Sigh. You're probably right. Still, I've been fascinated by the tantalizing possibility of using quantum effects for communication since reading this: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/321/5897/1812.short

I suppose using any of these techniques to slow light would destroy the entanglement? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_light

Hmmm... if we were to keep Alice and Bob one light-millisecond from Victor, could we send messages back in time? Imagine we're continually repeating the process of emitting photons as in the summary.

1) An earthquake happens. Victor entangles the photons.
2) Alice and Bob detect correlated polarizations, and instruct Victor to entangle his photons.
3) This process continues, bringing us one millisecond backwards in time at each step. (Minus the time to perform the measurements and inform Victor)
4) Lab staff notice that Alice and Bob have spontaneously correlated polarizations, and deduce that a disaster will shortly occur.

Victor should decide not to entangle the photons whenever Alice and Bob's polarizations are correlated. That'll rip physics a new one...

If it removes the 5% of players who ruin the game for everyone else, then I would expect more people to play the game. Alas, most jerks do seem to be morons as well, so we might only be rid of 1-2% of them.

Hmmm... you don't have to go wind though. If you can get 10 cents per KWh, and the system takes 30 KW, you're looking at three dollars/per hour to run this thing, or $72 per day. At 1000 litres per day, we're at 7.2 cents per liter. (Plus the cost of the system) Still seems pretty high for any kind of large-scale deployment - more than 72 times the (ideal) cost of desalinization.

I wonder how economical it is... is it cheaper than desalinizing sea water? If the answer's 'no', there's really no story here.

I work with tele-operated robots, and I must say this is an amazingly useful feature. The robots can establish a connection with either WiFi or 3G, and are meant to navigate in indoor environments. With WiFi, you can go a short distance before losing signal. With 3G, you can go a short distance before losing signal.

People with laptops or mobiles seldom notice the dead zones - they don't suddenly stop walking whenever they hit one.

I strongly recommend Lord Toede.

At least I won't have to pay the Microsoft extortion tax on devices capable of running Linux. Well, not the hardware tax anyways - the IP tax still applies.

TB can be vaccinated against.

I develop software for a small company, and it sounds like you administer a large one... but when you say: "Dislike of portables has nothing to do with controlling you", I think you are lying. You would like to force me to install AV software (you can't, I develop in Linux), clean up my machine (whatever that means), wipe it without my permission, stop me from taking it with me, and generally have control over everything I do on the system.

I can imagine this making a certain amount of sense if computers connected to the work network had special privileges over external machines (they don't), or if we prevented remote login to our servers (we don't). Other than protecting me from my perceived incompetence, they only reason I could see for taking away control of my own machine is that you don't trust me not to run off with IP or company secrets. But I doubt you'd be able to accomplish that no matter what you do.

In short, it seems to be more about control than security. I'm not sure that up-time is an issue here either, since I can always put my laptop away and switch to the IT-administered PC on my desk if it should die.

Oops, that should have been the cost of the battery, not the vehicle.

Well, I guess you could alter the charger to stop charging the battery once it reaches 60% capacity... I believe the Prius stops drawing from the battery before it is completely drained as well. But in that situation, you'd be looking at making very short trips only.

I would just use up your battery as you see fit. I suspect the price of lithium ion batteries will continue to drop within the next 5-10 years.Tthe US government expects the cost of an electric vehicle to fall to $3,333 by 2030: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/gas_graphic_fullsize.jpg

Electric vehicles are normally charged to 100% capacity to extend the range. I don't know of any that deliberately charge to less than 100%.