Now lets asks how much power this computer will need? Lets say it can do a billion flops per watt. 100 petaflops is 100,000 trillion flops. A trillion flops is 1000 billion flops so a trillion flops is 1000 watts at a billion per watt. So 100,000 trillion flops would 100 million watts. So lets hope they can do at least 50 billion flops per watt so that would mean 20 watts per trillion flops or 2 million watts. At 10 billion flops per watt would mean 5 times that or 10 million watts. Now lets assume they could do the computing for 1,000,000 users at a time instead of those 1,000,000 user using 1,000,000 computers. Now lets assume that each of those 1,000,000 user's computers used only 100 watts so the 1,000,000 users would use 100 million watts. If evenly divided 100 petaflops would still mean 100 billion flops per user. Now lets say each computer cost only $500 or times a million would mean 500 million dollars. I would hope that this supercomputer would cost less than that. So I am saying that this supercomputer should cost far less than a equal number of personal computers and run at a small fraction of their power requirements. I have looked at the power requirements of a 19 inch monitor and they use about $4 a year so even 1,000,000 of them would not add to much to the power requirements. So 100 companies with only 10,000 computers each could build one of these and save money.

If the FedEx truck was also self driving than it would only make one trip empty. If it delivered 100 items than it would save those people 100 empty trips to the store. Assuming there is less distance between customers than there is between each customer and the store would ensure it efficiency. There could be revolving boxes inside the truck to ensure customer only gets what is theirs. Lets consider how much this would help the store. The parking lot of each box store is usually has more area than the store so they could fit in a lot less area. If the store could predict their needs they could have a lot less inventory. The needed inventory could be stored in shelves much higher than humans could reach and with much less space between the shelves. I have already seen videos of a robot climbing to get what is sent to get in modern warehouses so that has already been invented. There would be much less inventory loss because of shoplifting and from people who have a bad habit of picking up some meat and than going to hardware where they than discover they did not want the meat and just leave it there. There would be no need for check out clerks and people to stock inventory as that would be done by robots. I think our total commercial district could fit in a lot less area thus freeing up millions of square miles of area nationwide. With a lot of experience, I would think they could get delivery times down to a very short interval.

So a plane that flies 910 miles would only cost 10 times the cost of a gallon of fuel per passenger. Let say that is $4 a gallon or $40 a passenger for fuel. Now lets double that amount to $80 a passenger for overhead(employees and other costs) and one would still only get $120 a passenger so add 20% for profit and one would still get only $144 a passenger. I have not checked lately but I would think that would still be less than a third what one would pay to fly that distance.

The chances of getting killed by an asteroid are orders of magnitude larger than the chances of anyone in the world thanking us if we did manage to deflect one.

You say the bible is not a book of science. I say it also not a book of morality too. The example of removing Adam and Eve from the garden is one of the worst. It tells me if someone makes a simple mistake one can condemn them and their descendants to misery. I believe the story about them is designed to explain why their existence was so horrible after all why would a powerful and loving god not provide for all of his creation whether or not they believed in that god. Especially when that god could do it without much effort. It goes on with Noah's flood. This had to be done by a infinitely cruel god since there were a lot of other ways that god could have handled the problem that did not involve killing a lot of people. How many times in the bible have pregnant women and young children been slaughtered by god or in its name? The times we are living in now are no better than the times of Galileo because religion is now condemning science because evolution and DNA sequencing are proving that Adam and Eve never existed so ending the very reason that Jesus was needed.

Why are people with low income more associated with democrats? It is because the republicans are more than willing to tax and take away any money that they might have to invest and improve themselves. I live in Michigan and what are the republicans doing? They are reducing business taxes by taxing pensions. What is the first tax republicans want to reduce. It is always the progressive taxes. In Michigan they are again trying to reduce income tax. Never mind the regressive taxes like property tax and sales tax. Never give a low income person a break by for instance not having a sales tax on a vehicle that sells for less than $10,000. Never give a low income person a break by reducing property tax and thus reducing their rent. In Michigan if a person has $500,000 in excess income, never mind taxing that person $2,000 because one can take $100 from a lot more people that only have that $100 or less to spare by the use of property tax or sales tax.

The same thing can be said about a qwerty keyboard. It was designed to be inefficient. Yet most people are still typing on them. It is because there are a lot of people who would have to relearn typing. If all the new computers came out with a different keyboard than I too would have to relearn but it would be worth it in a couple of months but since they are not doing that I will stick to the qwerty keyboard.

I sure hope you are right because in my area there is a huge pumped-storage plant and 56 wind turbines. To top it off we have a large amount of salt(Morton Salt) so there should be enough places for air reservoir plants. It would be nice if they could produce our gasoline needs here too.

Why are we arguing about the validity of a book that makes no sense and contradicts itself. One does not need to read past Genesis chapter 3 to find several verses that do not make sense. One verse says that if one eats of the forbidden fruit one will surely die on that day or even when eating it. If one takes the later to be literal than Eve should have died seconds after the fruit was in her stomach. Adam would have not eaten it but even if they were to die on the same day than none of us should be existing since they would have had no time to produce any children. In chapter 3 god ask Adam if he ate of the fruit. Why would Adam tell god he ate of the fruit if he thought he was going to die? Why would god not have already known this fact. Why would Jesus not have known that they were going to eat of the fruit and at least tried to talk them out of it? Surely he would have known that if they had eaten the fruit he would have had to die on the cross. Besides none of that matters since it has already been proven that mankind did not descend from just two people. Second is when Jesus comes to judge us and separate the sheep from the goats. Jesus never ask if we had faith in him or if we were baptized but if we can answer yes to his question about feeding the poor, clothing the naked, visiting the sick or imprisoned than we would have a place reserved for in heaven. But other verses say we need to have faith in Jesus and need to be baptized to enter the kingdom of heaven and so they contradict each other. Jesus does not say every time either so my reading of the 25th chapter of Matthew is that if one can say that one feed the poor or clothed the naked or visited the sick or imprison even only once than one will go to heaven. This is also contradicted by the story about a woman who anoints Jesus with expensive oil. If her salvation depended on feeding the poor than surely she should have saved that money for that purpose.

If one doubles a penny one still is very poor. It is only after doubling 20 times one finds his wealth growing at a significant pace. It is the same with technology. We are at the time when we have doubled the penny 30 times so the comparison with the amount of change in the last 15 years is not right. I really do not see this person driving back and forth to work since most will be done right at home. I would really like to talk about what all this technology will do to our life. For instance what will this mean to the commercial district. I can see most of our stores closing their doors since most things will be ordered over the internet and delivered to our homes. So that would mean that a vast amount of area would be left with no buildings. I can even see where our own beds would be a hospital bed for almost everything but the most serious cases. Now here is my story. One wakes up at 4 am because scientist have finally discovered why we sleep and now we take a pill that will double the effects of our sleeping so we can get away with 4 hours of sleep a night. One now goes to the bathroom where the toilet does a physical on us every time we sit on it. It now plans our exercise routine as we go to our personal gym that will record every thing we do and will constantly nag us to do what we can. We will then go to our eating room where we will eat what the computer has decided for us to eat. It will be delivered to our room by an automated delivery system from a central location in the vast building we live in. Any waste and dishes will be delivered back to that location. The apartment will be designed so that it will be totally self clean when we depart for a walk in the park. After we get back we go to our communication room where we will communicate with our fellow workers and accomplish our daily work. It will take at most 4 hours. The computer then will challenge us (using the vast amount of information it has about us) to games which will keep us mentally alert.

How about noise and speech recognition? John lives in a house where speakers and microphones are place throughout the house. John is home alone and computer hears a loud noise. Computer "John are you alright?". Computer hears no response so computer gets John some help or computer hears John say yes and does nothing. John later decides to leave for 2 hours. When leaving the house John says leaving be back in two hours. Computer know house is empty so computer immediately reduces energy use. One hour later computer hears a noise. Computer ask what is the password. Computer hears either no response or incorrect password. Computer calls John on cell phone and lets John listen to noise. John than decides whether or not to call police. Computer hears running water but washing machine is not on so computer turns off water to that room. Computer hears smoke detector and hears the noise from fire so computer calls for help. I can think up a lot more problems a computer could help solve just by listening.

Yes it is because $14,000 will get one about 105,000 miles of driving. Since most of that will be done at 30 miles a day, it will take about 10 years to drive that amount if one drives every day. That is assuming the batteries and motor and controller will last that long. I have had gasoline driven cars that have gone that long with just one change of battery and tires. I can just see one driving this car any length since one would have to stay somewhere one could recharge the batteries at least every 50 miles. I really do not see anyone doing this. So I guess that would mean that a family would need 3 cars. One each for the wife and husband and one that they could use for long trips. I guess one could rent a car for long trips but that would mean limiting the number of times one did take those long trips. If the grandparents lived just a hundred miles away than renting a vehicle would deter someone from making that trip.

Maybe the Ferris wheel will somehow get loose and start rolling and run over the prettiest female and you will safe her by grabbing her. Than she will sit on your lap and hug you until the wheel stops. By the time you are safely removed from the wheel, she will be madly in love with you. I mean if you are going to imagine something at least make it interesting. The odds of that happening are about the same as you being injured.

I think the next frontier is building a house that is completely controlled by a central computer. The computer should be responsible for water, gas, and electricity. It should be able to prevent any damage or injury from all three. It should be able to run the house with the least amount of energy. There should be speakers and microphones in every room so just by sound the computer should be able to detect any problem. So how long before this happens?

If it was water than there should be evidence of life even if it is only bacterial life. Even if they only discover bacterial life than some of these religious nut will have some explaining to do. We have been looking for life outside of earth for a long time now without success. I think if they do not discover some signs of either living life or past life than the whole mission will be a failure. It is just like looking for water on your property, one does not care how fancy or technological the equipment is, one only cares if they have found water. So I am hoping they discover signs of life soon.