AC industry shill. Color me surprised.

$180/month for a 3mbs link is a monthly charge of $60 per mbps. The EU average for this service unit is $3.50. Also a 2 GB monthly cap is "very usable"?! The average home use consumes about 25 GB of bandwidth monthly, the average mobile phone user is hitting 2 GB/month right now.

So the AC Shill, paying 17 times a competitive world service rate for only 8% of what a typical American consumes in bandwidth is "very affordable and very usable". But to anyone not taking industry astro-turf cash it is a rip-off.

Forced? Forced??? The link says no such thing. He is selling this Nobel Prize because he wants to use the money to take up art collecting, and making philanthropic donations. This is the choice of a very comfortable man who wants to take up the hobbies of the rich.

Note that the link says that he "he has no income outside of academia" - given his multiple high level positions in academia over the years, those pensions could stack up into mid-six figures, making him wealthy by any normal standard.

Sorry, the poor, poor Mr. Watson shtick won't wash.

The the term used in the paper is "semi-relativistic" - fast enough that relativistic effects cannot be ignored in even routine calculations about its properties. At 1/3 the speed of light the time dilation effect amounts to a 5.7% difference for example.

"Close to the speed of light" is the summary author's attempt to render "semi-relativistic" in sensible common place terminology.

Seems like a distinction without a difference.

Good for you! You are proposing to build an actual von Neumann machine. Such things are obviously possible (given the evidence of living things) - but I have never seen a proposal to actual build one, or even a defensible estimate of what would be required to build Humankind's first one.

Any estimate on when we will see this is more than just an electronic document? Currently the WikiBook about this flys at such a high level that it is impossible to tell whether there really is anything here.

The AC is right. This IUC tamper resistance scheme has nothing at all to do with launch authority controls.

If he makes $300,000 and he considers that a high six figure, then he is not lying at all. Note that $100,000 is a "six figure income", and these days not at all high in the scheme of things. So his statement may just be drawing the distinction of someone making a multiple of "six figure" (three in this case) as opposed to barely breaking that antiquated inflation-devalued benchmark.

And yet, the U.S. has legions of gated communities, despite not "needing" them! From the article: "By 1997, an estimated 20,000 gated communities had been built across the country. Approximately 40% of new homes in California are behind walls. In 1997, estimates of the number of people in gated communities ranged from 4 million in 30,000 communities up to around 8 million, with a ½ million in California alone." These are nearly all wealthy people, why are they seeking hidden enclaves?

Russia is the only country you can come up with by name I notice. Why not try one of the real industrial democracies?

Let's unpack this bit. Last going first, in which industrialized democracies does speaking up against politicians cause "disappearance, house arrest, or defamation charge"? Your "Russia" example again?

So we are left with that all-essential freedom of unrestricted gun ownership - the freedom to easily murder others. Very, very few gun deaths each year are due to "self defense" killing: for each justified self-defense killing, there are about 35 fire-arm homicides.

Neither link supports the claim you made. You will have to add that special sauce of wing-nut interpretation to make your case. Your turn.

Those measures are increasing my freedom - by making a selection of more efficient appliances for me to buy at low cost, and thus allowing me to lower my power bills, all of which puts more money in my pocket. I thought that was the very essence of the Conservative idea of freedom, more of my own money.

We know what corporations do when such measures are not in place. They don't innovate on efficiency, or provide cost effective efficient appliances. Only by moving the entire industry to more efficient standards to you get economies of scale.

Oddly, this would seem to be the "influence change on the producers" that you approve of.

I'm an environmentalist. I think converting coal to natural gas is a great idea. So, your general claim is disproven.

This was a Sierra Club lawsuit. The SIerra Club does not equal "all environmentalists".

Technically, no. Shoreham's construction was completed - it actually ran low power tests. What happened was not it was not permitted to begin commercial operation -- due to its singularly poor siting on Long Island, and Long Island Sound after the local community and state had had time to reflect on the wisdom of this particular license. In light of Fukushima, safety concerns about the siting of one of these first generation nuclear power plant designs were quite reasonable. This was a plant that should never have been built.

Plants more distant from major population centers and critical transportation corridors have not had this problem.

And we executed all the Germans who were?

Words fail me, as well.

Wait - I thought the story-line was that Obama did not do ENOUGH arming of the rebels, which created space for Islamist radicals to create ISIS. Shill on, AC.

Quite possibly. I would prefer a reality consistent philosophy, especially since Libertarianism makes extravagant claims about economics which is very much an empirical activity.

Oh my, no. Libertarianism and its Hayekist pseudo-economics twin are quite aggressive about denying the importance of basing beliefs of reality. Can you say "Praxeology"?

LIbertarians and Hayekists hold that their axiomatic principles are the true basis of perfect morality, the best of all possible moral codes, and that social, political and economic doctrines can, indeed must, be derived directly from them without contaminating the matter with social or economic data.

If you dispute with a Libertarian about the feasibility, and desirability of their proposals, you will shortly find them trying to derail the discussion from practical effects to an effort to educate you about the perfection of their axioms.