You're quite confused about the purpose of patents... The slide to unlock patent is doing exactly what it should: it's giving apple a legally protected head start for being the first to design something.

Now, is it too trivial? Could be, but the roar of applause for it when it was unveiled suggests otherwise. Should such things be patentable at all? Maybe not, but they are, so either work to fix it or suck it up.

Making a light bulb became instantly common, trivial knowledge after it was invented, so do many other patents. The point is not about what *becomes* obvious.

You're wrong,

The only reason patents do anything at all is because you can get injunctions and unreasonable settlements out of them. If infringing was only ever penalized with paying a back-royalty no one would ever license something properly and there would be no incentive to actually develop technology.

You have absolutely no clue how much useful transmission equipment costs. You probably think that you could just work out a mesh system that would magically work without 75% transmission loss and individual devices that cost at least an oder of magnitude more.

Actually, your comment might be the most ignorant I've read all month... congrats!

I'm amazed that some people think that $10 is a legitimate cost.

You have to realize that the company:

1) needs to provide you the server
2) needs to make a profit (or they will be crushed by a competitor that does)
3) needs to maintain the current infrastructure
4) needs to implement new infrastructure

You simply aren't going to get that for $10 a month. $20 might be in the ballpark.

Safety is still an issue with cargo.

A train derailment at *100*kmh can be catastrophic. A train derailment (it's tens/hundreds of thousands of tons of cargo) at *4000*kmh... that's considerably faster than most muzzle velocities, except instead of a few grain bullet you're talking about hurling a skyscraper that fast.

Every parent needs to do this. It would make both the world, and the teenage years of childhood much, much better.

Don't do that... Don't use bullshit to pretend you have facts.

Internet voting inherently appeals to a different demographic, there is absolutely nothing strange about a different demographic voting differently.

It's not strong evidence because it's not evidence at all. It might be worth looking into, but don't be that guy.

Oh hell, if we can just tell everyone to "get along" instead of actually having trials, I'm becoming a fucking judge!

Regardless of how stupid a patent case is, it's the current law and deserves a trial. Period.

You wanna change the patent system? then fucking help change it. Don't ignore your responsibilities.

You aren't terribly bright are you? You replied to my statement about running thousands of miles of cable with "this replaces quantum entangled bits".

That's wrong.

This "replaces" the current methods of OTP, which is to say it doesn't.

It also doesn't replace QEB because those are actually potentially practical.

I'm sure I'm wasting my time here... you clearly don't understand that this entire paper is garbage wrapped in stupidity. It isn't even original, FFS.

In fact, that is the worst ROI possible.

There is no reasonable return for doing such missions, we pretty much know what Mars is about and any further robotic exploration is merely because people aren't willing to do the real thing.

I'm also for extra Mars missions of any sort, because they give the private industry a chance to cut their teeth on such things... But to suggest that rovers are a better ROI than long-term habitation on other planets/moons is a joke.

well let's see:

ln(mi/mf) is the same for both rockets, which leaves us with pure multiplication.

Of course that's not counting that you don't have to fly through an atmosphere, or that because your fuel/lift ratio is so much higher and gravity much lower you can carry many times the amount of fuel in the first place, or any number of other reasons the moon makes a great launch pad.

You're in over your head.

There is nothing pragmatic about shunning exploration and invention based on arbitrary political states.

You should take at least high school physics before commenting on such things...

I'm so glad people like you are the minority... we'd be absolutely fucked as a species if you weren't.

Enjoy your idiocy while the rest of us try to make your life better.

Cheaper on the whole perhaps, but definitely not easier... doing a manned mars mission from Earth is insanely complicated. By comparison doing it from the moon is like walking down to the corner store in a metropolis.