It wasn't sustenance hunting (at least not in the 19th century), but a mechanized industrialized hunting, processing and selling of passenger pigeons. Pretty much the same thing we are doing to the oceans. From Wikipedia "pigeon meat was commercialized as a cheap food for slaves and the poor in the 19th century, resulting in hunting on a massive and mechanized scale." ... "At a nesting site in Petoskey, Michigan in 1878, 50,000 birds were killed each day for nearly five months."

I think it would make more sense to simply create a more bird-friendly environment (ie more sustainable development, no hunting, allow for return of wild forested spaces) and if there is a role for a passenger pigeon-like bird it will eventually be occupied by an existing bird species and those with passenger pigeon-like traits will be the most successful.

The passenger pigeon was killed by
1) overhunting - presumably, we can stop that, but we are doing the same thing to fish right now - what reason do we have to believe we would not immediate overhunt pigeons back to extinction?
2) habitat loss - we haven't done anything to address this. If anything in the past 100 years we've made the problem worse. Development is both good and bad, but for preserving natural habitats, we have not really solved all problems (or arguably even prioritized) allowing development in a way which is sustainable in terms of natural resources and does not threaten wildlife habitats.

Could passenger pigeons start over "from ground zero"? If they could be in a lab, I am very skeptical that such populations would survive.

I imagine if Kang and Kodoss ate all the humans and reduced all human works to rubble and poisone, then genetically engineered a bunch of humans and left them on the planet and said "go repopulate". It just would not work.

Birds are intelligent animals, require long developmental periods (with care of their already-able parents) and form complex social networks that allow them to thrive in adverse conditions. http://rstb.royalsocietypublis... Passenger pigeons would migrate 1000s of miles depending on weather patterns, and used decision-making processes we have yet to understand.

Net Neutrality is not about regulating the Internet. It's about preserving free speech on the Internet. This is what Aaron Swartz fought for, and you should too.

Where I live there are 2 broadband providers, COMCAST (cable) and VERIZON (fios). Every other place I have lived there was only one option.

Right now it would be perfectly legal for either of them to trash my traffic to comcastsucks.blogspot.com or other sites and there's very little I can do about it (well I often tunnel through a VPS provider and my download speeds for a lot of content goes up dramatically, but I have to pay extra for that, and luckily comcast is not yet throttling SSH or OpenVPN!). As far as innovation, the only thing they innovate is ways to annoy me with every changing rates, arrays of stupid unwanted services and marketing calls. Currently they (Comcast) wants to raise the rate for my broadband only (no tv) from 48 monthly to 65. However if I get a cable box and subscribe for TV services it will be 49/month for a year. I don't own a TV, but I have to get a cable box and have it sit in my closet for the cheaper rate. It's obscenely stupid, but that's comcast for you. I have no doubt that this change will double or triple the amount of junk mail they send me.

What would be wonderful is if there were other ISPs that could compete with Comcast and verizon using the same wires. What would also be wonderful would be if ISPs were required to respect 1st amendment, you know to promise not to quash freedom of speech. Less important to me, but probably pretty important would be to require ISPs to not abuse their position to try to lock users into or out of one video service (like Netflix) or another.

massachussetts not masschussets. I'm not from that edcated state ;-)

Agreed, there are huge societal and infrastructure differences between Masschussets and Missisippi. Mass might be one of the the most educated states in the union. Mississippi is not.

So what you are saying is that NVIDIA and ATI don't release closed source binary-only drivers? I wonder what this whole tainted kernel thing is about then?

I wrote a FUSE driver for a toy fs in Linux a VFS driver to do the same thing in kernel-space, and it's funny, I don't remember getting cooperation "from the " whole "Linux kernel team". Apparently Basil Brush and hairyfeet are involved in anti-Linux FUD.

Is apparently heavily involved with this company: https://www.google.com/finance...

He is a regular speaker at HOPE, and tries to stay involved with open source and hacker communities, and is a looney tune. It's gotten to the point where people who attend his talks play "the Robert Steele drinking game" and have to drink whenever he makes ludicrous unsupportable claims.

I can envision a brave new future with me dealing with their support system after waiting on phone for 30 minutes trying to explain that bittorrenting knoppix is not illegal. Sigh :(

Consider from their point of view with MPAA, RIAA and other trolls constantly harassing them. They cannot police their users. They often turn over lists of IP addresses and customers.

This would allow ISPs to turn over traffic inspection, enforcement, and resolution, and let someone else deal with the headache.

I can see large ISPs having teams to deal with these issues, but small ISPs having their hands forced :(

So if I lend my car to someone who has a valid driver's license, and a note from the doctor, but unbeknownst to me, they stopped taking their psychiatric medication, Then while I am sleeping, they run over 12 people, am I responsible for the murders?

I guess as a white male you can say that stuff and not be racist, but as a non-white male I cannot.

Opposing reverse racism does not mean that affirmative action is wrong. Accepting the premise of reverse racism means accepting that there is in fact a dominant racial group. Referring to people in this group as "whitey" and "crackers" is bigotry and inappropriate.

I say reverse racism is less damaging, because the dominant racial group is already protected (has better jobs, more money, better access to legal and health services). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...

Affirmative action on the other hand is a great attempt at equalizing racial disparities. It is not a perfect solution, but they are effective at getting people more fair access to jobs/education and other means of self-improvement. The devil is in the implementation. For instance if two candidates, one in the dominant group, one in the marginalized group are vying for the same position, the one with the obviously better skillset, experience/other qualifications should be chosen. However if it is not clear who is more qualified, then some weight can and should be given to affirmative action. This isn't about putting unqualified people in jobs because of their race, but recognizing the uphill battle that people who are not in the dominant groups face.

I ended up doing the job for the guy who was hired. He failed miserably and was fired (after years). He was eventually replaced by another UNIX-saavy guy who left the University around the same time I did.

The Solaris admin guy was a friend of mine who had dropped out of the CS program because he needed income, but sincerely wanted to come back as an employee and continue school part time. He probably would have left after he got his degree (if underpaid).

If the decision to hire mediocre but retain people was made, the other two candidates (who were ruled technically unfit) should have been given fair consideration.

I've worked in a state University and perceived serious discrimination in the hiring practices. While it wasn't necessarily widespread there were individuals who were hired that were less qualified because they fit a certain cultural acceptability perspective.

For a Solaris admin job, a guy with long hair who was certified as a Solaris admin and loved Linux and was working on his CS degree at said University, was not hired while someone who had no experience with Solaris or any UNIX-like OS, but was a conventional looking white guy in a suit and had general IT support experience got the job. Both wore a suit to the interview, but the guy who looked a little weirder was way more qualified and enthusiastic about the job. However, a decision to hire a less qualified candidate was made (not by me)

Race wasn't an issue because both candidates were white. An older white gentleman and a young asian woman were also interviewed but were also unqualified (although not any less qualified than the guy who got the job)

It's called reverse racism, and it is bigotry. It is damaging, and it should not be acceptable. However on a scale of damage, it's less damaging than regular racism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

  “The cry of the poor is is not always just, but if you don't listen to it, you will never know what justice is.”

  Howard Zinn