That and even very efficient (nearly perfect these days) desalinization takes a bunch of energy. I was being a bit tongue in cheek, though we do harvest certain elements from sea water using electrolysis.

Or we could ya know... USE the SALTS. Those are valuable chemicals! Think of all the magnesium and sodium and bromide we could get if we honestly had cheap enough power to be worried about the ecological impact of desalination.

That's not quite true, very often people with money are smart enough to not re-invent the wheel if they don't need to and would much rather pay you a consulting fee or a service contract to tailor the new software to the job they need done. That produces a positive incentive innovate as you now receive feedback as to the parts of your innovations that have marketable value. The trend of clean room reimplementations came about BECAUSE of overly strong copyright, if you can purchase the time of the creator for a reasonable fee why would you ever pay more to steal it??!

Except in many parts of the world (Germany for one) the subsidies are already disappearing. The big difference between these subsidies and the subsidies paid to big energy is that home owners don't have as many lobbyists. These subsidies will last as long as they last, they will not become like farming subsidies because honestly home owners aren't making enough profit to buy the extensions. It will be just like the early hybrid subsidies, which actually makes it a regressive tax since those who could afford to pay (for installation) and receive the subsidies will reap all the benefits, the hope is that it will drive down the cost of equipment. Whether that happens remains to be seen; but it will likely be effective at increasing energy independence. The point is yes, to some, all subsidies are bad, however these specific subsidies are better than most.

You are requesting tech schools, they exist here in German speaking Europe. It was never intended that everyone complete a BS/BA program, these programs are an opportunity to grow as a person and honestly broaden one's viewpoint in a variety of fields. The goal of higher education is to teach how to teach one's self, to do that one must have an idea of what one must learn. The undergraduate, and many programs graduate programs are designed to expose people to a variety of viewpoints in order to provide a framework for future thought. This provides flexibility in thought, you wouldn't tell someone to study only vacuum tubes, because you know that those have become a technological dead end, by advocating a zero breadth curriculum you are basically telling people to bet the farm on a single topic. Sure, you can go back to school, but I studied with a number of older students in my physics program who HAD to go back to get more breadth and exposure and I learned that its very difficult to attend full time college with a mortgage and a full time job.

And that was my point, I really think there are people who produce stuff because they are driven to. Yeah financing becomes a whole different game when everyone has the same size rice bowl but darn it, making stuff and solving problems is FUN.

Coders don't really know syntax, that's what stubs and the compiler are for. Give us a good english compiler so slashdot can devolve to a bunch of random library calls.

1.414, Amanda Palmer has actually started doing this. She got successful enough to get her fans to be her patrons and now she really does promote younger artists.

Yeah... it will be just like all those artists who see no point in producing things.

You really need the discount card. At least here in Austria on the ÖBB, you get an increasing discount for every member of your party. You are correct though and its true, it is ridiculously expensive to travel unless you buy into the system with a discount card.

What you've described seems like a dead on description for computational materials science. Which is still a very active area with plenty of investment for both chemical companies and semiconductor companies. My work is in predictive models for ion sputtering, but there is a ton of really cool stuff being done in other fields. So yeah, ethical exists at least its no more unethical than using computers; without which GPU programming would be difficult.

Well Duh.

I learned that the hard way when trying to convince my mother to let me ride. On the other hand the cyclists who would do stupid things like braking and turning at the same time don't live very long. I haven't ridden with another auto-driver very recently who had any idea of how terrible an idea these two combined actions are. Also the American motorcycle testing system does a pretty good job instilling the idea that dodging is better than braking so all in all I still feel pretty safe on a bike. I wonder if anyone has published the 0-20 times for hybrids, the instant torque may lead to some surprising numbers.

No... Cycle world has braking distances listed and most sport bikes W/O abs come in with similar braking distances to a Toyota Corolla (with abs) 60-0. Also it is worth noting that the front contact patch for sport bikes is smaller than the rear, this would also support an asymmetrical positive-negative acceleration profile.

Quartz has some neat stress properties. You can take a white hot quartz tube and quench it in water and it stays a tube. If you do that with borosilicate, (not that you can really get it as hot) you end up with crunchy bits.