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Confirmation bias .

Yepp, that's it. Just look at all the Slashdotters, Apple is evil, Google is good. ;-)

The 'first computer' debate is complicated; there were several machines that can lay claim, depending on your definition of 'computer'. IIRC Colossus wasn't Turing-complete, see this comparison of 1940s computers.

The US was well on its way developing ENIAC by 1945, I don't see Colossus being published in 1945 making much of a difference.
The first commercially available was British (Ferranti Mk 1), IBM built its lead later on.

Add to the fact that the behavior of the devices is likely to be different. An icon is just a small picture, and the layout of icons in that way has been around since at least the Program Manager in Windows (with provisions for screen shape).

This case is like a beauty contest between metric and imperial measurement screws. Which one is best? A 14mm screw or a 9/16 screw? I think that the only thing we know is that the customers are going to get screwed.

I'm pretty sure Palm made a lot of money with a flat device that had icons in rows. Take a look at the images on the right hand side of this page. Palm was using that look right back in 1996, and was making a lot of money until smartphones started to replace PDAs. The iPhone is an incremental change from the Palm (multitouch, no graffiti-entry space) and the iPad is an incremental change from that.

Economic mobility != Social mobility
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Crony_capitalism

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Xerox_Star

Confirmation bias .

You should, really stay away from american ereaders, and their drm, stick to chinese linux based with open formats only, no wireless, just usb and SD. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hanlin_eReader

I also dropped TV about 10 years ago, internet and gaming are enough for me; and the occasional show and live news also happens to be on the net.

Denial

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality

Calm down, the writer you're referring to is simply misspelling a word he's only heard and never seen written.

Ha'penny is an abbreviation for "half penny", a coin worth 1/2 cent. According to a quick wikipedia check ha'pennies have been minted in Great Britain (including Ireland and Scotland), Australia, New Zealand, and the United States (probably not an exhaustive list). Half penny coins were also issued before decimalization (i.e. before a penny was 1/100 of anything, becoming a "cent"), with varied values.

What the poster you replied to probably meant was 1/2 pennies on the dollar, or purchasing for 1/200th of the original value. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt, anyways. It makes me sad that neither of you apparently had someone teach you the nursery rhyme "Christmas is Coming", or else you'd know all this already (wow, I think I'm having a "get off my lawn" moment). And I don't know what's going wrong in your life that a simple misspelling leads you to lay the invective on that thick as a response, but I hope your day gets better.

No, it wasn't. NIST did that, and they did it mostly because:
1. Most finalists voted for themselves as first place
2. Most finalists voted for Rijndael

It is worth noting however that Rijndael was voted over Serpent primarily because Rijndael was significantly faster, where Serpent was significantly stronger!

Any alignment except one that isn't flat, you mean. "Flat" means in a single plane.

This is a flat roof.
This is also a flat roof.
This is not a flat roof. It has two faces in two different planes.

First, Apophis will not hit Earth, neither in 2029 nor in 2036.

Second, such a scheme would be incredibly dangerous. When you look at how close Apophis will pass (Apophis 2029 Pass), a mission to deflect it might just give it the little nudge it needs to hit Earth if something goes wrong. If you want to test deflecting strategies, please do it on an asteroid that is not going anywhere near Earth.

Third, the whole impactor idea is bad. There is no way to predict how an asteroid will react to an impact. It might make things worse, or more likely will have no effect. A gravity tractor is a much more subtle and effective method. It works because we can detect asteroids that pose a threat years in advance, and it allows precise control of the trajectory.

Here here is Adam on his own

Porn! and it shows BARE BREASTS! God for bid!!!!

That piece of pornography that the image was inspired by needs to be censored too!

Porn! and it shows BARE BREASTS! God for bid!!!!

That piece of pornography that the image was inspired by needs to be censored too!

the referendum was not about "should we add a filter" but "how should a filter implemented".

the resolution "controversial content" was approved 10:0 in May 2010

We ask the Executive Director, in consultation with the community, to develop and implement a personal image hiding feature that will enable readers to easily hide images hosted on the projects that they do not wish to view

The foundation wants a filter, the community has no way to stop such a feature.

In that vein, has any human met an extraterrestrial death yet? A number of people have snuffed it on the pad, or on the way up; but the only fatality I can think of that occurred even in earth orbit was that of everybody's favorite adorable cosmonaut...

It isn't, er, high on my aspirations list; but "First human to die on the moon" would beat the fuck out of "Nth human to die in hospital/nursing home".(Particularly if I had time to situate myself so that my horrifying dessicated husk would be artfully positioned to surprise and terrify future visitors...

Ahem.

It was short lived, but Total Recall 2070 was set in a hybrid Phillip K Dick universe that combined Blade Runner and Total Recall. It took place 20 years after the events of Blade Runner, kept a fair chunk of the aesthetic, and was pretty damn cool. It was a shame it only survived one season.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Total_Recall_2070

If you see how the -inside- of a 3.5 TRS jack is designed, you would see that Apple's design would have the same surface area between the contacts as a current jack. In a current jack the contacts do not SURROUND the plug. They only touch the side of it.
You can see an example of a typical type of TRS jack here

Could be, but the patent fight will scale up regardless.

However the automotive market is up-and-coming, and there is more potential for a proprietary platform. (You just have to convice a major car maker to go with your OS, and probably the car maker will want to control the app market for it.) Personally I think android will kick ass when it lands on the dash. I'd much rather be able to install my own apps than have to rely on Toyota's largess with their Entune platform, e.g..

[Hey lazyweb of grammar-nazis: do I need another period to end the sentence after "e.g."? "e.g.." looks wierd.]

Sorry, but cat brain has already been done some decade ago.

They have found asteroids that are pure precious metals. (Assuming you count Iron as precious - particularly when the impurities are gold, radium, silver, etc.). 3554 Amun is a good example

They can in fact get them to earth at a reasonable cost. A small rocket engine on them will do it in a reasonable amount time. The problem is safety and recovery. That is, the rocket engine method causes the asteroid to hit an unpredictable location and explode. The guy that spent the money to get the asteroid can't recover his money and in fact gets sued for any damage done.

Your finances are off also. We are talking trillions not billions. Specifically $20 Trillion for Amun.

The ONLY thing stopping it from being a business is the safe landing. Only a government can afford the risk.

This keeps getting brought up, but I've written commercial C++ code for years and I've not had memory management issues. There have been problems with legacy 3rd party libraries, but if you religiously apply the RAII ( https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/RAII ) idiom you will usually be fine. I can't remember the last time I worked with a raw pointer and had to new/delete my own memory.

Space starts at 100km. At 36km the BLOON will be closer to the ground than space.

Near field communication is only as secure as the size and sensitivity of the nearest antenna.
Just because your mobile phone has a weak antenna doesn't mean a malicious actor has to limit himself.

Yes, screw NFC - we would be a lot better off with 2D barcodes displayed on the phone and a camera on the POS terminal. If you need 2-way communication (which I doubt is really necessary) then just use the camera on the phone and a small (e-ink?) display on the POS terminal. Bonus in that no new tech on the consumer end is needed, every smart phone currently on the market has all you need to pull it off.

anyone with subs and torpedoes would sink the country, but only States can afford those kind of weapons

Not true -- narcotics syndicates have started building/buying submarines to smuggle drugs in, for instance. They're not typically equipped to survive a stand-up fight with a surface vessel, but adding a torpedo tube to hit a fixed platform wouldn't be a huge leap. Or hell, just use the submarine as a transport (which negates your radar) and have it drop off frogmen who attach demolition charges to the supports of your offshore platform; then you can hold the whole thing to ransom under the threat of blowing the charges if they don't pay up.

Pirates only have AK-47s and RPGs, and anyone can defend against those.

Generally true, but that's because when you're raiding transports and cruise ships anything bigger would be economically inefficient, not because they couldn't get anything bigger. The world is awash in weaponry. If there was enough money (or ransomable people) to be had by raiding your offshore platform, they could easily arm up as needed.

Question is how the inputs will be gamed by the people involved.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Goodhart's_law

I remember watching that video and I thought "boy, is that a dumb way of thinking about it." Their schema doesn't match mine (which is that the browser is a program that has certain, unchanging elements - these elements are separate from a given page and I think of the title of the page as the tabs title (leaving aside the window title sharing it)). Thus, separating the title from the content is disjointed - not to mention that fact that I almost never mouse to the location bar, back/forward bar, search box, etc but just use keyboard shortcuts so having these elements closer to the content does me no good.

Except that there are indications that HFT can be just a susceptible to panics as human traders.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash

That sounds pretty similar to a cannonball, which is a pretty normal way to maximize the size of the splash when you hit the water.

In the future, I fully expect to own a vehicle more permanently to be able to handle child-related emergencies and other parent-type requirements more easily

I did what I could in that department about 6 years ago, and so far it's worth every cent. A bicycle is just not an option for me, the terrain is too hilly. People who do ride bicycles are either commuting strictly on the valley floor, or they are certified masoch^W^W just playing in traffic :-)

I know that rain is tolerable when you have proper gear. I used to ride a motorbike some long time ago, and rain was part of the deal. Still, I can't say that it was convenient or particularly safe; I replaced it with a car as soon as I could. You are happy where you are, that's good too.

Your 10 km trip is done at 20 km/h, which is nicely matching the statistics at Wikipedia. In a car that distance in a typical US city, in a typical rush hour traffic can be covered in 1/3 of the time - in 10 minutes. Parking in US cities on a home to work trip is usually not a problem (provided by the company, provided by your rental place, included with your house, etc.) This means that you will save 2*20 minutes (total 40 minutes) per day. If you work as most people, that amounts to 220 work days per year and 8800 minutes (146 hours, about a week) of your life spent in traffic, among exhausts of cars, breathing all these carcinogens. Are you a suicider, or what? That can't be good for you.

I ride along neighborhood streets. Yes, cars go by, but I'm breathing the same air that you would if you went out to do some gardening (assuming you have a lawn, though it seems more likely you're in dense urban center from your descriptions, even if you then talk about living in the hills where one would expect the air is quite clean). Most people pay large sums of money to enjoy a vacation in the clean air I have available, I suppose. However, my previous commute, also by bike, was near L.A. I went right by LAX... on the beach side. So to answer your question... I'm pretty sure I don't have much better to do than ride along the beach for 60 minutes, enjoying the sound of surf and the freshest air available, and also getting to exercise out in nature instead of paying for a gym or gym equipment. Or, more recently, 30 minutes either along nice forested streets with bike lanes or on small neighborhood streets typical of suburban America.

In fact, I see plenty of people who drive home just so they can bike along the same roads I commute on in their leisure time. There are even people who take vacations simply to enjoy what is my daily commute. It's quite safe - you can attach some lights for night cycling, and with appropriate local zoning and transportation design, you have designated bike lanes and bike paths that keep drivers from being impacted by cyclist traffic, and keep cyclists from being unexpectedly in the way of a tired driver.

On occasion I will rent a car or truck to move larger objects as needed -- but most of the time, shopping is done via the bike, or online and deliveries come to my apartment directly. In the future, I fully expect to own a vehicle more permanently to be able to handle child-related emergencies and other parent-type requirements more easily, but still do the majority of my daily commuting by bike. It doesn't work for everyone -- but with minor adjustments to attitude and lifestyle changes, it can work for a lot more than you seem to believe.

Does he not have the freedom of assembly?

Yep, he has that. Although it can be restricted.

Does he not have the freedom to call for an assembly?

Probably covered by the above.

What part of a water fight is not legal?

Well, it could be some sort of offence against the person (would certainly be battery, if there was no consent). Then you have all those lovely "breach of the peace" or "affray" things that the police love to (often incorrectly) apply when they want to round someone up. They could also go with s127 Communications Act 2003 (as with the Twitter Joke Trial) if they can show that calling for a water fight is "menacing".

Can you be arrested for a pre-crime in England?

Of course you can - planning, or conspiracy to do a crime is arrestable most places.

Times like this I wish I was a lawyer already....

It's somewhat more complicated.

In the US, a work may be a work made for hire under one of two circumstances:

First, if the work is specially ordered or commissioned, the work falls into one of a handful of categories enumerated in the Copyright Act (e.g. part of an atlas, part of a motion picture) and the parties involved expressly agree in a written instrument that they both sign, that the work shall be considered a work made for hire. (N.B.: Unless the work is of one of the specific types, explicitly saying that a work is made for hire doesn't mean anything.)

Second, if the work is prepared by an employee in the scope of their employment, the employer will be considered to be the author, unless the parties involved expressly agree in a written instrument that they both sign, that the work shall not be considered a work made for hire.

But Congress never really addressed what constitutes employment in this situation, so the courts will look at a number of factors to try to figure it out, e.g. who supplied the equipment that was used, where the labor occured, how it was treated for tax purposes, etc. It's entirely possible for a contractor to be considered an employee for the purposes of this part of copyright law, given the right circumstances.

The Wikipedia article on this goes into more depth.

Tom Petty's 2002 album, The Last DJ, is partially a stab at the greed and evil of the recording industry. Particularly, the tracks The Last DJ, Money Becomes King, Joe, and Can't Stop The Sun.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Megabit

Like it has forever?

Not everyone lives in the same awful sounding place as you do.

I'm glad for them, whoever they are.

Airlifting? do you really think that a helicopter is going to just land right there in the busy road to pick up my broken remains?

Happened about two months ago to a guy I know. That's why I mentioned that. I was there as Fire and EMR were "collecting his broken remains" (he broke his neck, pretty much) and EMR had no doubt that he wouldn't survive a trip in the ambulance. They should know, I guess, they see this every day.

A road is busy typically because of all the cars not the bicycles

That's true; however video from China tells us that it's the people that make the road busy, not their vehicles.

It's about 30 mins cycling for me (~10km) versus 40+ for public transport (this includes travel to and from the bus/ tram stops), I don't own a car but with parking etc I figure it would be at least 30 mins for that too.

I will set aside the public transit time; I never use it myself. With all the waiting time and endless stops at every corner it is indeed a waste of life.

Your 10 km trip is done at 20 km/h, which is nicely matching the statistics at Wikipedia. In a car that distance in a typical US city, in a typical rush hour traffic can be covered in 1/3 of the time - in 10 minutes. Parking in US cities on a home to work trip is usually not a problem (provided by the company, provided by your rental place, included with your house, etc.) This means that you will save 2*20 minutes (total 40 minutes) per day. If you work as most people, that amounts to 220 work days per year and 8800 minutes (146 hours, about a week) of your life spent in traffic, among exhausts of cars, breathing all these carcinogens. Are you a suicider, or what? That can't be good for you.

To compare, the air that goes into the car (if it goes in at all, it is adjustable) is filtered before it enters the cabin. That alone is a big deal. But also higher speeds and shorter travel time help to keep you out of the poisoned air.

Also, don't you have something better to do with a week of your life every year - better than pedaling among cars? Drivers of some cars don't even see you, especially in the evening, when everyone is dog tired and it's getting dark. If you want an exercise, get an exercise bike (I have one) - they aren't expensive, and you can combine pedaling with reading, listening to music, watching TV, and it's very safe too :-)

Another item which most people without homes or family are easily overlooking is that cars are necessary to transport essential cargo, such as food, materials, and everything else that a household may require. You need a car to transport things and people when your relatives need that help. Car is not simply a people's mover - it is a cargo mover. Rare is a day when I don't carry some cargo in my car that won't fit on a bicycle. Long gone are the careless days when all I needed to deliver was myself. Today I carry metal pieces, electronic equipment, wood, tools, and all kinds of stuff that I need every day. I will go and collect a UPS package in an hour or so; it is so large that it can't be conveniently transported on a bicycle. I will throw it into the car and that's all.

Besides, I live at elevation of about 400 meters above the city (in the hills) and rare a bicycle rider can get that high. They do, sometimes, but they are not carrying bags of food, and they rest often, and they are well trained, and they take their time. One couldn't do that as a matter of routine.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Dyson_sphere#Dyson_shell

You must be good at reading.

I believe he means fuel for non-over-road use such as farm equipment (tractors, harvesters, etc.) Wikipedia link.

Just try it sometime - enable Instant and type "sex" into the bar. It will not display results.

OK, I did that. Typed 'sex', did NOT press Enter or click anything, and within 0.5 second got an ad for 'naughty local girls' along with a full page of sex-related stuff. Proceeded to type 'tant' and got what I needed in the first place.

Typed 'kill' and got suggestions and search done on that. Proceeded to type 'een' and got the stuff about the city in Texas.

This experiment failed to reveal a filter. I was not logged in and I was using standard, default settings. The browser was IE9. Besides, I doubt very much that Google would know all NSFW fragments of all languages on Earth, in all encodings.

One of concerns is that the cache of your browser will be searched and used against you if something happens.

We aren't yet at the stage when your searches can trigger the police response, but it's getting there. There is no need to make "the man's" job easier. As had been said by a competent specialist: "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." That part hasn't changed.

At work your searches go through the corporate filter; we had one at the last place (a big company) that I worked at. The whole 'sex' page would be blocked by that filter, with logs and all. How would you prove to your boss that your search was innocent? The filter has no reason to log traffic that it doesn't block, so your search of 'sextant' a second later won't be logged.

As I see it, instant search doesn't help (at least me) to get results faster. It only helps Google to claim 10x more searches done. In reality, most of the intermediate searches are a waste of resources. For example, all intermediate searches in "internal combustion engine in prius" are useless until the last word is entered. It doesn't help that one of suggestions after "internal" is "internal hemorroids."

This has a direct analogy IRL. A few people like to reply to someone's speech before the speaker finishes. It is rarely welcome or productive. Humanity worked out a simple protocol: listen to the complete statement, think about it, voice your answer. Google here tries to answer before you are done asking. When it's not pointless it is simply distracting; sometimes it is also disturbing, disgusting or otherwise unwelcome (and unrelated to your query.)

This.

Penis.

The above is my proposed counter-meme to the lame, over-used one above it.

maybe you should investigate why Greenland is called "Greenland"

Because in the places where the Vikings settled, it was green. In fact, those places along the coast are still green:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:Qaqortoq2008.JPG

If you go further inland, you'll find 100,000 year old ice. We can be sure it wasn't green when the Vikings lived there.

At the risk of being modded off-topic, here's the higher-resolution image mentioned by rts008 and JavaBasedOS for anyone interested.

It's actually sunset, as NASA mentions here. If you haven't seen it, it's worth a look.

I agree that, for all the advancements in knowledge that NASA and ESA develop, images such as these are what best capture children's imaginations and inspire them. This is what fuels dreams and fosters a desire to contribute to our* space program. Hopefully the image of this meteor inspires someone to pursue studies in a space-related career!

* - our = humanity's collective space program as a whole, because it doesn't matter if a child is from the US, the UK, the EU, China, India - we're all in this together, alone here on this rock.

Related: Pale Blue Dot
Earth and the moon from Mars

Why I don't like mass transit (vs. cars):
1) You spend 5-10 minutes waiting at the station for it (if you are lucky 10-40 minutes if you are not). For short trips, this is not worth it.
2) You have to walk to it some distance, so you have to physically carry everything, and you can't carry much (like laundry, or groceries, etc).
3) They are often dirty and vandalized. The dirt is not yours, so you don't know what exactly it is or what diseases it may carry. Also, since the train is a public facility, no one has an incentive to clean it.
4) They often are less comfortable -- designed for ease of cleaning rather than comfort.
5) When riding them you are "in public" rather than in a more private space. When riding a car you have to worry about driving -- but on the bus you have to worry about your fellow passengers, who may get violent.
6) They generally don't go exactly where you want to go -- so you have to transfer (more waiting) or do a lot of walking, or both.
7) Costs you money every-time you use them.
8) Often have restrictions on what you can carry/do. (Just try taking one to the shooting range with a couple rifles and pistols, and ammunition. Also, no eating/drinking.)
9) Limited hours.

Why cars are OK (compared to bikes):
1) Sometimes it is way too hot (e.g. heat index above 100*F). Sometimes it is way too cold (windchill below 32*F). Sometimes it is raining, snowing, or there ice on the road.
2) Hills are a pain.
3) Starts are a pain.
4) If you ride on the road, it is dangerous and cars are pissed at you because you are in the way. If you ride on the sidewalk, pedestrians are annoyed because you are moving fast, and quiet, and you have to bike around them (if you don't slow down to their speed you are a dick).
5) Other bicyclists are dicks (and being a bicyclist, maybe you are too?). They also like to spend money and brag about it. The blow through stop signs and street lights, and generally act as though everyone else is in the wrong.
6) Bikes can be easily stolen. Most bike locks can be undone in less than a minute.
7) You can't carry much of anything (backpack + basket + tire-rack). Especially if hills are involved.
8) You pretty much arrive everywhere drenched in sweat.
9) Also, they are dangerous. The most significant injuries in my life (so far) was an accident between me and a cub, that nearly took my two front teeth).
10) You can't go anywhere. Seriously, you are limited to basically a 15 mile radius. You can't see your relatives 400 miles away with a bike, unless you have a week to go there.
11) Extra dangerous at night.
12) Bike helmets are dork city.

I lived in Los Angeles for four years without a car. Living in Louisiana now, my primary mode of transportation is a bike currently.

Space junk is also a problem in GEO, because it tends to concentrate in a narrow useful orbit. The only advantage is that relative velocities are small, so damage from collisions is not as severe. On the other hand, lack of atmospheric drag keeps the junk in orbit for much longer.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Space_debris#Debris_at_higher_altitudes

You're confusing the 386 with the 486. Neither the 386SX nor the 386DX had a built-in math coprocessor. The math coprocessor didn't even exist yet when the 386DX (originally just called the 386) was launched.

The math coprocessor did indeed exist at that time. In 1989, I installed one in a CompuAdd 286 so that I could run AutoCAD release 10 at work. (I had to do the same thing when my company "thoughtfully" bought me a Gateway 386SX, which - lacking an integrated math coprocessor - wouldn't run AutoCAD either, unless you installed a separate math coprocessor.)

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Launch_loop#Difficulties_of_launch_loops

Difficulties of launch loops

A running loop would have an extremely large amount of energy in the form of linear momentum. While the magnetic suspension system would be highly redundant, with failures of small sections having essentially no effect at all, if a major failure did occur the energy in the loop (1.5Ã--1015 joules or 1.5 petajoules) would be approaching the same total energy release as a nuclear bomb explosion (350 kilotons of TNT equivalent), although not emitting nuclear radiation.

While this is a large amount of energy, it is unlikely that this would destroy very much of the structure due to its very large size, and because most of the energy would be deliberately dumped at preselected places when the failure is detected. Steps might need to be taken to lower the cable down from 80 km altitude with minimal damage, such as parachutes.

Therefore for safety and astrodynamic reasons, launch loops are intended to be installed over an ocean near the equator, well away from habitation.

The published design of a launch loop requires electronic control of the magnetic levitation to minimise power dissipation and to stabilise the otherwise under-damped cable.

The two main points of instability are the turnaround sections and the cable.

The turnaround sections are potentially unstable, since movement of the rotor away from the magnets gives reduced magnetic attraction, whereas movements closer gives increased attraction. In either case, instability occurs.[3] This problem is routinely solved with existing servo control systems that vary the strength of the magnets. Although servo reliability is a potential issue, at the high speed of the rotor, very many consecutive sections would need to fail for the rotor containment to be lost.[3]

The cable sections also share this potential issue, although the forces are much lower.[3] However, an additional instability is present in that the cable/sheath/rotor may undergo meandering modes (similar to a Lariat chain) that grow in amplitude without limit. Lofstrom believes that this instability also can be controlled in real time by servo mechanisms, although this has never been attempted.
[edit] Competing and similar designs

In works by Alexander Bolonkin [7][8][9] it is suggested that Lofstrom's project has many non-solved problems and that it is very far from a current technology. For example, the Lofstrom project has expansion joints between 1.5 meter iron plates. Their speeds (under gravitation, friction) can be different and Bolonkin claims that they could wedge in the tube;[citation needed] and the force and friction in the ground 28 km diameter turnaround sections are gigantic. In 2008[10], Bolonkin proposed a simple rotated close-loop cable to launch the space apparatus in a way suitable for current technology.

Another project, the space cable, is a smaller design by John Knapman that is intended for launch assist for conventional rockets and suborbital tourism. The space cable design uses electrodynamic levitation rather than electromagnetic levitation and discrete bolts rather than a continuous rotor, as with the launch loop architecture. John Knapman has also mathematically shown that the meander instability can be tamed.[11]

For extra credit:

- Come up with necessary security measures for a 2000 kilometers long and 80 kilometers high structure which doubles as a rail-gun and which acts just like an atomic bomb if something goes wrong.
- Practice saying "But there would be no radiation even if it DID explode" in front of a mirror.
- Come up with a reason why is it somehow NOT impossible to build 80 kilometers long anchor cables, but stacking those cables as sections of a much longer cable IS.
- Invent a perpetual motion machine which would both power the 2000 kilometer long structure keeping it "aloft" AND provide additional energy needed to launch the payload.