Loved the Journeys series

With rockets, faster acceleration means LESS total fuel to orbit, not more (assuming you can just use the same fuel either faster or more slowly). The shorter time you are fighting the 1G, the less total fuel you use up. Imagine takeoff to orbit at 1.01G (1G earth, .01G motion). instead of 2G. You take forever to achieve orbit and the first 1G is wasted all that time. The only advantage I see is (as you say) lighter engines and structure. Still seems low compared to any other rocket I have ever seen.

In the video it seemed to take 60 seconds to reach 225 m/s, or around 3.5 m/s/s. That's only 1/3 G!! Did the takeoff seem slow to others? Even manned rockets accelerate a lot faster than that! What's wrong with my analysis or their rocket?

Used for navigation. Provide wrong navigation coordinates to the pilots under conditions of reduced visibility. The humans will follow blindly in most cases. We have seen large numbers of aviation accidents like this. Remember the plane that got shot down over NK because the pilot had entered wrong co-ords into the autopilot? Sorry for your anger and lack of imagination. I just hope the terrorists have similar mind sets.

Cyber war gave us the stuxnet worm that was very selective and only activated when it could ruin gas centrifuges. The Ipad would make airlines vulnerable to a clever al qaeda hacker who makes a worm that activates when certain critical conditions were met (i.e. when a US airliner was over water, or during a critical landing maneuver). Are we conceited enough to think that USA and Israel are the only ones with master hackers?

Valid point. some sections of usrr can override the operator,but it is very expensive.

If you pay attention to the accidents, you will see the train accidents are almost always due to human error, not signaling equipment failure. Drivers going thru flashing red signals, engineers under the influence or texting, and occasional sabotage. Signal equipment almost always fails safe. This causes very annoying (but safe) delays while the equipment is fixed.

I worked on US rail signaling equipment (Background = Physics PhD). I have never been so impressed with over-designed, fail-safe equipment. They plan for everything, including multiple lightning strikes. They do such things as positioning their relays upside down so that the armature falls to NC by gravity if the spring breaks. They have many years of experience, and all of our equipment is for sale. I think the NIH mentality bit China in the arse this time.

If your premise is that the dynamics of software is faster than other technologies, then this only makes sense if you can streamline the patent examination process to grant software patents in an average of 6-9 months. This also implies publishing the applications after only 2 months, and acting on public input in a month or less. An interesting idea, but not feasible with the current USPTO.

Your choice

Claim 12: A system as in claim 1 where, if the audible warning telling the child 'to play nice' in a strict tone of voice and the audible warning that asks the child 'would you like someone to do that to you' in a softer tone of voice along with a visual cue as well are not effective, then a small correctional current is applied through EEG electrodes 1 and 2, inducing the desired behavior or a peaceful coma.

The reef squid has the ability to quickly change colors and patterns on it's body, and seems to signal other squids in this fashion (as well as for camouflage). I wonder if they would be fooled by this illusion or if their neural optics are wired very differently than ours. It would be challenging to try to create an objective test that you could do with them.

As I read the patent claims, it appears that in order to require no eyeglasses and to allow the observer to be located anywhere relative to the screen, the 3D effect will only work with one observer. No claims allow multiple, position-independent viewers. That makes sense from a physics and optics point of view, but it is disappointing.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceCube_Neutrino_Observatory Now that's real Icegeneering!