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I was an undergrad at NMSU in 1992 working for a team developing artificial neural network processing elements in the 1990's. By 1992 a paper was published for using the PEs for pulse streamling filtering. The specific PE used for that example had electrically isolated dendritic inputs and axionic output. The team had preciously developed a PE that had dendritic input and axionic output on the same circuit. These behaved exactly the same as the ones from IBM, without the need for fancy phase-change materials, from what I can tell from the short article (grammar fail, I know.). The problem faced at the time was automated training of the PEs when connected. I'm glad to see someone has overcome that problem, but this sort of artificial neural network processing element has been around for over 20 years.

This is the IEEE article: The 2016 Top Programming Languages. The link in the parent comment only shows the methods. The methods page does not have a link to the main article.

Here are some comments copied from the Top Programming Languages interactive web page that seem to indicate that the IEEE is not competent:

"Antonio Campos - 5 days ago -- middle of 2016 and people still thinking HTML is a programming language"

"RM1948 - 5 days ago -- Arduino is not a language but a development environment. It should be added into C++. The aruduino.cc site actually says they are C++."

"Tom - 5 days ago -- I don't think it makes sense to lump every assembly language into one - especially since you are making the distinction between C and 'Arduino C' for some reason."

This is the IEEE article: The 2016 Top Programming Languages. The link in the parent comment only shows the methods. The methods page does not have a link to the main article.

Here are some comments copied from the Top Programming Languages interactive web page that seem to indicate that the IEEE is not competent:

"Antonio Campos - 5 days ago -- middle of 2016 and people still thinking HTML is a programming language"

"RM1948 - 5 days ago -- Arduino is not a language but a development environment. It should be added into C++. The aruduino.cc site actually says they are C++."

"Tom - 5 days ago -- I don't think it makes sense to lump every assembly language into one - especially since you are making the distinction between C and 'Arduino C' for some reason."

This is the IEEE article: The 2016 Top Programming Languages. The link in the parent comment only shows the methods. The methods page does not have a link to the main article.

Here are some comments copied from the Top Programming Languages interactive web page that seem to indicate that the IEEE is not competent:

"Antonio Campos - 5 days ago -- middle of 2016 and people still thinking HTML is a programming language"

"RM1948 - 5 days ago -- Arduino is not a language but a development environment. It should be added into C++. The aruduino.cc site actually says they are C++."

"Tom - 5 days ago -- I don't think it makes sense to lump every assembly language into one - especially since you are making the distinction between C and 'Arduino C' for some reason."

Clearly, IEEE has more experience and is more believable. (And yes, I am an IEEE member, but that does not really biais me.) The methodogy used by IEEE spectrum is public [1]. And it also takes stack overflow and git hub as indices. Though that is not the ONLY thing it uses.

There is a saying in data mining: I'd rather have more data than a better algorithm.

[1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/ns/IE...

Already done: http://www.intellectualventure... http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-...

It's only "done" when you can get on Amazon or got to Wal-mart and buy one.

That shit has been vaporware for over 10 years. Still nothing, nada, nobody can get one, even if they would spend $500 for one.

So no, not "done". Vaporware.

By "so many" you mean... 1?

The problem with language rankings is that there are many ranking tables to choose from. C ranks second in the TIOBE and IEEE Spectrum indexes, but it ranks lower than second on the RedMonk, PYPL, and Trendy Skills indexes.

So who's right? Probably none of them.

By "so many" you mean... 1?
http://spectrum.ieee.org/compu...

I read the Google translate version of that document. It said they got e-ink to stick to graphene, and talked about how two companies had formed a partnership to find something to replace ITO (Indium Tin Oxide) in displays, suggesting that the e-ink is what they've used in the past and that the graphene will be the transparent surface layer in their product. Then, it talked about ITO, and it talked about graphene, and it talked about IP disputes and yota phone with Putin. So, it did have a little bit more to say about the product it's announcing. Not up to a full paragraph worth of information yet but now more than a single sentence.

If you're interested, here's an article on attempts to use graphene to replace ITO in solar cells. Here's one on attempting to use thin films of correlated metals to replace ITO in displays And, here's one on ITO having properties that could make it good to use for optical data transmission.

I read the Google translate version of that document. It said they got e-ink to stick to graphene, and talked about how two companies had formed a partnership to find something to replace ITO (Indium Tin Oxide) in displays, suggesting that the e-ink is what they've used in the past and that the graphene will be the transparent surface layer in their product. Then, it talked about ITO, and it talked about graphene, and it talked about IP disputes and yota phone with Putin. So, it did have a little bit more to say about the product it's announcing. Not up to a full paragraph worth of information yet but now more than a single sentence.

If you're interested, here's an article on attempts to use graphene to replace ITO in solar cells. Here's one on attempting to use thin films of correlated metals to replace ITO in displays And, here's one on ITO having properties that could make it good to use for optical data transmission.

I read the Google translate version of that document. It said they got e-ink to stick to graphene, and talked about how two companies had formed a partnership to find something to replace ITO (Indium Tin Oxide) in displays, suggesting that the e-ink is what they've used in the past and that the graphene will be the transparent surface layer in their product. Then, it talked about ITO, and it talked about graphene, and it talked about IP disputes and yota phone with Putin. So, it did have a little bit more to say about the product it's announcing. Not up to a full paragraph worth of information yet but now more than a single sentence.

If you're interested, here's an article on attempts to use graphene to replace ITO in solar cells. Here's one on attempting to use thin films of correlated metals to replace ITO in displays And, here's one on ITO having properties that could make it good to use for optical data transmission.

Floating solar is already common. Here is a large example. http://spectrum.ieee.org/energ... Putting solar on reservoirs also helps to reduce evaporation and conserve water. The novelty here is the resilience to rough water using the modular open base float system. It is notable also that sea based solar could replace fossil oil for liquid fuel production since the Navy has already patented a way to turn seawater into fuel.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-...

http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/robotics/drones/camera-drone-could-be-a-robot-command-center Corrected link.

In the early years of electricity light bulb makers realized how to make light bulbs last for up to 5 years or longer. However someone else quickly realized that this would mean people would only buy light bulbs every X years as replacements. So a light bulb standard was introduced and passed through congress that effectively limited the lifespan of the light bulb to 1 year. Thus guarantee that people would purchase the product many times.This is called planned obsolescence and exists to this day because of the Phoebus cartel.

links to proof IEEE: http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So about patent expiration and things that get bigger when someone does not hold the patent any longer : drugs. And lets pick My favorite drug to talk about Viagra. Viagra started as a possible high blood pressure treatment, but the side effects were amazing as we all know, its patent was scheduled to expire in 2012. So Pfizer sold it for what it did best. Then it became profitable and they increased the price to 60 a pill and a minimum or 8 pills costs someone 500 USD or so. But if Pfizer can show Viagra is a treatment for more than what it was originally marketed for, they can issue a whole new patent for the drug. This is what drug manufacturers do to keep control of a drug and its profits. This is par for the course. Lucky for you and me this drug seems to have only two good usages, luckily i have high blood pressure ;-) And Pfizer extended the patent for the second use case to 2020.

So there is literally a market waiting to explode based on a patent expiring.

Case 2: cell phone modems. This technical patent expired around '99 and those companies selling beepers upgraded to selling cell phones.
Case 3: K-cups
Case 4: 3D printing - the entire industry kick started in 2013 once the patents expired , and then in 2014 when most of the rest expired
Case 5: Kodak and the digital photography patent : (should be #1 but everyone studies this is college as one of the greatest mistakes )
case 6: home telephones: At&t used to lease telephones to people who paid for a home phone - thats why we all grew up with a phone that all looked the same in the 40's 50's 60's 70's and 80's. In the 80's however they were sued that it was unfair to hold the patent and make people pay for the phone... then all these new shaped phones came out... and the cords got longer which was great.. then they got tangled ... which was bad.

These are the top ones that come to mind in 5 minutes if I actually gave it some thought I could probably come up with some good ones.

This idea is similar to "Stormy Clouds", with the addition that on an information-theoretical basis, maximal distance separation codes can provide more entropy that traditional symmetric encryption: [paper] [presentation]

Vizio smart TVs sell your viewing habits to advertisers. The day I learned that is the day I yanked my Vizio's ethernet cable, hardcoded it's Wi-Fi network address to 169.254.something, and added its MAC addr to my router's banlist. There's no way in hell I'd ever, ever connect a Vizio TV to my home network, because the corporation has a demonstrated and recent history of treating its paid customers like trash.

Here's an interview with Yann Lecun. He's also sceptical about such undertakings, but he argues more convincingly: http://spectrum.ieee.org/autom...

Or the new IEEE Spectrum logo

And it is. Read

. . . .and when the FBI started to develop its' own case manager, the "Virtual Case File", which was one of the more spectacular failures in Government IT Development.

When the post-mortem finally comes in, I'd be more than willing to bet that it was due to (1) lack of formalized baseline requirements to hang an initial design on, and the real program-killer, (2) constant requirements creep. Because contractors are unwilling to tell a Federal Customer "no" (because it usually results in decreases in funding in the next task order, or re-allocation of slots to another contractor. . .), there's a constant "just add this one little thing". Over and over again, until you have an unworkable mess and a design that looks nothing like the initial requirement.

The same kind of pressures destroyed the Navy A-12 "Avenger" attack jet in 1991: constant scope creep, until the aircraft was too heavy to fly off an aircraft carrier. The resulting legal fight lasted 13 years. . .

Then they aren't handling their customer properly. I used to do contracting with the Department of Defense. I also helped with business development (including some pretty huge dollar value contracts) by writing technical approaches to these RFPs. When we got these contracts I was the lead engineer and often handled some of the project management aspects as they related to the engineering efforts. I went to every meeting with the customer, from cradle to grave. And you're right, I never did tell the customer 'No - I can't do that.' Because the customer doesn't want to think you cannot do something, even if the reason you're declining the task is merely to prevent feature creep and schedule slip. Instead, you have to convince the customer that while what they want is technically feasible, it is not in their best interests to pursue whatever feature they're asking for. Once you get the customer on the boat with you, make it feel like it was their decision not to implement the feature, they will love you. They will do everything they can to make sure you get every single follow on contract possible. Sometimes they'll even subtly alter their future requirements in order to make it easier for your company to win a contract from GSA or whatever agency is handling procurement.

. . . .and when the FBI started to develop its' own case manager, the "Virtual Case File", which was one of the more spectacular failures in Government IT Development.

When the post-mortem finally comes in, I'd be more than willing to bet that it was due to (1) lack of formalized baseline requirements to hang an initial design on, and the real program-killer, (2) constant requirements creep. Because contractors are unwilling to tell a Federal Customer "no" (because it usually results in decreases in funding in the next task order, or re-allocation of slots to another contractor. . .), there's a constant "just add this one little thing". Over and over again, until you have an unworkable mess and a design that looks nothing like the initial requirement.

The same kind of pressures destroyed the Navy A-12 "Avenger" attack jet in 1991: constant scope creep, until the aircraft was too heavy to fly off an aircraft carrier. The resulting legal fight lasted 13 years. . .

Things look grim for US nuclear power: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energ...

There's a difference between driving a car and knowing where to go.

Currently, Google's self-driving car depends on creating a very detailed 3d map of the world. More detail here. I don't like to link to Wired, but they got an exclusive interview, and it confirms what I just wrote. So no, practically there isn't a difference.

So for a self-driving car to work, there are two choices: either figure out how to make better maps, or create a much smarter car than the one they have now. It has to work a lot better than the Google maps currently does.

solar cells contain toxic heavy metals that aren't commonly recycled

Toxic materials in solar cells are used in very small quantities. The bulk of the solar cell is just silicon. Typical every day appliances have just as much toxic materials in them.

Nuclear is the only form of energy that can deal with our need for electricity.

Solar and wind can too, and are much more appealing to the average investor.

Uh, you're aware many newer solar panels are made of lead, in order to boost efficiency? I'm pretty certain my toaster is not made out of an extremely toxic heavy metal. And guess what, manufacturing them isn't as clean as you believe either. And we haven't even talked about any of the other downsides of solar power - they can be disrupted by the weather, they're not that efficient, and most climates simply can't support them. Sunny Hawaii and California, maybe, but up north in Washington or Oregon they'd only work during the Summer, if even that. And that's really the main problem - we could manufacture solar power cleanly even though we don't at the moment, and we could maybe improve the efficiency, but solar ultimately will not be able to provide the world with enough energy. You'd need to pick a second source anyway for climates without reliable sun, and what would that be? Natural gas? That's not really all that sustainable either, once we drain all of that too. Since you'd need to eventually use nuclear power anyway, why not make it our main focus?

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/sta...

We already have the connector. It has 24 pins, can carry up to 100W, and has 4 dedicated high speed pairs rated up to 40Gbps. It's specification already allows for different signalling to take over the pins in what the spec calls Alternate Modes. There are Alternate Modes for Display Port, MHL and Thunderbolt. These are in addition to the native mode - USB 3.1

It's the USB-C connector of course. The idea of making Ethernet an alternate has already been mooted. Someone just has to do the work to make it happen.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl...

They must have a 360 running.

"A 360" in the sense of "an IBM System/360", or "a 360" in the sense of "a machine compatible - except perhaps at the supervisor-mode level - with an IBM System/360"? If the latter, then that's not interesting; my laptop was purchased in 2015, but, as far as I know, its CPU is compatible, even at the ring 0 level, with the CPU from the original IBM Personal Computer (whether I could boot the original version of MS-DOS on it is another matter), and the most recent CPU design capable of running System/360 problem-state code was also announced in 2015.

Despite the FAA claiming security concerns,, it took me 10 minutes to find Lora

Presumably you meant "Loral".

was once bidding on a contract to replace IBM 9020Es,

Yes, in 1995. IBM replaced the 9020A and 9020D machines in the late 1980s, and then replaced the 9020E's in the 1990s.

so they are probably running 360-compatible gear.

What they're running now might well be "360-compatible", but that might be in the same way that the Haswell Core i7 in my laptop is "8088-compatible".

Apparently a lot of people still use Java: http://spectrum.ieee.org/compu...

TA "This is like climate change,"

Is anyone else noticing that these little zingers are starting to pop up everywhere? It's as if some mechanism that is supposed to keep us from mixing or over-stretching metaphors (unless we're deliberately trying to be funny) has been broken. Like the old social catch-phrase, "How 'bout dem [sports team]?" in which someone is attempting to jump-start a stalled conversation or uncomfortable silence with hilarious off-topic clumsiness.

How 'bout dat Climate Change? (sorry! off topic when I say it, but not when they do)

TA "My team focused on considering how people can identify themselves when the most common form of identification --- the driver's license --- is no longer trusted." [going on to propose something even more complicated]

Other groups suggested... [some things so complicated, effort to implement completely boggles the mind]

So the must-possess-ID to prove your own existence bandwagon we've all jumped onto seems to be experiencing ... technical difficulties. Time and again we applied the naive assumption that the current state of things, such as when local thugs might physically alter and pass documents, is simply intolerable and could not be worse. What we need is the un-crackable trust system. So we embrace increasingly centralized systems that turn out to be centrally exploitable. Now we have globally exploitable systems, what progress! Those thugs in your neighborhood don't stand a chance. Unfortunately neither do police detectives or even FBI agents, even as their forensic methods have improved. How often has the trail of say, some gas-card fraud scheme, dead-ended at some kid whose whole degree of technical prowess consists of writing numbers received in email to mag strips. Numbers acquired by intricate, even fantastic means in bulk by persons who may be anywhere on Earth?

SIMPLIFY. Sounds like there were some clever people there because it ended on an idea 'stack overflow'.

one team expressed what seemed to be a common sentiment --- that the best thing one could do is already impossible. "We should go back to 1995 and get this right. [something about climate] We are too far along to stop bad things from happening in the future; we can just try not to make it worse."

They're right, 1995 was a good year. Allow me to reminisce.

There was this thing 'cash' which most of us used for every day purchases. We were not using cash because we had something to hide... honest! We payed our taxes regularly, sometimes even with cash... honest! Even terrorists paid for things in cash, and their money was as good as anyone's. That's the wonderful thing about cash, once you have it, it's yours and you don't need to worry that the Federal government will seize it from your account because that fellow who bought that living room set was an Iranian. Some reading this never knew a time when it took a lot longer to process a credit card than count money and make change. Then again, in 1995 people didn't hold up the line as they bought and scratched instant-win lottery tickets. That was considered rude then.

Your bank was your friend. it couldn't play the stock market and expose its shiny ass in derivatives, or corroborate with the Federal government in real time to scrutinize your transactions. Few banks were joined at the hip with credit card companies and junk mortgage giants. They offered actual ATM cards which worked in local ATMs that did not immediately broadcast your transaction and geo-position in global data streams to a loose consortium of corporate and government special interests. They

TA "This is like climate change,"

Is anyone else noticing that these little zingers are starting to pop up everywhere? It's as if some mechanism that is supposed to keep us from mixing or over-stretching metaphors (unless we're deliberately trying to be funny) has been broken. Like the old social catch-phrase, "How 'bout dem [sports team]?" in which someone is attempting to jump-start a stalled conversation or uncomfortable silence with hilarious off-topic clumsiness.

How 'bout dat Climate Change? (sorry! off topic when I say it, but not when they do)

TA "My team focused on considering how people can identify themselves when the most common form of identification --- the driver's license --- is no longer trusted." [going on to propose something even more complicated]

Other groups suggested... [some things so complicated, effort to implement completely boggles the mind]

So the must-possess-ID to prove your own existence bandwagon we've all jumped onto seems to be experiencing ... technical difficulties. Time and again we applied the naive assumption that the current state of things, such as when local thugs might physically alter and pass documents, is simply intolerable and could not be worse. What we need is the un-crackable trust system. So we embrace increasingly centralized systems that turn out to be centrally exploitable. Now we have globally exploitable systems, what progress! Those thugs in your neighborhood don't stand a chance. Unfortunately neither do police detectives or even FBI agents, even as their forensic methods have improved. How often has the trail of say, some gas-card fraud scheme, dead-ended at some kid whose whole degree of technical prowess consists of writing numbers received in email to mag strips. Numbers acquired by intricate, even fantastic means in bulk by persons who may be anywhere on Earth?

SIMPLIFY. Sounds like there were some clever people there because it ended on an idea 'stack overflow'.

one team expressed what seemed to be a common sentiment --- that the best thing one could do is already impossible. "We should go back to 1995 and get this right. [something about climate] We are too far along to stop bad things from happening in the future; we can just try not to make it worse."

They're right, 1995 was a good year. Allow me to reminisce.

There was this thing 'cash' which most of us used for every day purchases. We were not using cash because we had something to hide... honest! We payed our taxes regularly, sometimes even with cash... honest! Even terrorists paid for things in cash, and their money was as good as anyone's. That's the wonderful thing about cash, once you have it, it's yours and you don't need to worry that the Federal government will seize it from your account because that fellow who bought that living room set was an Iranian. Some reading this never knew a time when it took a lot longer to process a credit card than count money and make change. Then again, in 1995 people didn't hold up the line as they bought and scratched instant-win lottery tickets. That was considered rude then.

Your bank was your friend. it couldn't play the stock market and expose its shiny ass in derivatives, or corroborate with the Federal government in real time to scrutinize your transactions. Few banks were joined at the hip with credit card companies and junk mortgage giants. They offered actual ATM cards which worked in local ATMs that did not immediately broadcast your transaction and geo-position in global data streams to a loose consortium of corporate and government special interests. They

Moore's Law has been running out of steam lately.

Intel had trouble with their last several process nodes. TSMC and UMC had... more than trouble.

We'll still see progress, but we're hitting the wall on what silicon can do. Maybe alternative materials will be the answer, but even then the reason they haven't been used before is the cost to manufacture.

Chris Mack wrote a relevant article about it here: http://spectrum.ieee.org/semic...

He doesn't mention the need to move to alternative materials, which Intel has said elsewhere will need to happen by 7nm.

Moore's law has been slowing down. We're still seeing benefits, but I expect the industry to slow down at least a bit in this lifetime.

So how excited are you about this announcement?

Although the paper isn't something you can just skim through on your evening commute (I tried...).

Why link to that useless tease at inhabitat?

Here is TFA: http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-...

Though it still does not explain why induction might be better than using a conventional dock, especially for an automated car.

people typically learn object recognition with far fewer examples than a computer requires using a deep learning approach.

Single Sample Face Recognition using Deep Learning Autoencoders.

IMHO deep learning is just the latest fad, popular with AI programmers who otherwise don't have a clue.

How many world class Go players have you defeated?

The O2 headphone amplifier is an extremely clean amp that can drive almost any headphones. It sounds great. Pair it with a clean DAC, rip all your CDs to FLAC, and you can listen to your music from your computer with the very highest in fidelity.

If you can solder, you can build the O2 amp for $30 to $40 worth of parts.

http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/08/o2-summary.html

The guy who designed the O2 also designed a really good DAC. He wanted to release it as a DIY project but the realities of the DAC chip business mean that it was only practical to sell a complete DAC board. But you could make a project out of building an O2 amp in an enclosure with the DAC board built-in. (I have such a device but I can't solder; I bought mine from JDS Labs, pre-built.)

http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2012/04/odac-released.html

I am friends with a world-class audio expert, and he agrees that the O2+ODAC is the best way to spend your money. It's as clean as $1000+ solutions.

P.S. Article about the guy who designed the O2 and ODAC: "the audio genius who vanished"

http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/profiles/nwavguy-the-audio-genius-who-vanished

You could feed a lot of donkeys for $32 million dollars. Their barns are probably cheaper than the warehouses this LS3 would be stored in, too. http://spectrum.ieee.org/autom...

DeBeers was also involved in industrial diamonds which are not at all useless. During WWII, they were considered a strategic asset.

There was plenty of motivation to enter the market, big money is always a motivator.

If DeBeers isn't Scottish enough, consider the Phoebus cartel.

Enron had a pretty good go at it until it got caught.

Then again, not all transactions are fully voluntary. For example, in the emergency room, it's questionable how voluntary the transaction is when the alternative is death within minutes.

Laser Bug Zapper Inches to Market -- the video is from 2010. Didn't realize it had been kicking around that long.

"Compared to the domestic manufacturing scenario, the energy use efficiency is generally 30% lower and the carbon footprint is almost doubled in the overseas manufacturing scenario."
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...

"the countries that produce the most photovoltaics today typically do the worst job of protecting the environment and their workers ... The quartz is extracted from mines, putting the miners at risk of one of civilization’s oldest occupational hazards, the lung disease silicosis ... turning metallurgical-grade silicon into a purer form called polysilicon—creates the very toxic compound silicon tetrachloride ... So some operations have just thrown away the by-product. If exposed to water—and that’s hard to prevent if it’s casually dumped—the silicon tetrachloride releases hydrochloric acid, acidifying the soil and emitting harmful fumes ... one of the largest photovoltaic companies in the world, spilled hydrofluoric acid into the nearby Mujiaqiao River, killing hundreds of fish. And farmers working adjacent lands, who used the contaminated water to clean their animals, accidently killed dozens of pigs"
http://spectrum.ieee.org/green...

http://archive.wired.com/wired...
http://spectrum.ieee.org/biome...

D-Wave has published about chip architecture for quite some time now. You must be frequenting the wrong science sites.

Google for instance is following their overall approach but throw in hardware error correction. The latter has to be implemented via software on the D-Wave chip, which in essence is nothing more than a bunch of coupled josephson junctions (I heinously oversimplify of course, but there are now dozens of publication like this since D-Wave left the stealth mode).

ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 has had a group looking at programming language vulnerabilities, including (a) how to define a 'vulnerability'; (b) how to assess languages against those definitions; (c) an assessment of languages (that have de-jure standards) for vulnerabilities, and related work. There is an introduction here http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/s... and the work is documented here: http://grouper.ieee.org/groups...

(Do you suppose the authors of this report are aware of the ISO work?)

And anyway the highest monochromatic conversion rate ever recorded - lab scale - was 53%.

59% .... http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=122385&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D122385

That's the result of a quick search. I have no idea what the practical and theoretical limits are.

Others have asked the same question:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/consu...

Thanks for the compliment, AC. Perhaps I can do the same for you some day.

But let's analyze the case (if any) for power satellites. Electricity is a commodity; like all commodities you have to be competitive on price if you want a significant market share. That means you want to undercut electricity from coal at around 4 cents per kWh. If you set 75% of coal (3 cents per kWh) as the target, then you can back calculate how much you can spend for a levelized cost of electricity of three cents. For generally accepted life and discount rates that's about $2400/kW.

The mass for ground based solar power is around 500 kg/kW. This article, http://spacejournal.ohio.edu/i..., make a case for 6.5 kg/kW. Not having to support the collectors against gravity and wind, plus the near 24 hr sunlight cuts the mass to about 1%. Parts and the rectenna are currently estimated at around $1100/kW, leaving $1300/kW for transport cost. If we can't get the mass lower than 6.5 kg/kW, then the cost of lifting the power sats to GEO can't exceed $200/kg. At high flight rates, Reaction Engines thinks the cost will get to $120/kg. Electric propulsion from GEO to LEO powered by 25 GHz microwave beams in the hundreds of MW, looks like it will cost under $80/kg.

This article goes into the transport cost analysis. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl...

It was peer reviewed.

If you don't have easy library access, there is a preprint here:

https://drive.google.com/file/...

AC, if you would like to be anything but a blowhard, go through the documents and see if you can find fault with them.

Actually, the Spectrum article says the opposite. The private sector wastes just as much money, and manages just as badly, as the government.

Here's what the article you quote actually says on the matter:

This is only one of the latest in a long, dismal history of IT projects gone awry [see table above, "Software Hall of Shame" for other notable fiascoes]. Most IT experts agree that such failures occur far more often than they should. What's more, the failures are universally unprejudiced: they happen in every country; to large companies and small; in commercial, nonprofit, and governmental organizations; and without regard to status or reputation. The business and societal costs of these failures--in terms of wasted taxpayer and shareholder dollars as well as investments that can't be made--are now well into the billions of dollars a year.

Quantify "universally unprejudiced", show the authors actually did that analysis here, and then show that is even remotely relevant to your claim that the much larger private sectors wastes just as much money on IT projects.

Recall that a lot of paying IEEE members work for government projects. Saying that the much larger private sector wastes money too at the same level while having no evidence to support that assertion is a sop to them.

The private world doesn't generate ten billion dollar complete failures for IT upgrades, for example. And I doubt their examples of billion dollar failures (over-represented by governments BTW) under-report the private sector that much. It's much harder to hide a billion dollar IT failure than it is to hide a ten million dollar IT failure.

I think free-market ideologues should read less Ayn Rand and more IEEE Spectrum. And pay less attention to right-wing theories and more attention to what actually happens in the real world.

And when we do read more IEEE Spectrum and see that our educated assertions are borne out, then what's next on the path to enlightenment?

Of course, as Paul Krugman says, if the Republicans want to destroy government, in order to prove government never works, they can cause a lot of harm to their country and sometimes succeed. (Not that centerist Democrats are much better.)

If the irrelevant comment about "free market ideologues" and Ayn Rand didn't clue us to your political bias, this sure does. The mental failwaves from Republicans are what makes us incompetent. Wah!

You neglected "massive government waste who cares it isn't really my money being spent."

Actually, the Spectrum article says the opposite. The private sector wastes just as much money, and manages just as badly, as the government.

The "Software Hall of Shame" includes

http://spectrum.ieee.org/compu...
large companies and small; in commercial, nonprofit, and governmental organizations.

I think free-market ideologues should read less Ayn Rand and more IEEE Spectrum. And pay less attention to right-wing theories and more attention to what actually happens in the real world.

You ought to meet some government employees, as I did, who would rather serve their country than make a lot of money, corny as it sounds.

I found a lot of people like that in the military health care system.

I met a 60-year-old doctor who gave up a practice that was probably paying ~$300,000 a year to join the military and treat Marines in Iraq who had their feet blown off by land mines.

I met VA doctors who were really dedicated to cure patients with cancer and heart disease, or at least keep them alive and functioning as long as possible.

Of course, as Paul Krugman says, if the Republicans want to destroy government, in order to prove government never works, they can cause a lot of harm to their country and sometimes succeed. (Not that centerist Democrats are much better.)

The list of failures from TFA proves that software cannot be created and then not maintained, not constantly observed, not updated. Complex software that interacts with real life systems cannot be treated as if it is a 'fire and forget' thing. It is not.

The "disappearing warehouse" case is perfect, nobody was keeping an eye on the system, nobody at all was actually personally invested, personally responsible. I have created a lot of software over my life, I built and own a retail chain management system, store management, supply chain management, customer relations management, logistics, shipping, payment, warehouse management and some other systems. These are used by medium sized companies (actually in the world they could be called small, only dozens of stores, only hundreds of employees and a hundreds of suppliers, but actually tens of thousands of SKUs)

I know this: the owner of the business does not forget anything. The owner of the business is the person whose personal wealth is tied into the business, that person does not miss anything and if he or she is personally involved in the project, they understand the system (not entirely, but the parts that are important to running the business), no warehouse would go missing, no store would go missing, no supplier would go missing.

The reality is that combining complex software with lack of personal responsibility leads to real world issues.