They DO random genetic testing you know. There are independent labs that test for GM markers, and distributors and retail chains that sell GM-free products do use them. That's not to say that a GM strain can't accidentally make it into the pipeline, obviously it's bound to happen. However, I personally am not too concerned with the occasional accident as much as the regular daily stuff.

I'd expect a libertarian to hold the view that if you contaminate your neighbors' soybeans or corn you're liable for cleanup and replanting, as well as medical care to people who ate it. This in turn would force growing to be geographically separated so as to prevent cross-pollination - or if that's not possible GM crops would be a commercial dead end. The liability litigation would simply bankrupt anyone who tried to grow it.

However, in the real world as opposed to libertarian utopia the best is probably to simply restrict growth of GM strains to laboratory settings.

I'm not a free market enthusiast, but even I can answer this: you take your business to a store that doesn't carry GM produce or products that contain it. My local Whole Foods store, for instance, is GM-free and predominantly organic.

The pattern:

##{ FH_DATE_PAST_20XX
header FH_DATE_PAST_20XX Date =~ /20[1-9][0-9]/ [if-unset: 2006]
describe FH_DATE_PAST_20XX The date is grossly in the future.
##} FH_DATE_PAST_20XX

Will match 2010 no matter how many bits are used to keep time. This is a problem that has been know for years; it's a total embarrassment to OSS practices that it wasn't fixed before 1/1/10, before becoming critical. It's not based on a bad architectural decision, or even particularly bad code - it's just a typo where the fix wasn't pushed in a timely manner. I suspect a problem here is that open source development doesn't separate bug fixes from feature additions, which means non-critical fixes get backed up with features to be considered stable enough to ship. A critical fix can be spun separately (being backported to the current stable branch) - but this problem wasn't critical... yet...

Right you are. However, what is illegal is publically stating someone has committed illegal acts. Nohl should sue for slander.

They can't afford tabletop models anymore, so in this project they used paper cutouts on a black canvas.

The VA provides single-payer, single-provider, socialized, health care for the Army.

In other words, we need GNU Ecmas.

As a CS student I think you should focus on product development, not IT. You absolutely should intern at a technology company whose main focus is products - and whose _customers_ may include IT departments. You won't be paid a whole lot, but the tasks you get will also be very simple, relatively speaking, and while they may be important, once taken care of you'll have plenty of time to poke around with whatever interests you. You may be asked to say add an option to a compiler, tweak a kernel build, or add data gathering and instrumentation - things that the other developers would like to have but don't find time to do themselves. If in the process you find something you think might make an interesting project by all means suggest it, chances are you'll get to go do it, unless it seems overly ambitious to the extreme.

I guess at 45 I qualify as "older" in this context. I don't post personal details, or say things I don't want my business contacts to be aware of. FB serves the same purpose to me as a cocktail party - it's just a simple social function. I don't really care who wants to be my friend (which I view more as a 'live rolodex') - you never know who might be handy to know. I have about 300 friends on FB. My wife, who's a freelance writer and has to network as part of her business, has over 1500. It's just a tool, and like any other becomes what you make of it. I personally like it better than LinkedIn, which is too formal.

No kidding, I was always wondering how they got away with billing it as a screensaver. I left my PC powered on accidentally when I went on a four week trip in 2004 and came back to a 24" Sun CRT with SETI@HOME permanently burnt into the center. Screendestroyer is more like it.

With that kind of money it should be easy to keep your own private army or buy protection from a warlord.

Perhaps, but if the northern hemisphere becomes uninhabitable a billion or so people will want to migrate south. The northerners will still be the most heavily armed in the world, have a long history of manufacturing excuses for wars that are thinly disguised land grabs, and aren't going to take no for an answer.

So did I - spent time in the local woods, swam in the lakes, jumped in every muddy puddle to be seen, played out in the rain, and whatnot. I'm still allergic to cats, some detergents, and natural rubber (latex, avocado). This was in the mid 70s, and people had allergies then just like today. It's just the bar was much higher and people didn't really consider it an allergy unless they were likely to go into shock or develop serious symptoms. A little spring sniffle caused by pollen wasn't really hay fever unless it caused breathing difficulties or made your eyes puff up so bad you couldn't see. Anything else just wasn't bothered with and parents would tell their kids, "yeah it's just a little spring pollen, now go to school."