I change the universe all the time. Of course, most of it will never be affected by those changes, but changes they are.

I wonder if anyone's tried combining some sort of sintering process with an electron microscope... it would be neat to be able to build up a complete molecular model of an object and then be able to reproduce it, layer by layer. It'd take forever, but you could replicate some pretty useful things really accurately. And once you've destructively scanned the item once, you can replicate it as much as the materials you have on hand allow. Great for making backups of mechanical parts, just in case someone stops making that specific part. Not so good if you don't get the printing accurate, as you'd have a part with stress lines most likely.

Only problem with that is: if you can replicate an object with this contraption, you can replicate the object using a similar contraption that doesn't contain the destructive/encryption element. So if the item ever leaves a secured area, anyone can replicate it.

So yeah; it could be used to send a key to a remote location... but you could just keep the plan for the key in an encrypted file and send that to whoever you want -- as you still can in this situation (anyone with the file and the key can replicate the item at any point in time).

Also worth noting that Avid owns Sibelius now too (music scoring software). They've become the one-stop shop for multimedia editing using excellent back-end tools with stale UI.

While Avid was available in the mid 90s, it wasn't what was being used professionally; it took a while to mature. Professionals, for the most part, were using custom hardware and Amigas.

Not only is DDT no longer effective against many mosquito populations, it's STILL effective against humans and birds of prey. Only took a century for us to realize that one.

Does that mean that no true American can be a witch?

What do you call the group that sits between Gen-X and Millenial? Gen X is usually 1960-1974 (not 76 like the math on this article says) and Millenial starts in 1981. So there's that 5-year gap that doesn't get included in any generation group, and has zero bargaining power. It's the group that generally rejected the Gen-X worldview, but was still old enough to experience life before pagers/cell phones/digital imaging/home computers.

Their parents generally were part of the wartime generation, (1940-1945) which was a small in-between generation due to most people not having the time to have kids then. So both generations had a very unique world perspective compared to those who came before and after.

They also don't get much air-time in articles like this.

I remember in 1988 getting my hands on a scanner, and doing frame-by-frame drawings, scanning them in, and using that to create animated sprites and backgrounds for a game. That was state of the art in 1988. At that point, video was still a splice-tape-record job, and visual effects were applied as either by-frame modifications to the film or as a filter applied during the filming process. Think "Who Framed Roger Rabbit".

You're not going back far enough.

The most recent scroll has only a small fragment deciphered so far.

It says "Move 'ZIG'".

I believe video editing software didn't come out for the Mac until 1986 -- it was something by Sorenson IIRC. I remember seeing a camera with its video out hooked up to the Plus and being amazed. The video was black and white and 512x386 pixels, of course.

And the real powerhorse for video editing 25 years ago was the Commodore Amiga and the Video Toaster (and Kitchen Sync). This setup was used by broadcast orgs and movie editors for a decade (until around 2000) at which point digital video started to take over. At this point, Video GIMP was a contender, along with Avid Studio and even iMovie.

So yeah; it's really only been the past 10 years or so that Windows and Mac offerings have surged ahead of Linux offerings (with Video GIMP getting its own project but not really moving any further ahead).

Instead of putting it in a mouse, why not put it in a wireless telephone with a touch sensitive display?

My wireless mouse was replaced by an iOS device about a decade ago. Pros: doubles as a small keyboard when needed and can even be used from time to time to make a phone call. cons: batteries are constantly being drained, too easy to misplace. At least they licked the orientation issue.

Adding to that, this article is about a technological solution to the grid problem. If such solutions aren't available, than the grid problem of inefficiency will be there, causing higher energy costs. Sure the infrastructure companies can change their pricing schemes, but without load balancing of some kind, the cost (and thereby price) of energy will have nowhere to go but up. If we become more efficient at using energy at the endpoint as well as at the grid level, that means less wasted energy. If the energy providers make more money from this, who cares? You'll still have fewer brownouts, price spikes, etc. to deal with.

I think you've totally misread what I wrote... "I think you sorely underestimate the impact a few degrees can have" is not the same as underestimating the impact it is having. People who may be overestimating the impact are studying all possible outcomes (including "nothing to see here, please move along") while those who may be underestimating the impact are refusing to follow the "if this happens/is happening, what could be the effects, and how do we deal with that?" line of thought.

The problem isn't whether local weather is warmer or cooler, or even if global temperature is warmer or cooler -- it's what effect a change in global temperature will have on the climate in which humans can survive comfortably. Things like the polar ice caps melting, global ocean temperatures rising and global weather patterns changing are facts I think almost everyone would agree with. The beginning of the mass extinction/migration event in the NW Pacific is something that is becoming steadily apparent.

Our world is changing, and it makes sense to model that change and try to figure out how we can prevent/adapt so that humans can, in general, have a comfortable existence in the future. Just brushing it all off as a scam helps only the very few in the short term, and nobody in the long term.