Friday, February 24, 2006

Seeing the Irony

Planet's Population to Hit 6.5 Billion Saturday


And

S.D. House Approves Abortion Ban Bill

Now, am I the only one that sees the irony here?

The human population on this planet is increasing at an ever increasing rate. They say it may taper off, but even so, they are estimating that it will take only till 2012 to make it an even 7 billion. 6 years to add 500 million humans. That is twice what the US was just a few years ago (if memory serves me correct).

Longer life spans, decreased mortality rate, improved medicines and surgical procedures, kind of has made it less likely to die.

Science fiction authors have written about settings where their are food riots. Seems far fetched here in the land of the Golden Arches, but it will happen first in other countries then happen here.

Add to that how I keep seeing farmland turned into housing developments, and it is only a matter of time before the population line on the fancy graph crosses the available food line. That is when the food riots will start.

I know I like to push for moving into orbit, but that is not overnight for the entire human race, and it will take a while before mass production of food stuff can happen in space. So, it can not be said that moving into space will help equalize the population vs available food ratio.

I always liked the saying 'Plan for the worst, hope for the best'.

So in the artical about SD passing legislation about abortions, it makes it a criminal act for a doctor. Wonder if it is a criminal act for the mother? Her sister? Her best friend with a coat hanger?

They are starting a special account for donations to defend this legislation, supposedly already a million has been donated. Wonder how many adopted or foster care children that would help? struggling single parents? Educating young women and men about abortion?

Let's see, 500 abortions a year in SD. $1 million so far. Wonder how much $2,000 would help some woman who is pregnant and considering an abortion?
($1mil divided by 500 got me the $2,000 number above)

I believe a few things when it comes to abortion (this means my opinion):
1- Men have no say in it. Seems harsh, but even as a father of two, I was not the one pregnant. I was not the one that could die from complications of said pregnancy. And any pregnancy can have complications.
2 - It seems like if they wanted to curb the 500 abortions a year, they could setup 500 adoptions. Or maybe provide free daycare for the single parent so they do feel like they have no choice? (cant afford daycare, etc, so had to get an abortion)
3 - The less government has control of our lives, the better for everyone. Less government means less taxes, which for people doing ok, not a big deal, but when you are scrapping just to keep a car running, food in the house, and decent clothes on your children, it is alot of money that goes away and does not come back.

Well, getting late.

LDJ

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Cyberwalls - Keeping out the trash?

Just wish I could see what is going on at NewsVine.

I have heard others talk about it, but really I think invite exclusive systems (like Google's GMail) just keeps out some who wanted to use the service.

I still do not have a GMail account, but now I dont want one. I have plenty of other email accounts to keep track of.

I DO want to see what is going on at NewsVine, as I have to go to a bunch of different sites to see the news I want.

I am also interested in their 'Citizen Journalist' concept.

But, guess I am not good enough to use it. Hopefully they will bring down the Cyberwalls and let everyone see.

LDJ

Monday, February 20, 2006

Podcast DNA?

On episode 6 of Inside the Net, they interview Tim Westergren of Pandora Media. He did a 'little' thing called the Music Genome Project. Great idea.


Leo says someone should do that for Podcasting and I have to agree.

A set of tags or attributes that would let people sort and search on podcasts would be helpful for the whole 'community' of podcasting.

Of course, I am not sure what those tags would be or who would be best to determine them, but it is a great idea.

LDJ

Even Cray has fallen for Linux

The power of Linux, in my opinion, is to convince people it is the best thing, even if it is free. Cray (company that makes supercomputers) has set some record with their new computer ('Red Storm') that runs Linux. See story here.


Don't get me wrong, I think it is great and many people have put a vast amount of hours making Linux what it is.

But even an OS that is free and developed for free, many focus on new features over fixing bugs.

I thought that mentality was limited to corporations that add features to try to convince consumers to purchase the latest version for new features. And the companies, for the most part, have trained the consumer to accept buggy software as the standard. Consumers have been brainwashed that new, but maybe marginal, features are worth it.

I want an OS so stable, so reliable, that I do not need to install it on a computer, but that it is stored on chips on the motherboard and new versions are new chips. Maybe it is stored on something as simple as a USB Thumb/Key drive that can not be written over. Or, it could be like BIOS chips, and is plugged into a socket on the motherboard.

Whatever specific hardware that it is stored on, that it cant be written over. This would really eliminate alot of problems with malware, as no changes could be made to the OS.

Now obviously there would need to be mechanism in place to store variables, parameters, and user defined settings. Sure there would be some settings that combined together may result in a hard to use system (ie, all colors set to black), but then you could just boot with the defaults and then correct your settings, and you are back.

Just an idea.

LDJ