We're getting closer, anyway. The biggest problem is that TPTB have no motivation to make life not be a zero-sum or even negative-sum game because they are winning. It's fine for them if it's like that... for now. Obviously this is not sustainable. And even Science Fiction is filled with cautionary tales about the fact that you cannot maintain a technological society without a certain number of people. (You might be able to replace many of them with computers one day, but it's there's plenty of cautionary tales about that as well.) So you can't just get rid of all the people, but that's where these policies lead. Green Revolution farming actually destroys farmland and turns it into an inert medium for hydroponics. But it is increasingly failing even on that basis because massive monocultures are inherently unsustainable. They lead to massive explosions in birthrate of "pest" species which cause not only later dieoffs which spread disease, but also massive impact to crops. And the pests (and diseases!) are increasingly becoming resistant to the treatments which we have to bring to bear.

If you are willing to plant food in guilds and harvest by hand, and if your customers are willing to buy the food which is in season, then none of this bullshit is necessary. We have massive unemployment so there's plenty of idle hands. But we also have legal protectionism (and indeed, even subsidies) for the industry producing low-value foods which provides an unfair incentive which keeps the green machine rolling over soil and spitting dirt out the arse.

Tell them they can turn around and fuck off, or accept net 30 terms.

Prime doesn't stream to much. The player crashes often on Linux, and they've locked their android client down so that it will only run on some crappy old Google TV devices. This last is what made me not subscribe to prime.

I played Pac-Man on the 2600 for hours and hours. At the time, it was an amazing thing to have in your house. Have some perspective.

Well then, that's better than usual. Now they just have to deal with Boeing, and the fact that it's still in Florida

But now you can get quad-core sticks for $100 or less. So while the Pi is still cheaper, it's not that much cheaper. The issue is as you say reliability. The cheap ones tend to be garbage.

Those games are irrelevant because I'm not playing them.

Sorry, my sentence was a little backwards, but those are the windows games I'm playing. I also have an Xbox 360 which I bought used, and whose optical drive I have replaced. I bought it on the theory that it hasn't RROD'd yet even though it's old. SFSG.

These arguments are hypocritical. If Florida really believed the shit they said to stop this development, then more than half the development in Florida would have never happened. But let's face it, Florida is a warm storage facility for dying people that most of us are hoping (secretly or not) will get wiped out by some sort of massive wave, and their primary exports are citrus (better from Mexico anyway) and bad legislation.

I have nothing against vilifying specific groups by name, on either side, if they deserve vilification. Libertarians are those who want police protection from their slaves (and are sure they'll be on the enslaving side.) Teabaggers don't even know what that means. I have lots of things to say about hippies too, if you want to hear more negativity. I grew up in Santa Cruz, so I am more intimately acquainted with their smells than I would like.

Well, if you're convinced, then I'm convinced. baa! baa!

The fact is that the natives who lived in the pacific northwest had successful land management practices. They had rules for who could fish where and how much, they set fires yearly when moving between their summer and winter grounds which kept down the brush including poison oak, and they were able to subsist primarily on hunting and gathering because their land management was so very successful and the land so rich. Predictably, ol' whitey fucked it all up for them. First he murdered them wholesale, notably in the form of the U.S. 1st. Cavalry killing every man, woman, and child on an island in the lake (one of the larger settlements) in revenge for deeds by a distinctly different band of Pomo. Then he destroyed their way of life by attrition, granting their land to others and then paying them a dollar per tree planted to rip out the oaks and install black walnut. You can't live on walnuts alone, but you can live on acorns.

The point here is that humans are capable of responsible land management, the problem is which humans are chosen to make the decisions. Baa! Baa!

I suppose you've been out to the site and taken a nice broad range of soil samples, then brought them home and analyzed them? Because military bases of all kinds have a tendency to become superfund sites because of decades of disposal of hazardous chemicals involving burying barrels or simply dumping things out in back of the shop.

It's a nice idea, but it doesn't work that way for several reasons. One of them is that when someone walks away and leaves a housing development it doesn't just vanish. Another is that there's always impact from the construction that you can't simply wish away.

What kind of torture did you use on this sentence? Waterboarding? Thumbscrews?

850 sq. ft? That's okay for one person, or a young couple that doesn't own anything yet, but it's cramped for anyone else. Oh, it might be okay for small people. But not the average 'merican.

Speaking for myself, I'm not living in a city again until they abolish cars. Cars are what make cities suck.

Not me, I'm still playing the old games because they new ones are shit, like in the case of Civ IV or Simcity IV.

Well, when the alien YHWH created them, they had nanotechnological mechanisms to prevent the inbreeding from becoming a problem. They were passed down generationally until eventually there was a break in the process. This led to the tradition of consuming corpses, to gain their remaining nanobots...

BECAUSE... ALIENS. No, I don't believe any of this stuff, but it would make a cool story. It's more creative than nine tenths of what's coming out of hollywood anyway :p