Indeed, why does anybody run Ubuntu, when they can run Xubuntu...

But if you ask, why anything from Ubuntu family, then a good reason is, most of the non-distro-specific stuff comes with installer/installation instructions for Ubuntu. So, if you want that stuff to just work without hassle, an Ubuntu-family distro is safest choice.

Only exception I know of is mono .NET stuff, for that OpenSUSE is a better choice, IIRC, unless things have changed recently.

Building a city is engineering, so when will they solve the problem? At what point do they say "finished"?

Well, never, obviously. The city will keep taxing and charging you so they can keep building. Private companies will keep billing you for renovating and maintaining existing buildings. They'll also try to sucker new people into it. It's all a big scam! First they invent this "entropy" thing, and on top of it they keep om gradually introducing new stuff, such as running water, electricity, "broadband" Internet access... Do you ever wonder why they don't just build houses that last forever without repairs and maintenance, with best infrastructure allowed by physical reality? Well, let me tell you, it's because they want to keep robbing you of your money, day by day, millenia by millenia!

The time==distance for those photons to travel from there to here is almost same in both reference frames, ours and the reference frame of a similar planet in that other galaxy.

How are those genes any more "foreign", than genes of, say, a new fruit you try for the first time? Also, we're invaded by constantly mutating viruses all the time, and they actively seek to activate their "foreign genes" in our bodies. Etc. I simply don't see this as any kind of risk, compared to the "risk" of just existing in a normal environment. At least engineered genes and associated proteins will have had some screening and scrutiny before being unleashed on a new population, unlike most "natural" sources of "foreign" genetic material. There's nothing special about engineered genes in the sense, that observing health effect of some genes for 10-20 years would tell us anything about health effects of some other genes.

"GMO" marking would be much like "contains animal products" marking, and I'm certainly all for having that marking and giving consumer the chance to make a choice. But I don't see it as a health concern, I see it more a way to encourage GMO companies to act more responsibly for the fear of consumers starting to avoid GMO labeled food because of whatever bad headlines. Also, just because some consumers might be irrational about their choices and make emotinally motivated choices, it does not give some multinational corporation a right to make the choices for them.

Thanks for the links!

The problem with gene technology debate IME is, many people are just worried if it's "safe to eat the genes", not realizing how all organisms have these "digestive system" and "immune system" thingies, which have rather a long history of dealing with any foreign DNA entering the organism with extreme prejudice, even when that DNA does it's best to hide itself (like in the case of viruses).

I think the potential risk is introducing basically a new evolutionary mechanism, entirely new genes appearing "out of nowhere". Or at least it seems new to me, as far as I know how evolution works. What are the results of that, when it's done in global scale.

No, common sense is, until (scientifically, or whatever) shown to not be. Furthermore, when common sense says, common sense isn't, then it's common sense to assume the worst case scenario, until shown otherwise by a more reliable method.

You realize what you say makes no sense? What I said was tautology. Perhaps you meant "under pressure, natural selection can work surprisingly fast"? Yes, but there's generally a cost of a high extinction rate, and then diversification of those species which did not die. This is not a very desirable, especially when there's a big mass extinction underway, species disappearing very very rapidly (in geologic/evolutionary time scale).

Either you don't care about humans, or you're intentionally trying to muddle up human and evolutionary time scales. Recovery takes millions of years. We've either spread to the space or gone the way of the dodo long before any natural recovery has happened. Also, for recovery to happen fast, there needs to be lack of competition. This implies that there are no humans competing with the new species. Doesn't sound very good to me.

In other words, we've used our ability to adapt to increase our population, steadily approaching the carrying capacity of earth. We'll probably be in trouble long before we have the technology to supply everybody with food grown by nuclear energy (instead of solar energy and fossil fuels for fertilizers and machines, as now happens) or whatever. There's only so much net output available from solar energy.

We've increased human population to current billions (and counting) with the cost of ongoing mass extinction, decrease of biodiversity, and overusing natural resources (overfishing, burning forestes to get a few seasons worth of crops before burning the next piece, etc). Furher cost, which I hope we will not have to pay, but which seems inevitable, is that these billion will die, when we are at the practical limit of carrying capacity, and then there is a reduction in our food production (it could be for political reasons, or because fossil fuel based fertilizers become too expensive, or because climate shifts and large areas of arable land become too dry, or many other things).

I think you've got this backwards. Let's say you came up with a new mass-use for some known but not commonly used chemical. Would you really have no qualms about spreading it to the environment in large quantities, and keep doing it until you have scientific proof that it does something harmful?

No, when you do something new, and common sense says this has potential to be bad, then you do scientific study to rule out as many bad things as you can, until you can plausibly say it's ok.

Can you link to a scientific study, which for example estimates first of all how fast herbicide resistance created by gene technology may spread from crops to weeds, and further what kind of effects this may have if resistant weeds become the norm? If this study is at least a few years old, then also follow-up study which actually measures the actual rate would be useful.

I bet Monsanto has done a few studies like this. I also bet they are in a safe somewhere, closely guarded and known to as few people as possible.

Common sense says, that if you forcibly introduce and maintain a large number of new genes to the ecosystem, it has potential to unbalance things. Natural evolution can only keep up at the rate of natural evolution, adaptations driven by natural mutations, in very small steps and under constant pressure of natural selection. Humans are not limited in the same way, with gene technolgoies we can introduce very large "mutations" to ecosystem as fast as we want, and we can manipulate natural selection (for example with protected environments, introducing genes which protect against human-applied poisons) to keep otherwise detrimental genes around.

Gene technologies are not just more of what has been happening for the past about 4 billion years without humans too. This is a new, never before seen phenomenon. We have only one Earth to see what happens. Common sense says, better be cautions.

I think the problem is, what Python community considers good documentation does not match what I consider good documentation.

Many parts of Python docs are quite ok even to me, and I guess it's mostly issue with presentation, cross-linking, and how the whole thing is split into chapters. Also, I think the bad parts are more concentrated on areas used by less experienced Python programmers, seldom really used by those who might get around to fixing them. It could possibly be fixed just by modifying documentation tool output.

Oh, and yes, documentation comments/embedded documentation are used in most mainstream languages these days...

Just compare (not, these are not exactly same thing, just pretty close):

• Qt5 QFile
• Java6+ java.nio.channels.FileChannel
• .NET FileStream
• Python 3 io module

Of these, Python's is least clear and useful in my eyes, by quite a margin. YMMV.

A very important feature of any language still seems to be missing: a sane reference documentation.

In a duck-typed language this is even more important, because compiler/IDE can't really help programmer there. Below is a sample from core library docs, links included. To fully appreciate this, there's no link to this "read()" method, and whole BytesIO class documentation does not contain such method, so you're going be manually searching the page to find documentation for read(). Fortunately it is on the same page, which conveniently documents entire module, so it's really easy to quickly find particular piece of information in that wall of text.

You're thinking too small. That's omnipotent for humans. A God-level omnipotence requires not being subject to all these nasty laws of causality or mathematical logic we mortals are bound to. There's no problem with Genesis and fossil record not matching quite 1-to-1, because Omnipotent God. Drowning entire world in a very recent global flood, which seems to have left no trace basiclaly anywhere even though it covered everything and killed almost everything, is neither evil nor impossible, because Omnipotent God. The whole concept of "Hell" is not morally questionable because Omnipotent God.

If "Omnipotent God" is not sufficient explanation, then that god is not truly omnipotent.

There was no Data yet. There were just lower and higher byte, all equal, no order. Please pay attention!

"Mitohocontrial Eve" is the last woman, from whom mithoconrial DNA of all living humans is descended from. Naturally her mother, two grandmothers, 4 grandgrandmothers etc also had ancestors of our mithocondria, they're just not the last. In future daughter/granddaughter of current Mithocondrial DNA may well become the new Eve, if other lines of Mithocondrial DNA die out.

It's important to realize, that other women who lived at the same time as current mithocondrial DNA are also our ancestors. The important difference is, if you track your lineage to any other woman living at that time, there is going to be at least one male in the lineage in between, breaking the mithocondrial inheritance. In other words, other women who lived at the same time (and before) the Mithocondrial Eve may also be ancestors of all currently living humans, it's just that it's not all-female lineage back to those women.

Similarily you could track lineage on the male side for all living humans, and arrive at one male who is greatgrandfather of us all. Or just trace this for males living now, you can find Y-chomosome Adam. But it's is important to notice that Y-chromosome Adam of men is not the same man who is the last father of all current men and women, and also that they did not live at the same time as Mithocondrial Eve.

No they're not. Compare: either two infinite straight lines must intersect, or they must be parallel. True or false? You can't say, without knowing further constraints (in this case, whether they are on on an euclidean plane or not). Genesis does not give an awful lot of context to make assumptions, and has other parts too, which seem to have... let's say, quaint concept of time. In general, trying to apply logic to something as ridiculous as Genesis is like trying to apply logic in a vi vs. emacs debate. You're wrong already by entering the debate, anything you say after that is irrelevant.