Not strictly true. There where a handful of large piston engined helicopters like the S-58/H-34 which could carry ~6000 lbs (or 12 troops). But yes, turbine powered craft soon became the preferred option.

Well, we'll just have to hope that their competitors will implement the technology

Already have. Actually Alcatel is pretty much playing catchup with all this. Nortel introduced a 40Gb/s dual polarization coherent terminal 4 years ago (despite many people, including Alcatel, saying it wasn't possible). Furthermore Nortel Optical (now Ciena) already has a 100Gb/s version available. Alcatel is pretty late to this game.

Fermilab had a beam loss event in 2003 (beam came into contact with part of the ring). The beam drilled a 2.8 mm hole through a 5mm tungsten support. It also etched a groove 25 cm long and 1.5 mm deep into a stainless steel collimator (after passing through the tungsten). Apparently this took about 8.3 ms (over several turns of the beam) before the beam dissipated.

I'm guessing if you could insert your hand fast enough (not possible, even if there wasn't a vacuum tube) you would end up with a nice small hole drilled through your hand.

This is the report from the Fermi incident:

http://beamdocs.fnal.gov/DocDB/0011/001185/001/FN-751.pdf

FTA:

Apparently they aren't using Silicon based electronics so they don't need to keep the sensor that cool (at least from a silicon point of view). But even if the electronics can handle it I'm still not entirely sure what they would use to power it all (Sodium Nickel Chloride battery typically work between 270 and 350C, other molten salt batteries used in missile systems typically operate between 400-550C).

Personally I believe it was the delay from the license lawsuit that really killed it. The first couple of generations of LCD and Plasma's screens weren't cheap to produce either. But while the SED technology was mired in litigation the LCD and Plasma manufactures sold screens and used the money to develop better and cheaper manufacturing processes. Once the SED litigation was cleared up it was too late. They had missed the ramp up stage. The had an expensive new technology competing against a cheap mature one. The stupid thing is the biggest loser in the whole ordeal is probably Nano Proprietary, the ones who started the litigation in the first place. If they had just let the joint venture build the damn things they would be collecting royalty checks today. Instead they sued their only revenue source out of existence.

Though BP has shelled out a lot more than $75 million. And they are actually able to. Different situation for nuclear energy companies.

The $75 million cap does only apply to the economic impact to any disaster (lost jobs, business, property, etc). The companies are still on the hook for direct cleanup cost which is what BP has mostly paid to date (although typically the direct cleanup costs are the smaller part of any large scale disaster). BP has said they will cover all economic losses as well but it remains to be seen how truthful this is as the costs pile up (there's also the issue of the cap being removed if gross negligence can be proven....)

Let one of the French nuclear power plants go boom and the effects are a _lot_ worse.

Could be. I'm not familiar with French nuclear reactor design. I am however familiar with Canadian CANDU reactors and can say with some certainty they are much safer than most (use unenriched fuel, require heavy water moderation, vacuum building, etc...). Not to say a CANDU accident wouldn't be bad but it would certainly be better than, say, Chernobyl. The point I'm trying to make is nuclear reactors can be built safer. Newer designs, like pebble bed reactors, can not melt down by design. If there wasn't such fear mongering about nuclear energy we could invest in and build these safer reactors. Instead we're stuck with many aging reactors with suspect safety records.

Also, Africa has had an oil spill of similar size for ages and no one would think of starting to stop it as it's apparently not cost-efficient. And that is on land. Where people live. Not hidden under water by ways of chemicals.

Not entirely sure how this helps your argument against nuclear energy. It just goes to show again that oil can be just as damaging as nuclear.

Wrong. It's easy to process CO_2 into O_2 and C_x. It's just not economically feasible.

Yes, you can scrub, sequester, and convert fossil fuel emissions but as you stated it's not economically feasible. Recycling nuclear waste is economically feasible. They already do it in France and Britain. They don't do it in North America for political reasons (not technical or economic reasons).

I prefer to pay for my stuff in a way that makes sure the ones getting rich from what I pay have to shoulder the costs, as well. Not that I pay them _and_ pay extra for clean-up.

And this is my issue with how people think about fossil fuels. We are shouldering the burden of using them. For example increased smog causes more health issues which places extra burden health care which we all end up paying for with taxes (well, outside the US at least). So in truth, we are paying them and paying extra for the clean-up (just in different ways). At least with nuclear energy the problem is fairly well contained and solutions do exist (admittedly some better than others).

And the oil industry has a cap of $75 million on the possible economic impact of their mistakes so I fail to see your point. If the gulf has taught us anything it should be that fossil fuel usage can cause disasters just as bad, if not worst, than nuclear energy.

As for nuclear storage, as others have pointed out, spent fuel can be recycled. The same can't be said for the waste products of fossil fuels. At the end of the day society pays a price for all our energy usage.

Static Inverter Plant

They're used for high voltage DC transmission systems. Actually, they're probably overkill for a 4 MW supply as many plants have been built to handle hundreds of MW each.

From the patent, claim #1:

and wherein the initial or complementary motions comprise motion in one or more of at least six fields of motion including lateral x, y, or z motion or rotational x, y, or z motion

Emphasis mine. They aren't claiming you have to detect all six. The "at least six fields" part is just defining the set of possible motions to detect; not that you have to detect all six of them. At least that is my take on that line.

I had a pedometer in the 90s that used motion to record events, each motion event would trigger an update on the display, it was hand held when reading the display, and it was a computing device that would calculate distance traveled (not to mention history). Sounds like it covers just about every aspect of that patent.
 

But a corporation is merely a construct of government. Every right that a corporation has should therefore be at the behest of the government. The government grants a corporation certain tax benefits and protections and in return can limit certain activities (such as politicking). If the corporation doesn't like this there is nobody stopping them from running their business as sole proprietorship (or partnership or whatever). Of course doing so opens them up to liability (among other things) but those are the risks you have to take if you want all the privileges of a person. In this case the corporations want all the privileges of a person while sharing none of the responsibilities.

Any of the laptops they already have up there could run a mail server in the background without any issue. No extra equipment needed.

Simply apply the filter on the ground based server before it relays the mail up. Or if you want more human control then just set up a number of private email addresses on the shuttle mail server and have someone on the ground manually forward incoming mail to the shuttle addresses. Still a hell of a lot simpler than what they're doing now.

Well, to Arrignton's credit he (or the TechCrunch side of things) did build the first prototype. He also provided office space for Fusion Garage and no doubt was integral in the testing. There's also a lot of talk about setting up distribution and funding although it's hard to say how much of that was Arringtons doing. Overall I would say Arrington has contributed at least an equal share into the project.

conversions, I meant conversions damn it...

Take one meter. Make a cube of that side, a cubic meter. Fill that with water near the sea level and you get a volume of 1 Liter of water.

Actually, 1 Liter of water is a 10cm x 10cm x 10cm cube (or 0.1m x 0.1m x 0.1m). Put another way 1 ml = 1 cubic centimeter. Otherwise your conversations are correct. Although you did miss out on the Calorie - the amount of energy required to warm one gram (1 ml) of air-free water from 14.5 ÂC to 15.5 ÂC at standard atmospheric pressure (101.325 kPa).