Theoretically we could represent every number like this: 1111111 instead of 7. So why do we have any numbers other than 1? Because it's much less work to write 1234 and manipulate those four digits than to write or type one thousand two hundred thirty-four 1's and count and/or manipulate them.

Or, referring back to Randall Munroe's Up Goer Five the term "helium" is shorter and more precise than "that kind of air that makes your voice funny." When I explained this to my nephew who's in kindergarten the latter was good enough; when he gets older and more interested in rocketry, I'll clarify using the former. But if I were a rocket scientist, or speaking to someone who was, I'd use the former term even though it's "harder."

Yes, it leads to blackmail and intimidation. Suppose I want Kang to win the election instead of Kodos. I can threaten to harm your family or release a secret I know about you unless you vote for Kang. With the current system, unless I look at your ballot before you put it in the ballot box (and that would be difficult to do covertly in the polling place where I usually vote; it may be easier in other places) I don't know for certain how you voted. But if YOU can check how you voted, so can I. If you voted for Kodos or anyone but Kang, I'll harm your family or broadcast your secret.

In addition, you expect everyone to memorize their key pair and enter it perfectly in the voting system? People have enough trouble remembering eight character passwords (so they choose "password" or write it on a sticky note.) Asking them to remember a longer key made up of (what appears to them to be random) letters and numbers would result in them bringing a copy of their key to the voting booth ... and likely tossing it in the trash on the way out. Pose as a substitute janitor and grab those pieces of paper/sticky note then change those votes -- how likely is it that those people are going to check their votes?

On occasion, if the power company fucks up badly enough, there are consequences . Frankly, regardless of whether or not it was a good idea to give the IT staff advanced notice (it wasn't) offshoring your IT in New England will likely come back to bite them in the ass in the winter. It's not like there are snow and ice storms that would interrupt power and communications and the ability to remotely connect to IT systems, after all ...

Asimov's Trantor had, if I remember correctly, 40 billion at its peak and that was basically one planet-wide city. Or you could go up an order of magnitude or two and use Coruscant at a trillion people. Of course if you do that, you run into a problem or two or three. If you're wondering if a webcomic author is a good authority on the physics of a fictional city, he's not just a webcomic author.

Of course, we COULD use that science to send some of those billions of people to planets or celestial bodies other than Earth. Keep a few billion folks on Earth, send a couple million to orbiting habitats, and put the rest on Mars and its moons as well as Earth's moon.

It's a good thing the footage from these helmet-mounted cameras is posted to YouTube in real-time. That means there's no time for the chief and the appropriate members of the city's legal department to review the footage and choose what to release to the public and/or the news media, what to hold onto in case of legal action against the city and/or the fire department or to use as training footage, and what to erase.

Equations are one piece of the puzzle. Words are another piece. Pictures or examples are a third. Using one of the pieces alone may not be enough; using two or all three, if done well, could be better.

For instance, in explaining E = mc^2 you could explain it in words: the amount of energy that would be released if a small piece of matter, say 1 gram, is enormous. Or you could give the exact amount of energy produced. Or you could show a collection of Olympic size swimming pools and indicate by how much it would heat the water they contain using a graphic of a thermometer. E = mc^2 on its own doesn't really paint a picture in readers' minds of how much energy that actually is. Even the number, without some sort of context, doesn't really do it justice. But most people have some idea about how big an Olympic sized swimming pool is, and can tell that it would take a lot of energy to heat it. If you say "turning one gram of matter completely into energy would take 100 Olympic swimming pools from just above freezing to just below boiling" (pulling that figure mostly out of thin air) that's something a lot of people can picture.

Increase the patent filing fee by some flat amount plus some amount that's based on how many patents the filer has had accepted and has has rejected in the past year or two (this curve should be fairly steep.) Put a portion or all of that increase in escrow. Once patents are published for public review, if someone reports to the patent office prior art that causes the patent to be rejected, the first person to report that prior art receive the bounty. [In the case of multiple pieces of prior art causing the rejection, split the bounty between the first submitters either equally or based on "how compelling" the art was to the rejection.] If it's rejected for other reasons (the filer's fault for trying to patent something obvious, for instance) the patent office keeps the bounty.

If the patent is accepted, either: 1) return the increased amount to the filer, 2) give that extra amount to the patent office [I don't really support this since it could lead to greatly increased pressure to approve a patent for the kitchen sink, not that that's not a problem now], or 3) keep it in escrow (and making interest for the patent office) for a period of time in case someone successfully challenges with prior art in the near future, at which point they receive the bounty.

People who file one patent won't suffer more than the initial flat increase. Companies that file many patents that are all accepted won't suffer more than N times the flat increase. Companies that use a shotgun approach to patent filing will eventually see the "points" on their "patent license" increase to the point where it's not financially viable for them to file more; they have to wait until some of those failed filings age and come off their record.

According to the Florida Senate's website, section 849.16 reads:

(1) As used in this chapter, the term "slot machine or device" means any machine or device or system or network of devices that is adapted for use in such a way that, upon activation, which may be achieved by, but is not limited to, the insertion of any piece of money, coin, account number, code, or other object or information, such device or system is directly or indirectly caused to operate or may be operated and if the user, whether by application of skill or by reason of any element of chance or any other outcome unpredictable by the user, may:

(a) Receive or become entitled to receive any piece of money, credit, allowance, or thing of value, or any check, slug, token, or memorandum, whether of value or otherwise, which may be exchanged for any money, credit, allowance, or thing of value or which may be given in trade; or

The human brain and auditory system is a machine or device (both mechanical, through the eardrum, and electronic, because of the signals that pass along neurons) that can be activated (through a user saying "I bet you ...") and the user may receive or become entitled to money if the condition of the bet (which may rely upon an outcome unpredictable by the user) is satisfied. So unless the State of Florida has defined "machine" and "device" to exclude things with an organic component, which I'm guessing they have not done, a human being would satisfy the definition of "slot machine or device" according to a very technical reading and interpretation.

In one of the episodes of the animated series The Batman, future archaeologists unearth the Batcave and find information etched in binary on the titanium support pillars.

Alternately, I wonder what projects the Long Now Foundation has in the works to do something like this. The Wikipedia page lists the Rosetta project but there may be something else for general knowledge.

In my opinion, if you're not allowed to vote for a candidate you should NOT be able to provide money, goods, or services to the candidate's campaign (other than at normal prices; I'm okay with the supermarket selling a candidate's campaign steaks for an $N per plate dinner as long as he or she pays the same price the supermarket would charge me or anyone else buying the same quantity of food, for example.) I'd make an exception for people too young to vote who are doing it as some sort of citizenship/scholastic activity (for a Boy Scout merit badge or as part of a class project, for example.)

While that's true, do you think Grandma or Grandpa would be able to unbrick the phone that some script kiddie decided would be fun to lock up? No, which means either going to a different phone (luckily they still have a land line) to call the phone company to ask that it be unbricked or buying a new phone, whichever is less hassle.

Don't worry, the lobbyists writing copyright treaties will get around to fixing that soon enough.