Ahem. Boo-Fucking-Hoo. My heart is simply rent asunder by my grief for large corporations.

They snatched the property from its owner, extracted economic rent (if you don't know what "economic rent" is, look it up) using it for decades, and now they might have to return control to the creators descendants? What a fucking crying shame.

Where the fuck does this conception that, of all things, contracts must be absolutely fucking sacrosanct come from? Heaven forbid that someone be able to get out from under and abusive and exploitative contract! That'd be the end of society as we know it!

Yeah, that it.

It nothing to do with DDT being a known Carcinogen, Neurotoxic, an abortifacient, terratogenic and an Endocrine disruptor in humans. Not a damn thing.

Why, yes, yes it does.

In order for it to work, it requires a concerted effort. It would be perfectly acceptable, if for example, several years of supplies had been stockpiled at the landing site in advance, in addition the plan would be for the first arrivals to work on creating the infrastructure to support successive waves of people making the one way trip. Once you get enough gear, and enough people (labor) there, its possible to the colony to start being not only self sustaining, but self expanding.

I think you're also overstating how "rich" the "New World" was for the first waves of colonists. Due to a lack of knowledge, plenty of them starved to death. We have the advantage of enormously greater technology. We can be extremely confidant that starvation won't be a risk.

Granted, there's a big "What if?" there, that IMO is fairly critical to start exploring. We know that people don't handle effective zero-gravity very well for prolonged periods, but we have no data at all on the effects of prolonged exposure to gravity much greater than 0G but noticeably less than 1G. How about reproduction in that environment? Again, we have no idea. That's another task the first colonist(s) should be tasked with: animal studies of reproduction in reduced gravity. If mice and rats can handle it just fine, then full speed ahead! We could have native born martian-humans within a few decades.

Oh and this crudely photoshopped image is better? After all, nothing says "We Care" like 5 seconds of photo manipulation. Even in the most favorable interpretation, this image indicates whoever made the decision didn't give a shit enough to actually use an appropriate photo for the ad.

At the very least, this sort of thing is in remarkably poor taste. Its done in a very unprofessional way, which IMO sends the wrong signals and reinforces a perception of racism. Had they actually substituted in a real picture which had only whites, instead of just "hiding the Black Guy" it would be far less obvious that was the intent. Instead they've crudely modified a picture in such a way that its clear their intention WAS to "hide the black guy."

It definitely reveals racism somewhere, and Microsoft's (Poland Office?) concern about appeasing it, if not acting on internal racism.

Seriously. Its a professionally dressed dark skinned man. Is that so offensive to delicate Polish sensibilities? Why? Even if there's not a single dark skinned man in all of Poland, why should it be a problem?

If you'd care to offer one, I'd like to hear your explanation for modifying a picture to remove a depiction of a person of a specific ethnicity that doesn't fundamentally boil down to racism.

You seem quite behind. Not only have they dumped the "Spawn" feature, they've dumped LAN play as well. They announced it months ago. It's all Battle.net now.

I think you're confusing Ireland and Scotland.

Find me a case anywhere in the the first world where any of that has ever happened.

You also clearly have no idea what it means when hospitals refuse treatment based on inability to pay. Have fun dying unconscious in the ER because you were in an accident and no-one knows who you are or where your insurance card is.

Or are you planning on getting yourself chipped with credit rating and insurance info? Is that the free conservative utopia you imagine? A society in which the EMTs first action is to scan a potential patient for their income and social status?

Or we'd have to do something at least as difficult as adding an atmosphere to Mars, slam asteroids into Venus in exactly the right way to speed up its rotation. FYI, a martian day is already quite close in length to an Earth day.

The whole completely replacing the crust every half billion years that theorized to happen on Venus is a bit of an inconvenience as well.

You know, there's a really profound point there. Whenever someone starts to make an argument about how the market, through the rational behavior of consumers will correct abusive behavior by corporations, they should be forced to work Customer Service/Support lines for 8 hours.

THEN, they can come back and tell us about how well the system works. If they can manage not to choke on their bullshit then, I would be amazed.

Wait, so Ghostbusters is the new Matlock?

See there's a critical distinction there that you're missing (possibly intentionally). Liberals did not want the USA to lose, we believed the USA was likely to, and for that reason pursuing it was a bad policy.

The recent dramatic increase in violence in Iraq should serve as an ominous sign we may very well be proven correct.

Whether you want to acknowledged it or not, there is a real difference between the liberal fear (circa 2000) that George Bush would pursue policies that would prove disastrous to the United States, and the current behavior of the Right, cheering for Democrats to fail so they can regain power.

Correction: Most criminals that are known, aren't known for their foresight or intelligence.

*choke* *spew* *hack*

Bullshit. Just bullshit. Supports not there. And the integration isn't either.

I'm typing this on a Mac, but seriously how can you even claim that when every time Apple releases a new model, there's some (perhaps very large) portion of their existing base that gets screwed over and hung out to dry. Examples? Want to use one of the new machines with that super expensive Apple display you bought just 6 months ago? Sorry, the converters aren't out yet, or even worse they are, and they don't work. This shit has been going on forever, and Apple's track record about addressing it in a way that takes care of their customers is absolutely abysmal. That's why its standard advice to never buy a "Revision A." Apple product (And especially never at launch! You may be able to get away with it six months later, after all the suckers have found out what's going to be broken).

The OS is fantastic, but the hardware is hit or miss, and the support is fucking horrible.

That's completely unworkable. For one, SSDs are at least an order of magnitude too slow, and two, while the number of read/write cycles for DRAM is effectively unlimited, the number of Read/Write cycles for even SLC flash is not.

The ability of wear leveling currently to keep a Flash drive functional when used as Swap space is just barely there, use the flash as main memory and there is no hope. You'll constantly be killing cells.