Dammit, I can't edit my posts. Slashdot, fix your stupid comment system.

$.35 per cubic meter, not gallon. I'm an idiot. That would work out to 264 gallons for $.35. A bargain.

> Desalination from seawater costs about 8.5 kWH / m^3 {fixed}

At rates I pay (Illinois), that works out to be around $.35 per gallon. What's the problem? Charge farmers appropriately for what they use and everything will magically work, as they cut their production and raise their prices to a new equilibrium.

But there was a Tofudebeest...

If that's windows support, linux support is as follows:

Check /var/log messages for errors. Find cryptic bizarro language pointing to some subsystem you've never heard of. Craft messages as follows and post to Slashdot:

"Linux is terrible! I'm going back to Windows! I can't even get function XYZ to work! Every time I try, error message $ERR shows up in my /var/log/messages!"

Wait one hour before you get a response as follows:

"You moron, All you have to do to get that to go away is edit $CONFIG_FILE and restart $DAEMON! Windows sucks!"

Problem solved.

How is that different from the standard IBM business model?

Combine that with this guy's work and you'll have something.

See, I have the opposite view. I like to have all my movements recorded and tracked so if I get falsely accused of something, I have an alibi I can reference.

"No, Detective, I was not in that alley when Joe Blow was killed. I was at Starbucks getting a latte. Here's my credit card record to prove it."

I've had Google Wallet on my Nexus 4 since 2012. I used it for like a month, until the novelty wore off. It's just plain easier to open my wallet, grab a credit card, and swipe it through the reader than it is to get out my phone, unlock, find the wallet app, unlock fumble with the NFC scanner that doesn't always work, hope I have a decent server connection, and etc. I found that 7 out of 10 times I tried to use it, I wound up putting my phone away and digging out my wallet just to avoid pissing off all the other people in line behind me.

THIS.

How many Chinese spies are embedded with major multinationals?

Stuff like this happens all over the world, from every country. Everybody spies on each other.

Yeah, 10 years from now...

I hope you're wrong, but you make a good argument.

I guess we'll see what happens when they unveil their latest progress next month.

SteamOS is still under active development and works quite well. I anticipate we'll see some dedicated hardware halfway through 2015.

You can roll your own Steam Box today if you like. I ran it dual-boot on my gaming PC for a little while, but I got rid of it in favor of Slackware and a Steam on Linux installation.

Yeah, I don't see this project moving forward. For one, Russia is broke. Their economy is in tatters. For two, I don't see the Japanese or Europeans siding with the Russians on much of anything; there's too much bad blood there. The Russians have burned just about every diplomatic bridge they have right now - they're stuck being buddies with thugs and failed states because nobody else will return Putin's phone call.

Habitable does not necessarily mean earthlike. Just getting it to the point of having floating colonies, actively working on fixing the planet - of putting up sun shields over the planet to even start cooling, getting cheap, efficient interplanetary transportation - all of that will take hundreds of years. Turning it into a place we can walk around on the ground would take a lot longer.