No means? If you have land, you have means to meet your needs. Have we become so separated from our basic needs as this, that we can't fulfill most of them for ourselves? Really? C'mon, despecialize and get a little security for yourself.

Combines may have made it possible to increase an individual farmer's output, but at what cost? Haven't we all experienced the replacement of the quality, handcrafted item with the cheap plastic mass produced part planned to break in x years (or months)? Sure that's acceptable for some things, but with our food?

Food security is enabling, empowering. And if you're considering it back-breaking, or doing so much of the same task as to need machines, or to consider the work boring, you're doing it wrong. We have a 1 acre, highly diversified, mostly perennial farm, aiming at low-input sustainability. If you don't bother with annuals, that saves you a ton of time. Having the diversification means you don't have accumulations of super-pests, and hence less need for costly poisons. If you plant enough nitrogen fixers, and have enough animals around, there's no need for fertilizer. If you treat your farm less like a crop, and more like an ecosystem food web, there's a lot less work to be done. You introduce new species, you let one element feed the other, you let them multiply for themselves, and you harvest the surplus. Anything else is fighting nature, and hence, introduces work.

Having food security then enables one to be free from the whims of the food, oil, and job market. I would think anyone, including the software programmers (such as myself), would want such security, at relatively low input, and one that involves enjoyable, diversified work. It reduces risk and unties your hands, to take those professional risks you might otherwise wish you could.

Someone forgot to press the button.

My understanding was that the prediction was indeed important, for inter-business communication. Say, for example that a company purchases cpus from a vendor, for use in its product when it releases two years from now. The product development team will shoot for the expected specs on the cpus at that future date, so that the product will be current when it hits the market. Such predictability is very important for some.

1) Buy bare land, on Earth
2) Create self-sufficient, airtight biodome from scratch, no external inputs and outputs except for solar power and heat loss. Any tech has to be made from materials found on your bare land. (Sure a minimum of stuff would be sent along, but tech breaks, and what if you want more?) Metal forging and working is a must.
3) Kill all microorganisms in the soil, then build up a soil ecology and subsequent ecologies
4) Maintain against the ravages of weather and time for at least a year, with provable containment (no breaches in your biodome)

If you get this far, you'll at least be able to take care of your small corner on Earth, AND you'll be ideally placed as a candidate for colonizing Mars.

Oh yes. I look forward to when id10t errors rip off users' limbs. Or a bug in the most recent firmware upgrade.

Thingiverse is a place to freely share 3D object designs: http://www.thingiverse.com/about

RepRap is GPLv2 and later: http://reprap.org/wiki/RepRapGPLLicence

I did already say how I recognize the OP might have been meant differently than I took it. I'm ok with being (possibly) wrong. Save your breath.

The problem is that there are enough actual proponents of this mindset out there that it isn't necessarily taken as over-the-top.

Ok, I can see that. I was taking the post at face value, and didn't see the possibility of irony/sarcasm. The poster could have been a bit more clear, but that's more minor.

Ah yes. Thank you. :-)

How incredibly insensitve, to say that an entire race is expendable. Shame on you.

... when the first child is killed in an auto accident caused by a robot's misjudgment.

I mean, the common cold can kill someone whose immune system is compromised. Is there any indication that bees' immune systems are healthy to start with? Do we have any numbers on white blood cell counts in relation to these studies, or anything like that?

You were the one who said this isn't a matter of IQ. It has to do with more of the core of your being. Some call it your "heart" or "soul". Human beings are more than just our faculty of reason, and the usefulness of reason has its limits. Indeed, many people when presented with stark evidence of something will still reject it, and vice versa, because we are not entirely rational beings. I've been honestly trying to describe something rather difficult to put in words, and to share of my experiences with you. You're asking for apples when all I've got available is oranges because of how it works--the spiritual life is manifested inwardly. I really don't care for teleological and ontological arguments, because even if the point holds, you're not left with a description of God or the interior life that really does it justice, but it seems that's the sort of argument you want just so you can bat it down as hard as you can. It's hardly charitable or sociable to resort to name calling and vitriol just because you can't relate to it. We're at impasse. Now we go our separate ways. I know I've learned some things from this, and I thank you for that opportunity.