Higher math crowd-sourcing. I like this idea.

This sounds like an energy-efficient design. Some else suggested a capacitor--that wouldn't be so bad, I suppose.

Flywheels.

Just don't throw any bricks?

I say it's more reliable. Twitter gets cached by all sortsa spiders all day long. If someone blocks twitter, your bot can go to a cache instead.

VPN

Seriously?

I feel what you're saying, and I agree with both of you (op and gp), but imagine this with even weak AI. It could be a huge productivity booster. Instead of typing a long string of commands, tell it what you want in natural language, and let it generate the commands.

Or if you happened to control a huge botnet, you could do the same thing.

means going in your diapers.

I believe the program you refer to is title 'House M.D.'

I liked the idea of each house having it's own trans/rec capable of producing a variety of ac/dc voltages. Then, when you plugged something in, it would tell the plug what it needed and the household transformer would deliver. Thus increasing the efficiency...kinda like the combining power supplies argument for data centers.

Relevant (and interesting) article: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/06nov_loworbit.htm

I think your definition of 'just works' is very different from Joe PC's definition of 'just works'.

I was thinking in terms of an RPG game! I played table top d&d. I could easily imagine a mechanic such that the visibility index of a target would affect your chances of hitting from a distance, for instance. Or when rolling for stealth, your visibility index would affect that as well.