Earnshaw's theorem only applies to a static configuration of magnets, which this is not.
Go read about Inductrack for a more detailed description of the idea. It is dynamically stable with no electromagnets or feedback systems. It is an exceptionally clever/simple design, and the only energy required is to overcome a small amount of electromagnetic drag.
The only drawbacks, are that the electromagnetic drag force in Inductrack varies inversely with speed, and also the lower efficiency of the vertical design. Given how much easier it is to create designs of enormously larger surface area though, these drawbacks are likely negligible. In addition, it has a huge advantage from a maintenance perspective, having (more or less) no moving parts.
However the details work out, it at least sounds plausible.
Encrypting the peer connections is fine, but it does nothing to hider Comcast-style traffic disruption. Almost all public trackers use plaintext for tracker communications, and it is trivial to intercept this. With this information, traffic analysis isn't even necessary, the tracker gives them everything they need to discover and block peer connections.
This is almost certainly what Comcast is doing. After setting up Azureus to use only DHT and Peer Exchange for peer sources, it is once again possible to seed torrents, in spite of Comcast's evil doings. It is still not at all great, but much improved. Not nearly as good as my new ISP though.:)
If you run a tracker, please consider using SSL in the future. Ideally, requests for.torrent files and downloads should also be done over SSL.
This is not at all about circuit switching, or routing more efficiently. This about tracking connections through the router so that they can apply policy based on a simple lookup, rather than examining each packet. If they didn't intend to muck with the packets, a "dumb" router is perfectly fine.
Instead of producing lengthy expositions about the flaws of technologies that you don't understand, why don't you try learning about them instead? From your post, it is clear that you neither understand, nor have you read any of Dr. Bussard's papers on the subject. Given the topic of this story, you could at least have enough respect to do so, before spreading FUD about ideas.
First of all, no one is claiming that the divergence of a magnetic field is non-zero. The fact is, the "wiffle ball" trapping of electrons in a Polywell is more than adequate for the task. Electrons escaping through the cusps do not equate to losses, as they usually follow the field lines right back into the machine.
In any case, it is highly disingenuous to claim that a Tokamak has no difficulty confining a plasma. While the topology of a Tokamak (or a dipole as in the LDX) may be a better configuration for containing charged particles, this ignores the fact that the ions have a much greater mass. After a number of collisions, it is inevitable that they will smash into a wall. The only solution to this problem is to make the machine bigger, but it is still far from ideal.
Your calculations concerning a Boron plasma are complete nonsense; as described in his recent paper, only a slight deviation (1E-6) from neutrality is necessary to make a well nearly as deep as the drive energy.
Overall, there are at least as many, if not more challenges, in producing a commercially viable Tokamak. I won't discount either approach yet, but the Polywell certainly looks a lot more promising. A quasi-spherical potential well simply seems like a much better place for a sustainable fusion reaction than a divergence-less B field. Wether or not it works out, it certainly deserves more attention and less unfounded condemnation.
Inductrack is a brilliant technology, and not only can the principles be be used to produce cheap passively levitated trains, they also allow for the creation of passive magnetic bearings. While Halbach Arrays are very interesting themselves, and ideal for this system, they are not inherently necessary.
The parent is correct about the cost though; this technology should be inexpensive enough to allow for wide scale adoption of Maglevs. Why we are still squandering enormous wads of cash on the existing designs is truly baffling.
You're right about the crying shame - what you have is a high end games machine. Perhaps AMD still has a chance if their chipsets support ECC RAM.
The nice thing about AMD is that with the integrated memory controller, you don't need support in the chipset. I'm not sure about Semprons, but all of the Athlons support ECC memory. The thing you have to watch out for is BIOS/motherboard support. If the vendor doesn't include the necessary traces on the board or the configuration settings in the BIOS, it won't work. It is worth noting that unbuffered ECC ram will work in non-ECC boards, but without actually using the ECC bits, so you have to make sure that the board explicitly supports ECC, and is not merely compatible.
It is a shame though, and however nice a chip the Core2 is, AMD is the obvious choice if you care about your data.
If Google can throw millions of dollars at something like this, then it is extremely disappointing that they are not funding the next stage of Dr. Bussard's work. For a small fraction of this prize, they could verify the Polywell IEC fusion concept. In addition to solving our energy and pollution problems, this is probably the single quickest way to enabling large scale space activity. Without a space elevator or at least nuclear rockets, any large scale space activity will be impossible anyway.
For those who missed it, Dr. Bussard gave a talk at Google, and the video is available here.
Dave Hitz, NetApps's founder and executive vice president, said the lawsuit was filed largely because Sun 18 months ago "aggressively demanded" cross-licensing fees related to the Write Anywhere File Layout (WAFL) file-system technology included in ZFS. Hitz said the cross-licensing talks were halted in April after Sun claimed that NetApp's use of WAFL infringed on Sun patents. Demanded cross-licensing fees? What does that even mean? Licensing fees perhaps, but it seems like Sun was after a cross-licensing agreement; not seeking to drag NetApp into court like some patent troll.
It sounds more like both Sun and NetApp are infringing on each others patents, and Sun simply wanted to formally resolve this in order to be on the safe side. This article seems awfully one-sided though, and the way the quote is paraphrased, it looks like the author is more interested in dragging Sun's name through the mud than presenting the facts.
Yes, it will be difficult to produce cables of sufficient quality, but I find it surprising how many people are willing to make such unfounded claims of impossibility. It may not happen in the near future, but if the theoretical strength is even remotely close to reality, the space elevator is basically a certainty.
Yes, it is easy to panic a system with ZFS, but such situations are also easily avoided. Furthermore, they will not lead to data corruption. If you are aware of the causes, it is no more than a minor inconvenience.
For example, ZFS will panic when you lose enough data or devices that the pool is no longer functional. If you take care and use a replicated pool though, this is unlikely to ever happen. Even if it does, all it requires is that you reattach the devices and reboot. If the disks truly are dead, then you are going to backups anyway. You do have backups, right?
ZFS has some rough edges yet, but to call it "far from ready" is mere FUD. Most of the problems with it are a matter of convenience, and nearly all that have been mentioned in the comments are actively being worked on. With a little bit of care, and proper backups, ZFS is rock solid. Meanwhile, it is improving every day, and if you choose not to revisit it, it is your loss.
Also, I bet Power6 would work great in minis and MacBooks.
A Core2 Duo would also work great in a Mini.
Apple now has tons of options with Intel, yet they still refuse to produce competitive hardware; whichever chips they are using is irrelevant. The future looks like more of the same: insanely priced outdated hardware, so that they can maintain their obscene margins.
I have no problem paying more for Apple hardware, but right now, they are simply gouging customers. What's worse is that none of that revenue is being used to further the Mac platform, as is evidenced by their almost nonexistent R&D investments. (Which work out to far less per machine than it costs for any PC OEM to bundle a copy of Windows.)
While the article is scarce on technical details, that is an immense sum of money. (Perhaps, in part, due to the landscape?) If the numbers at Wikipedia are correct, it is seven times the cost per unit length of the Shanghai TransRapid track. It would seem unimaginable for an Inductrack system to cost this much though.
So, I have to ask, why? Inductrack is a brilliant design, and would make Maglev's much cheaper and better in just about every way. Inductrack is a completely passive levitation system, which requires no electromagnets or control circuits to maintain stable levitation. You can't buy a finished system today, but the theory is proven, and it would almost certainly be a more sensible investment.
Inductrack is a direct extension of ideas which made possible the passive magnetic bearings in earlier Flywheel Energy Storage systems. Basically, it uses a linear Halbach Array instead of a cylindrical one. Very cool technology, all around.
Rather than answer that question, I will ask another. Why would hardware manufacturers such as Intel and AMD want to limit their market by crippling the hardware to only run certain software? It is unlikely in the extreme that open source operating systems will be locked out, and that is what really matters.
As I understand it, UEFI will enable some thoroughly nasty DRM, but only so far as the OS vender chooses to take it. Apple and Microsoft will almost certainly make it a miserable experience for all involved, but will probably tire of shooting themselves in the feet at some point. There are alternatives after all and they are looking better every day.
A similar argument should be made that IP rights to pharmeceuticals should be overturned, so that any company should be allowed to produce knock offs of drugs. Agreed.
That would certainly bring down prices for consumers quite a bit... for existing drugs. However, it would disincent pharmeceutical companies to make the mammouth R&D investments needed to discover new ones. What mammoth R&D investments? At best, this would would kill the mammoth advertising expenditures, which arguably should not exist in the first place. Most of the (minimal) investment is in researching replacements for existing high-margin drugs, which are dissimilar enough to avoid patents but functionally identical.
In any case, these companies most certainly don't have our health or best interests in mind. Investment in medicine should be driven by need rather than profit, and the existing system is clearly a massive failure.
What is really needed is widespread adoption of encryption; this would prevent the hoards of greedy and evil entities from pushing "solutions" to problems which don't actually exist. The purpose of the network should be to move data, not to enforce policy, or spy on people. Things such as VOIP are recent enough that they should never have even existed in an unencrypted form. At this time, any fundamental redesign of the Internet will likely only make the situation worse.
Thankfully, this is a problem that can be solved at the edges of the network. If you are a developer of a networked application, you should embrace encryption, no matter what you are sending. Only after a significant part of the traffic is encrypted will the Internet truly be an end to end network as it was originally intended. This is a good thing, and is the primary reason why the Internet has flourished to date.
Until then, more and more intelligence will be stuffed into the network, and it will offer no benefit at all to the users of that network. It only serves to further the special interests of large corporations and government, and will continue to be severely abused. It only serves to make the network more expensive, and one thing is for certain; it won't move the data any faster.
Only after this becomes a reality can we really concentrate on making the network faster and better, rather than inventing new ways to squeeze more money out of people for the same crappy infrastructure.
The real problem with nuclear energy is not the reactors (the middle bit)), but the mining (the first bit) of the uranium and the disposal (the end bit) of the waste.
Actually, it is not a problem in the slightest, if we use modern designs like the Integral Fast Reactor. Current reactors only extract a few percent of the energy from the Uranium, and throw out the rest. Merely by recycling this "waste", any new Uranium mining can be delayed for certuries.
I can imagine a solution to clean up the former (although this would make nuclear fuel even more expensive), but I haven't yet seen a (proven) solution for the latter*
Using the aforementioned technology renders the waste problem inconsequential. More than that, it is likely to actually improve the waste situation; these reactors burn away all of the really nasty elements, and the little remaining waste is much safer and (relatively) very short lived.
Furthermore, the design is passively safe, and meltdowns are impossible.
The search for a better solution to our energy need continues. (be it sequestration for coal, waste disposal for nuke, higher efficiency for wind, cleaner materials & higher efficiency for solar, better storage techniques for all the above). There is no silver bullet.
The search is over. Of course we should continue to investigate other technologies, but we have a perfectly workable and very nearly ideal one staring us in the face. For the foreseeable future, this is the silver bullet.
In any case, holding out for something like the Tokamak is a waste of time. While a Fusion machine, in the end, it is hardly radiation free; the neutronic fusion reactions will slowly irradiate the hundreds of tons of reactor, which will eventually need to be disposed of and replaced.
Much more interesting and promising in my opinion is the Polywell, conceived of by Dr. Robert Bussard. The device seems like it may be perfectly feasible in the short term, and would have so many advantages, that it is madness not to make the minimal investment. I'm not going to discount Tokamak research, but we should really be investigating the alternatives as well. Anyway, here is Dr. Bussard's Google talk as well, for those who missed it: Should Google Go Nuclear?
I have a domain at with of their resellers which can not be contacted. (In fact their site certificate expired last October.) Unfortunately, Tucows offers absolutely no recourse, and the phone number listed in the whois will let you sit on hold forever, and eventually (after an hour or so) spit you into a voicemail box, which goes unanswered. Likewise, the email contact forms simply forward to the resellers. Very useful.
The reseller is domainsnare.net, which is also related to mailsnare.net. Not recommended...
How is the remnant going to last in the long term? Maybe they will be able to work glass and metal well enough to repair and expand their buildings and some machines. But they will also be dependent on microchips, solar panels, diode lasers, etc. It's not really plausible that they could build a semiconductor fabrication plant on Mars. It is not plausible today, but within a century or so, this will no longer be an issue. Everything from microchips to French baguettes can be assembled atom by atom in a device no larger than a microwave oven. All that is required is energy and materials, and just about any rock in our solar system will provide the necessities.
The arrival of molecular nanotechnology will be a very interesting time. If we don't already have them, space elevators will inevitably arrive alongside MNT. Life will spread throughout our solar system (and beyond) very rapidly. Unfortunately, the real obstacles are social in nature, and they may well set us back a thousand years, if humanity survives at all.
Also, travel between the stars is perfectly practical, though with our current understanding of physics, it will take time.
I believe the problem with nuclear power has a lot more to do with disposal and storage than with the safety of the reactor. Well, good news, the Integral Fast Reactor solves this issue. It recycles the "waste" until it is entirely consumed and all the of the really dangerous elements are burned up as well. There is very little actual waste left over, and it is far far less dangerous than what is produced by conventional reactors. They only extract a few percent of the energy from the fuel, and throw out an enormous amount highly dangerous and useful material. By recycling this material, the IFR can actually consume existing waste! It would be a long time before any new Uranium would need to be mined.
Another feature is that it is a passively safe design; meltdowns simply aren't possible. Anyways, the interviews in the external links of that wikipedia article are very interesting and informative.
I know a few politicians I consider sock puppets for other entities. Can we ban them too? To hell with banning them, they should be charged with treason, and punished appropriately; ie. with death.
The government should represent its people, and politicians should be held to very high standards. Legal bribery, or any other means of subverting our government are simply unacceptable, and should be considered no less seriously than premeditated murder. In fact, as the current administration demonstrates, it is often much worse.
It looks like they offer a service to proxy your registration address. Having my home address/phone/email in the NIC registry has always been somewhat of an annoyance.
Does anyone else do this? Is there a good reason not to?
Re:NO KEYBOARD?!
on
iPhone Roundup
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I doubt it; I am typing this on no real keyboard, and once you get used to it you will never want to go back.
The Fingerworks TouchStream--a multitouch keyboard--presents a very nice interface, with gestures, mousing, and keyboard combined. Typing is somewhat difficult, but that is only due to the (relatively) crude design. (and the other aspects more than compensate for it.) As Jefferson Han pointed out in his presentation, on a more dynamic device, the keyboard can adapt itself to an individuals typing. As software improves, it should work very well; in fact, much better than existing keyboards.
If you could store all the energy from a bolt of lightning, perhaps it would be useful.
Amusingly though, lightning does not provide enough power for a large rail gun. According to Wikipedia, typical bolts are around 30-50kA, whereas a rail gun may draw 1MA or more. FWIW, 100kA can be delivered by a (relatively) small capacitor bank.
Slashdot Mirror
Earnshaw's theorem only applies to a static configuration of magnets, which this is not.
Go read about Inductrack for a more detailed description of the idea. It is dynamically stable with no electromagnets or feedback systems. It is an exceptionally clever/simple design, and the only energy required is to overcome a small amount of electromagnetic drag.
The only drawbacks, are that the electromagnetic drag force in Inductrack varies inversely with speed, and also the lower efficiency of the vertical design. Given how much easier it is to create designs of enormously larger surface area though, these drawbacks are likely negligible. In addition, it has a huge advantage from a maintenance perspective, having (more or less) no moving parts.
However the details work out, it at least sounds plausible.
Encrypting the peer connections is fine, but it does nothing to hider Comcast-style traffic disruption. Almost all public trackers use plaintext for tracker communications, and it is trivial to intercept this. With this information, traffic analysis isn't even necessary, the tracker gives them everything they need to discover and block peer connections.
:)
.torrent files and downloads should also be done over SSL.
This is almost certainly what Comcast is doing. After setting up Azureus to use only DHT and Peer Exchange for peer sources, it is once again possible to seed torrents, in spite of Comcast's evil doings. It is still not at all great, but much improved. Not nearly as good as my new ISP though.
If you run a tracker, please consider using SSL in the future. Ideally, requests for
The picture on this page says it all.
This is not at all about circuit switching, or routing more efficiently. This about tracking connections through the router so that they can apply policy based on a simple lookup, rather than examining each packet. If they didn't intend to muck with the packets, a "dumb" router is perfectly fine.
Instead of producing lengthy expositions about the flaws of technologies that you don't understand, why don't you try learning about them instead? From your post, it is clear that you neither understand, nor have you read any of Dr. Bussard's papers on the subject. Given the topic of this story, you could at least have enough respect to do so, before spreading FUD about ideas.
First of all, no one is claiming that the divergence of a magnetic field is non-zero. The fact is, the "wiffle ball" trapping of electrons in a Polywell is more than adequate for the task. Electrons escaping through the cusps do not equate to losses, as they usually follow the field lines right back into the machine.
In any case, it is highly disingenuous to claim that a Tokamak has no difficulty confining a plasma. While the topology of a Tokamak (or a dipole as in the LDX) may be a better configuration for containing charged particles, this ignores the fact that the ions have a much greater mass. After a number of collisions, it is inevitable that they will smash into a wall. The only solution to this problem is to make the machine bigger, but it is still far from ideal.
Your calculations concerning a Boron plasma are complete nonsense; as described in his recent paper, only a slight deviation (1E-6) from neutrality is necessary to make a well nearly as deep as the drive energy.
Overall, there are at least as many, if not more challenges, in producing a commercially viable Tokamak. I won't discount either approach yet, but the Polywell certainly looks a lot more promising. A quasi-spherical potential well simply seems like a much better place for a sustainable fusion reaction than a divergence-less B field. Wether or not it works out, it certainly deserves more attention and less unfounded condemnation.
...and there is more information about it here.
Inductrack is a brilliant technology, and not only can the principles be be used to produce cheap passively levitated trains, they also allow for the creation of passive magnetic bearings. While Halbach Arrays are very interesting themselves, and ideal for this system, they are not inherently necessary.
The parent is correct about the cost though; this technology should be inexpensive enough to allow for wide scale adoption of Maglevs. Why we are still squandering enormous wads of cash on the existing designs is truly baffling.
The nice thing about AMD is that with the integrated memory controller, you don't need support in the chipset. I'm not sure about Semprons, but all of the Athlons support ECC memory. The thing you have to watch out for is BIOS/motherboard support. If the vendor doesn't include the necessary traces on the board or the configuration settings in the BIOS, it won't work. It is worth noting that unbuffered ECC ram will work in non-ECC boards, but without actually using the ECC bits, so you have to make sure that the board explicitly supports ECC, and is not merely compatible.
It is a shame though, and however nice a chip the Core2 is, AMD is the obvious choice if you care about your data.
If Google can throw millions of dollars at something like this, then it is extremely disappointing that they are not funding the next stage of Dr. Bussard's work. For a small fraction of this prize, they could verify the Polywell IEC fusion concept. In addition to solving our energy and pollution problems, this is probably the single quickest way to enabling large scale space activity. Without a space elevator or at least nuclear rockets, any large scale space activity will be impossible anyway.
For those who missed it, Dr. Bussard gave a talk at Google, and the video is available here.
It sounds more like both Sun and NetApp are infringing on each others patents, and Sun simply wanted to formally resolve this in order to be on the safe side. This article seems awfully one-sided though, and the way the quote is paraphrased, it looks like the author is more interested in dragging Sun's name through the mud than presenting the facts.
Where did you pull that 100GPa number from? From what I have read, the theoretical strength is closer to 300GPa.
7 /5453/637
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/28
Yes, it will be difficult to produce cables of sufficient quality, but I find it surprising how many people are willing to make such unfounded claims of impossibility. It may not happen in the near future, but if the theoretical strength is even remotely close to reality, the space elevator is basically a certainty.
Yes, it is easy to panic a system with ZFS, but such situations are also easily avoided. Furthermore, they will not lead to data corruption. If you are aware of the causes, it is no more than a minor inconvenience.
For example, ZFS will panic when you lose enough data or devices that the pool is no longer functional. If you take care and use a replicated pool though, this is unlikely to ever happen. Even if it does, all it requires is that you reattach the devices and reboot. If the disks truly are dead, then you are going to backups anyway. You do have backups, right?
ZFS has some rough edges yet, but to call it "far from ready" is mere FUD. Most of the problems with it are a matter of convenience, and nearly all that have been mentioned in the comments are actively being worked on. With a little bit of care, and proper backups, ZFS is rock solid. Meanwhile, it is improving every day, and if you choose not to revisit it, it is your loss.
A Core2 Duo would also work great in a Mini.
Apple now has tons of options with Intel, yet they still refuse to produce competitive hardware; whichever chips they are using is irrelevant. The future looks like more of the same: insanely priced outdated hardware, so that they can maintain their obscene margins.
I have no problem paying more for Apple hardware, but right now, they are simply gouging customers. What's worse is that none of that revenue is being used to further the Mac platform, as is evidenced by their almost nonexistent R&D investments. (Which work out to far less per machine than it costs for any PC OEM to bundle a copy of Windows.)
While the article is scarce on technical details, that is an immense sum of money. (Perhaps, in part, due to the landscape?) If the numbers at Wikipedia are correct, it is seven times the cost per unit length of the Shanghai TransRapid track. It would seem unimaginable for an Inductrack system to cost this much though.
So, I have to ask, why? Inductrack is a brilliant design, and would make Maglev's much cheaper and better in just about every way. Inductrack is a completely passive levitation system, which requires no electromagnets or control circuits to maintain stable levitation. You can't buy a finished system today, but the theory is proven, and it would almost certainly be a more sensible investment.
Inductrack is a direct extension of ideas which made possible the passive magnetic bearings in earlier Flywheel Energy Storage systems. Basically, it uses a linear Halbach Array instead of a cylindrical one. Very cool technology, all around.
Rather than answer that question, I will ask another. Why would hardware manufacturers such as Intel and AMD want to limit their market by crippling the hardware to only run certain software? It is unlikely in the extreme that open source operating systems will be locked out, and that is what really matters.
As I understand it, UEFI will enable some thoroughly nasty DRM, but only so far as the OS vender chooses to take it. Apple and Microsoft will almost certainly make it a miserable experience for all involved, but will probably tire of shooting themselves in the feet at some point. There are alternatives after all and they are looking better every day.
In any case, these companies most certainly don't have our health or best interests in mind. Investment in medicine should be driven by need rather than profit, and the existing system is clearly a massive failure.
What is really needed is widespread adoption of encryption; this would prevent the hoards of greedy and evil entities from pushing "solutions" to problems which don't actually exist. The purpose of the network should be to move data, not to enforce policy, or spy on people. Things such as VOIP are recent enough that they should never have even existed in an unencrypted form. At this time, any fundamental redesign of the Internet will likely only make the situation worse.
Thankfully, this is a problem that can be solved at the edges of the network. If you are a developer of a networked application, you should embrace encryption, no matter what you are sending. Only after a significant part of the traffic is encrypted will the Internet truly be an end to end network as it was originally intended. This is a good thing, and is the primary reason why the Internet has flourished to date.
Until then, more and more intelligence will be stuffed into the network, and it will offer no benefit at all to the users of that network. It only serves to further the special interests of large corporations and government, and will continue to be severely abused. It only serves to make the network more expensive, and one thing is for certain; it won't move the data any faster.
Only after this becomes a reality can we really concentrate on making the network faster and better, rather than inventing new ways to squeeze more money out of people for the same crappy infrastructure.
Actually, it is not a problem in the slightest, if we use modern designs like the Integral Fast Reactor. Current reactors only extract a few percent of the energy from the Uranium, and throw out the rest. Merely by recycling this "waste", any new Uranium mining can be delayed for certuries.
Using the aforementioned technology renders the waste problem inconsequential. More than that, it is likely to actually improve the waste situation; these reactors burn away all of the really nasty elements, and the little remaining waste is much safer and (relatively) very short lived.
Furthermore, the design is passively safe, and meltdowns are impossible.
The search is over. Of course we should continue to investigate other technologies, but we have a perfectly workable and very nearly ideal one staring us in the face. For the foreseeable future, this is the silver bullet.
In any case, holding out for something like the Tokamak is a waste of time. While a Fusion machine, in the end, it is hardly radiation free; the neutronic fusion reactions will slowly irradiate the hundreds of tons of reactor, which will eventually need to be disposed of and replaced.
Much more interesting and promising in my opinion is the Polywell, conceived of by Dr. Robert Bussard. The device seems like it may be perfectly feasible in the short term, and would have so many advantages, that it is madness not to make the minimal investment. I'm not going to discount Tokamak research, but we should really be investigating the alternatives as well. Anyway, here is Dr. Bussard's Google talk as well, for those who missed it: Should Google Go Nuclear?
Now, if they would only follow suit with Tucows.
I have a domain at with of their resellers which can not be contacted. (In fact their site certificate expired last October.) Unfortunately, Tucows offers absolutely no recourse, and the phone number listed in the whois will let you sit on hold forever, and eventually (after an hour or so) spit you into a voicemail box, which goes unanswered. Likewise, the email contact forms simply forward to the resellers. Very useful.
The reseller is domainsnare.net, which is also related to mailsnare.net. Not recommended...
The arrival of molecular nanotechnology will be a very interesting time. If we don't already have them, space elevators will inevitably arrive alongside MNT. Life will spread throughout our solar system (and beyond) very rapidly. Unfortunately, the real obstacles are social in nature, and they may well set us back a thousand years, if humanity survives at all.
Also, travel between the stars is perfectly practical, though with our current understanding of physics, it will take time.
I present you with the APU.
Another feature is that it is a passively safe design; meltdowns simply aren't possible. Anyways, the interviews in the external links of that wikipedia article are very interesting and informative.
The government should represent its people, and politicians should be held to very high standards. Legal bribery, or any other means of subverting our government are simply unacceptable, and should be considered no less seriously than premeditated murder. In fact, as the current administration demonstrates, it is often much worse.
No, but it might come with a mass driver.
It looks like they offer a service to proxy your registration address. Having my home address/phone/email in the NIC registry has always been somewhat of an annoyance.
Does anyone else do this? Is there a good reason not to?
I doubt it; I am typing this on no real keyboard, and once you get used to it you will never want to go back.
The Fingerworks TouchStream--a multitouch keyboard--presents a very nice interface, with gestures, mousing, and keyboard combined. Typing is somewhat difficult, but that is only due to the (relatively) crude design. (and the other aspects more than compensate for it.) As Jefferson Han pointed out in his presentation, on a more dynamic device, the keyboard can adapt itself to an individuals typing. As software improves, it should work very well; in fact, much better than existing keyboards.
If you could store all the energy from a bolt of lightning, perhaps it would be useful.
Amusingly though, lightning does not provide enough power for a large rail gun. According to Wikipedia, typical bolts are around 30-50kA, whereas a rail gun may draw 1MA or more. FWIW, 100kA can be delivered by a (relatively) small capacitor bank.