1) it is usually not more expensive, and often cheaper, to buy the CD used on Amazon than to download it.
2) the physical CD provides a backup.
3) And while I find that, given the current cost of HD space, I am willing to accept what is, to my ears, a slight loss in quality from compression to fit more music on my HD, I imagine that someday I'll want to re-rip those CDs at a higher bit rate.
Releasing the DVD at the same time the movie is released would bring a huge slowdown to this problem.
Very likely. But it might well have an even greater detrimental effect than bootleg copies on theater revenues, which would hardly serve the purpose of preserving the livelihoods of those who work in movie theaters.
Using binoculars to look into the windows of someone else's residence (say from across the street) is indeed an invasion of privacy and can get you busted in my state, even though looking with the naked eye is permissible. The night vision thing creeps me out.
If I want privacy, I'll watch a video at home. I don't expect or desire privacy in a movie theater. This is a confined place where I am surrounded by people I do not know. I've seen people threatened and assaulted in theaters. As far as I'm concerned, supervision of the patrons is one of the things I am paying for when I lay down my inflated ticket price. I expect them to keep me from being bothered while watching the movie--whether it is by jerks who talk too loud, or who are looking to start a fight, or who are more interested in filming the screen so they can make a few bucks selling counterfeit videos to suckers on the street. If night vision goggles help the management to do so, that's fine with me!
As the movie companies are paying for enforcing the law in this case yes, thats fine.
The movie industry pays taxes. So do all of the people who work making movies, or in theaters or video stores. So do all of the people who benefit from the positive effect of exported movies on the US trade balance. Why aren't they entitled to have a little bit of their money invested to protect them from criminals who want to undermine their businesses and livelihoods? There is plenty of US precedent for laws designed to protect businesses from criminal activity.
if they wanted to stop people from recording they should have done so way back in the 60's by stoping the sale of recording mediums and recording devices
This is not possible, because these all have legal uses. Laws must be designed as much as possible to target illegal activities, without undue burden on citizens and businesses engaged in legal activities.
Who the hell wants some crappy camcorder-made copy of a movie, anyways?
I have often seen them for sale on the street. They are often sold in counterfeit packaging designed to look like a legitimate video, but inside is a crappy camcorder theater copy. Laws preventing theater taping are thus defensible in terms of protecting the consumer, as well as protecting the livelihoods of people who work in the movie, theater, or video rental industries, not to mention preventing legitimate theater goers from being annoyed by jerks with videocameras.
Okay... well, going by your standards, why doesn't Congress pass a law criminalizing the eating or drinking of refreshments of non-theater refreshments in the theater?
Probably because nobody has made that case to Congress sufficiently convincingly. It seems like a harder sell; at worst, a person who sneaks a candy bar into a theater deprives the theater of a single sale, while somebody who sneaks a camera into a theater might well distribute the copied film widely. But I imagine if people managed to figure out a way to sneak in a whole snack bar and started selling to other patrons in competition with the theater (which is a closer analogy), then you'd see such laws pretty quickly.
Come on, let's be reasonable. The government isn't doing this to protect any individuals.
No, that's only a small part of it. They are also doing it to protect a large, critical segment if the US economy that benefits many of their constituents, produces huge amounts of tax revenue, and has a beneficial effect on the US trade balance. Why else do you think that it is such an easy sell for industry lobbyists? After all we're talking about a protectionist measure that costs almost nothing, doesn't invite international retaliation or hurt the balance of trade, and that has little opposition aside from film counterfeiters and a handful of people who hate the motion picture industry on general principles.
Camming != taping. Notice I'm not talking about copyright infringement in general, but specifically camming. A cam is of far lesser quality than even a 3rd generation VHS dub.
The only tapers we are discussing are the ones who videotape movies in movie theaters. These are frequently the basis of bootleg and counterfeit videos. I have often seen such videos sold on the street.
Well, 1) its pissing their money away because of the aforementioned near-zero loss to camming
You haven't demonstrated this, merely asserted it as a matter of personal belief. And remember, the cost of the law is also "near zero," in that it is primarily a deterrent increasing the theater's clout in prohibiting videotaping the screen (which is something virtually all theaters prohibit, anyway), will not require additional police, and will likely be only rarely applied.
also goes back to the fact that the government is not for guaranteeing the profits of businesses.
We aren't talking about guaranteeing the profits of businesses, we are talking about protecting the livelihood of individuals. Protecting their employers against illegal activities may be a means to that end, however. It seems to me that, given that people have their income taxed to support government, they are entitled to a say in what government is "for." There is certainly nothing in the Constitution that outlaws the use of government funds to protect people's income and employment.
So, if as you say the workers want to protect their jobs, then rather than giving money to the government to do their enforcement for them, they can give up some of their wages so the industry can do their own damn enforcement, the way it should be, rather than asking me to pay for it as well.
They are already giving plenty of money to the government; why ask them to give more? I imagine that there are things supported by tax dollars that benefit you more than them. The object of the political process is not to restrict government to activities that benefit everybody equally; it is to spread those benefits around in an equitable manner. So if it makes you feel better, you can think of your tax dollars as being the ones spent on suing Microsoft or supporting the civil courts that enforce the GPL, or whatever activities you favor.
All of which is still paid for by theater customers.
You could just as well say that it was paid for the people who employed the theater customers, or by for by the people who used the services of the people who employed the theater customers, etc., etc. And since the economy is all connected, everybody in this chain benefits to some extent from the health of the motion picture industry. And all of these people pay taxes, some of which go to protect this component of the economy that benefits them. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
And how many industry people have lost their jobs or even missed a pay raise because of camming in theaters? If its more than zero I would eat my hat.
I doubt if anybody knows. But a sale of a counterfeit tape on the street is at least occasionally a lost sale or rental for a video store. And the income of a video store determines what it can pay its employees. So it seems likely that some of the money that would otherwise go into the pockets of video store employees is instead going into the pockets of tapers. Who can blame them for wanting their tax dollars spent to prevent this, or from expressing this preference in the polling booth?
The civil court system is certainly important enough that such subsidies can be justified.
Of course. One of the reasons why it is important is that it enforces licenses and other contracts.
Unauthorized copying and distribution of films is also a copyright violation. Apart from this new law (which makes one of them but not the other a criminal matter) GPL violations and camcorder rule violations are fundamentally the same things.
No, the new law makes no change in the legal status of copyrights; it prohibits a particular activity. That happens to make it more difficult to commit a particular kind of copyright violation. It's a rare case in which the activity in question has no significant legal justification, so the law makes it harder to violate copyright without any significant impairment of legal activities. So if you could come up with some activity that people engage in pretty much solely for the purpose of violating the GPL, and not for any other reason, then you might have a case for criminalizing that activity as well.
Since when is there a "right to have their tax dollars protect their livelihoods"? Such a right would imply that every industry has a right to industry-specific legislation to protect that particular industry.
Industries don't have livelihoods. I'm talking about the people who depend upon the industry for their living. These people pay taxes. And in general, people are entitled to a say as to how their money is used. Understandably, protecting their jobs is high on the list of what people would like done with their tax money, and they express this preference in the polling booth. As a result, there are many laws on the books whose primary function is to protect people's livelihoods.
This is an issue that can be solved easily and inexpensively: movie studios which are concerned about this could simply distribute high-quality versions on their films via P2P filesharing.
I'm sure that they could, although I don't know of any that do. But even if some choose to do so, they aren't likely to want low-quality theater-filmed copies floating around.
How do you justify movie industry tax money being spent on enforcing a "no camcorders" rule, but tax money from free software businesses not being spent on GPL enforcement?
As a contract, the GPL is enforced by the civil courts. The civil court system is subsidized by tax dollars. But even if it were not, that would be a foolish objection. Two wrongs don't make a right, so even if the GPL were not getting its fair share of tax dollars, fairness would not be increased by also denying those whose jobs depend on the movie industry the right to have their tax dollars protect their livelihoods.
How do you justify the unfair advantage that this kind of law gives movie studios that want to prevent leaks over competing movie studies which want to take a more relaxed attitude?
And which specific movie studios like to have bad theater-taped copies floating around giving their films a bad name?
The injustice is not in the no-camcorders rule, but in using tax money for enforcing it.
A lot of that tax money derives from the movie industry. After all, an immense number of people have jobs that depend on the movie industry, from those who create the films to those who distribute them, to those who work in theaters and video rental shops. And all of these people make money which they spend in businesses, which benefit indirectly. And they pay taxes on the money they make. So if it it makes you feel better, you can think of it as a little bit of their money being invested to protect their livelihoods. What could be more just than that?
The taxpayer is the one doing all the contributing here, though. And they get to contribute a second time to government inforcement of copyright laws, rather than having the studios do their own damn civil enforcement. Lucky us!
However, the movie industry employees large numbers of people, from those who manufacture the films to those who distribute them, to those who work in theaters and video rental shops. And all of these people make money which they spend in businesses, which benefit indirectly. And movies sold overseas reduces the trade deficit, thereby increasing the value of the dollar and benefiting everybody else who sells products overseas. All of this improves the overall state of the economy. And all of these people who benefit pay taxes. So what is wrong with investing a tiny bit of their tax money in protecting their livelihoods?
But I consider it a big problem that apparantly politicians think that this type of law is right and just
Where's the injustice? I don't see anything in the Constitution about a right to tape in a movie theater. I can't think of any legitimate reason to do it. There certainly has never been a fair-use privilege to tape theatrical movies. And even if you don't give a damn about the studio's copyright, theater-filmed copies are crappy anyway. Even those who are into illicit copies are probably better off without lousy camcorder versions running around. As far as I can see, the only people who suffer from this law are the guys who sell lousy counterfeit videos.
But why on earth should taypayers have to pay for enforcement of these rules?
Because they do in fact benefit. The movie industry is a major contributor to the economy, and US produced movies are a major export. There is an understandable knee-jerk reaction against anything the movie industry wants, sincewe all know that if they could figure out a way to get away with it, they'd undoubtedly try to charge us royalties for every time we watched a movie. Still, this seems to be a law with near-zero impact on personal freedom or traditional fair use. Is there really any legitimate reason to be filming in a theater. Note also that the costs will be minimal. The law does not require a policeman in each theater, any more than laws against shoplifting require a cop in each store. The potential for the theater to call the cops will function primarily as a deterrent, and the number of arrests will be very small.
The article states that this is the first recorded human with this condition.
Keyword being "recorded". Myostatin is a fairly recent discovery, so I doubt if there has yet been a broad genetic study of muscular families. Remember, the mother is apparently heterozygous, and the child is homozygous. That suggests that the father likely has the gene as well.
You see, we've done this before... You know, the "monument of engineering in somebody else's country" thing? So where do we build this thingy along the equator??
Actually the plan isn't to build it in any country. The proposal is to use a floating platform converted from an oil drilling rig. There's a lot more suitable ocean than land, and an ocean platform could be best situated for good weather, and even moved a bit to dodge larger bits of debris. A platform out in the middle of the open ocean would also be less accessible to terrorists.
Thirdly, 60000 miles? Geosynchronous orbit is at 42000km from the centre of earth, how the hell are they going to keep the "weight" where it's supposed to be? Rockets? Unless they manage to keep the centre of mass at 42000 km
Which is exactly the plan. A counterweight at the far end can be adjusted to position the center of mass exactly in geosynchronous orbit.
IIRC, the main rebuttal for this is that the cable will be much wider than the minimum required for the target maximum liftable mass, and that there will be "repair lifters" that go up on occasion to patch holes in the ribbon cable. For the larger, trackable space junk masses, the cable will be tied down to a mobile oil rig platform to allow for evasive maneuvers.
Also, it is more a ribbon than a cable, oriented edgewise in the orbital plane to present the minimum cross-section area to particles orbiting in that plane. It would also be somewhat curved, so that a single unfortunately oriented particle cut not cut it all the way across. So it would need to be overbuilt to withstand punctures, and would have to be maintained to patch them.
Carbon nanotubes are strong enough. They just aren't long enough. So what is needed is either a way of making nanotubes longer or a way of linking them together. If they are linked together side to side, the cross-links don't need to be nearly as strong as bonds within the nanotubes themselves. Making the nanotubes longer gives more length to fasten them together, and decreases the strength requirement for crosslinking. But standard nanotubes may be too slippery to link up in this way; they might have to be chemically modified to link them together.
there's a concern he'll use up all the satellite cells in his muscles (the source of replacement cells when the muscle is damaged).
We'll probably know pretty soon. If there is one person like this, there are probably many, so it should be possible to do a study of families in which this allele is present. If there is some severe pathology associated with the trait, then it's probably already in the medical literature, even if the gene has not been identified. Certainly there must be a selective disadvantage, or most of us would have it. But it might be something as simple (and as irrelevant in developed countries) as requiring more food and being the first to go in times of famine.
While this screen sounds very cool, people with very bright projectors have been projecting on "black" surfaces, even black velvet, for a long time. It results in amazing colors and high apparent contrast _if_ you have an extremely bright lamp to overcome the absorption.
What's new is that they've come up with a screen that "looks" black in broad-spectrum room light, but "looks" white in narrow-spectrum digital projector light.
It diffusely reflects more broad-spectrum visible light than anything else in your field of view. Note that the very same surface may appear white or black, depending upon what surrounds it.
What happens when a bio-cracker unleashes a plant virus on all the wheat in North America, and the genetic code to 'Wheat 2.0' is closed-source, patented code owned by a corporation? Should life be Open Source?
First of all, there is no such thing as "closed source patented code." Patent requires disclosure, and patented code is a matter of public record. Indeed, one of the goals of patent law is to encourage disclosure (as opposed to trade secrets). Moreover, the genetic code is more like an object code, which anybody can determine for any program simply by reading the raw code out of memory or off a disk. The translation from nucleic acids to amino acids is trivial. Moreover, modern PCR and sequencing technology makes it very easy to read off the genetic code of any protein. There isn't really anything analogous to source code--perhaps detailed 3D protein structure is the closest you can get.
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For a number of reasons.
1) it is usually not more expensive, and often cheaper, to buy the CD used on Amazon than to download it.
2) the physical CD provides a backup.
3) And while I find that, given the current cost of HD space, I am willing to accept what is, to my ears, a slight loss in quality from compression to fit more music on my HD, I imagine that someday I'll want to re-rip those CDs at a higher bit rate.
Releasing the DVD at the same time the movie is released would bring a huge slowdown to this problem.
Very likely. But it might well have an even greater detrimental effect than bootleg copies on theater revenues, which would hardly serve the purpose of preserving the livelihoods of those who work in movie theaters.
Using binoculars to look into the windows of someone else's residence (say from across the street) is indeed an invasion of privacy and can get you busted in my state, even though looking with the naked eye is permissible. The night vision thing creeps me out.
If I want privacy, I'll watch a video at home. I don't expect or desire privacy in a movie theater. This is a confined place where I am surrounded by people I do not know. I've seen people threatened and assaulted in theaters. As far as I'm concerned, supervision of the patrons is one of the things I am paying for when I lay down my inflated ticket price. I expect them to keep me from being bothered while watching the movie--whether it is by jerks who talk too loud, or who are looking to start a fight, or who are more interested in filming the screen so they can make a few bucks selling counterfeit videos to suckers on the street. If night vision goggles help the management to do so, that's fine with me!
As the movie companies are paying for enforcing the law in this case yes, thats fine.
The movie industry pays taxes. So do all of the people who work making movies, or in theaters or video stores. So do all of the people who benefit from the positive effect of exported movies on the US trade balance. Why aren't they entitled to have a little bit of their money invested to protect them from criminals who want to undermine their businesses and livelihoods? There is plenty of US precedent for laws designed to protect businesses from criminal activity.
if they wanted to stop people from recording they should have done so way back in the 60's by stoping the sale of recording mediums and recording devices
This is not possible, because these all have legal uses. Laws must be designed as much as possible to target illegal activities, without undue burden on citizens and businesses engaged in legal activities.
Who the hell wants some crappy camcorder-made copy of a movie, anyways?
I have often seen them for sale on the street. They are often sold in counterfeit packaging designed to look like a legitimate video, but inside is a crappy camcorder theater copy. Laws preventing theater taping are thus defensible in terms of protecting the consumer, as well as protecting the livelihoods of people who work in the movie, theater, or video rental industries, not to mention preventing legitimate theater goers from being annoyed by jerks with videocameras.
Why should I shell out money for a monitor that costs more than my Harley?
Probably only if the work you do on it pays for the Harley.
Okay... well, going by your standards, why doesn't Congress pass a law criminalizing the eating or drinking of refreshments of non-theater refreshments in the theater?
Probably because nobody has made that case to Congress sufficiently convincingly. It seems like a harder sell; at worst, a person who sneaks a candy bar into a theater deprives the theater of a single sale, while somebody who sneaks a camera into a theater might well distribute the copied film widely. But I imagine if people managed to figure out a way to sneak in a whole snack bar and started selling to other patrons in competition with the theater (which is a closer analogy), then you'd see such laws pretty quickly.
Come on, let's be reasonable. The government isn't doing this to protect any individuals.
No, that's only a small part of it. They are also doing it to protect a large, critical segment if the US economy that benefits many of their constituents, produces huge amounts of tax revenue, and has a beneficial effect on the US trade balance. Why else do you think that it is such an easy sell for industry lobbyists? After all we're talking about a protectionist measure that costs almost nothing, doesn't invite international retaliation or hurt the balance of trade, and that has little opposition aside from film counterfeiters and a handful of people who hate the motion picture industry on general principles.
Camming != taping. Notice I'm not talking about copyright infringement in general, but specifically camming. A cam is of far lesser quality than even a 3rd generation VHS dub.
The only tapers we are discussing are the ones who videotape movies in movie theaters. These are frequently the basis of bootleg and counterfeit videos. I have often seen such videos sold on the street.
Well, 1) its pissing their money away because of the aforementioned near-zero loss to camming
You haven't demonstrated this, merely asserted it as a matter of personal belief. And remember, the cost of the law is also "near zero," in that it is primarily a deterrent increasing the theater's clout in prohibiting videotaping the screen (which is something virtually all theaters prohibit, anyway), will not require additional police, and will likely be only rarely applied.
also goes back to the fact that the government is not for guaranteeing the profits of businesses.
We aren't talking about guaranteeing the profits of businesses, we are talking about protecting the livelihood of individuals. Protecting their employers against illegal activities may be a means to that end, however. It seems to me that, given that people have their income taxed to support government, they are entitled to a say in what government is "for." There is certainly nothing in the Constitution that outlaws the use of government funds to protect people's income and employment.
So, if as you say the workers want to protect their jobs, then rather than giving money to the government to do their enforcement for them, they can give up some of their wages so the industry can do their own damn enforcement, the way it should be, rather than asking me to pay for it as well.
They are already giving plenty of money to the government; why ask them to give more? I imagine that there are things supported by tax dollars that benefit you more than them. The object of the political process is not to restrict government to activities that benefit everybody equally; it is to spread those benefits around in an equitable manner. So if it makes you feel better, you can think of your tax dollars as being the ones spent on suing Microsoft or supporting the civil courts that enforce the GPL, or whatever activities you favor.
All of which is still paid for by theater customers.
You could just as well say that it was paid for the people who employed the theater customers, or by for by the people who used the services of the people who employed the theater customers, etc., etc. And since the economy is all connected, everybody in this chain benefits to some extent from the health of the motion picture industry. And all of these people pay taxes, some of which go to protect this component of the economy that benefits them. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
And how many industry people have lost their jobs or even missed a pay raise because of camming in theaters? If its more than zero I would eat my hat.
I doubt if anybody knows. But a sale of a counterfeit tape on the street is at least occasionally a lost sale or rental for a video store. And the income of a video store determines what it can pay its employees. So it seems likely that some of the money that would otherwise go into the pockets of video store employees is instead going into the pockets of tapers. Who can blame them for wanting their tax dollars spent to prevent this, or from expressing this preference in the polling booth?
The GPL is a license, not a contract.
Licenses are a type of contract.
The civil court system is certainly important enough that such subsidies can be justified.
Of course. One of the reasons why it is important is that it enforces licenses and other contracts.
Unauthorized copying and distribution of films is also a copyright violation. Apart from this new law (which makes one of them but not the other a criminal matter) GPL violations and camcorder rule violations are fundamentally the same things.
No, the new law makes no change in the legal status of copyrights; it prohibits a particular activity. That happens to make it more difficult to commit a particular kind of copyright violation. It's a rare case in which the activity in question has no significant legal justification, so the law makes it harder to violate copyright without any significant impairment of legal activities. So if you could come up with some activity that people engage in pretty much solely for the purpose of violating the GPL, and not for any other reason, then you might have a case for criminalizing that activity as well.
Since when is there a "right to have their tax dollars protect their livelihoods"? Such a right would imply that every industry has a right to industry-specific legislation to protect that particular industry.
Industries don't have livelihoods. I'm talking about the people who depend upon the industry for their living. These people pay taxes. And in general, people are entitled to a say as to how their money is used. Understandably, protecting their jobs is high on the list of what people would like done with their tax money, and they express this preference in the polling booth. As a result, there are many laws on the books whose primary function is to protect people's livelihoods.
This is an issue that can be solved easily and inexpensively: movie studios which are concerned about this could simply distribute high-quality versions on their films via P2P filesharing.
I'm sure that they could, although I don't know of any that do. But even if some choose to do so, they aren't likely to want low-quality theater-filmed copies floating around.
How do you justify movie industry tax money being spent on enforcing a "no camcorders" rule, but tax money from free software businesses not being spent on GPL enforcement?
As a contract, the GPL is enforced by the civil courts. The civil court system is subsidized by tax dollars. But even if it were not, that would be a foolish objection. Two wrongs don't make a right, so even if the GPL were not getting its fair share of tax dollars, fairness would not be increased by also denying those whose jobs depend on the movie industry the right to have their tax dollars protect their livelihoods.
How do you justify the unfair advantage that this kind of law gives movie studios that want to prevent leaks over competing movie studies which want to take a more relaxed attitude?
And which specific movie studios like to have bad theater-taped copies floating around giving their films a bad name?
The injustice is not in the no-camcorders rule, but in using tax money for enforcing it.
A lot of that tax money derives from the movie industry. After all, an immense number of people have jobs that depend on the movie industry, from those who create the films to those who distribute them, to those who work in theaters and video rental shops. And all of these people make money which they spend in businesses, which benefit indirectly. And they pay taxes on the money they make. So if it it makes you feel better, you can think of it as a little bit of their money being invested to protect their livelihoods. What could be more just than that?
The taxpayer is the one doing all the contributing here, though. And they get to contribute a second time to government inforcement of copyright laws, rather than having the studios do their own damn civil enforcement. Lucky us!
However, the movie industry employees large numbers of people, from those who manufacture the films to those who distribute them, to those who work in theaters and video rental shops. And all of these people make money which they spend in businesses, which benefit indirectly. And movies sold overseas reduces the trade deficit, thereby increasing the value of the dollar and benefiting everybody else who sells products overseas. All of this improves the overall state of the economy. And all of these people who benefit pay taxes. So what is wrong with investing a tiny bit of their tax money in protecting their livelihoods?
But I consider it a big problem that apparantly politicians think that this type of law is right and just
Where's the injustice? I don't see anything in the Constitution about a right to tape in a movie theater. I can't think of any legitimate reason to do it. There certainly has never been a fair-use privilege to tape theatrical movies. And even if you don't give a damn about the studio's copyright, theater-filmed copies are crappy anyway. Even those who are into illicit copies are probably better off without lousy camcorder versions running around. As far as I can see, the only people who suffer from this law are the guys who sell lousy counterfeit videos.
But why on earth should taypayers have to pay for enforcement of these rules?
Because they do in fact benefit. The movie industry is a major contributor to the economy, and US produced movies are a major export. There is an understandable knee-jerk reaction against anything the movie industry wants, sincewe all know that if they could figure out a way to get away with it, they'd undoubtedly try to charge us royalties for every time we watched a movie. Still, this seems to be a law with near-zero impact on personal freedom or traditional fair use. Is there really any legitimate reason to be filming in a theater. Note also that the costs will be minimal. The law does not require a policeman in each theater, any more than laws against shoplifting require a cop in each store. The potential for the theater to call the cops will function primarily as a deterrent, and the number of arrests will be very small.
The article states that this is the first recorded human with this condition.
Keyword being "recorded". Myostatin is a fairly recent discovery, so I doubt if there has yet been a broad genetic study of muscular families. Remember, the mother is apparently heterozygous, and the child is homozygous. That suggests that the father likely has the gene as well.
You see, we've done this before... You know, the "monument of engineering in somebody else's country" thing? So where do we build this thingy along the equator??
Actually the plan isn't to build it in any country. The proposal is to use a floating platform converted from an oil drilling rig. There's a lot more suitable ocean than land, and an ocean platform could be best situated for good weather, and even moved a bit to dodge larger bits of debris. A platform out in the middle of the open ocean would also be less accessible to terrorists.
Thirdly, 60000 miles? Geosynchronous orbit is at 42000km from the centre of earth, how the hell are they going to keep the "weight" where it's supposed to be? Rockets? Unless they manage to keep the centre of mass at 42000 km
Which is exactly the plan. A counterweight at the far end can be adjusted to position the center of mass exactly in geosynchronous orbit.
IIRC, the main rebuttal for this is that the cable will be much wider than the minimum required for the target maximum liftable mass, and that there will be "repair lifters" that go up on occasion to patch holes in the ribbon cable. For the larger, trackable space junk masses, the cable will be tied down to a mobile oil rig platform to allow for evasive maneuvers.
Also, it is more a ribbon than a cable, oriented edgewise in the orbital plane to present the minimum cross-section area to particles orbiting in that plane. It would also be somewhat curved, so that a single unfortunately oriented particle cut not cut it all the way across. So it would need to be overbuilt to withstand punctures, and would have to be maintained to patch them.
Carbon nanotubes are strong enough. They just aren't long enough. So what is needed is either a way of making nanotubes longer or a way of linking them together. If they are linked together side to side, the cross-links don't need to be nearly as strong as bonds within the nanotubes themselves. Making the nanotubes longer gives more length to fasten them together, and decreases the strength requirement for crosslinking. But standard nanotubes may be too slippery to link up in this way; they might have to be chemically modified to link them together.
there's a concern he'll use up all the satellite cells in his muscles (the source of replacement cells when the muscle is damaged).
We'll probably know pretty soon. If there is one person like this, there are probably many, so it should be possible to do a study of families in which this allele is present. If there is some severe pathology associated with the trait, then it's probably already in the medical literature, even if the gene has not been identified. Certainly there must be a selective disadvantage, or most of us would have it. But it might be something as simple (and as irrelevant in developed countries) as requiring more food and being the first to go in times of famine.
While this screen sounds very cool, people with very bright projectors have been projecting on "black" surfaces, even black velvet, for a long time. It results in amazing colors and high apparent contrast _if_ you have an extremely bright lamp to overcome the absorption.
What's new is that they've come up with a screen that "looks" black in broad-spectrum room light, but "looks" white in narrow-spectrum digital projector light.
It diffusely reflects more broad-spectrum visible light than anything else in your field of view. Note that the very same surface may appear white or black, depending upon what surrounds it.
What happens when a bio-cracker unleashes a plant virus on all the wheat in North America, and the genetic code to 'Wheat 2.0' is closed-source, patented code owned by a corporation? Should life be Open Source?
First of all, there is no such thing as "closed source patented code." Patent requires disclosure, and patented code is a matter of public record. Indeed, one of the goals of patent law is to encourage disclosure (as opposed to trade secrets). Moreover, the genetic code is more like an object code, which anybody can determine for any program simply by reading the raw code out of memory or off a disk. The translation from nucleic acids to amino acids is trivial. Moreover, modern PCR and sequencing technology makes it very easy to read off the genetic code of any protein. There isn't really anything analogous to source code--perhaps detailed 3D protein structure is the closest you can get.