Business, Economics, Space, Technology and Society

Molecular Manufacturing And Space

22 Comments

There’s a review of Eric Drexler’s new book over at The Space Review today.

I don’t agree with this (I assume that it’s his own opinion, not Eric’s):

APM will also make space colonization imperative, but for different reasons than for Eric Drexler’s original quest to find a solution to the impending global crisis posed by The Limits to Growth. What will the millions of people now involved in mining, manufacturing, distribution, retailing, transportation, and other services do if much less of these services will be required and most of them could be performed by robots? How will people earn a living if they can buy a desktop factory—something like a super 3D printer—and can produce most of what they need at home and no longer need to shop at Wal-Mart or Amazon? If people aren’t working and earning a good income they will no longer be able to buy stuff. Henry Ford recognized the problem and chose to pay his people well so that they could afford to buy his cars. By choosing to industrialize the Moon and colonize space, thousands and ultimately millions can be put to work earning a good income.

I think that this technology will enable space settlement, but I don’t see how in itself space settlement creates jobs, particularly for those who are becoming unemployable because they’re on the wrong side of the bell curve. That’s a big problem coming down the pike, and space isn’t a solution to it.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

Another Holocaust

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Bibi Netanyahu is prepared to prevent it, even if Barack Obama (among others) isn’t:

“The leaders of the Allies knew about the Holocaust in real time,” Netanyahu said at the opening of a permanent exhibit called “Shoah” in Block 27 at the Auschwitz- Birkenau State Museum.

“They understood exactly what was happening in the death camps. They were asked to act, they could have acted, and they did not.

“To us Jews the lesson is clear: We must not be complacent in the face of threats of annihilation. We must not bury our heads in the sand or allow others to do the work for us. We will never be helpless again.”

But the administration continues to fantasize that the barrier to the “peace process” is homes on the West Bank, rather than that one side that wants to destroy the other, while the other side refuses to acquiesce to its own destruction.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Hollywood

Is it going out of business?

As late as 1981, Hollywood could still muster up enough energy to care what the audience thinks and want to please it. Today, the American moviegoer is anathema, particularly now that he’s no longer buying sufficient quantities of DVDs to support the lavish lifestyle of Hollywood elites, despite following the advice of Hollywood elites who told him to stop buying DVDs.

It certainly deserves to.

Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire

Why The Government Hates Conservatives

2 Comments

Frank J. explains:

You have to remember that the bureaucrats in government are a fiercely tribal people who base all their beliefs on an extreme ideology of government power. How did we think they’d react when we threatened to tear down all they know over some concept they’ve never even heard of — math? Did we think they’d really welcome us as liberators when we tossed them all out into the private sector — a scary world that demands things they can’t even understand, like productivity? No, of course not. Instead they did what seems logical to them: Fight against the invaders threatening them while rallying behind their supreme religious figure, President Obama.

Clearly they had it coming.

Administrative, Technology and Society

XFCE

10 Comments

Is there a doctor in the house? I decided to just go to Fedora 19 beta, since it’s going to be released in a few days anyway. It’s fine so far, except I’m running XFCE, and it refuses to give me a monitor size any larger than 1280×1040, so I’m losing about an inch on all sides with my 21″ LG.

I’ve changed the configuration in the settings editor to 1600×900, and the same in the display.xml file. But when I log out and back in again, it resets them to 1280×1040. I can’t find where in the system it’s getting this information, despite lots of grepping (is it misreading the signal from the monitor?), but it’s driving me nuts. And there doesn’t seem to be a configuration file for X any more.

Any ideas?

[Update a couple minutes later]

OK, it’s probably getting it from xrandr:

[simberg@linux-station ~]$ xrandr
xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default
Screen 0: minimum 640 x 480, current 1280 x 1024, maximum 1280 x 1024
default connected 1280×1024+0+0 0mm x 0mm
1280×1024 0.0*
1280×720 0.0
1024×768 0.0
800×600 0.0
640×480 0.0

So how do I force a change?

[Late evening update]

Yes, the problem is likely some driver or new version of X or something inf F19 foxtrotting things up, because Fedora 18 recognized my monitor no problem. Just not sure what to do about it.

[Sunday morning update]

OK, I installed the latest Nvidia drivers from RPMFusion, and all is now well. It’s a beautiful screen, in fact.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!