They would need to increase the surface area of the plates, probably using three-dimensional fractals. This would increase the ratio of surface area to volume in the same way that human lungs or fish gills work.

Always keep offline backups.

A microphone placed on top of a PC, beside or behind a PC will pick up more noise from the cooling fans. Even if you are not use a combination of cooling fans and an open-plan PC case that work as a white noise generator for the whole room :)

They could still hack into the nearest smartphone and listen to the clicks that way. Just about everyone has a smartphone on their desk. Or they could collect the used printer ribbons and read back the text that way.

It's a feedback system. The wind displaces the flat surface of the ocean into waves. Then those waves catch more wind, create turbulence. You can download or view any number of GPU based ocean wave simulators.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Look at what happens when an earthquakes occurs in one side of the Pacific, creating a tsunami which travels all the way across the ocean. With a storm over the ocean, the waves can reach 100 meters or more in height, and stretch for hundreds of meters (determined by a mathematical equation linking amplitude to wavelength and ocean floor depth). And the storm is 100 miles across.

You could say the same about the difference between shopping malls and individual shop units. With housing, terraced homes are more energy efficient than detached homes since the common walls are usually at the same temperature compared to the outside.

Imagine you divided the space up into cubes, each the side of a shop. Each side of a cube can be outside air, insulated wall, uninsulated wall, open space. Suppose you have 1000 units. With individual stores, that's 5000 sides that need to be insulating. If you have one shopping mall, with shops side-by-side, there are only 500 sides that need insulating. Even with the extra floor space for plazas, staircases, that's still no more than a few hundred rooftops.

It's no different from an office block. Some modern designs actually have separate frameworks for the exterior walls and the floors, so you have a greenhouse architecture where each can be modified without affecting the other. It's just a dome but with flatter sides.

Ideally to power something like that, they'd really need to a giant massive solar power plant somewhere in the middle of a large desert, and maybe some energy storage based on pumped water.

Some companies only look for people with MSc's or a PhD, but then there are those companies which only consider those with higher qualifications for non-programming jobs. So it's something to think about if you consider doing a MSc as as "refresher" to learn new skills when the job market is tight.

There was another variation where you could give the expert system a list of ingredients that you had available, and the system would tell you which drinks you could make and optionally how many.

Back in the 1990's, having a expert system that could generate the course timetables for the whole university was a holy grail of all AI departments. Most of the time it worked but every now and again it would generate courses that clashed, requiring some extra modification. Never knew whether they got it finally working.

It's the last 2.5% which involves a controlled collision with a rocky planet which is the worrying part.

Instruments are rendered in software on generic high-contrast LCD monitors. If one monitor fails, they can switch over to another display. If engine power fails, they have an auxiliary generator. The only time all four engines have failed is when going through the ash-cloud plume of a volcano.

The patent describes a 3D view or holographic view. That's going to be interesting. Some sci-fi stories have described the idea of flying an aircraft using a 360 view dome/cylinder with cameras projecting images from each direction. The pilot would have a complete 360 degree view all around. With the latest projection technology, this would work with stereoscopic glasses. If the system could see infra-red, then it would be possible to see through fog, mist and haze.

Agreed. DOS mail clients from 20 years ago could handle hierarchical email discussions. But somehow 20 years on, we're back to a single list.
While you can create folders, you still have to move the messages manually, and then as soon as the title changes, it's back to the main list.

Then you could always CC the email to a company mail distribution list. There have been times where sysadmins have updated the mail client to do this as default, only to shut down the system once there was a category 5 mailstorm across the network.

Maybe they want to reduce the number of trees cut down to make those plywood sheets? Don't forget the amount of chemicals used to kill off insects, make the wood fireproof, adjust the color, bind the woodchips together.