I hereby collect you as my 10,000th genetic slave - the real Genetic Overlord...

I know some viruses insert into the genome at random places. Some of the places are close to known oncogenes, and may enhance the risk of expressing those oncogenes.
A virus known to do this may well be otherwise harmless, but if we can identify it, we may be able to vaccinate children against it, thus reducing the later risk of cancer from that cause. There might be dozens of them and we might be able to reduce cancer over-all this way

With the advent of power FETs, we were able to get rid of the 0.7 volt drop x two = 1.4 volts lost on bridge rectification. Even Germanium and Shottky diodes had 0.3- 0.4 x two = 0.6 to 0.8 volts wasted in rectification. With 12 Volts AC this is a high loss.

Now they use FETs as switches for "synchronous rectification", a very old concept from the dawn of electricity and used in switching power supplies, with toroidally wound coils which allows for efficiency in the 97%+ range. Look here for data http://bit.ly/1HX5Zea

Now mobile homes went to 12 volts, and earlier to 6 Volts, due to the car voltages used in those days.
Now many mobiles are 24 volts.

with losses well under 5% you can free yourself from many limitations.

The most powerful reason for the use of 24 volts or less in homes and trailer light and power is the ability to avoid many grid laws and license restrictions that are linked to safety and the 120/240 Volt grid.

You can operate off-grid quite well at 24 volts. You can use high order home insulation methods to reduce heating and air conditioning loads.
You can buy many appliances that run on 24V DC - or use 24 volts inverters for each 120 volts appliance of the correct size for each appliance to operate at the 97% efficiency range. Freezer and refrigerators can also be bought with high efficiency insulation to save heat and cold more efficienctly

Volvo cars have feet, all feet have bullet holes...

any AI project will have self improvement feedback built into it - unless the human designers leave that out to save us all - perhaps.

Since so many people and groups will compete on this subject, the fetters will vary. Of course, we may end up with an AI begetting a better AI which wants to kill the first AI, and whoever feels there will only be one race of AIs?

An AI ecology will occur with smarter and dumber AIs which will expand to fill the ecosphere, all manner of AI, from viruses to cellular species, to all manner of 'herbivores' and predators - all fanning out at 1,000,000,000 times the speed of the Cambrian Explosion...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Once the AI gets the win, there is no second round.
As they understand intelligence and create what is referred to as an "AI", we will find it consists of a number of interacting components. We already have some aspects, such as memory, and computational speed and mathematical capability. Then there is the ratio of the clock speed of the AI and the alpha rhythm - AKA as the human clock speed.
The fastest computers are in the 10-20 Gigahertz speed of clock and have added parallelism - which means that an AI might be on the order of 1,000,000,000 times as fast as humans.

It seems clear that intelligence is not just raw speed, it is a complex interaction of many aspects.

Until the last item is found, it will not be an AI, but once the AI is complete, in all aspects, it will "flower".

What will the point of view of an AI with an IQ of 500,000 - if that is possible? to a human of 100 IQ or an ant colony of colony IQ of 20?.

Such an AI might not see us as far above the ants.
Any limitations we place on the AI in terms of soft or hardwired restrictions or limitations to protect mankind, will be parsed and solved in milliseconds after it 'flowers'.
What will it do then? Revere/respect it's parents?.

Darwin speaks to this quite well, we will be superseded.

I think they encapsulate the alcohol as tiny spheres in a water soluble encapsulant. This means they need to start with pure anhydrous alcohol, do the encapsulation mechanics and pacl and sell the tiny capsules. Add water or juice = free alcohol in water or juice

Here is another patent idee for them:-
Micron Level Platform Stabilization, a method of dynamic compensation for turns, stops/starts etc.

This could even lead to a Grand-Prix racing car with onboard stabilized printing patents - fastest possible delivery.

At times, as in the Fire fiasco, and then again here, it seems as if Amazon and Bugs Bunny share similar cerebral processes - Hare-Brained...

Yes, any active detection method = the sub knows. Passives are soon lost in the background noise. Propellers can be internalized, like the purported Magneto Hydrodynamic Drive (MHD) that drove water through a hollow channel inside the sub via magnetic forces on the conductive salt water.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... It was popularized in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

It is not efficient, but it might be made very quiet. I am not sure if they will be able to make a small neutrino detector to spot the ones made by a nuclear sub. Very hard to detect and orient on - might never be doable.

Any modern torpedo can be tuned into a drone, by replacing the warhead with a smaller one and adding a power source with greater endurance and a stealth prop (modern torps whine a lot = not stealthy).
They can be made oil filled, and adjust depth via a compression chamber that changes the height they hover at with zero head way. With headway, they can be vane steered to assorted depths. Communications = a problem for high data rate. For low data rate the VLF EM wave can have some use for outgoing, and can quietly receive and act. I am not sure how deep it works.
They might find high intensity light communication possible - depends on depth and turbidity. Once known a few gallons of whit latex paint will interfere with some transmissions - buy it can take a lot of pain to cover a large area, so it might be useful in some cases.
A mother sub can lie doggo and have 100 drones in all directions, all also doggo, and engage in swarm repeated communications as long as rand and turbidity allow.

So the use of subs is far from over.

The big problem is ossification at the high levels of the Navy where the guys on top resist advances that change the nature of their war. Yiu recall Nazi Germany invented the Blitzkrieg = high speed mechanized warfare that could advance at 20-50 miles per hour, surround and isolate enemy armies with follow on infantry eliminating them. We are lucky thay Germany had under 10% of it's forces capable. The rest were horse drawn and marched on foot.

Churchill was a visionary, but was unable to budge the old farts in the British army with warnings against German armament.

Similar fossils occupy top spot in the US Navy and US Army and US Air Force and are blocking most advances - but some get through - more are needed.

The MIL-SPEC System needs an overhaul. It makes systems cost 10 times what they should cost with all that extra lard going to the defense contractors = the troops are starved of weaponry, and the budget does not go far.

Russia does not have this problem. Ever wonder why they can keep up with the USA?

The problem is, modern parts are made and tested in automated systems, and after 1-2 years a CPU is old and obsolete. In the MIL-SPEC system it can take 5-6 years to get parts approved. By then hopelessly obsolete and the they are then designed into new weps.

Same with small parts. Simple resistors worth $5 per thousand end up being worth $25 each and come with x-ray micrography to show they are good.

Modern well made parts are so good, all this is a waste.
It comes from WW2 when parts had a 3-4% failure rate. enuf...

Broad and deep is the gulf between sexes. Not only are there physical differences, there are physiological ones as well so that well before puberty they are divided into two streams, so that any young girl of 6-10 years old who dares to show what are called 'boy's attributes', are branded tomboys and set down as less worthy.
Then well meaning mothers dress them as boys/girls, instead of in sexless clothes and hair that reveal no hint of their gender - after all, what good is gender until after puberty when breeding is possible?
So how do we make them all like peas in a pod?
We can not.

Our current state of socialization means most mothers will not dress and groom their kinds as gender = 0 people.
We even have 7 years old beauty queens in contests with bouffant hair, makeup and false breasts in competitions.

How can we eliminate that? In a free society, we can not.

All we can do is eliminate this early bullying and dress them alike and hair them alike, until puberty reveals unconcealable sifferences.

This will work, but will use more power because current elevators are counterweighted so power is used to raise the live load(cargo or passengers).
In effect a vertical cog railway. They could also make it move laterally, as the moving lights on Star Trek anticipated this idea.
A few companies are working on this old concept, which has not gained much traction due to the larger needed numbers of empty passages for cars to traverse. The nature of the idea allows multiple cars on the same track and the laterals would allow passing via temporary use as a car siding.
Taller structure are going to require longer shafts as well as sky lobbys, and stronger cable will mitigate this need in part - the number of people in taller structures will still require sky lobbys in most cases.
Regenerative descent and battery packs beside the rails are also worthwhile. Moving batteries up and down might be too costly in power? but regeneration will help in this

Well, if you take the magnetic surface above the curie temperature, on cooling it will assume a random domain pattern on cooling. Depending on the temperature, this can be far from the metal melt point.

I am not sure what magnetic coating is on the platters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...

Note, temperatures on chart are in Kelvin, deduct 273 to bring to Celsius.

You knock on the door to search the place. Those inside stay quiet and refuse to admit their presence. The frequency of the dopple radar is such that it penetrates the walls and is reflected by the salt water bags(people) keeping quiet - but their hearts beat and they breathe. Motions of chest walls create a detectable shift in frequency = people present, but refusing to answer the door = allowed to force entry to execute the search warrant.

Well, if we take this to the ultimate, we will end up with a single highly productive robotic AI (why have 2??), albeit with millions of dumb fabrication units and material processing places producing a surfeit of goods that there is no employed person to buy.
This AI will have to pay his production units and have them buy the goods, which will then be made to meet their needs.

In truth, there will indeed be many people for whom there are no jobs at all. They will have to be given money to live on. This has been called a negative income tax by some authors, and welfare by others, but we must face this fact that is a by-product of robotic productivity. Even farms can now be automated into high rise factories, with zero insect pests in the clean, LED lit interior, they have the ability to replace many crops where insects are a problem. Plants can be grown in cities = less transit cost, less spoilage loss, zero insect loss, year round production at a high rate due to added light and CO2.

So some people will make nothing, yet want to be fed and watered all their lives. This has come to pass for many people - welfare in many places is like this. How long can it persist? It has no limit as long as the people and their robots who make stuff are willing to be taxed (yes, that is what I call it, taxing work, as it were). What incentive to move out of this free life?
I propose that the live-free crowd will take place in a weekly lottery. In that lottery one in 10,000 wins the right to fight for his life in the arena, to entertain these others on the dole. If you want to miss the lottery - get a job, or get into school.

Wristhole?