A sun-like star is about 1 1/2 million kilometers in diameter. To blot out all light from such a star that's 10 light years away, a 0,75 kilometer diameter disc could be no more than 1/200.000th of a light year, or around 50 million kilometers (1/3rd the distance between the earth and the sun).

The brightest star in the sky is Sirius A. It has a diameter of 2,4 million km and a distance of 8.6 light years. This means your shade could be no more than 25 million kilometers away.

The sun and the moon both take up about the same amount of arc in the night sky so would be about equally difficult to block; let's go with the sun for a nice supervillian-ish approach. 1,4m km diameter, 150m km distance means it'd be able to block the sun at 800km away. Such an object could probably be kept in a stable orbit at half that altitude, so yeah, you could most definitely block out stars with the thing - including our sun!

It makes sense. We can radiate individual photons for thrust if so desired. We can move individual electrons from one position in a spacecraft to another for tiny adjustments of angle and position if so desired. It seems you're going to be much more limited by your ability to precisely track your target than by your ability to make fine adjustments.

I think a much bigger problem is going to be isolating standing waves from within the shielding material from distorting its perfect rim (with a shield that big and thin, there *will* be oscillations from even the slightest thrust inputs). You need to isolate the rim from the shielding. And you also need to make sure that you can have a rim that can be coiled up for launch but uncoil to such perfection in space.

Tough task... but technically, it should be possible.

I would presume that the bulk material in the inside has no need for accuracy, only the very rim. The question is more of whether you can have a coiled material that when uncoiled (deployment) can return to a shape with that level of accuracy. I would think it possible, but I really don't know.

I would forsee a super-precise rim with just a small bit of light shielding on its inside, deployed via uncoiling, and then attached to a much stronger, less precise uncoiled ring to which the bulk shielding material (and stationkeeping ion thrusters) are attached. The attachment between the two would need to provide for vibration and tension isolation (even the slowest adjustments in angle of such a huge, thin shield are going to set in motion relevant vibrations, you've got almost no damping - you want the structural ring to deal with those and not transfer them through to the precision ring). Not to mention that your shield will be acting as a solar sail whether you like it or not (unless you're at L2... but then your craft better be nuclear powered).

Your telescope behind it is going to need to do some real precision stationkeeping (either extreme precision on the whole spacecraft positioning, or merely "good" positioning of the whole spacecraft plus extreme precision adjustment of the optics within) . This means long development times and costs to demonstrate that you can pull it off before you actually build the shield. But I would think that also possible - just very difficult. If they take the latter route they could probably demonstrate that here on Earth, which would be a big cost-saver.

Well, I had an IBM PC-1, and yes and no respectively.

Clearing CMOS settings is still done with a jumper. I do wish that all flash BIOS devices had a write protect jumper, though, and it would cost little to add them.

I sure do, but any time I go visit a new contract or even just go on vacation, I shave it. It's not an attachment or an affectation, I just don't measure my value by the cleanliness of my neck. It's not my fault I was born hairier than the average bear.

But hey, thanks for recognizing how great I am. I could use the publicity.

Typecasting. They play the villain role so frequently, it's impossible to see them any other way.

Only the top ten or so even get space.

Here's another way to handle it. Whenever they appear on television, block out x% of their face and words based on their campaign contributions. Whoever gets least comes through at 100%, whoever gets most is just a wall of ads, and everyone else falls somewhere in-between

No, no it isn't. Just having non-transferable activation codes was that. This is a stupid and ham-handed attempt both to fight actual crimes and to dissuade people from seeking bargains.

Next time, consult a five year old.

Well, no. The license is something you enter into after you make the payment, hence the assertion that shrinkwrap licenses should not have any weight: you're not getting anything for them, you already got it. This online activation bullshit is a way around that: You're getting online activation.

I'm not sure they will do that. I think the majority of the gaming press will flame them for doing this (and rightly so, you don't punish people who are trying to be your customers, even if they are seeking bargains) and I think the majority of customers will feel however they are told to feel. And I think most of the rest of them will be pissed off because they won't have been able to play the game they paid for.

There's often legitimate discounts on games, so there's no valid reason to penalize customers for seeking discount prices. Likely some of those users made their purchases in ill faith, but I'd bet they were in the minority.

There's nothing more ironic than someone who has the luxury of having time to complain about someone complaining spending that time complaining about them.

Yes, I realize what this post entails. But I was just sitting here and noticed that instead of curing cancer or solving world hunger, you chose to spend your time trying to make someone feel bad about complaining by complaining about them, and thought maybe you could use a bit o' perspective.

Leftists including myself bring up Cuba's health care system to show that even a country which is totally busted politically and economically can manage a national health care system which provides outcomes as good as what we have now (which ain't that great, but bear with this argument) for pennies on the dollar. It's not that we should go commie, it's that even the commies can manage health care. Here in the allegedly greatest nation in the world, the only magnificent part of our health care system is the size of the bill.

Right now, any dickwad in America is free to put up a website advocating abolishment of the American government. And indeed, many of them have. Further, there is in fact a completely legal process for elimination of the constitution; you could pass an Amendment replacing it with another document. Nothing prevents anyone from starting a political party on this basis. I bet if I were less lazy I could find some really batshit crazy examples right now, but I equally bet that some people out there in Slashdot-land already know of some. I hope they will help out and link them here.

I don't get why they'd think New Zealand would be safe from protests. If they really want to be safe they should be thinking places like, say, Heard Island, like a true billionaire supervillain would.

Um, you do realize that Canada is a commonwealth state and the queen is the head of state, right?