The Future of Extinction of Plants and Wildlife

100 plant and animals are lost every day due to deforestation and urbanization, what might happen if this continues in the future? Let's consider the future now.

Overview                            

The last mass extinction of plant and animal species occurred 65 million years ago with the Dinosaurs. In all, five mass extinctions have occurred and scientists believe earth is in the sixth mass extinction. The author of the book “The Sixth Extinction”, Dr. Leakey states that 50% of the earth’s species will vanish within 100 years. The world as it is now is threatened, including people, who are responsible for earth’s deterioration.

The Damaged Earth

Pesticides contaminate water; overharvesting of animals and plants; air pollution; illegal fishing and the clearing of land are direct results of urbanization and deforestation. People have altered and/or damaged almost half of earth’s land, a very unsustainable rate.

Global warming is having a serious impact as well. A six-degree Celsius increase in global temperature killed 95% of all species on Earth 251 million years ago. An increase of six-degrees Celsius is forecast this century if a change is not made to reverse the damage done to earth. Home sapiens (people) will be one of the 95% of species lost.

Noticeable changes of global warming include migration acceleration and the timing of seasons is changing. Migrating birds are migrating earlier, which in turn is causing them to hatch eggs and bear young earlier than they did at the beginning of this century.

Considerations

While this is just the tip of the iceberg, many, many issues need addressing regarding the extinction of plant and animal species. It is more important now than ever before to pull heads out of the sand and make a change for the better to earth. Future generations are threatened, as they are a species as well.

This is a much bigger problem than just deciding to recycle plastic, as many believe. If you want to leave a legacy to your future generations, get involved in a program to save the planet. Whether it is on a personal level or a global level, find out what areas need help and what you can do to help.

Mozilla to Develop OS based on android!

Mozilla, who are renowned for their successful internet browser, are entering the mobile race, developing a new web-centric OS that will directly compete with Google, Apple and Microsoft.

                                                 

                                                   

If the name Mozilla rings any bells it's because they're the tech boffins who put together Internet Explorer, the browser that Windows defaults to. Mozilla took the leviathan computing company on with its Firefox browser, and today it stands as the second most popular browser worldwide.

Now the company who was underdog to Microsoft looks to be playing the same role, but this time against internet mogul Google.

Announced on the Mozilla discussion forum, Mozilla have begun coding for phones and tablets. The BBC revealed the mobile operating system will draw on Android code, with Mozilla writing as much fresh code as possible. The hybrid-like operating system will be named Boot To Gecko. 

It is an unusual name for an OS, until you remember Gecko is the rendering engine employed by the Firefox browser that interprets web page coding and displays it in a screen-friendly format, a homage to its origins.

Even though Android coding will form the operating system's foundations, Mozilla hope to add a much more open wrapper around it than Google currently do, making it more versatile as an operating system.

Its shared foundations will also make Boot To Gecko compatible with the same phones as Android, competing as a direct alternative to Google.

Often, when you select a link from an application native to the Android or iOS market, the operating system will have to open a new webpage in the browser. Boot To Gecko aims to limit this by making applications much more web-centric.

If the venture proves successful, Mozilla will be waging war against industry giants, with Google, Apple and Microsoft dominating many facets of the technological world. 

Mozilla have acknowledged the project is in infancy and have chosen to make the development public in hope it will attract talented enthusiast coders who will contribute to the Boot To Gecko's cause.

According to their project team, all of the code development will be completed and shared with the public as soon as it is written.

Researcher Andreas Gal, who announced the development, admits the company has set a high target, but wants to do it "the way we think open source should be done.

Gal says his ultimate goal is to break "the stranglehold of proprietary technologies over the mobile device world," implicitly referring to the practices of Apple, Windows Phone and Google.