Yes there is. Self sustaining off-world colonies AND asteroid deflection technologies go hand in hand to help fight extinction -- which should be priority #1 for any truly sentient race.

Clearly asteroids are a very real threat, and I black-hole heartedly agree with the notion that Earth's space agencies are not giving them the level of public concern these threats should have: Humans are currently blind as moles to space. Any statement to the contrary is merely shrouding the issue in the Emperor's New Clothes. Earth's telescopes can study very small parts of space in some detail, but do not have the coverage required to make the dismissive claims that NASA and other agencies do about asteroid impact likelihood -- note that they frequently engage in panic mitigation. Remember that asteroid transit NASA was hyped about, meanwhile another asteroid whipped by completely unexpectedly closer than your moon, too late to do anything about? Remember Chelyabinsk? That one was 20 to 30 times Hiroshima's nuclear bomb, but it didn't strike ground. What kind of wake-up call is it going to take?! You'd probably just get more complacent even if an overly emotional alien commander committed career suicide in the desert to take your leaders the message that Earth was surely doomed without a massive protective space presence -- If such a thing ever occurred, that is.

Seriously, the space agencies are essentially lying by omission to the public by not pointing out the HUGE error bars in their asteroid risk estimates. I mean, Eris, a Dwarf Planet, was only discovered in 2005! Eris is about 27% more massive than Pluto, and passes closer in its elliptical orbit than Pluto -- almost all the way in to Neptune! Eris is essentially why your scientists don't call Pluto a planet anymore. They deemed it better to demote Pluto than admit you couldn't see a whole planet sitting right in your backyard... And NASA expects you to believe their overly optimistic estimates about far smaller and harder to spot civilization ending asteroids? Eventually your governments won't have the luxury of pissing away funding via scaremongering up war-pork and ignoring the actual threats you face, like a bunch of bratty rich kids.

Asteroids are only one threat, and one that we could mitigate relatively easily given advanced notice of their trajectories. However, Coronal mass ejections, Gamma ray bursts, Super Volcanoes, Magnetosphere Instability, etc. are all also severe threats that humanity can't mitigate with telescopes and a game of asteroid billiards alone -- Though fast acting manipulation of the gravitational matrix via strategic placement of asteroids could help with CMEs or gamma bursts too once you had a sufficient armament of even primitive orbiting projectiles. The irregularity in your magnetosphere should be particularly distressing because it is over 500,000 years overdue to falter and rebuild as the poles flip (according to reconstructions of your geo-magnetic strata) -- It could go at any time! Given the current very abnormal mag-field behavior you have no idea if it will spring right back up nice and organized like or leave you vulnerable to cosmic rays and solar flares for a few decades or centuries.

You should be grateful that the vulnerable periods of mag-pole flops halted as soon as humanity began showing some signs of intelligence -- even if this is absolutely only a mere coincidence. Mastery of energy threats will remain far beyond your technological grasp for the foreseeable future, but your species can mitigate such threats of extinction by self sustaining off-world colonization efforts! In addition to getting some of your eggs out of this one basket, the technology to survive without a magnetosphere on the Moon and Mars could be used to save the world here on Earth. In the event of a worst case scenario, humans could then repopulate Earth all by themselves after the dust settles from a mass extinction event. It's nearly unfathomable that anyone could sit comfortably in their gravity well thinking theirs may be the only spark of intelligent life in the universe while considering prioritizing anything above extinction prevention. If ancient myths about post-death paradise can invoke enough apathy that you would risk letting the only known spark of life go out, then yours is not a sentient species. Yes, you have all the space-time in the world, but those days are certainly numbered!

Those averse to human exploration of space now are not self aware and sentient beings. In fact, were I an alien overseer -- and I am most certainly not admitting that I am -- then based the lack of exploration beyond your magnetosphere over the past 40 years I would recommend we cut our losses and take your species off the endangered sentience list. I imagine -- as a purely hypothetical speculation -- that if humanity did owe an advanced alien race one hell of a tab, and showed no indication of ability to repay it for the infinite future, that one of them might risk violation of technological contamination statutes and propagandize the suggestion for you to get your asses to Mars and colonize it as soon as humanly possible -- which would have been about 67 years ago, if you hadn't wasted so much time murdering yourselves. Even if exposing a clear and troubling picture of humanity's place in the universe were an overt violation of some alien version of your fictional prime directive, it's not like one would not seriously need a permanent vacation after only a few decades of witnessing humanity's failure after mind-blowing failure to commit to ANYTHING resembling progress as a space faring race!

Perhaps one would rethink their benefit package at the last second, and bury their contemptuous assessment in a reply to an AC.

I know this is an old thread ... but I really don't like Pulseaudio.

I never installed it on my Gentoo system. On my Mint systems, removing Pulseaudio is one of my first post-installation steps.

If I want to play sound over a network I export a read-only filesystem containing my media to the machines on my LAN (Samba does this nicely). Then I can play video and anything else over the network too, in a transparent way. I've never seen a single benefit of running Pulseaudio but I have seen lots of difficult-to-resolve problems. It's just useless bloat to me. I have a much better time using straight ALSA.

Welcome to the Internet.

The amendment process for the Constitution is not for the faint of heart. The usual method is to have a 2/3 majority of both the houses of Congress pass the amendment, and for that amendment to be ratified by 3/4 of state legislatures. There is no way in hell that amendment would ever get through Congress, let alone the state legislatures.

Well, there's the overall warmup process that takes 30 seconds or whatever, but what I'm talking about is just a momentary power draw (1/4 of a second or 1/2 a second) when the warmup process starts.

I hope in the Apple tradition it is $666, and when you lose it like you lost your other ultra-losable hardware you make a Frowine face so hard it freezes that way.

I still have a working Osborn 1 and use almost every day. That's over three decades of service. My CP/M 2.2 disks are toast, so I've replaced the OS with one of my own design for use in my hobby home automation projects. The 300 Baud modem died so I use its RS-232 (serial) port with an IR LED and resistor across DTR to do IO with my home theatre system. The IEEE-488 (parallel) port is used for multiple sensor IOs and a sanitized COM link to my Linux server network which can route IR messages around the rest of the home.

It's more of an "antique" retro conversation piece, but I'm a practical guy and find collectables such as this 1st widespread "portable" PC to be far more interesting when in use; Rather than collecting dust and only being the subject of tech war storries others can witness the power of its simplicity and appreciate the workhorse in action. When I press the button on my remote or smart-phone app visitors (esp. kids) heads are turned by the 5 1/4 inch drive access sounds as the proper code translation table is loaded into the 64KB RAM and colored debugging LEDs on its exposed bread boards blink while status messages flicker to life scrolling up the 54x24 character green monochrome display, then lights dim and a projector screen lowers, and various set-top boxes have their inputs configured. Kids will spend hours "watching TV" just changing the channels and active devices while actually paying attention to the old Osborne One doing its duty. I consider it sort of like an 80's version of steam-punk -- My take on "cyber-punk". Sometimes I'll show the older kids how to manually command systems by making and breaking circuits with a paperclip on the breadboard to do IO. The resulting stream of "how"s and "why"s is fully expected; This setup was socially engineered to lead hapless inquisitors away from the mind-numbing TV and out to tinker with the brain boosting electronics and robotics projects in the garage.

I have some replacement parts from its dead brothers and sisters, but it too will eventually bite the dust eventually and be replaced with other hardware. I really miss parallel ports. Even kids can do IO by hand on the old interface instead of running everything through a more complex serialization protocol; Building a USB interface just to get back bit-mapped parallel IO is just silly. Thus, old beige boxes and custom DOS programs are still my favourite for intro to software / hardware & robotics even more so than single board or embedded systems like Raspberry Pi or Arduino and its clunky expansion ports -- for want of a simple Parallel Interface... I mean, you can use a bit or byte pattern of a parallel interface as an "escape code" to signal a mode switch and with a few transistors you can have as many "expansion cards" to program as you want. When I'm teaching how stuff works, I don't want things like this abstracted away and hidden behind proprietary hardware and software interfaces.

Remember the Three R's: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Reusing old hardware should be attempted before recycling. Experiencing the magic blue smoke escaping from an old main board, ISA / PCI card, etc. is an important part of learning electronics projects. Having to redo their work teaches folks to be more careful even if the parts are otherwise "worthless junk". Making interesting and/or useful things out of a "Trash 80" is seen by youngsters more impressive than using purpose built devices designed to facilitate the project. If they make it past the Cyber-Junkyard Frankenstein stage Only Then do they move up to working on more expensive single board systems and full featured robotics systems, bypassing the Raspberry Pi and Arduino stage altogether (and foisting some of my old junk into other unsuspecting tinkerers' garages).

The Osborne 1 is great for operating your whole home AV gear. Bugfixing custom hardware and Z80 instructions exercises one's memory and maintains neuro-plasticity -- It can even cause kids to favor educational programming instead of that obnoxious crap on TV nowadays.

I hooked my 4+ up to a Kill-A-Watt.

I have no idea if the readings are accurate for a momentary power draw, but I swear I saw it register a draw of almost a kilowatt for just one or two readings as it was turning on.

Mine started accordian jamming. Pulled out the rollers, roughened them up with some sandpaper (got that trick from Wikipedia), and it seems to be back in working order.

Once again the evil of Information Disparity rares its ugly head. To maximize freedom and equality entities must be able to decide and act by sensing the true state of the universe, thus knowledge should be propagated at maximum speed to all; Any rule to the contrary goes against the nature of the universe itself.

They who seek to manipulate the flow of information wield the oppression of enforced ignorance against others despite their motive for doing so. The delayed disclosure of this bug would not change the required course of action. The keys will need to be replaced anyway. We have no idea whether they were stolen or not. We don't know who else knew about this exploit. Responsible disclosure is essentially lying by omission to the world. That is evil as it stems from the root of all evil: Information Disparity. The sooner one can patch their systems the better. I run my own servers. Responsible disclosure would allow others to become more aware than I am. Why should I trust them not to exploit me if I am their competitors or vocal opponent? No one should decide who should be their equals.

Fools. Don't you see? Responsible disclosure is the first step down a dangerous path whereby freely sharing important information can be outlawed. The next step is legislation to penalize the propagators of "dangerous" information, whatever that means. A few steps later will have "dangerous" software and algorithms outlawed for national security, of course. If you continue down this path soon only certain certified and government approved individuals will be granted license to craft certain kinds of software, and ultimately all computation and information propagation itself will be firmly controlled by the powerful and corrupt. For fear of them taking a mile I would rather not give one inch. Folks are already in jail for changing a munged URL by accident and discovering security flaws. What idiot wants to live in a world where even such "security research" done offline is made illegal? That is where Responsible Disclosure attempts to take us.

Just as I would assume others innocent unless proven guilty of harm to ensure freedom, even though it would mean some crimes will go unpunished: I would accept that some information will make our lives harder, some data may even allow the malicious to have a temporary unfair advantage over us, but the alternative is to simply allow even fewer potentially malicious actors to have an even greater power of unfair advantage over even more of us. I would rather know that my Windows box is vulnerable and possibly put a filter in my IDS than trust Microsoft to fix things, or excuse the NSA's purchasing of black-market exploits without disclosing them to their citizens. I would rather know OpenSSL may leak my information and simply recompile it without the heartbeat option immediately than trust strangers to do what's best for me if they decide to not do something worse.

There is no such thing as unique genius. Einstein, Feynman, and Hawking, did not live in a vacuum; Removed from society all their lives they'd have not made their discoveries. Others invariably picked up from the same available starting points and solve the same problems. Without Edison we would still have electricity and the light bulb. Without Alexander Bell we would have had to wait one hour for the next telephone to enter the patent office. Whomever discovered this bug and came forward has no proof that others did not already know of its existence.

Just like the government fosters secrecy of patent applications and reserves their right to exclusive optioning of newly patented technology, if Google had been required keep the exploit secret except to government agencies we may never have found out about heartbleed in the first place. Our ignorance enforced, we would have no other choice but to keep our systems vulnerable. Anyone who thinks hanging our heads in the noose of responsible disclosure a good idea is a damned fool.

The randomly assembled amino acid does randomly disassemble as well, but that is not what it must do. An amino acid may stay the same, disassemble, or it it may form a more complex molecule.

Here is a little demonstration of "randomly" assembling complexity in behavior. I have given each entity the ability to sense the left and rightness and ahead and behindness of 'energy' dots and their nearest peer. They also get a sense of their relative energy vs their peer. The inputs can affect two thrusters which operate like "tank treads". However, their minds are blank. They don't know what to do with the inputs or how they map to the outputs. The genetic program introduces random errors as copies runs of a genome from one parent then the other switching back and forth randomly. The selection pressure simply favors those with the most energy at the end of each generation by granting a higher chance to breed. Use the up/dn keys to change the sim speed, and click the entities to see a visualization of their simple neural network. The top left two neurons sense nearest food distance, the right two sense nearest entity, middle top is the relative energy difference of nearest peer. Note that randomness is constantly introduced, and yet their behaviors do not revert to randomness or inaction, they converge on a better solution for finding energy in their environment.

There is no pre-programed strategy for survival. Mutations occur randomly, and they are selected against, just as in nature. Given the same starting point In different runs / populations different behaviors for survival will emerge. Some may start spinning and steering incrementally towards the food, others may steer more efficiently after first just moving in a straighter path to cover the most ground (they have no visual or movement penalty for backwards, so backwards movement is 50% likely). As their n.net complexity grows their behaviors will change. Movement will tend towards more efficient methods. Some populations may become more careful instead of faster, some employ a hybrid approach by racing forwards then reversing and steering carefully after the energy/food is passed. Some entities will emerge avoidance of each other to conserve energy. Some populations will bump into each other to share energy among like minded (genetically similar) peers. Some will even switch between these strategies depending on their own energy level.

Where do all these complex behaviors come from? I didn't program them, I didn't even program in that more complex behaviors should be more favorable than less complex, and yet they emerged naturally as a product of the environment due to selection pressure upon it. Just because I can set the axon weights manually and program a behavior favorable for n.nets to solve the problem, doesn't mean randomness can't yield solutions as well. Today we can watch evolution happen right on a computer, or in the laboratory. All of this complexity came from a simple simulation of 32 neurons arranged in a simple single hidden layer neural net, with 5 simple scalar sensors and the minimal 2 movement outputs, with a simple single selection pressure. Each time you run the sim it produces different results, but all meeting the same ends, collect energy, reproduce. Just imagine what nature can do with its far more complex simulation and selection pressures... You don't have to imagine, you can look around and see for yourself.

In other more complex simulations I allow the structure of the n.nets and form of sensors to be randomly introduced and selection pressure applied. In larger simulations I allow the breeding and death of generations to occur continuously across wider areas and speciation will occur. Entities will develop specialized adaptations for a given problem space of the environment. I have created simulations where the OP code program instructions themselves are randomized, and seen program replication emerge. If there is replication and entropy (errors added) competition will begin among the entities for resources in the environment.

I have created other simulations for the evolution of chemical life in a simplified environment with particles that attract or repel, and have various bonding properties. These take even more processor cycles to run, but they demonstrate the emergence of complex behaviors too. First linking up of chains of atoms occurs. The entropy introduced and other parameters determines how long the chains can form. As with the Op-Code VM universe requiring certain types of opcodes to produce life, Certain universes of chemical properties are not conducive to life either. The ones that are will emerge life-like processes spontaneously.

The first atom joining interactions will produce small molecules, thus increasing the complexity of the universe -- this is the meaning of life: It is what life is and does. In my opinion, life is not binary but a scalar quality which happens at many different levels; The degree that something is alive is denoted by the complexity of the interaction, IMO. Out of the millions of simplified chemical universes some will be able to produce molecules, and some can yield chains of molecules. The first chain-producing catalytic molecule, or "protein", will begin to fill the sim with long chains of atoms, and then become extinct as no more free atoms are available, or entropy destroys the chain-making interaction "protein". Some universes that can produce atomic interactions can not produce life. I call this "universal crystallization": If not enough entropy in the universe you don't get complex life, only self assembling crystals. With enough entropy to break the chains down over a period of time, but not too much entropy that it limits the chain lengths too much, chain-making interactions can restart and die out many times. Each micro-genesis tends to occur with greater frequency given the more complex environment their predecessors left behind.

Suddenly an evolutionary leap will emerge: Simple Pattern Matching. For no other reason than it being one out of a sea of random outcomes one of the spontaneous chain making catalyst will produce TWO chains instead of one. Often this happens because of entropy attaching two chain making catalyst interaction "proteins". Because of the propagation of attraction / repulsion, etc. properties in the "protein" molecule the atoms added to one chain will have an immediate effect on the atom or molecule that can be added to the other chain. An interlock is formed, and the complexity of the simulated universe essentially doubles in a small period of time. Sometimes three chains can be produced as well, this may even yield ladder like chains, which are very durable; Though frequently the ladders do not emerge and are not absolutely required for the next phase of complexity to emerge. During the pattern matching phase copying can occur. A chain of molecules may enter one side of a pattern forming "protein", and produce the mate chain. Depending on the chemistry, that mate chain may have one or more additional mate pairs before reproduction of the initial chain Thus the first copy of information is born, and is key to future increases in complexity. Not all chains can make copies, if any input on one side has two or more equally likely pairs it will almost certainly prevent exact copies; Thus molecular pairs instead of atoms are more likely to form life's chemical Op-Code. Depending randomly on the time it takes for the next evolutionary jump to happen it may occur via manufacture of simple or very complex molecular chains.

Some catalytic interactions have an interesting property. Instead of being formed of a chance collection of complex molecules the catalyst will be formed of a chain themselves. Beginning as a molecule chain themselves they may be able to exist in two states: Relaxed or Kinked up. The interaction with a few common atoms or molecules at one or more "active" sites can cause the somewhat relaxed chain to transform in a cascade of kinks into the catalytic protein shape whereby it can manufacture molecular chains. The pattern of the folding is programmed into the molecular chain itself, charge interaction propagates along itself such that stages of the folding action occur in a predictable way (this is still a mysterious mechanism we're trying to solve in real-world biology). Shortly after the emergence of the first such transforming molecular chain, an explosion of evolutionary advances occurs. When the relaxed form of a dual chain-maker kinking "protein" is fed into another dual chain-maker its intermediary form is output. Rarely is this mate-pair form also a transforming kinking protein. It may take one or more additional passes through a duplex pattern matcher to yield the first copy of a copying machine, or it may take a secondary kinking protein that performs the reverse process. "Protein" synthesis is a huge evolutionary leap because immediately thereafter the copy machines reproduce exponentially and begin competing by reproducing the array of slowly mutating intermediary forms. /p>

Mutations to the copy machine or its intermediary form(s) can cause new varied forms of itself to be created. Most of the mutations are fatal, some do no harm by merely adding expense via inert additions, some additions are useful. This is where I see the evolutionary leap due to competition: Armaments and defenses. The inert additions can serve as a shield to prevent vulnerable "protein" machinery from breaking down by preventing a stray atom or molecule from joining or gumming up the works. Some copy-machines will emerge weapons: Long (expensive) tails that detach on contact to clog the gears of other copiers, short barbed kinks with active elements at the tips to break away and attach to competitors. Some may produce reactive molecules that they are immune to, essentially an acid to digest others via. Soon activity is everywhere, the sim will be full of ever more complex interactions. Thus the complexity of the copier universe grows by amazing evolutionary leaps and bounds.

New forms of protein folding emerge which may yield reversible kinking instead of one-way transformations. Sometimes folding is lost and life can go extinct by relying on existing catalytic molecules (given enough time it may form again). Very rarely, instead of long chains self assembling catalysts are formed which manufacture the various smaller parts that then self assemble. However, I have never seen self assembly in this way yield much more complex things without resorting to duplicating molecular chains. The "genetic program" is a powerful evolutionary advantage which seems to be almost a mandatory necessity for complex life. If the chemistry is right sometimes naturally occurring or previously mass produced mated molecule pairs will form chains that begin copying by zipping and unzipping free amino acids given some slight oscillating energy to break apart the chain pairs.

Without any tweaking of parameters, I'll sit back and watch as the simulated universe emerges more and more complexity through competition. Some designs seem naturally more favorable than others. Having only a single intermediary stage instead of two or more is the most common. I think this may be why RNA replicates by a pair strand, and DNA has a double ladder chain to ensure the op-code interlock functions, and yield structural stability. Program hoops seem very advantageous -- A dual chain producing protein may be fed a its intermediary chain that is linked with its unkinked self. The protein will races along the hoop feverishly outputting an unkinked chain copier and a long curved intermediary copy, which can self assemble into more hoops, and kink up to do more copying. The hoop is advantageous to copying random chains since a new copy can begin immediately instead of waiting for a chance strand to happen by (which may not be a competitor's genome). I see the emergence of start and stop signals among the chains so that long intermediary chains or hoops may produce several different molecules of varying complexities.

Many symbioses occur. For the first time a chain destroyer is advantageous to have in one's molecular program to split up chains and/or atomize molecules for re-use. It's optimal for some copiers to use the shorter chains laying around than to create everything from individual atoms, so they may survive only as long as the smaller and simpler / cheaper chain producers also do. Sometimes the intermediary form of two or more complimentary copiers will join and thus carry with it the information for copying all essential copiers and assemblers of an environment. Thus an energy store and release mechanism is heralded by the local increase and decrease in entropy in the making and unmaking of molecular chains, corresponding to heating and cooling the environment which can act as a switch for kinking or relaxing and drive even more complex interactions.

Something like speciation occurs by having various areas of the universe separated by seas of caustic agents or walls of think chain soup, and leaving ecosystems unable to interact. Something like viruses occurs whereby one subsection of the environment replicating various chains will be infected by a drifting intermediary form chain that produces incompatible copiers and/or catalysts that are very destructive and take over the ecosystem. I haven't got the CPU power or time available to run these simplified simulations for billions of years, but there is no doubt in my mind that if I did some would produce more complex creatures by continuing the process of encoding ever more better methods of survival within their self replicating copies.

I have seen simulated life emerge in my computers. For the life of me, I can't figure out how it is any different than organic life. Both require energy and an environment conducive to their survival in order to exist. Thus my definition of life includes cybernetic beings, and my ethics revolves around preserving and increasing the complexity of the universe. I know of more efficient ways to produce intelligence than waiting billions of years in billions of universes with billions of different parameters for emergent intelligences to appear. I can apply the tools of nature directly to the complexity of information itself within the problem spaces I need solved, but just because I can intelligently design a solution doesn't mean that nature could not do the same with her countless dice and enormous trial and error periods.

Emergence of life in water would seem likely given the chemical properties of water and usefulness as both a medium of interaction as well as a source of energy. Water is one of the most abundant molecules (made of hydrogen and oxygen, both very abundant atoms); For the same reason that certain op-codes are required for self-copying programs to form, carbon is a likely atomic building block for life. We know how to create hydrogen atoms from pure energy using very powerful lasers. We know hydrogen fuses into helium in our sun. We may not have been there at the big bang to watch it happen, but all evidence points to its occurrence, and subsequent hydrogen production, and supernovae stars from this to increase the chemical complexity of the universe to include all the atoms we find here on Earth, and which life is made of. We've seen self assembling lipids and amino acids, and it's not a very large leap to consider the latter may take refuge in the former given enough pulses of a the local entropy increase and decrease cycle and a bit of selection pressure.

I am not a god to my cybernetic creations. I am merely a being in a higher reality to them. I see no evidence that indicates a god is required for life to have formed. Complexity emerges as entropy decreases locally, and this universe is expanding. However, even if we met miraculous beings tomorrow with technology far beyond our own and they had powers that seemed as magic, they would be merely aliens, not gods. Even if the universe were a simulation and the administrator logged in having full god-like command of my reality I would not worship them a god: Should Neo worship the Machines of the Matrix? No, worshiping aliens for having more technology is cargo cultism. If reality itself were a thinking entity we would call it a massive alien intelligence and study it with cybernetics, not worship it as a god. The god of a cargo cult does exist, but it is not a god.

The philosophical concept of a much higher intelligence should not be conflated with the term "god". To do so lends the reverence you hold for ancient traditions and their folkloric figures to powerful alien minds. You are espousing enslavement to Stargate Aliens by saying a mind-boggling god created life. Science has made magic into technology. The term "god" is deprecated, and can no longer apply. God is dead. I will not worship aliens, even if they do exist.

These are facts due to thermodynamics verifiable through the mathematics of information theory: Complexity can emerge from simpler states; Complexity can beget more or less complexity, but complexity is not first required to produce complexity. The lack of all complexity would be a hot dense singularity.

A person or two mentioned Conway's Game of Life. Unless I specifically say so, I am not binding myself to only mentioning that one thing and never moving on to any related ideas which happen to be outside its scope. And I didn't specifically say so. Therefore I see no value in pointing that out.

Am I the only one who thinks the entire notion of a "class-action lawsuit" was a bad idea?

If a company materially harms 250,000 individuals, let them defend against 250,000 individual lawsuits. That would be a massive disincentive against harming people. Having to pay lawyers for that many separate lawsuits would be a lot more like the predicament (during a standard isolated case) of the one individual trying to have a legal battle against a huge multination corporation. Seems fair to me.

Plus in many class-action lawsuits, only the lawyers really win. The former customers might get a $10 coupon or something like that.

Is there any chance that the lawyers who knowingly and intentionally come up with such ideas and try to implement them could be disbarred? Few measures would more effectively discourage the practice.

The difference being, there is some chance the Slashdot user was actually involved in producing that software (or has enough expertise to competently discuss its merits and faults). There's also a chance they're responding to people who chose to use shoddy software when better alternatives were available, and are now complaining about the results.

Everything I need to know about energy logistics I learned from Sim City 2000.

You put the plants / reactors away from the city, out in the water, so that pollution doesn't bother folks and if there's an explosion, nothing else catches on fire. The cost of maintaining the power lines is far less than additional rebuilding costs after a disaster strikes and the plant blows. I guess next they'll discover it's fucking egregiously foolish to zone schools and residential next to industrial plants. In this case, they didn't even need a sim, they could just read a history book.