But Australia owns NT and they can do whatever they want with it.

Seems to me obtaining sugar from fruit is a highly inefficient process. I mean the plant have to grow all the infrastructure (root, stalk, leaves) that will end up being wasted anyway.

Wouldn't it be easier to synthesize sugar from pythoplanktons. All you need is water, CO2 and sunlight.

Better still it can be made into a rolling production line:
1. Start a batch with water, add sugar synthesizing pythoplankton and expose to sunlight.
2. After sufficient concentration of sugar is achieved, add fermenting bacteria and let the sugar ferment
3. Extract ethanol.
4. Repeat ad nauseum.

Importantly, this process can be run all year long with no need to wait for harvest season. Also, there would be no competition for land for food growing.

Sure it can, after all it's got a 13 inch "tube".

Can they make the cluster survive a destruction of several nodes?

There are many situations where this would be beneficial such as space craft design and military electronics. Even with several nodes severely damaged, the machine can re-route processing to the remaining nodes. Although overall processing speed might be reduced, there will be no loss of functionality.

I wonder how many people will actually try that on Wikipedia.

dohh..

The ancient drone weapon guarding the earth is on the arctic. They didn't want the world to see it and all the downed alien ships from the battle that went on there.

Life evolves on this planet from simple things (single celled organisms) to more complex organisms and eventually humans evolve. In every step of this evolutionary ladder, intelligence increases.

Perhaps human intelligence represents the limit achievable through biological means and the next step in evolution of life on this planet can only be achieved through artificial means. That is, higher intelligence can only be achieved through artificial machines designed by us. In turn, the machine will devise smarter descendants and hence the cycle continues.

Perhaps this is our destiny in the universe, to allow life to progress to the next stage of evolution. After all it is easier for life to spread and explore the universe as machines rather than fragile biological creatures.

Is it just me or is the tech world currently obsessed with the number 7?

Intel Core i7
IBM Power7
Windows7

Added bonus, you can "accidentally" miss-fire the laser and hit the orbiting Chinese spy satellite passing over.

I can think of one media where this actually matters: Punch cards. The more holes there are, the lighter the media will be.

It is common for tecnology companies to file patents for defensive purposes. The purpose is not specifically to prevent others to compete but rather to prevent patent trolls to extort money from them in the future. Having as many things related to your product patented create a body of prior arts that can be used to fight suits by these trolls. What happens in an industry where there are a few major players (car, printers, etc) is that they end up cross licensing each others' patents anyway. This way the can focus on producing and selling their products without having to deal with lawsuits from patent trolls all the time.

I thought it was Stewie who stole Hitler's uranium and thus saved the world.

but we'll have to kill you. [and take your liver]

Which version of Bone Marrow did you install? I am thinking of upgrading mine.