If someone is producing a modpack with 100+ mods and not giving you instructions on how to make MC use more memory, then they are an asshat. Now go forth and google for how to make MC use more memory with your 64 bit Java.

If you're worried about that, you can firewall off all non-IPSEC traffic... and still enjoy WiFi

You do realize that this is completely besides the point, right? The question was whether the US had anything to do with the problem in Iran, and the answer is yes, yes it did. Even if everyone involved in that decision is dead, we still have to live with the consequences today. I should not have to explain this to you.

Well, I didn't mean to imply that it was difficult, just that it's slightly less available. What's being pushed in people's faces is not Windows 7.

There are pretty good reasons for believing that a key to the improved environment on Earth will be the migration of many processes off the planet. I'm not a particular fan of Space Solar Power, but it's definitely in the running. According to experts in the field, SSP could eliminate all of the power plants on Earth (both fire-based and nuclear) and provide easy cheap power everywhere for less. (IMHO it would be cheaper in the short run to just build big solar facilities in the Sahara, 30 feet off the ground. This would generate plenty of power and provide a new resource underneath - shade where things could be grown.)

As someone who is involved (peripherally) in the "New Space" movement, IMHO the first purpose of space development will be the availability of new resources and technologies. An economist a couple of years ago predicted that space development would have the potential to increase the standard of living of everyone on Earth by a factor of 10. That seems optimistic to me, but a reasonable goal. One popular example (see Planetary Resources, Inc.) regards the availability of Platinum, which is a very useful industrial metal, but is unfortunately $1300 per ounce. Platinum mining is expensive, dangerous, and disastrous both ecologically and socially. This greatly restricts is usefulness although it is used in those expensive catalytic converters in your car - that's why they're expensive. The best astronomical physicists believe that some of the Near Earth Asteroids contain single-digit percentages of Platinum. If this is true, then a 100 meter asteroid would contain a dozen times as much Platinum as has ever been mined. Retrieving this material to Earth could drop the price to between $10 and $100 per ounce, and this would still be economically viable for the company to process in space and ship it down to Earth.

There are many other examples. Technologically, the range of industrial processes that are presently either expensive or impossible on Earth due to gravity and air, that could be done in the high vacuum and microgravity of space is broad but it is likely that an order of magnitude more new processes that have not even been envisioned yet will be discovered or invented. Orbital production of high quality integrated circuits might well be one - one of the most expensive aspects of IC manufacturing is the requirement to build a huge facility and maintain a high level clean room environment. In space that could be done with not much more than a bit of Mylar.

I expect those who grow up in space, or in a colony, to be habitually _very careful_. This puts 'kidproofing' at a whole new level.

Just fyi, an MSR can be built small enough (both weight and dimensions) to be driven around in a pickup truck.

Well the nice thing is that there would be plenty of open space. I'm not sure why one-inch steel - steel doesn't seem to be an ideal material for this. I don't know what the effects of all that sulfide would have on carbon, but if it can be made resistant I would think seriously about starting small with a probe that can produce a carbon-based skin and build a bigger balloon for itself.

Just to be clear - size is not largely irrelevant. The whole key to buoyancy is that the volume of a sphere goes up as the cube of the diameter while the surface area goes up as the square - for a non-sphere it's based on the three linear dimensions of course. So a very small craft can barely carry the skin, while a large one can carry much more in addition to the skin. There are other factors, but that's the primary one.

For example, a one-foot box made with one inch steel would not float well.

I recall not that many years ago when the prospect of a teraflop processor was science fiction. That was about 1992. A year or two before that I worked on some photometrically-correct ray tracing code, porting it to the Cray X/MP. That code took a month to make one 1024x1024 frame on the top-end Apollo workstation, and a few minutes to run on the Cray. It could probably run at close to 30Hz on my phone today, and today's supercomputers are in the 30+ petaflop range, i.e. 3x10^16.

So we're getting close - theoretically, if all of the top 100 supercomputers got together, the group performance would be in the 10^19 range. :) Actually that's not a bad idea - the powers that be could work a deal for all of them to work together for one week per year on the same problem, and the research time could be allocated the way that telescope time is allocated according to accepted/agreed value of a particular project.

I had an idea a while back, that actually relates to TFA. Genetically engineered bacteria or simple organisms that could float and live in the Venusian atmosphere and gradually begin to 'fix' the sulfides and whatever - maybe pooping out metallic sulfur. For the first long while, they would be working at the top of the atmosphere. Their poop would drift down and re-vaporize (absorbing energy and lowering the temperature). When they died, they would drift down into deeper layers and get to the point where their bodies would be heated back up to the point where the materials would be turned back into gas. But as they became more populous, gradually they would reduce the amount of solar energy (especially if their bodies were reflective), and the temperature. Eventually the might be able to reduce the temperature to the point where their poop, or that of their successors, would fall to the surface, permanently eliminating the sulfides from the air.

That's the thing; they aren't so insensitive to it. You have the hardback, then the paperback, then they hit the discount racks, used bookstores, etc...

What's amazing is that it's the e-books that are so insensitive to this.

And going by what Baen's released for their policies, it's the distributors such as Apple and Amazon that are pushing not only this, but DRM and such.

True, but given that I wait for said massive sales actually means that I end up paying LESS for my games(on average), than the difference between buying a game new and then selling it to a store like gamestop, and as a bonus I get to keep my game!

So I'd argue that it's not worth that much less, and I still remember reading an article where the author argued that the resale market for games, especially server-dependent online ones, actually drives the price for games UP, and that the continuing profit TO the studio from steam-style sales provides incentive to keep improving the game. His arguments were quite well reasoned, even if I didn't agree with all of them.

Of course, this is getting away from e-book sale prices a bit. You don't normally expect to see revisions to a published book, even though such would be possible with a e-book, and such may not be welcome. "Han shot first!" type stuff.

It's in the context of it being a 'not quite a new release'. Depending on the books I've bought used, they've often been under a buck.

Still, yeah, the price should decline.