Short term yes. Long term maybe or maybe not, it depends on if we decide to make crap here again or not.

Just wait until the get into a discussion over text editors. It would paralyze them for centuries.

So is that how the book was suppose to end?

I don't think Mars will complain if they crash into the surface either.

This makes me wonder how "Nineteen Eighty-Four" was originally received. But after a quick check it looks like it got a better reception than GATTACA but I wonder about the initial sales.

[gets out tinfoil]
Maybe big brother just got better at conditioning people. Bread and circuses.
[tinfoil off]

The best and probably most relevant quote would be this:

Too bad the film was a box office flop since it was sci-fi film without explosions, lens flares, buxom scantily clad green women, and/or laser swords. Also at this point there are probably a lot of people who haven't seen the movie since it is 17 years old (and now I feel old) and it hasn't been that popular. Good story, wonderfully shot, well acted, and explores topics that are becoming prescient, just not what people think of when they hear it is a sci-fi movie. Just tell someone it is a drama and it is usually much more readily received.

With this technology I would think it would substantially push prices down. There would still be costs associated with distribution and new capital outlays for plants and maintenance but generation costs would fall to almost nothing. The savings on bills would be substantial, another poster mentioned a number around 40%. If one were to instead use one of these in a factory to provide power for what ever is being done it would eliminate the distribution costs. I would think that places like aluminum smelters would love this.

Given the dimensions of the reactor it also seems like it would be able to be put into large mining equipment. Basically these could probably be used any place where large 2 stroke diesel engines are currently in operation. Given the power output quoted these would produce significantly more than the current engines which are mostly in the 3-10MW range so who knows what they would do with the extra power.

It really is a weapon of last resort when you are on the retreat as you are basically fucked (individually) if you use it, especially if you are down wind. A similar but tiny warhead was also used in the US US W48 nuclear artillery shell. These very small nukes are all very dirty and very inefficient. The Atomic Testing Museum just off the strip in Las Vegas had on display the Mk-54 (I assume just the casing) and a W48 with the W48 disassembled so you could see inside of it. The Atomic Testing Museum is a really neat place to go if you get the chance, especially since it is quiet compared to all the other tourist things in Vegas.

Well there sure seems to be a large number of them graduating now. And every one of them believes that they are gods gift to management. Add in the ones who have a 4 year management degree and I think we have several generations worth of supply on hand currently.

I might worry about this shortly before I start to worry about the heat death of the universe. If we look at one of the largest lakes on earth which contains about 3,000,000,000,000,000 gallons of water and extracted water out of it for the purposes of using the hydrogen in it for fusion reactors at the average rate we have been extracting oil out of the ground for the last 100 years it would take about 5000 years to drain the thing assuming no new water entered it. Now add in that this is one lake representing about 10% of the available fresh water and that most of the water on earth by a very substantial margin is sea water and we should be good for at least the next half a million years or so. This also assumes that we would extract the water at the rate we do for oil even though fusion would be providing orders of magnitude more power for the same volume of fuel. So that pushes it off for at least a few 10s of millions of years. If in that time we haven't managed to get off this rock, I say fuck it we all deserve to die.

With excess energy lots of things become worthwhile to make. We already know how to convert CO2 into hydrocarbons it is just really energy intensive. With excess energy this becomes a non issue if the excess energy is cheap enough. Also given the dimensions of the reactor it could probably be used on jets thus eliminating their fossil fuel use.

Depending on what you saw it might be a rather large one by comparison.

Not very adventurous then, even if it is all contained within your own house.

You obviously don't know some of the people I know. One of my friends from high school got married when it became legal here and is very much the bull dyke (she is also a great lifting partner and is built like an eastern block power lifter), she ended up marrying the lipstick lesbian. Trust me the gender roles exist in that relationship even if the male role is filled by a female. I realize that this is probably outside of the norm for non hetero relationships but what ever works for you.

On a side note was when I was "informed" that my friend was a lesbian. I gave her a call and wanted to know if she was up for going out for some beers (probably once a month we do this) and was asked "if it would be ok to bring her (long pause) partner along?". So we go out and I meet her future wife to be and am informed that she is gay. I responded that it was pretty obvious even going back 15 year when if first met her in middle school on the shot put team and this wasn't a surprise. The next question I had was have you tried a Pyramid Hefe-Wissen.

Sadly that doesn't sound too out of place in my family, but replace block party with party at the farm or local VFW.

Why yes my family is a bunch of rednecks but hey we have a good time.