The passive system also depends on someone filling the water tank in the first place. What if they filled it but water leaked or evaporated? Imagine what would happen if they forget to connect pipes to the tank and inspectors forget to check for it. Obviously, nuclear power cannot be safe.

Perhaps someone who started using computers after OS/2 Warp and Windows 95 came around has a better idea of what a GUI working environment should look like compared to someone who have fond memories of ENIVAC? I am not that old but I can say with absolute certainity that my CP/M skills does not give me any edge in this discussion.

Not if the jug is at least 1 1/2 gallons and you drink it in a sufficiently short time (like an hour.) But tap water is only slightly less hazardous in that case.

The living standard of an average worker is primarily defined by his economic output. Considering there is limited amount of time in a week to do work, this economic output reflects the efficiency of the economic environment the worker is in. Unless you believe efficiency of an average worker is reduced if people live longer, there is no reason to think their life standards will be lower. In fact I think exactly the opposite will happen. Higher average education, higher average experience and less unskilled youngsters in the job market will increase average efficiency.

He might have longjmped without setjmped.

Essentially, you want a trollbait. Katz is a successful bait, we'd all bite.

There is no miracle, as the machine is about 20 times slower than a 286 according to KIPS value in hamster_nz's sibling post. It is not gener

I am not an astrophysicist but red-shift shifts all absorption lines in the same proportion while preferentially absorbing blue light would not have such an effect.

That is exactly the point. For long term survival we need technologies that allows us to survive i otherwise hostile environments. Human colonization of space is a great way to research and prove such technologies. if the whole human population on Earth is dead when a planet wide disaster strikes, it wouldn't matter much whether or not we have a dozen survivors in space but a space colony almost ensures that that will never happen.

Most materialists would accept mental states are distinct from brain states and that mental states are a different level of abstraction from brain activity. Think of a typical desktop computer. If you observe someone else use the computer and simultaneously observe the electrical activity of CPU (and rest of the hardware) at transistor level, you would have a hard time mapping the program function to CPU activity. It would be absurd to hold a dualist position over that hardship, to claim that since you can't tell which program is running and what it is doing from low level analysis of CPU activity, the execution is actually carried out by (or augmented by) something non-CPU (or non-physical.) The program really runs on the physical system, and there is one-to-one correspondence between physical states of the CPU, the software running (i.e. firefox) and state of software (i.e. waiting for /. to load) but understanding what a program does/is doing requires different levels of abstraction. This is actually functionalism but I don't know any hard-line materialists that says mental states are explained away by physical states. Functionalists would be comfortable with many-to-one correspondence of physical states to mental states, materialists may claim one-to-one correspondence, that is as far as the difference goes.

There used to be a very primitive way of enforcing blocking of sites: ttnet DNS's were not correctly resolving names. This lead to public aphaty on censorship issue, as anyone and their dog knew how to use alternate DNSes or if all else fails, TOR. The prime minister himself said "I can access the banned sites, you can too." The blocked site list (which must be constructed by internet users, as there is no transparency about the process at all) is absurdly long but most didn't care - they didn't even notice. Most sites are banned without a court order (not that those banned on court orders are more sensible) and on grounds of "obscenity" defined by middle aged religious conservative bureaucrat men. Now that the institutions, mechanisms and laws are in place, they are making the next step: trying to bypass filters becomes a crime. Moreover ISP passwords will be tied to RW ID, so you will use the same login if you are the same guy. No, thanks. Current situation is less than ideal, but the proposed one is a disaster.

I am not allowing other people to decide what I should *know.* Turkish culture does not value intellectual freedoms as much as westerners do and the government might be acting to people's will (IMHO they don't. Those do not have a problem with current internet censorship are basically not interested in the issue. There is a very small minority pushing for less freedom, a much bigger minority pushing for more freedom while the real majority does not care) but that is beside the point. I don't care if I am in the minority, even if I am just one guy, I am not letting the other people or the government to decide what information I have access to, especially since the said information is freely available to remaining parts of the world. The censorship is a violation of my rights, majority cannot take away my rights.

A great idea, having a numbers station for peanuts.

I don't think Middle East is upset about death of OBL at all. Muslims are not the most progressive bunch but few would consider flying planes into buildings to kill civilians as a honorable way of fighting, even those who consider fighting against USA is fighting for a good cause (and many don't). He was not liked and assassination is culturally more acceptable anyway.

Alfresco community edition is good enough. I have been using it for two years now and after initial hair loss, it is painless.