I did some research, and in order to pick up a TV level signal 100 light years away, we could built an antenna the size of Rhode Island in space.

You make my point :) 100 light years is still really in the neighbourhood. The vast majority of detected planets lie outside that range - that new possibly earth-like planet if five times longer away.

It assumes that you actually have an island-sized structure in space, and it assumes that any civilization is currently blasting radio signals in the same wasteful way as terrestrial TV. We don't have anything approaching your detector, so even at 100 light years we'd miss it, and, as I argue, civilizations are unlikely to beam out strong radio waves in that manner.

I would like to see what kind of detector we'd need for a more realistic scenario. Say, detect things within 1000 light years, and when radio use looks more like our digital low-power and directed radio devices.

A civilization would be quite hard to detect. The best chance is probably radio emissions, but even that has a fairly short practical limit. And it's noteworthy that our emissions are dropping today, as we increasinly use the spectrum for low-power digital systems rather than analogue "scream at the top of your lungs" broadcasts. It wouldn't be too far-fetched to imagine that we'd be effectively silent in another couple of generations, as we push toward more effective transmission technologies.

We could probably have dozens of other civilizations in this sector of the milky way and we'd never know it.

The problem with building really tall buildings is how to transport enough people up and down without using up the floor space on elevators rather than rentable area. Silly fast elevators may well be worth the money if it results in more silly expensive top-floor rent income.

A free but limited version and a full, paid one is completely reasonable. There's several ways to do it too, but I think perhaps the best division is between the casual and the dedicated user. Casual users are unlikely to pay if forced, but they can still be good advocates for the app, so it may be worth it making sure they still have something to use.

The Aedict Japanees dictionary, for instance, is one of my most used apps. It has a free version that is really the full old (pre-Android 4) version of the app; and a paid version that is newer, better, more polished and with lots of added funcitonality. You can use the core functionality in the old app, but you really want all the improvements in the new one.

Games could have just the first few levels. Productivity apps could limit the document size or number of simultaneous documents. But I do think that making the free version usable for the occasional user likely pays off over time. Casual users advocate the app, and they may become dedicated users over time.

[...] but getting a fake hand for the sake of a fake hand is just being vain IMHO.

People are vain. People do care what other people think of them, and people do want to make a good impression on others. And it's completely rational; we are being judged by how we look, what we wear, how we behave. What we think of that is besides the point.

So yes, it turns out most people care about what their prostheses look like as much or more than how well they function. Any maker that disregards that is setting themselves up to become a niche within a niche; and most likely a long-term failure.

Idk about you, but I'd think an obvious robot hand would be easier to deal with than a fake looking piece of plastic mimicking a human hand.

It's probably impossible to know until you are actually in the same situation. There have been highly functional, highly useful hand prosthesis long before robotics - the classical hook is just one example - but the vast majority of patients have always preferred a hand mimic, even when it is completely nonfunctional and even when the mimiry is far from perfect.

Not getting stared at, and fitting in, is critically important to people, in this case as in others. Should'nt be too surprising when you think about it in such terms.

I wasn't considering the time spent shopping for books, whether on an online site or in a store, but the overall time I have to read. Besides, browsing the store is part of the fun, not a chore. I basically count that as part of my reading time.

Welcome to the minority you share with the employees at Amazon HQ.

What minority? Most people do work or have other income sources (even though unemployment is alarmingly high the world over). And my income is slightly less than the average for people my age where I live.

My point was that books are not an expensive indulgence; not in absolute terms and not compared to other everyday extras ranging from movie tickets, coffee-shop coffe or music buys, to weekend beers or tobacco.

I'm not saying the price difference doesn't matter for anybody, or for any kind of book. I am saying that for many people the limit for book buying is not how many books you can afford, but how many you have time to read. And after all, if you're hard up for cash, used book stores or the library are excellent sources for reading material as well, and cheaper still than Amazon.
 

After you browsed through the real bookstores, where did you buy them?

I usually both browse and buy at real bookstores. In fact, I sometimes browse on Amazon (the ratings are very useful), then buy at the bookstore.

Why? Because even when the price difference is large, the absolute price is still quite low. Besides, these days the price difference often isn't actually very large anymore, once you add the cost of shipping. The difference may be that of a plain cup of coffee or less for a book I may spend weeks enjoying. And I can get the book right then, right there, not have to wait for shipping and schedule a pick-up time.

I work and I have disposable income. I don't, however, have a lot of free time. I can buy far more books than I will ever have time to read without making much of a dent in my personal play money. The limit is not money but time. Books I can't find elsewhere I order from Amazon or Rakuten, but otherwise I prefer the physical store.

So what about Japan then? That's a large, heavily populated country with both huge urban conglomerates and a sparsely populated countryside. Or Sweden, about the same size, with a diverse mix of cultures.

Of course, there's relatively small income equality in both cases. it would be intereting to see how income inequality correlates with murder rate in general. I wouldn't be too surprised if it turns out to be as important as, or even more important than, average income itself.

I think this SMBC comic is very appropriate as well: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id...

The post says the total number of exits is fixed. You're just shuffling the order of the queue. A limited benefit, if any benefit at all - the people in the general queue will wait even longer, with more breakdowns and medical emergencies as a result.

And the post itself mentions the solution: Make off-site parking more viable so more people get in and out on buses. That would benefit everybody, rather than pitching one subgroup against another.

Just to be clear here: the devastation is all due to the tsunami, not to the reactor failure. Foreign media seem to often forget or ignore that the disaster was the earthquake and tsunami. That's what killed almost 20k people dead and destroyed the homes of many hundreds of thousands of people.

Even if you put the screen up by the window, with a mirror you can always move your head a bit to get a bit more visual context. With a camera and screen, that doesn't work. Unless they also put in head tracking, or use a 3d screen.

In the longer term you're absolutely right. And in the longer term I don't think automation is an overall bad thing. I suspect that those of us in the industrialized world will be in for a rude awakening when we realize that it's the developing countries that will reap most of the benefits, but that's a digression.

What I meant with my comment was that the only people that benefit specifically from lowering wages* to stave off automation are the employers. It's a short-term event - buying people a few years or so - and effectively won't be reflected in the long-term price level changes. And the effect on the wage level spreads to areas that are not otherwise immediately affected by automation. The employers are effectively reaping the benefit of automation a bit early; a margin profit that we're unlikely to see.

* Wages can be lowered in other ways than reducing the pay. Adding to the workload, no compensation for inflation, more responsibility, night or shift work, or split shifts; they are all effectively the same as lowering the wage.