It takes lots and lots of energy (and/or time) to desalinate water, and you'd still have to transport it thousands of kilometers in some cases.

Yes to all of those.
The reason that doesn't help is the same reason that erosion hasn't broken down all major cities on Earth yet: it takes a while for those processes to operate. The rate at which we use (some) resources is faster than the rate at which they are replenished by nature.

In a sense, even oil is a renewable resource: it comes from organic matter, after all. Problem is, it took hundereds of millions of years to build up the oil reserves we have now. The rate at which we use it is (much) higher than the rate at which it is renewed. Same problem as with fresh water, although the timescale for the oil to be renewed is much longer than the timescale for water to be renewed. Then again, we can survive without oil, but we can hardly survive without water.

I'd say the main reason that the US is running short of drinkable water is mostly pollution. Too many cities dump toxic crap into rivers UPSTREAM of other towns and cities. It can take a lot to clean that crap out of the water. And expensive too.

For a long time the North Saskatchewan river here was horribly polluted. Its been getting a lot better though. To the point that they don't need to use as many chemicals to clean it anymore. Still aren't supposed to swim in the river though so its not clean yet.

Sure they are, theres just more of them.

Just in case, this is the article that explains a bit about the technology.

Let me clarify: I mean scaling up as in vertical scalability, that is, instead of having a single nanotube, have an array of them. They also need to figure out how to cheaply build them as well, as well as adapting the process to industrial proportions.

Has Jonathan made his translations?

Great, just 2 more to go.

Oh, and don't bring more attention from the CIA until we finish this, or they'll kidnap me and none of you will see the results.

Too late...
{"name":"601274","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/8\/18f046b6283d1d6a2e5d4f2ee1783da0.jpg","w":1053,"h":799,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/8\/18f046b6283d1d6a2e5d4f2ee1783da0"}

That's okay.. I work for csis and we already got it covered

Seems like there's some delays with Marco. Don't worry though people, if for some reason he has some problems(cough, real life), the deadline is Sunday's night. Or so I hope, I want to get this out of the door as soon as possible.

All I can say for the patient, is that the wait was worth it. The results are pretty interesting, and it'll change your view on Human/Computer translators surely.

Can we get the results from the computer translator for the same sentences at the same time as the actual results?
Also, do we get to justify our translation choices?

. I'm an academic so anytime i do something there is a paper to be written Stil.. I think it would be neat to write up a little report and I'd help in the analysis and writing.