Theory, yes. There are some things that are pretty difficult to put into practice however. The question remains that even if we do achieve long lasting fusion that generates power, what then of the parasitic power loads. This is not a trivial problem. It may be an insurmountable problem.

The ecstatic claims that we are there, with fusion power now completely feasible, are a bit deceptive. The Qin to Qout might be 1 or somewhere a little higher, however, there is a a real issue with generating that Qin. Press releases and physicists and others grubbing for money conveniently gloss over the fact that QTot is actually around .1

Will we make it to a Qtot of say 2, or better yet 10 of 27/7/365 fusion power generation? Maybe. But we are much closer to the beginning than the end of that happy day when the world's energy problems are finally solved. My money says possible, but not all that likely.

Just a note - controlled and sustained fusion is nowhere near established. We can do the rapid and uncontained version pretty well though, and there is a big fusion reactor 93 million miles away for us to use

The paradox of the human brain. Minds that can do incredible things, as you point out. Minds that can exhibit great compassion and love.

Yet minds that can also make for extreme brutality and cruelty.

The technology has grown to a point where our aggressiveness might just end up ending us. Some of the usual suspects like AGW probably won't. That one will make things uncomfortable, but I doubt humanity will go extinct. Overpopulation? Nature will take care of that. Might smell pretty bad for a while. My BOE says maybe 10 percent of us left

Nuking ourselves might do it, and a combo of all three might do it even better, weakening the remaining humans trying to adapt to hunter gatherer days. I always thought we should send a statue of Ozymandias into deep space. https://www.poetryfoundation.o... .

I give a 50:50 chance we'll survive - If we do, we'll be in a decided minority, along with cockroaches and horseshoe crabs.

And while we are at it, there is the Windows meme of "MacOS has a restricted hardware set, do it's easy for them."

Yet Linux not only works with a lot of different hardware, Linux driver support is much better. Linux has new drivers, plus it doesn't eliminate older ones, like Windows does. I still remember the Windows Vista Driver disaster, which rendered a lot of contemporary equipment useless. And some equipment has been rendered permanently useless like the dual boot systems I was setting up with RS-232-USB adapters. Worked perfectly on Linux, oopsies! Microsoft killed The prolific chipset driver support. Wasn't even announced, just killed. (there were a number of bogus Prolific chips out there, so MS went scorched earth)

My favorite W8 story is that my wife had a rotator cuff operation when W8 came out, so she was going to be sitting on a couch a lot during recovery. I bought her a nice touch screen laptop with W8. Trouble since day one, I was constantly fixing problems and a lot of the stuff just didn't make sense to her, and not much sense to me either. After a month, I stopped getting called into troubleshooting.

I figured she finally figured things out, so I congratulated her one morning. She said " Actually I hate that thing, so I stopped using it."

So I installed Mint on it, let her try it, and she never looked back. Did her own maintenance. As the saying goes - "It just works."

Unless we have a headline "Is Betteridge's law wrong?"

I wish that Windows would work when I boot it up again.

W10 was getting pretty fair, but as usual, Microsoft pushed another dog's breakfast out the door, and W11 is a disaster IMO. DDG'ing Windows 11 is a disaster shows that even Microsoft admits that. So if people are pissed about all the Linux distros, I wonder what they think about the various Windows versions Things like Basic, Home, Pro,Enterprise?

All that said, if a person is pleased with th eWindows experience, I believe they should use it and be happy, the worlds largest installed user base have to be using the best OS I mean if it wasn't teh best, it wouldn't be the biggest. For me, Windows is the VHS of OS's, or for the car people, Windows is like Lucas Electrics.

So is present day MacOS.

So, there's tons of improvements and changes that can be made to the Unix baseline to bring the system up to 2020's expectations. But anytime you give 100 passionate people open source that needs lots of changes, you end up with 110 different sets of changes. Plus, you have completely disparate sets of users (Developers, Home users, Internet operations, Datacenters, etc) who have orthogonal use cases, so there is a constant tension between changes that are good for one group vs. changes that are good for another.

Yes, everyone has a different "only way it can be done". While it might make for a lot of grumbling, I think that having many people weighing in on the development side has some advantages. If someone wants to say put ads in places they shouldn't be, there will be a lot of pushback.

I think W11 is far below mediocre. What I am concerned about is that most other versions improved over time, W11 is getting worse. I just went through a reboot loop after an update, some bizarre onedrive problems, while I had it disabled, re-enabled it, that moved applications and support files to onedrive, which made a mess and I ended up removing onedrive totally. And other travails.

Sure as hell, my MacOS and Linux computers simply work pretty well, while the Windows experience, never all that great - is downright unacceptable at this point. I want the operating system to boot, allow me to run my programs, then get the hell out of the way.

And hella more if Distrowatch is any guide. https://distrowatch.com/ they only do a top 100 listing. I've never been bothered by the plethora of distros. I've noticed a lot of people who get into Linux use Distrowatch as a sort of of playground, trying out distros as a sort of hobby. I did that for a while, after which I figured they are all pretty similar.

I tell the curious to install Mint, run it from a thumb drive, understanding it will be slow that way, then install if they like, and have fun. I have a guy in my classes who is doing that right now - even though I told him that we were standardized on Mint, and if he did have issues, it will slow down the troubleshooting. Damn Linux people don't listen for crap! ;^)

I think a longer development cycle is actually a very good thing.

Many of us are trying to get work done. Not have the model of one particular company who would have us believe that the most important thing is the Operating System. All those applications and the work done on the computer is far less important. Irrelevant in fact.

This! It is hard to imagine that we have people in here claiming this is some sort of highly focused operation, with the results that the adversary now has control of the gulf of hormuz, and the Republicans have decided to blockade it to bitch everything up even more as a solution.

And the Republican plan for peace is that the Republican Party has determined that violence against the Vatican is part of the Republican plan, and the Republicans believe that the bible is the movie Pulp Fiction

So much winning!

You'll have to wait your turn... ;^)

Talk about a situation. Somebody somewhere made a braindead idea that attacking the whole of Iran, rather than targeting a specific thing. So now the we aer on record as planning to end an entire civilization - sounds A lot like advance notice of Genocide, the rest of the world must now obey the smallest whim of the Superpower.

Now just between us, this was some sort of victory? Shutting off our one time allies fuel supplies, and looks like it might get worse.

I'm on record as saying I understand that the Democrats made some weird decisions that cost them the 2024 elections, but if anyone voted for Trump and his merry band, you support use of nuclear weapons against anyone, support subjugation of religion if they do not support everything you want to do. and anything else the stable genius wants to do. I'll bet he tries to declare martial law with use of deadly force before this is over, Demands deadly force against all Citizens who do not obey his orders. And now, let us pray from teh Wholly babble:

“And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother, “And you will know my call sign is Sandy 1, when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

Words straight from teh mouth of Gawd.

Republican faith based fuel? Maybe the EU can fuel their jets with thoughts and prayers.

In reality, unless he stopped, the rest of the world is going to decide that war with the USA is inevitable, Because the Party of trump are not going to stop him. Amnd despite the rhetoric, the USA cannot subdue the entire world.

Well, around 30 years old, men start to think with their big head, not their little one.

True about the ability to have casual sexual intercourse.

As a not-young guy who is sexually active, my wife and I have had discussions about this. I could go out and find a woman to have casual sex with. A bar most likely. using the 10:1 method - If I approach 10 women, I'm going to get laid by one.

She would have an easier time, could be as little as 1:1 so she can be pretty picky. Both of us look okay, are fit and attractive enough.

But really, casual sex really ain't all that. If a woman wants to get impregnated at a club or bar, it isn't that hard, but then there is the single mom problem. Few men today want to raise another man's children.

In the end, most everyone wants to find a loving partner, and it seldom happens via casual sex.

In great irony, looking at the statistics, I'm getting laid so much more often than over 60 percent of young men who should be gelling sex regularly. I guess infinitely more, since those guys aren't in relationships or with women at all.

When I was their age.......

After you scroll down to my listing, it really isn't all that unique. Unless you are into checkboxes.Because as I'll show you, every mission can be unique after some metric. If I went to space, I'd be the first Hungarian/Polish/Italian mix to ever go. (note among my listing, of female astronauts, they have many checked as first person or female of their country. If you see my posts on Artemis II, you will note that Christina Koch is highly qualified, and I would add, perhaps the most qualified person on the voyage. Victor Glover, the male of African descent who is the pilot, is likewise highly qualified. They are Astronauts, they are elite, females have performed every mission in space, from specialist to pilot, to commander.

Who is pretending? We definitely do not live in a color blind society. And make no mistake, if you believe in race in any form, you are by definition a racist. Don't like it? You are welcome to your opinion, I respect that, and I have mine based on Science and biology,I see DNA evidence that shows that homo sapiens sapiens is a species, with extremely small and insignificant genetic differences.

And sexism abounds as well.

Okay, I might be a little insane, and I'm going to stop after the female Astronauts - I'm on vacation, and I don't need to go into the "race" of astronauts Valentina Tereshkova - first woman in space

Svetlana Savitskaya, Sally Ride, Kathryn D. Sullivan, Anna Lee Fisher, Margaret Rhea Seddon, Shannon Lucid, Bonnie Jeanne Dunbar, Mary L. Cleave Ellen S. Baker, Kathryn C. Thornton, Marsha Ivins, Linda M. Godwin, Helen Sharman, Tamara E. Jernigan, Millie Hughes-Fulford, Roberta Bondar, Nancy Jan Davis, Mae Jemison, Susan J. Helms, Ellen Ochoa, Janice E. Voss, Nancy J. Currie, Chiaki Mukai, Yelena V. Kondakova, Eileen Collins, Wendy B. Lawrence, Mary E. Weber, Catherine Coleman, Claudie Haigneré, Susan Still Kilrain, Kalpana Chawla, Kathryn P. Hire, Janet L. Kavandi, Julie Payette, Pamela Melroy, Peggy Whitson, Sandra Magnus, Laurel B. Clark, Stephanie Wilson, Lisa Nowak, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, Anousheh Ansari, Sunita Williams, Joan Higginbotham, Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Barbara Morgan, Yi So-yeon, Karen L. Nyberg, K. Megan McArthur, Nicole P. Stott, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Naoko Yamazaki, Shannon Walker, Liu Yang, Wang Yaping, Yelena Serova, Samantha Cristoforetti, Kathleen Rubins, Serena Auñón-Chancellor, Anne McClain, Beth Moses, Christina Koch, Jessica Meir, Sirisha Bandla, Sian Proctor, Hayley Arceneaux, Yulia Peresild, Kayla Barron, Jessica Watkins , Nicole Aunapu Mann , Anna Kikina, Rayyanah Barnawi, Jamila Gilbert, Kelly Latimer, Keisha Schahaff, Anastatia Mayers, Jasmin Moghbeli, Loral O'Hara, Namira Salim, Ketty Maisonrouge, Lina Borozdina , Jeanette J. Epps, Marina Vasilevskaya, Sarah Gillis, Anna Menon, Wang Haoze, Nichole Ayers, Jannicke Mikkelsen, Rabea Rogge, Zena Cardman, Patricia Robertson (died before spaceflight in accident), Christa McAuliffe, Jennifer Sidey-Gibbons Backup Artemis II, Sophie Adenot, Rosemary Coogan, Meganne Christian, > Meganne Christian, Anthea Comellini, Sara García Alonso, Carmen Possnig, Amelie Schoenenwald, Nicola Winter, Katherine Bennell-Pegg, Mariam Fardous, Christina Birch, Deniz Burnham, Jessica Wittner, Lai Ka-ying,

And for the checkboxes? some of them are pretty funny, other than the young lady who was the first to fly into space wearing a prosthesis, a cancer survivor, and I wish her long life and good health. Even a crazy like me can't begrudge that.

But things like being the first to play a violin in space, or the 20th woman to do a spacewalk? If we keep doing that, will we have a big celebration fort the 10,0046th woman to walk in space?