Launching everything we need from Earth is too expensive.

True! And yet for 50 years, I could never help noticing, we have de-orbited everything we've sent up! It seems as though noone has given any thought to making things we spend $$$$$ billions and billions $$$$ putting up there so that it will be useful in the future.

It wasn't that long ago that they were talking about de-orbiting the ISS in 2016 !! Gosh, I wonder if there's anything long-lasting enough in the ISS that might be useful later. Gosh, maybe Henry Ford was ONTO something when he discovered standardization of parts. LEGO seems to have figured out how to make a whole lot of stuff work together. Maybe they could hire LEGO.

Huh. I wonder if a plan would be possible. If there were only a bunch of smart guys sitting around in fancy government buildings looking for something challenging to do something that lasts longer than the next election. Instead of looking for more ways to throw more money into the Right pockets.

Documentation could improve a lot faster and better if some company took the time to setup a Wikipedia-type "Linux Encyclopedia". Everyone could get at it and improve it in waves in the very same way, and it would unite stuff that's scattered hither and thither.

Actually it appeared in the Ubuntu 14.10 Alpha 2 releases a few days ago.

Hah! After a year of reading the Reddit Linux everyday? Made my day!!
Yeah I'll quit doing that.

We should all go re-read Kuhn anyways. Because (thinking of the current state of cosmology for one) clearly we didn't get it yet.

The first Earth Day took place on April 22, 1970, to " to create awareness for the Earth's environment and to encourage conservation efforts."

The phrase "Damn tree huggers" has been heard ever since. Yeah, even in Iowa. So, 40 years of deliberate ignorance and acrimony is coming home to roost? Tough grid.

No way I'm going to believe any of this. There's no equations on that page, no PhD's are named, and no mention of any government grants. If it were so easy, it'd have been done already long ago.

TOK-a-MAK!! TOK-a-MAK!! TOK-a-MAK!!

Every word they've said After Snowden has been public relations. "Our extended family" "sensationalized the leaks" "wrongly cast doubt" "more of a rogue element than a national treasure"

"Denial, Anger, Acceptance" is the third episode of The Sopranos.

Sometimes the the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Star Trek warned about dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight.

I'm pretty sure the DoD could scrape some together by looking under some rocks somewhere if it had to.

Sun's ultraviolet creates H2O2 from CO2; H2O2 'scrubs' methane. Next question??

Because anything that the people do that's ad-hoc, effective and lower in cost threatens not only the government but the consultants and planning-boards and corporations that get the big tax bucks we pay. The System routing around potential damage

ALL the software - and much of the hardware - I was using 10-15 years ago to craft, record and sounds is long dead ... because of OS and I/O changes. Anything at all proprietary is therefore inaccessible, and much of the hardware is worth a tiny fraction of what it cost. The OSS stuff, on the other hand ... CSound, MIDI, file formats ... remain sturdy and viable.

I'm quite sure Albini remains at the top of his game, particularly including the technical side of the game, and so his opinion will deservedly carry a lot of weight for anyone who doesn't have a recording contract. (Those also have about a 5-year lifetime.) Analog tape remains the only sane archival choice for a 20-30 lifespan, by which time there may finally be alternatives with an even longer lifespan.

Clearly all the years of talk of security and encryption has accomplished is to lull many of us into a false sense of security. (Much like meeting with the TSA at the airport.) That false sense has kept many of us from asking the hard questions and really thinking about the weaknesses of the whole setup... which, as we are seeing more and more clearly, is rotten to the stinking core.

Good. Thinking about it all is good, and so is talking about it.

Hiroshima was long time ago, that's not scary. When I think about what the US faces (screw Japan) if those 400 tons of fuel catch fire and start burning for years, I'm already scared. When I think about TEPCO trying to 'fix' that alone, I'm more scared. Rocky Flats and Hanford and a terrorist with two halves of a plutonium baseball are a joke by comparison.

Something better get us all scared soon, because there's nothing else scarier on the planet right now ... and few people in the US seem to realize that.