I've a feeling it has a lot to do with weight. Invent a light enough feather analog and a way of anchoring it with control for each feather, and you might be onto something. From the documentation on the website, "SmartBird has a total weight of around 400 grams and a wingspan of 2 metres". If you can duplicate that once you invent your lightweight feather system, you're onto something. -W

We don't have a power crisis, we don't have peak food, peak oil, or peak facebook views. We have peak people. Radioactive water is a solution, not a problem. -W

Now geeks can get socially acceptable plastic surgery.

This is true, however most off-the-shelf computer motherboards run at various DC voltages, and this still requires conversion (which means more power lost through heat). This is why companies like Google that run server farms that equate to nothing more then thousands of motherboards zip tied to wire racks had component manufacturers make boards that only run on 1 voltage (24VDC I believe). I think that the concept is sound, but it does require a degree of standardization that only exists in custom orders currently. -W

I'm pretty sure Cassini launched despite the insane Luddites. People bitch about everything, when you start listening, you're just a bitchmagnet. -W

Maybe all the enemies will just start using subsonic rounds, like a .45 I wonder how often this is going to get squads to simply start tracking eachother, doesn't seem to be any provisions for friendly fire. -W

As someone who's played guitar most of my life, and had some success at it, I can say it's also very frustrating trying to play the "balding middle-aged male version of dance dance revolution" that is guitar hero or rock band. Frankly I suck at the game, and I'm looking forward to a game that I may actually be better at and involves a bit more then twiddling my digits in reaction to various lights much akin to a lab rat in an experiment. -W

Stand back and imagine a moment. . . a nuclear power plant designed to withstand a mighty 8.2 earthquake built right next to the ocean. . . um, oh no tsunami? How is the tsunami supposed to be something the plant was not designed for? Sure, there is some good engineering here, but piss poor planing and 0 forsight. -W

Sprint owns 51% of Clearwire. All of the "4G" services Sprint offers use the Clearwire network. Keep in mind that this is WiMax, and not really 4G, but because they sold it before 4G was a standard, they can continue to advertise as such. Rumors are of a deal between Sprint, T-Mobile, and Clearwire regarding 4G, so I suspect something significant to come of this soon, probably for the worse (for the consumer) and for the better for the beleaguered business deal.

His writing infuriates me. I love the story, I love the depth, and I love how complex it is. What drives me crazy is that he will go on to describe a single meal over the course of 20 pages, yet he will kill off a main character in a few random sentences. The man clearly loves his food. -W

Last I heard, Cheney and Rumsfeld are still at large. If the government isn't going to do anything about the people responsible for crashing passenger jets into buildings in NYC, why the fuck would they care about an RC plane?

To just use the domestic pipelines we have to deliver gasoline instead? The infrastructure is already there. I see two ways this could work: We could use slugs (like the kind used to clean the pipelines, but hallow) as canisters, or, even better (since this is the US), just replace the gasoline with high-fructose corn syrup and then it could just be processed into whatever fab crap the plebes are eating at the time when it comes out the other end?

I remember watching shows about the future warrior or OCIW system that this is based on. From what I remember, the rounds only burst at exactly the distance they are programmed for, so in all likelyhood, collateral damage would be less because you're not going to get any rounds "missing" and going through walls, or downrange from the target where innocents might be holed up. While I see your point, the end result may be a wash. Until humanity can evolve beyond greed and desire to accumulate wealth, there is going to be war. People die in war. War is SUPPOSED to be horrible, not neat and clean. It is exactly the horrible nature of war that prevents it from occurring more often then it does. The problem with US tech is that it tries to make war neat and clean, and this is exactly why the US causes more wars then any other nation. If we still had to rely on carpet bombing instead of smart bombs and drones, you can bet that we'd have fewer armed conflicts. -W

There are tons of weapons now, some even based on the M4 type receiver, that fire 6.5mm grendel rounds, which are as effective as 7.62 Nato without the weight and recoil. Unfortunately, the weapons the US military chooses to deploy have everything to do with politics and nothing to do with technology. The OICW was a great weapon system that suffered from scope-creep, and in the end the battery and tech cost of the day in addition to the fact that they wanted the damn thing to do everything killed it. There were other XM, SCAR, and MR programs that suffered the same fate. . . most have to do with the fact that the best technologies are from other countries and the politicians want the weapons to be home-grown, sourced in 15 different states, ect. In the end, the most effective killing machine is a red-cheeked US politician, the actual weapons are just apendages. -W