I did. Did you understand the meaning behind the paragraphs you cite?
I am confused as to how it was possible to understand the claims it made. Robots don't have genomes and don't eat food. Their "genomes" cannot be recombined.
Robots have code and programmers. What does a random change mean in this context? Do they use faulty dram or mess with the voltage?

conspicuously absent is any explanation of what is meant by "learned" in this context or how the algorithms "evolved"

I would guess he works on the nobel peace prize committee.

The timing coincided with an expiration of a no-compete. He also tapped some of the same people he liked working with at EDS who also had their no competes expire.

that was my question as well. the motor seems to consist of many atoms. one might fairly say "the piston" is only 2 atoms.

is grounding no longer a problem? I haven't built a computer in a while, but I'm not sure if cardboard makes a good ground.

i'm not sure where you're getting your data: http://www.municipalbonds.com/ seems to be somewhere between 4-5%

try googling the municipal bond rate.

well, i too think slashdot is getting worse, but i don't think the problem is in the comments section.

there's really been no work done on this project AFAIK. it's just hope, a dream, and a website so far. A couple napkin calculations and suggested solutions to the basic problems. Unfortunately, he didn't know that napkinning is a multi-person sport.

a basic problem is that it often snows at night, good sir. how do propose to power a solar cell at night in order for it to have the energy it needs to melt ice across its entire surface?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthalpy_of_fusion

we're looking 333.55 J/cm^3 of water. So at 16m^2 per panel, it's 1.6 x 10^6 * 3.3 x 10^2 = J/cm of water = ~ 5 x 10^5 kJ/cm of water ...

that's a pretty decent amount of energy not including the amount needed to heat it up to 0C in the first place.

if you read the website, you would realize the only thing they tested is the HTML.

fair point.

I was just trying to imagine there was something other than marketing + hope in the website or blog post

the more i think about it the more i realize this project will only work if a new form of relativistic physics arrives that has hope as the magic term.

that's also what i think of the new health care cost plan, but that's for another thread.

at least one of the claims here seems a little off: http://www.solarroadways.com/The%20Numbers.htm

in particular, this sentence: "This means that if each individual panel can be made for no more than $6912.00, then the Solar Roadwayâ can be built for the same cost as current asphalt roads." It seems to assume that an outlay of 3x the money for a road that lasts 3x as long is the same cost as 1x & 1x respectively. While this is true for someone with infinite readily available money, the reality is that most places don't have enough money for that.

also "The Solar Roadwayâ will, therefore, eliminate half of the greenhouse gases currently being produced. " seems to be a dramatic overstatement.

that's a good set of points you make skull. have you considered following your own advice? (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1229581&cid=27915343)

i.e. you should also read the convo.

i'll spell it out for since i don't expect you to do any reading. linux power management doesn't work that well because most systems are not fully ACPI compliant and cheat using their windows-only drivers.

ever heard of power management?

it's on by default in windows.

maybe you should figure out what your settings are for linux?