Having written both my theses in LaTeX I could not imagine trying to do half the things I did in LaTeX in Word. Most importantly, I have a style that allows me to switch from my full thesis style required by my university, to a nice book style, and also a small paperback style all with the stoke of a key (just need to comment the proper lines).

Since all my computers except my laptop run linux, I never had the choice of Word. However, even using my laptop I find myself writing in LaTeX before using word for anything remotely technical. If I need to spin off a quick document such as a meeting agenda, then I use word (or open office) but otherwise it is LaTeX for me.

As far as journals, they "prefer" LaTeX files. In fact many conferences I go to require plain text or LaTeX files for the submitted abstracts. Go figure who will win this war - in the science world anyway.

It may seem defeatist to you, A.C., but it is important to understand the marketplace when starting a new business. While I applaud his efforts and back him 100% in trying to provide something useful to the locals, you have to understand how your business is going to function in its environment. Good ideas, while the basis of entrepreneurship, aren't all that's required. Many businesses have been sunk over the years by bigger or monetarily stronger companies who do they same job (more or less) but in a shoddy way or charge the customers prices that are outrageous because no one is doing it better. When someone tries to do it better, they bring in the high-priced suits to slow down or stop the competition and the little guy generally gets squeezed out. It's unfortunate but that's business.

Seems the big ISPs don't really want your kind in the broadband business. Watch what happens when good ideas meet greed - i.e. Greenlight providing competition to the greedy last mile ISPs.

All I have to say is - good luck!

You do realize that if your suggestions were taken into account, it is likely that important bills would not get passed because it would take FAR too long to do so. For example, bills to amend the criminal code or a bill for protecting the Arctic waters from pollution.

I certainly agree with your third point however. The bill should only deal with 1 subject matter and amendments to the bill should only be related to that subject matter.

After reading that paper and a couple of others, it appears that there are some significant difference between CME-SEP (Solar Energetic Particle) events and Impulsive Flare - SEP events like the one described in the paper you mention (this paper talks about the difference).

My understanding is the CME-SEP events follow the standard view of IMF frozen-in conditions with the solar wind, though the solar wind can be as high as ~2000 km/s (or perhaps as high as 5000 km/s estimated for the Carrington event). The Flare-SEP is different as the ions/electrons have a different acceleration mechanism from the type of formation of the solar flare. These events cause "beams" of only high-energy particles (and associated X-ray and Gamma-ray bursts) such as you noted, but no IMF fields that would accompany them which would be what causes the strong currents in the power grids.

The magnetosphere should protect the majority of the Earth from bombardment of this particles (except the areas that are connected to the solar fields via open field lines) though it would certainly cause the magnetosphere to become highly disturbed.

You are right, however, as the amount of radiation (gamma and x-ray) that is output from such flares would be highly dangerous to the people on the ISS, surface of the Moon or travelling to Mars. There are projects that are attempting to examine how to protect people from such effects for extended missions.

I'm interested to see the affects of this on the magnetosphere so I'm going to investigate further.

I guess there are different criteria. Personally, while you are correct in saying the observation of a reversed-polarity sunspot likely constitutes the "start" of the cycle, I'm more of the opinion that a cycle "starts" with an increase in solar activity.

Recent (very recent - like in the last week) solar activity in the form of high speed solar wind flows may signal a start of stronger solar activity beginning. This maybe what I would consider the "start" of the next solar cycle.

Indeed, there are some here in my research group that are spelling the doom-n-gloom, as you put it, of a new Little Ice Age. I personally doubt that this is the case but it is not unheard of in the sunspot record to have a very low sunspot count in between to larger cycles. It is far to premature to say anything about a new Maunder Minimum to be sure.

Actually, the optics from the solar flare would reach the satellite or Earth well before the effects would. The average speed for the solar wind is about 400 km/s and up to 1000 km/s during severe conditions (think hurricane). Therefore the effects of the flare, CME, or other detected solar event would not reach the Earth for quite some time after.

It may be possible that you are assuming that the EM field from the Sun would travel at the speed of light. Well, the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) which would be part of the event's effect, is "frozen-in" to the solar wind plasma and travels at the same rate of speed as the solar wind. (See Baumjohann and Treumann,"Basic Space Plasma Physics", Imperial College Press, 1997 pg. 76 as an example)