so that just maybe people will wake up to the world we live in. We've given over most of our rights and just expect that the corporations are some benign entity that just can't wait to do something else for us. A few more blatant slaps across the face would do people good I say.

Can we get the cell phone companies in on this too please? Maybe the banks too?

We have lost ourselves in an attempt to be politically correct in this society. Here's what I mean..

A young man sees a a young girl and finds her attractive and approaches her. Not physically restraining her, or drugging her or any other form of persuation other than expressing interest. and by the current ideology of militant feminists he has committed rape. No, I'm not kidding.. as defined by rabid feminists simply by trying to communicate that he is attracted to a female in a perfectly normal way he has made 'unwanted advances' and made her uncomfortable by 'forcing her' to say no, or to say she's not interested.

There is a current trend in some colleges to create 'safe zones' for women.. in essence, a place where no males are allowed to enter. According to some, merely having a biological male in their presence makes them feel as if they are in danger of being raped. The inherent sexism in this is lost on them.. only women need to be protected and shielded and only their rights should be respected. I read yesterday where they are trying to expand that so that it specifically lists 'white people' as well.. because minorities can't feel equal or unpersecuted unless there aren't any white people around. To entertain EITHER of these odious ideas is not only unconstitutional it's madness. Rape should have very clear definitions... talking to someone is NOT rape. LOOKING at someone is not rape. Having consensual sex with someone that is inebriated is NOT rape. It may be poor judgement on both parties involved, but it's NOT rape.

There are several video's I've seen on the net that explain it some.. we can already convert x-rays and streams of electrons into an electrical potential...we just haven't tried to do it in an industrial capacity. I'm not a physicist or anything, but it appears from the video that the 'beams' of x-rays and streams of ions are directed over small foil plates or antenna looking structures.

The current test reactor they've built fits inside the bay of a car garage. Granted it's a test reactor but if/when they can reach the point where they are producing more power than they need to sustain the reaction, getting useful power out of it won't be a major challenge.

THIS!!!

Aneutronic fusion, should it pan out (and it is certainly making some serious headway) is like the holy grail of power production!!! It's so good it's almost like a fairy tale come true. A way to produce power directly to electricity w/out having to convert nuclear-->heat---->electricity. Not only that, but it would be very very small, have very little infrastructure costs (shielding and containment) and be walkaway safe to operate, w/out almost no long term radioactivity to worry about. AND!!! it can be used for propulsion, providing direct thrust from it's own reaction as well as being an excellent source of huge power supply for Hall type thrusters.

In MY utopia of intelligent design, the worlds electricity needs are met with aneutronic fusion, while it's industrial needs for actual heat/power and fuel production for liquid fuel vehicles is met by LFTR reactors, and to burn up the mistakes of our current nuclear programs, as well as to generate the isotopes needed for medical research and treatments.

ITER and the other BIG fusion projects may or may not someday produce something that could be useful, other than the research they generate. A fusion plant that requires that large a facility and infrastructure costs to build just aren't ever going to be a viable source for our energy needs. We need compact efficient and mass produceable means of generating power and heat.. ITER doesn't and won't ever fit that bill.

We've all been anesthetized by the constant daily 'AMAZING NEW BATTERY TECH AROUND THE CORNER!' articles over the past X years.. but this one doesn't sound like they are doing the 'if only we could do X' to make it work commercially.. these guys even suggest you could start right now with a room full of DVD burners. they even state there's a startup company already started on making the stuff commercially for the market. I for one will remain a bit optimistic on this one...

I don't think we'll see this tech in Tesla's car in the next 5 years, or maybe even in cell phones in that time period. I DO expect we'll see it in stuff like medical gear and in solar panels. That bit where the backside of a solar cell could have a sheet of ultra caps on it capable of storing all the energy it captured...so a meter square of solar panel on a sunny day that could store lets say a kw/hour in itself. That could def be useful. A BIG part of the cost of a home solar system for off-grid is the battery storage. Not to mention the weight and hazard of deep cycle acid cells. Collection and storage in one place, lightweight and maint. free? High voltage transmission to prevent line losses? Oh yah.. I can see this cracking the home solar thing WIDE open, and that's just one industry my tiny little mind can think of.

I like the fact that the 'old' reactors do not get any kind of credit. The incentive should be for newer, better designed reactors. The one that makes the most sense economically (for a lot of different reasons) are Thorium based reactors, especially LFTR designs. The problem with Uranium and Plutonium based power plants is you NEED a breeder reactor to fuel them. Th based designs can breed their own fuel and are orders of magnitude safer. Changing the rules on classification of the handling of nuclear materials would solve enormous problems, such as allowing rare earth mines to be re-opened and generate a huge revenue stream here in country as well. Doesn't hurt that we're going to need all those rare earth magnets for all the electric cars and wind farms either....

4 letters... L F T R

In fact, I watched an very interesting proposal by someone in the state legislature in one of the western states of the US that was trying to push a proposal to use a LFTR reactor to turn their coal (primary source of income for the state) into liquid fuel because the cost would be negligible with a super high heat thorium reactor. No need to make fancy next-gen generators.. they could exactly model the already proven design they had at Oak Ridge to provide the heat and hey presto! Instant liquid fuel that is 100% compatible with our current liquid fuel infrastructure. While not ideal this does open the door to better applications.. like harvesting the C02 needed for the reaction from the air, thereby making the reaction sustainable and essentially carbon neutral. All you need is lots of power to make it happen, specifically lots of power in the form of heat. Stop playing with fresnel lenses and start building LFTR's damn it!

I think we might be overlooking a couple of other issues here.. if these kids don't have a computer at home in this day and age... their parents might not WANT them to have one. I know some 'impoverished' folks and although they might shop at goodwill for clothes and eat off of subsidized cards in the generic aisle, the one thing they ALL have is a computer. AND a relatively powerful smart phone. There are certain 'luxuries' in the US that have literally become ubiquitous. If someone doesn't have a computer or easy access to one, there's very possibly another reason than money.
 

If fusion in general is the holy grail, then aneutronic fusion would be the 2nd coming of (fill in a mythological deity of your choice). Fascinating stuff really, and the group that is working on it (in a GARAGE in Jersey I believe) have already attained as high an output energy as any of the big players in the field like ITER and LIF on a shoestring budget. Not only is it incredibly smaller/cheaper to operate than any of the other approaches so far (other than possibly the MIT sponsored methods) it's also got one HUGE benefit... little to no radiation and practically NO waste whatsoever. It's also a damn near perfect propulsion system for interplanetary travel. You can keep your Tokomak's and laser igniters.. I'll go with aneutronic fusion with a side of liquid fluoride thorium reactor's for industrial use. These 2 technologies together can and will 'save the world' from itself.

There's a problem with your argument there chief... this is a game that is about to release. I'ts not an alpha.. from the video I just watched the company is about to release 'Ashes' for purchase.

DX11 is dead tree man. Might as well use that same argument a few years ago with DX9.. when M$ moves on with it's API, you either get onboard or you're left in the dust. I've been hoping for years and years that someone could make the push for OpenGL to become competitive again but that's not gonna happen. At least with DX12 being based off of Mantle, you will have the Vulkan equivalent that is almost code identical so games can work as well off of Win10 as on it. I want to see Linux and Mac games released at the same time as windows games and running just as fast. Thats what will open up the field to everyone finally.

The other thing that is glaringly obvious is that the fastest AMD chips are suck for gaming with this API. I had hoped that Mantle would really bolster up the AMD cpu performance in gaming, but that was almost embarrassing to look at; the I3 is faster than AMD's flagship processor in this game. Ouch.

Wind and solar cannot, and will not EVER replace more concentrated means of generating power. They are useful and serve a purpose but by no means are they energy dense enough and compact enough to depend on for our total needs If we ever want to bring the whole world up to a 1st world standard of living and try to derail the climate change we've already caused it HAS to be done with something more than pinwheels and mirrors.

Have you ever seen the figures on how much infrastructure cost there is in building your magical solar and wind farms? It's mind boggling...the concrete, the steel, the C02 emissions alone make it untenable large scale and long term. If it were the silver bullet, why the hell aren't more countries using it? Power storage, I agree that any and all advancements we make there are necessary, critical even.

Actually, the holy grail of fusion is aneutronic fusion. There's a group working on it that is literally doing their experiments in a garage in Jersey, and they have already exceeded the technical landmarks of the multi-billion dollar ITER in only a very short time. All other power generation designs require that we still use a heat engine to create electricity. The Aneutronic Fusion gives off massively charged 'jets' of positively and negatively charged streams which can be captured to generate electricity DIRECTLY. No conversion losses. It's also got the 'side effect' of using one of those jets of charged particles as thrust.. as in put it on a spacecraft and reach intra-solar bodies in weeks or months. Oh, it's also got the advantage of not giving off neutron radiation. at all. In fact, they are stating that after shutting it down you could safely walk into the reaction area in 30 min or so.

To me, THIS and a LFTR reactor working together would be the best possible power generation going forward. The benefits you could from a really hot LFTR reactor for making liquid fuels from C02, burning up old 'spent' fuel from conventional fission reactors and for the medical isotopes it generates just makes too much sense NOT to use them.

AMEN brother! Preach the Th to the masses and they will become enlightened.. and enriched. :) (see what I did there?)

Seriously, the world supply of transuranic's is desperately low..and they aren't going to be 'found', they have to be made, and the only way to make some of them is through the decay chain of a Th or Pu reactor. If for no other reason than research and medicine an MSR needs to be built! The endless uses they can be put to aside, we need them or run completely out of materials to do good science.

There will have to be some sort of enforced birthing policy. It's also obvious that the vast majority of people will not have access to the rejuvenation process, it will be priced out of their reach. We will have the most egregious caste system to have ever existed on this planet; the rich will live extended lives and have the 'right' to reproduce at will and the rest of us will live short meagre lives and fight for the right to bear offspring. This is a subject well covered in science fiction guys, it's not new ground. Throw in a little Gattaca and I think you just about have it.

There is such a thing as going to far, and the feminists have overshot the mark so far it's dangerous to even talk to a female in pubic or private without facing cries of discrimination, rape or bias that will cost you. No, I haven't ever been directly accused and I personally have no issue with women getting paid the same for doing the same work. The other day my son was telling me about his yearly mandatory HR lecture on how to go about work in the workplace. Did you know there is now such a thing as 'stare rape'? WTF? Did you know you can be censored at work (reprimand or fired) for having a relationship at work that makes someone totally unrelated uncomfortable? I guess the only way to ensure a completely level playing field is to have everyone wear a gender neutral suit that hides your sex, male or female from site. You will no longer have a name since that can give you away as being either male or female. Voice changers will be mandatory as well. Of course that means that all bathrooms will be open for everyone as well, with hermetically sealed cells to prevent anyone guessing that way too. I love the world we live in now.. we're so politically correct we can't even BE what we are without the possibility of someone filing a lawsuit.