If only because technology marches on. I would think that as long as the human can choose whether or not to activate an autopilot, then its existence doesn't have to be considered a problem. So, along the lines of making fancy tech happen (what nerds do, after all), here's a notion.... When Google decided to compete with Apple's Siri voice-recognition system, an infrastructure was created that might be enhanced to do image-recognition. And Google has vast numbers of images from its Street-View system, probably all linked together in an orderly way (such as the route a autopiloted car might take). From there, the conclusion should be obvious, if not so simple to actually achieve.

"Widely exists" is not automatically the same thing as "cost-effective to obtain and distribute". The main reason the Alberta tar sands are now cost-effective is simply that the overall price of oil has gone up. But that fact, however, also makes other technologies more cost-effective. So, oil and gas can only stay on top of the energy-generation heap as long as they are more cost-effective than, for example, solar panels. Will it be cheap and easy to process methane hydrates? If it was, we'd be doing it on a huge scale already!

1. Disconnect XP system from Internet.
2. Buy a more-up-to-date system, for connecting to Internet.
3. Maybe buy a small local network hub. Connect both machines to it, and use carefully:
3A. Let XP machine be OFF when other machine is connected to Internet.
3B. Use "network connections" in other machine to disable connection to Internet when XP machine is on. This way the Internet machine can gather data that the other machine can access if needed, via the local network.

The article and the parent both have some errors. The article refers to the CoCo as having 512K of RAM, but that was only true for the CoCo3 --older models were designed to max-out at 64K. (There were some 3rd-party kits to get past that limit, and even on the CoCo3 there are 3rd-party kits to raise the RAM limit to 2 megabytes.) The article is also wrong in calling the 6809 an 8-bit processor. Actually, it was partly a 16-bit processor; several of its internal registers were 16 bits wide. Its instruction set also made it easy to write position-independent code, which is one of the keys to a UNIX-like operating system such as OS9. You-all might be interested in knowing that when the Space Shuttles were first built, their on-board computers used 6809s. You can bet NASA chose the best it could get its hands on. Therefore, the parent post is wrong in claiming that it is "pure fanboyism" to say that the CoCo was better than the C64 in technical ability. Both had their good points, but the CoCo was more versatile. One of the neat things about the C64, that the CoCo did not have, was a screen editor for writing BASIC code. This was purely a matter of differences in the software-in-ROM of the two machines. And I personally wrote a screen-editor that replaced the CoCo's line-editing system; when done it still fit in the ROM space, and was actually superior to the C64's screen editor. See the April 1987 issue of "The Rainbow", page144, for a review.

With Russia embracing democracy, more or less, there is less concern about it trying to conquer the world, as seemed to be a prime Soviet ambition. Meanwhile, China's government (not so much its people) is still bellicose, and has been significantly increasing its offensive capabilities in recent years. We can't drop the MAD paradigm just yet, because of China.

There is a fundamental minimum amount of energy associated with flipping a bit. So, the more flipped bits that are involved in communications, the more energy needs to be generated to make those communications possible. Logically, therefore, an Information Economy is also an Increased Energy Usage Economy. Equally logically, since taxing energy usage is already done, the most simple way to do a data-usage tax is to designate a portion of existing (and growing) energy taxes as being associated with data usage. Then use that money for data-associated projects.

Please recall this article about "panspermia". It means that we are practically certain to find Earth-originated life-forms down there in the ocean of Europa. If life originated there independently of Earth, there might not be any evidence of it left!

The actual problem, in terms of what the CongressCritter doesn't understand (unless is deliberately acting on behalf of Big Fossil Fuel), is that the fuel used by bicyclists comes from renewable sources, while the fuel that runs cars --even electric cars-- mostly doesn't. So cyclists don't increase the net CO2 level, while cars do.

In the core of the Sun, where the temperature is many millions of degrees and electrons and protons are squished into degenerate matter, the probability that an electron and a proton will combine via the Weak Force to make a neutron is rather low --in spite of all the energy and pressure available to help. It is so low that a completely different reaction is described: two protons combine to make a deuteron (one proton becomes a neutron during that process, and a positron is emitted instead of an electron being absorbed).

While I also know that certain unstable nuclides are quite willing to capture an electron and thereby convert a proton into a neutron, I have doubts that a stable nickel nucleus can be induced to do it. Furthermore, such a reaction would completely fail to explain how experiments involving palladium and deuterium have generated so much "heat" (not just controversy!), and have even been replicated, as reported in a major physics journal. Then there is also titanium, another metal that has interested various cold-fusion researchers.

So I think a different hypothesis is needed to explain what happens inside those metals. Since the replication-experiments prove that something is indeed happening in there, the experiments need to continue, and the nay-sayers need to shut their yaps. Just remember that humans managed to extract metals from utterly non-metallic rocks for thousands of years before understanding the chemistry behind what they were doing. Knowing the chemistry allows more efficient extraction methods to be developed, and in this case a better hypothesis of cold fusion would lead to improved experiments. But lacking such a hypothesis, it is still possible to get useful results --it will merely take longer. It just doesn't need to take even longer than that, due to idiots who think that just because we don't understand what is going on, nothing can be going on....

An alternate possibility might be a variant of spyware. It would run like a virus detector, except that the programs it prohibits come from a different list, than the lists of malware programs provided by anti-virus vendors.

If you can raise your monitor so that you directly face it without leaning or bending your neck downward, this will help you retain a vertical posture, which in turn leads to being comfortable longer. I've built myself a number of monitor stands over the years; all it takes is 3 pieces of wood (some even looked professional, because I bought quality wood). The one I'm at now lifts the monitor about 10 inches off the desk. Your preference may be different, of course.

The Supreme Court recently invalidated patents on natural things. All Monsanto has done so far, is move various natural genes around, from one life-form to another. That is, there are no synthetic genes in the seeds that were patented. I'm aware that the result is new in the sense that the combination didn't exist before, but no part of it is actually new.

Since I'm quite aware that new combinations of other things are quite often patentable, I won't say that gene-manipulated seeds don't automatically deserve to be patented. But it might be reasonable to limit the scope of the patent. Because, historically, most patented things need to be manufactured to exist in quantity; they don't go out and automatically make copies of themselves as seeds can do.

So, my opinion on this matter is that the patents should not be allowed to cover any "copies" of the seed-genes that Naturally "get away" from Monsanto's (and most any other industry's) normal control-of-supply. If Monsanto can lock down cross-pollination of its patented gene combinations, fine (and good luck!). If Monsanto can produce seeds that grow plants that produce nonviable seeds, fine (also, good luck!). Because either of those would be reasonable ways to keep its patented gene-combinations under control. But trying to claim ownership of the results of perfectly Natural gene-spreading processes, NO.

The giant impact scenario can still make sense. All we need to do is assume both the Earth and the other object formed in the same zone (distance from sun). That's the most critical thing, since we can expect any one zone, all around the sun, to be fairly consistent in its isotopic composition. So, each gathered up lots of debris while forming, and their collision constituted one of the last events that made the Earth a planet (per modern definition: a planet has to clear its zone of all large debris).

I am bothered by the fact that people know full well that many inventions come about from different things being combined together, yet as far as nuclear fusion research is concerned, the researchers are largely divided into camps, each of which thinks its own approach is the One True Way. There are the magnetic confinement people, the electrostatic confinement people, the inertial confinement laser-blast people, the inertial confinement electron-blast people, the inertial confinement sonic-blast people, and so on, and so on, and so on. Bah! It seems to me that some of those techniques are "complementary", such that if combined in an overall system, the whole would be a more effective means of reaching the goal. Well? (For some particular examples, see this link.)

Actually, the Polywell approach is an attempt to use magnetic fields to mimic the technique of "electrostatic confined fusion" which gained fame under the name "Farnsworth Fusor", was the very first technique to generate controlled-fusion neutrons, and has been constructed and operated successfully by various high-school students for science fairs. The main problem with the Fusor approach is an "inner electrostatic grid" which interferes with the free motion of ions in the vacuum chamber (sucks energy). The Polywell approach doesn't have that grid, but instead has lots of potential "ion leaks" at lots of magnetic cusps. But the leak problem is no worse than has been tackled by the "magnetic mirror" approach to fusion, and so appears to be controllable.