toyota were to do that, since i own a Nissan.

I've asked for a refund on the remainder of my subscription. The site is ugly and unusable now. I'll just have to get tech news from other sources. Too bad; i enjoyed Slashdot for many years.

61% of Americans are stupid. Film at 11.

If robots are doing everything, then why are we important? We shouldn't obsolete ourselves- nature is already working hard enough to do that for us.

So... why are we so important? If we can create an offspring species (either biological or technological) that is superior to us, then shouldn't we step aside? What is the intrinsic value of the particular pile of chemical reactions that make up a human? Sure, humans like to value themselves somewhat highly, but if we can create something even better than ourselves and have the grace to let that better thing take our place, wouldn't it be a bit irresponsible to the universe to not do so?

What software can rip DVDs while preserving the subtitles correctly? I don't mean HandBrake's style of "hard burning" the subtitles into the image. I want all of the subtitle tracks copied and stored in the same MKV container as the video and audio track(s) so that i have the option of turning the subtitles on and off just as i do with the original DVD.

Build it yourself with "server grade" components. My previous machine was almost 10 years old when i retired it. It had 0 hardware failures in that time, and i retired it only because i wanted something with better performance. The previous machine was a SuperMicro motherboard with dual Pentium II-450, 1/2 GB ECC RAM, and SCSI hard disk.

I'm sure my previous machine would have lasted another 5 years if i'd really wanted to run it for 15 years. The other thing i do is about once per year shut the machine down, open it up, and clean out all the dust. At that time i also check that the fans are all functional and replace any that aren't. Really, though, as long as you don't let fans get overly clogged with dust and you don't buy the cheapest ones they are fairly reliable and will usually run for years. If the machine is placed on the floor, it should probably be cleaned more than once per year as it will suck in more dust than if it is placed higher.

My current machine was built with a similar philosophy as to the previous one, and i expect it also to last about 10 years before it is too slow for my taste. Again i used a SuperMicro motherboard and ECC RAM, but this time with SATA instead of SCSI disk. However, i chose one of the "server" SATA disks that is basically disk built to the same standards usually associated with SCSI, but with an SATA interface. That required giving up some capacity (it is only 74 GB), but it is large enough for my needs since i'm not storing multimedia on it. I added the additional requirement of wanting my current machine to be quiet, so i replaced the heat sinks on motherboard and CPU with larger versions, and then used large fans that spin slowly.

Sending an astronaut is many times as expensive, since we need more safety, need to keep the astronaut alive during the long trip over, and need to bring the astronaut back.

Why? Why not send the first astronauts on 1-way trips? Of course it would be a suicide mission, but i'm sure there would be plenty of volunteers. Rather than spend the resources to bring them back, use the same resources to send enough supplies that the astronaut is able to live on the surface of Mars for several years.