I suggest slashdotters are actually not pure geeks, but are really a hybrid geek/responsible-tech-manager entity and that the true geeks don't really show up here. Occasionally one will show up and geek away, but usually, not. Go to Adafruit and watch the geek videos to see a true geek tech environment.

That tech should be bought every six months. The truth in the real world is that once a system is put in place and works, it is kept for as long as it works. The USPS is using many sorting machines that are twenty years old and use ICs from the 70s-80s. Why? Because they work and they have been paid for many years ago. They do the job. At they same time, in the recent decade, the USPS bought and installed a billion dollars worth of flats sorting machinery. Keep what gets the job done. Buy new when the need changes.

They have to stay in the habitable zone. Many of those "in habitable zone" don't spend all their time in the habitable zone and thus their water freezes or boils.

Yes, busythink seems to consume this site at times.

And that very very few of them can support life.

The same RV measures that are used to find exoplanets would apply to our own planetary system. And the nonsensical "Dyson Sphere" would react how?

We seem to have accelerated evolution. I suspect that species that have changed little over millions of years probably have little to no cancer risk.

I doubt that the universe has Multiple Personality Disorder. We are the universe asking itself what it is. The universe has risen to self-awareness and we are it. I suspect there can only be one consciousness at a time and as one falls another rises. It is sequential, not parallel. Otherwise the universe would be mentally ill. And Multiple Personality Disorder is probably very rare in the realm of universes.

This is what you would expect from sub-genius judging genius.

You drive your new Tesla into a swap-station and they take your brand spanking new battery pack and give you the beat up grungy recharged battery pack of the guy before you?

All we really need to do is stop producing antibiotics and eliminate cancer treatments. You get the time you get and move on for others.

I remember a story I read long ago in which the poor HAD to live in mansions, drive expensive cars all day, play golf constantly, eat expensive food and generally run around all day wearing out the production of vast robot factories. They would return home at the end of the day exhausted from their "work." The rich lived in modest homes and had plenty of time for themselves. Are we headed there?

It is 12:02 pm. Do you know where all your music is, and what will play it?

People are starting to draw back from the overwhelming complexity in all things.

Unmotivated intelligence is just clever programming. Nature did not create intelligence; she created what I call "Mentis," which is a combination of a complex motivation array and the tool "intelligence" which creates the behavior-space to satisfy the motivation array. Some people think that "intelligent" machines will somehow spontaineously develop a motivation array as in Asimov's robot stories (which I read in youth and never felt were right). Nobody is studying motivation programming, not realizing it is something different from the tool it uses.