It seems obvious to me that capturing energy that would normally be passing by the Earth and redirecting that energy to the Earth would, eventually, result in additional global warming. Maybe we need to consider some big space heat sinks for Earth (in Earth's solar shadow, of course), to compensate for all the additional energy we could transmit down to Earth from the space around it? In fact, the inverse of this project might be a way to capture heat energy on Earth, convert it to microwave energy and transmit the "heat" directly off world. With some new tech and large scale, we would really, really mess up this ball of dirt, rock and water.

I got great grades in high school because everything seemed a bit too easy. I never needed to do any homework that could be done "on demand" in class the next day. I found social interactions far more challenging than the classes in high school.

When I got to college I found out that I had never developed the skills I needed to cope with classes that were actually a challenge. That led to dropping out of college and joining the military, which eventually led to a nice career (30 years and going) in software design, development and most things "IT."

So, rather than devoting every moment of every day to the pursuit of excellence in high school, I found excellence to be my default setting and ended up horribly unprepared for college. This is a very different view, but I believe that at least some kids are having the same issue.

New Yorkers must have known this for a very long time ... they never look UP towards the sky, thus avoiding all of that dangerous blue coming from the sky outside.

I grabbed a copy to see how it would handle a bunch of old Visio and PageMaker files that no one wants to re-create from scratch.

The Visio files opened fairly well, with only a few rendering glitches (like connecting external endpoints from a network symbol back to its center instead of leaving them unconnected to anything.) I didn't see anything similar to Visio's tool suite in the Libre Draw program, but it may be buried in there somewhere, so I'm not sure about actually working with these files.

The PageMaker files were another story altogether! The first document I tried actually has two pages (front/back of a product lit sheet) but Libre Office told me there were over 17,000 pages and all of them contained things like "#####.##/#####-####" instead of the text, images, lines or bullets from the document. Granted, these are OLD PageMaker files (PM4, PM6 and PM7 files) but there was no version compatibility limits given and Libre Office offered to open those extensions, so I expected it to work. I tried one of the newest files (a multi-page text-only .PMD file) and Libre Office showed that it had nine pages, which was good. Unfortunately, all nine pages were exactly the same (showing the first page's content) because it appears that Libre Office did not handle the text block's flow from one page to the next and instead, just restarted the single text block in the document again at the top of each page.

So, since I gave it a try explicitly to see if it could do the "magic" of opening Vision and PageMaker files that was advertised, it sure won't work for me. Luckily, we were able to virtualize a Windows 2000 system before it died and still run the old Visio and PageMaker when absolutely required (and they both read these same files perfectly.) I REALLY want Libre Office to work, and to do what is advertised, but it just doesn't.

So, how can I tell you what the conditions will ACTUALLY BE for 500 years in the future so that you can make these accurate predictions?

So this magic film has been tested to last for 500 years, eh? Was the film really invented (and the testing started) back in 1517? Or has someone finally invented a time machine or maybe a telephone to the future, at least?

It simply is not possible to test something's viability for an extended time period with having that time period actually elapse! Some real-world processes simply cannot be rushed or physically simulated. Just because a thing survives one year at 500 times normal usage or exposure or whatever, doesn't mean it will survive 500 years at normal exposure. In fact, there is a strong likelihood (500 times stringer, in fact) that the material will be exposed to something that was not even tested and fail as a result during the real-world 500 year period. Of course there are fundamental chemical & physical issues as well... Just because a rat might survive for one year at 500 (some unit) of radiation doesn't mean that another rat will survive for 500 years at 1 unit of radiation. Yes, rats have a known lifespan, but don't chemicals, too? Especially complex chemical constructs like film?

All the data needs to be encoded on something like solid gold tape. That might last. Then there is only the problem of storing the knowledge of how and capability to actually utilize the data -- or has someone also found a way to do simulated-compressed-time tests of language, knowledge, and technology drift for 500 years, too?

I don't believe that even Oculus Rift is actually 3D. To actually be 3D, my eyes need to be able to choose the depth into the scene where they will focus, in addition to all of the other things mentioned about looking around, into and behind things. Someday, a display like Oculus may be able to monitor the focus depth of my eye in real time and adjust the focus of the presented images to match, but until then 3D won't really exist.

Honestly, linux hasn't been much better than Windows. linux just expresses its troubles differently. I'm in a tiny company and managing our company's little email and web servers is part of my job. All of that runs on linux and, most of the time, is wonderfully reliable. HOWEVER, every two years (I use Ubuntu LTS builds) there is a significant "upgrade" to the OS. Unfortunately, every single one of those has also included upgrades to various packages (like postfix, php, mysql, etc) that are INCOMPATIBLE with previous versions! When this happens, it can take days to figure out all of the adjustments that must be made to our configuration and, since everything is just in text files that I only look at every two years (because things work so well in between updates) I must re-learn amost everything every time I update. And yes, I've heard all of the scolding and comments about note-taking, etc., but when you have a boss and customers screaming at you to get a server back on line, good note taking is low on your priority list.

I don't run Windows SERVERS, but I have NEVER encountered such major incompatibility issues with Windows or software that runs on it. When a new version is incompatible with the previous, the upgrade clearly informs me and offers to automatically migrate my old configuration to the new while asking for any new settings required. linux may say there is a new config file that is recommended, but it won't contain any of your old settings if you use it. I'd be surprised if the linux desktop is any friendlier. By and large, linux is written and maintained by people who love computers and coding (and are VERY good at both) and they appear to expect that anyone using their system is the same (or at least wants to be the same) as them. IMHO, this is the biggest flaw in linux ever since the first time it was predicted to replace Windows. As a developer, I understand the nearly pointless task of writing a migration tool that will run only once -- but when it will run once for MILLIONS of users it becomes quite a bit less pointless, but still, very few of these are written for linux applications (at least, not for any of the server applications I've used for the past 18 years).

I, too, am against the pushy Windows 10 upgrade system, but I'm not sure where to go in a few years when Windows 7 no longer has working drivers for market hardware. Hopefully, something will be ready by then.

Has anyone actually got this "trick" to succeed? I changed the owner of the GWX folder and everything in it away from Administrator, turned off all of the permissions I could find and it seemed to work great. For about a month. Then it was back and when I looked just now, I see that files in that folder were updated YESTERDAY, even though the folder is not owned by the system and is marked to have NO ONE with permission to write into the folder. Clearly, (to me, at least) Microsoft's updates don't need to worry about pesky little things like file system security settings -- those would only get in the way of a successful update, after all.

XP, LAMP, 2003 servers, all of those things are spiffy new systems to us. Almost all of my job is trying to get old PDP, MODCOMP and DOS systems into the modern era of things like Windows NT or (Jobs forbid!) linux. Sites with truly aging systems are rarely willing to spend anything like what it would cost to really bring what they have up-to-date and they often have good reasons -- how many security issues do you hear about those aged systems vs [recently] modernized ones?

Of course, it also help to keep all user interfaces the same as much as possible instead of forcing people to learn something new (are you listening, Microsoft?) That kind of change for its own sake rarely adds value. I've seen really great looking Windows software used on the operators' console at nuclear power plants -- except -- it is only great looking from a couple feet away. If you get farther away the lines being graphed become invisible and the text is too small to read without 20/10 vision. This stuff probably only changed format because some programmer (and marketeer and purchasing agent) thought it looked pretty in demonstrations in a conference room.

Ahem. Sorry, poor human factors in software "upgrades" is a pet peeve of mine.

I wonder if the framers ever conceived of rubber bullets or bean bag guns...

Also, what happens if something like a hand-held electric rail gun is ever developed? It may well be recognizable as a "firearm" to the framers, but it certainly will be using technology which they never dreamed of, and would seem to fall under the category of "electric weapon"... Farther along, there may even be lethal and non-lethal directed energy weapons, also most certainly "electric" (in some sense, at least) -- would they be banned as "electric weapons"?

Lastly, it makes no sense to ban NON-LETHAL weapons, just because the framers did not imagine them. But if that ever comes to pass, everyone who would've bought (or is forced to turn in) a stun gun should immediately get a REAL GUN. I wonder how the folks banning the stun guns would feel about THAT!

As I said, a one way serial link will do for most of the data that needs to be sent from the secure to the non-secure system. If serial isn't fast enough, there is the "data diode" concept that provides a one-way network link.

I don't care (much) if my entertainment and navigation system is hackable. But I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT WANT anything to do with the actual operation of my vehicle to be hackable! It seems to me that using two physically separate computers and networks -- one for nav/comm/entertainment and one for vehicle systems -- would be a good start. MONITORING devices could be providing data to both (to allow things like OnStar to detect an accident or to allow the entertainment system display to show vehicle status. However, absolutely ZERO vehicle CONTROL devices should be in any way accessible from the entertainment computer/network.

I write software for nuclear power plants where we have several physically separate networks and computer systems, with the most secure systems only streaming data outward towards the less secure systems. The most secure systems have no external inputs or connections at all -- as the vehicle control system should be (even the diagnostic port(s) should be in an area locked by one of the vehicles physical keys). The less secure systems have no access to any sort of control function so that, in the event of compromise, the worst that can happen is capture and possibly inaccurate display of aggregated data (operators still verify unexpected computer readings with physical instruments before controlling the reactor). The secure system needs nothing from the less secure system(s) and, if the data rate is not too high, could even stream its outgoing data using a TWO WIRE serial connection that does not even have the return signal connected!

If they care, the automotive industry could easily do these things to protect control systems. The fact that they don't bother shows just how much they value profits over human lives.

That is becoming less and less true as hardware and software evolves and possibly as industry's comfort level increases. I'm not sure that is a good thing, but I've worked with some systems that have software that could potentially trigger plant trip if the software determines that a dangerous enough condition exists. That is probably a good thing -- unless someone is dumb enough to connect that software to a network and allow it to automatically update.

After all, none of us have ever has an operating system update cause any troubles at all, right? ;-)

Any company that has a SCADA system that is allowed to automatically install any sort of update needs new management. I write software for industrial SCADA systems (many of them nuclear, but some not) and absolutely NONE of them have any form of automatic update enabled. That goes for the operating system platform, even anti-virus packages (when they are used) must be manually updated after the update has been tested in a sandbox lab system. Even a well intentioned update may disrupt a SCADA system's operation, so why would anyone in their right mind allow a SCADA system or the operating system it runs on, or any other software running on the same machine automatically update itself? Sorry, but that's just insane.. At best, SCADA systems should have a one-way data flow (preferably on a serial link with the receive line physically CUT) but none of them should accept input from outside their physically controlled environments.

Except for toys and things like that.