By the time off-world colonies are viable, pollution on Earth will be a non-issue, because the exact same technology needed to sustain an offworld colony is the technology that would allow us to clean and recycle absolutely everything here on Earth. Because that's exactly what you need for a self-sustaining offworld colony: recycled everything. On Earth, we're lucky enough to have a natural biosphere that gives us tons of recycling capacity for free: just dump wastewaster and CO2 and feces into the wilderness and, like a miracle, fresh air blows back, clean water falls from the sky, and food grows out of what was once someone's shit. Up to a certain capacity at least. If we can't even manage to recycle the excess of ours that that massive free hand up nature gives us can't handle, then we're nowhere close to being able to settle offworld where we have to do all of that work ourselves.

Like you say, Antarctica or the desert or, hell, the ocean floor, would all be a cakewalk compared to anywhere off Earth.

There is good reason to settle offworld when we can (not keeping all our eggs in one basket), but until we're capable of even settling all of the comparably idyllic places on our own planet that aren't "worth settling" at the current difficulty levels, then we don't stand a chance of settling anywhere offworld.

It's not floating by hull displacement like a boat does. It's not pushing out the higher-density lower atmosphere and letting the lower-dentity higher atmosphere fill in; that wouldn't even make sense, we're talking about a continual gradient of gasses, there is no liquid surface to float on. You just fill it with Earth-sea-level-density gasses, which are less dense than much of Venus' atmosphere, and then let it float where it floats, which will be up around the range of where those same gasses exist on Venus. The weight of the hull will drag it down some, but size is largely irrelevant to that. The weight of the hull is like the weight of the rubber in a balloon. How big you inflate the balloon isn't really important; the fact that it's filled with helium and thus lighter than sea-level air is what matters.

Yeah, the similarity of figures between the two did strike me as suspicious.

One year is as arbitrary as three. And you admit that spending some time with the child when they are young is a good thing so what really is your problem with maternity leave? Just because it isn't the amount you are accustomed to doesn't mean it is wrong.

I think spending time with the child at home over the first years is GREAT and I think the lack of this in todays society has lessened the quality of kids today over yesteryear (with respect to manners and the parental participation in the educational process, etc).

However, I don't believe it should be up to other to PAY for this. If you're gonna have kids, well, then PLAN and be fiscally ready before you pull the old rubber off or quit taking the pill. Be ready to sacrifice, and not live on the ideal standard with nice shiny cars and electronic toys.

It is your kid, plan before you fuck and have one.

Is there something wrong with wanting a rewarding career that you're passionate about?

Nope...but the reality is, most people do NOT have the luxury of having the time and resources to find the perfect job they love in order to work and make a living.

I guess it does help to attain that if you have a man supporting you till you find the one job you love, but that's mostly a luxury for women....but even that has its limitations with 3 mouths to feed and one new one to save for to educate later in life.

Those of us having children are the only ones helping you have all the social welfare programs (pensions and Social Security, etc.)

Social Security...are you serious?

I have paid into that damned system all my life, and would have loved early on to have been able to take that money and invest it myself, rather than the Feds. But here we are now, and by the time I get to retirement age, it likely won't be around, or it will be so severely crippled with new regulations and moving the retirement age, I'll likely never see a meaningful fraction of what I put into it.

And by listening to the millineals (sp?) today they don't seem to want to respect the system put in place, and don't feel they owe anything to the previous generation, and hell...whine that life is tough (entitlement mentality), and they aren't coming out of school making $50K a year, etc. So, no, they don't want to pay into the system, and with the debt the Feds have rolled up these past two presidents....the SS system will go tits up long before I'll get anything out of it.

I"m scrambling now to sock back every cent I possibly can to take care of my own self in my older years. I won't have a wealthy retirement of traveling and golf, but I'm making damned sure I'll have a roof over my head I can call my own, and no debt. The trick is in timing having a good, reliable car that is paid off that will likely last me through the retirement years.

But no..I have no faith in your progeny to uphold the social safety nets or obligations to the elders of society at all.

What is a pension by the way? I thought that term disappeared in the 50's.

First of all....3 YEARS of maternity leave?!?!? What...was the kid a difficult birth, or have problems? Seriously, maternity leave is like a year, more than that is taking time to spend with a kid as a stay at home mother (which is a good thing generally), but wow...that term really is more than should be applied here.

That being said...who is pushing for her to get back in the workforce...her or you?

Once you answer that question...well, it should be up to her where she wants to work and doing what. IT may be a good way to go, but only if that's what she wants to do. There are other interests, and certainly these days...other forms of employment that are more lucrative than just being a code monkey again.

Newegg only has OEM copies.

And your problem with this is what exactly.....?

What is this?

"One Court to Rule them ALL?"

And here we were thinking the Supreme Court was maybe throwing a bit too much weight around making laws up.

I guess SCOTUS is just not secret enough, and FISA is.....

I'd imagine it's also because the Kaspersky guys spend much less time than Krebs trying to dox various malware authors and so on. The real life identities of those people are just much less relevant. So if a journalist comes and starts asking questions about various people who "anyone in the business should know" etc, and if your job is just analyzing malware all day but you don't much care about the real names of the people who make it, then you might come across as evasive when really they're just thinking, "that accusation might be kind of weak, but I don't know for sure either way, best to stay out of it". Especially if you'd rather not appear in print with your name next to the real name of a bad guy.

The Kaspersky question was kind of dumb anyway. Let's imagine that they have some sort of shadowy deal with Russian intelligence to avoid flagging their IC malware. I doubt it, but let's pretend they do.

What are you gonna do about it? Kaspersky is the best at what they do, and they've blown the covers of way more government malware than any other company out there, period. If you say, gosh, I don't trust those awful Ruskies, what if I get hacked by the Kremlin, I'm gonna go with a True Blue American Patriot AV company ..... then all you're doing is siding with a team that not only hasn't revealed NSA malware, but generally, hasn't revealed any government operations at all. Does not seem like a win. Especially because the Russian government is about 1% as scary as the ridiculous Western propaganda would have us believe.

The local big box store has a receptacle for toner cartridges. Hit Best Buy, chuck them in there, call it done, the end.

I had a lot of toner cartridges as well, but no use in keeping them. They are not going to appreciate in value, and as time goes on, that toner cartridge format will be used by fewer printers, so might as well dispose of them properly (and properly isn't the trash can.)

I'd likely waste more $$ on gas packing up and driving to a Best Buy to drop off a single cartridge, than would be saved by recycling.

And as other posters say..what guarantee is it that BB is recycling them in some fashion?

Some things are trash, and crap like this isn't worth my time to drive all over town trying to find a specialized bin to toss it in. I'm not going to keep 3-4 different trash cans taking up limited room in my kitchen to sort shit out, why would I drive all over town to throw out one toner cartridge.

My taxes/fees pay for garbagemen to pick crap up and haul it off. Why not use them for what they are there for?

Ugh..it is trash.

Throw it away, let the garbagemen earn their pay and haul it away for you.

Yeah, people just don't know about them because they are embedded products. There's a lot of routers that use MIPS chips. Intel/AMD x86(64) and ARM are so well known because the chip is one of the bullet points on the marketing materials such as desktops, laptops, phones, and tablets. MIPS chips are put into devices where the processor isn't used as a marketing point. That's not to say it's a bad chip, just stating the way it is.

The vast majority of slashdot users are not americans, the editors know and don't care.

Where did you get that?

Slashdot has always been a US centric site.

If you do the leading edges and windscreen with furniture polish (people swear by Lemon Pledge, I use Mr Sheen because Pledge doesn't seem to be sold locally) the bug guts wipe off very easily (and I suspect many just don't stick but I've not done a scientific test of this).

Take an awful lot of Pledge to do an airliner leading edge, though.