It's not that I like Ubuntu's moves to act more like Apple, or that I think that it's the best engineered, but Unity with the CompizConfig Settings Manager provide the look and feel and the configurability that I like. Changing up the keyboard bindings is the most significant. I say that having spent significant time on Gnome 2.x, KDE 3, Windowmaker in times long ago, and sampled the others along the way.

That said, the number one thing that I want is a consistent standard for custom keystrokes. That's simply necessary where people come from diverse backgrounds onto a platform like this; some have muscle memory for Mac, others for Windows, others something else, and maybe in the course of a day we're hopping amongst these platforms. Please, set a configurable single standard. I shouldn't have to redefine the key to switch a tab or fullscreen a window separately for Qt/GTK/individual apps or find it impossible to do so.

Until then, the Compiz grid extension with Unity is giving me more of what I want than the others.

CTRL-S still suspends scrolling on my terminal now just like it did in 1997 on Slackware. What nonsensical software is the author using?

A fork of OpenSSL which is stripping out support for VMS, Win16, and other ancient platforms by the *OpenBSD* group is making a bug more likely? It's supposed to make another Heartbleed twice as likely? This guy is completely full of shit. He has no idea what coding is, he just wants to hear himself talk. Give me 8:32 back!

It's almost like those cable and data monopolies stocked the government with their people so that the government would work for them and not the citizenry.

You know, like they talk about with that fancy "regulatory capture" thing.

That would be one interesting outcome - but in order to replicate, the bacteria needs these proteins that it won't get in nature. Take it outside the lab, and it won't last long. That has intriguing implications.

I would say that the tsunami that would result from an ocean impact would be broadly devastating, and damage a large number of dense urban areas. How much of the ocean's surface area is a serious risk, would you say?

But every bit of water we've got has been dinosaur piss and shit at some point.

I've been running Linux on my desktop more than any other OS since 1998, and only sometimes do I set up dual booting. Usually Wine or VMs are enough compatibility, and I would rather code on a Linux machine than Mac or Windows anyday.

It does matter, though, where life starts and evolution takes it. Life is unlikely to emerge initially from the conditions most hostile to it, but given enough of an incubator, it can get started and incrementally evolve through natural selection to survive wherever there is something to feed it. Given that, Viol8 could be right. The energy and nutrient input isn't immediately obvious. ...Unless the tidal motion supplies energy, and organic compounds are widely spread throughout the universe and are present in the materials the solar system was formed from.

I think marriage is medieval property-transferring bullshit, but I really don't agree with anyone who thinks only straight couples should be allowed a screw-up.

However, the NSA is already spying on everyone, so I think you'd be stupid to write off the leading open-source browser for a machine with anything of importance on it. Choose some goddamn battles! I'm going to put basic privacy from abusive power higher on my list.

Which country is crazier, the one defending its own bounds or the one going half-way around the world to attack it?

That's exactly why you should research this. A definitive aspect of aquaponics is that it includes a combination of nitrosomonas and nitrobacter bacteria which successfully convert ammonia and nitrites into nitrates which the plants consume. This means that the system takes a bit of time to ramp up to bring the fish, bacteria, and plants into balance, but once it is going, it is very low maintenance. There's a significant difference between this and the typical aquarium.

This kind of closed loop is definitely going to shake up agriculture in some form, not only because of its much smaller water consumption and higher density, but because the current state of agriculture is extremely oil-dependent for both its machinery and its fertilizer and pesticide production. Reducing that dependency is going to matter a great deal.

Everyone assumes similarity to themselves and their lives.

This is why rich people look at poor people and don't see how poor people live, but how absolutely lazy or irresponsible someone who grew up rich would have to be to wind up in those straits. They cannot assess the huge differences in opportunity, education, social connection, or positive expectation. They can't imagine seeing the world from a place of limited opportunity. Even the best-hearted of them can take a "poor vacation" and try to live the subsistence life, but growing up feeling you can't just walk away from that is one of the biggest aspects.

So what to Eric is expensive college tuition is ridiculously impossible for many others, especially considering that jobs aren't even available to that many college graduates anymore.

Higher education has been made the tool of class stratification. You're lucky to be born with the funds to have the odds on your side. And even if you give education all you've got, heaven help you if you're one of those who doesn't have health care coverage - recent changes being a bit late for those I know who tried to bootstrap when college was all they could afford.

The part of this story that the Slashdot audience could most easily get in on is aquaponics, which is producing huge yields in some cases and holds a lot of promise for the local food movement.

Aquaponics is a system you can use indoors or outdoors, on large or small scales. It is a closed loop wherein ponds full of fish, usually tilapia, have their water pumped through hydroponic grow beds full of food-growing plants. The all-important third ingredient is a bacteria which converts the ammonia of the fish waste into nitrates which nourish the plants. The water goes back to the fish clean and livable. Once the bacteria are established and in balance to keep this conversion going, the only investment this needs are the energy to keep the pumps going, stable temperatures, and fish food.

Because the density of available nutrients is quite high, the plants can be so too. Their roots mostly just need to grow straight down, so typical planting distances don't apply. The fish too get a cleaner environment, and the usual equations for how many fish per gallon of water can be exceeded. A stabilized, intelligently planted aquaponics system can grow a lot of food - this site (http://portablefarms.com/2013/part-one-sizing-your-aquaponics-system/) claims that 25 to 30 square feet of grow bed is enough to completely meet one adult's supply for table vegetables, and given that you keep the water quality high, the tilapia will make for very tasty protein too.

Because the water is in a closed loop system, very little of it is lost, and aquaponics is radically less demanding of water than traditional agriculture. Because you can grow this stuff indoors, chemical pesticides are neither needed nor desirable, for your sake and the fishes'.

Leafy green plants are the easiest to grow in this way, root vegetables some of the hardest. Tweaks on this system do keep expanding the options, however, like microgreens, wherein you harvest plants in the first two weeks after they've sprouted for a nutrient density four to forty times that of typical mature vegetables. So the question is, how could we make this the most easy thing to get started, so that people with little experience and limited time can skip the refrigerator and east straight from their greenhouse?

Done rightly, this system can shake up food supply as surely as 3D printers are going to shake up industry.

Actually there are a lot of ways that they could make this happen. Vertical farming, interplanting, and aquaponics all are producing very high yields. They can be more labor-intensive, but there's a lot of pay-off in having a local, resilient food system.

This place, for example, is growing a million pounds of food per year on two acres, even through the winter: http://growingpower.org/