Really? What about the center core propellent cross-feed? That sounds like a major piece that cannot have been launch tested yet. AFAIK there is no other rocket that has ever had it either so there must be some element of risk. All that mass transfer could go wrong in any number of ways I suppose.

Thanks. I almost puked when I read the word "orbit".

Solar is getting cheaper by about 10 percent a year, and has been for decades. And there is no reason to think it will be any different in the future. This cannot be said of any other form of energy.
And it has reached grid parity already in many places where incremental costs of additional capacity are high (like India).
Btw, I find your ignorance AND your rudeness appalling.

Kenya should probably go solar since it scales better at the small end, requires less transmission infrastructure. It is interesting that it doesn't seem to have much more sunlight than many American cities, at least according to casual web search:

      http://www.climatetemp.info/kenya/

      http://www.currentresults.com/Weather/US/average-annual-sunshine-by-city.php

The true reward of writing code is seeing it executed. Just hand it over. If you want more money get another job. Dice is full of them.

That sound ruder than I meant it. Basically you are just overthinking it.

Agree completely. I think Assange is at the very least guilty of gross breach of many people's privacy.
I hope everyone who had documents exposted to the world that they considered private communications between them and the parties that they communicate them too sue the guy.
I would be so pissed if he had done this to me personally. And I imagine practically everone on slashdot would think the same if it happened to them. It is just that most people forget that governments have actual people working in them.

Wierd reply. Its like you didn't read the e-mails, especially your own. There are several main things you write that don't fit.

I didn't complain about not having fun - he did. I happen to enjoy my life immensely, both the parts that involve my kids, and the rest of it, but I think that is somewhat off topic.

Raising kids is actually lots of fun, and mine are rewarding and not very annoying (although admittedly many are). I guess we rasied them right (although genes obviously play a large role too).

You write about personal responsibiliy and sound economic policy, I think that sound demographics is an essential part of that. Seems like a no-brainer really.

And sound economic policy and personal responibility is being seriously undermined by people persuing their "different desires" without investment in the human capital that created them in the first place.

That we need more kids is not a popular opinion these days, but I think it stands to scrutiny. The world we live in is unbounded.

And by the way I am not the least bit religious. Even athiests can be interested in humanities continued well-being.

Or a social contract.

I actually think it is irrepsonible for healthy talented people to not have kids. Breaks the social contract. Population forcasts continue to collapse and a world with too many pensioners will be ugly - and possibly unavoidable already. Just look at where Japan is headed.

The earth may be limited but there is infinte room in space. As any geek should know.

Games are not so important for adults. The biggest use for games is learning how to learn fast. Maybe you have that down now and your subconsiously just not as interested.

Go make and raise some kids and let them learn some games. That is a fun, rewarding, and quite complex game. All stages of it.

You get a lot of desalinated water in resorts in the med. You can always tell because you can taste the salt in it - and they told us the water purified for touriests was purified 10 times more than the water for the locals. I think getting it down to the point where you cannot taste it is prohibitively expensive with today technology. So I can see why they would want a whole supertanker full of fresh Alaskan water. Of course it might taste a bit oily...

They blocked my account for reasons that were not clear to me, but had to do with being an American living in Germany using a German bank. There was a way to get it unblocked, but it was complicated and not worth my time. I only ever used it for eBay, so I just stopped using eBay.
They are just stupid.

Less would have been more.

I agree with your title and your first few points were good, but then when you started ranting about socialism and conspiracy I got bored. I am pretty sceptical about global warming on the whole, but I find it best to ignore passionate claims by either side.

Passion is for bed, and not really suitable for making scientific judgements.

Electric cars emit much less noise. I think we will need to have a protocol whereby iPods can sense potential collisions and warn the listeners. Cars are getting anti-collision devices and software anyway in the coming years, they shoud expand the protocolls to iPods too.
Hmm - maybe I should patent that idea :).

Why are we reposting an economist article? I would think SlashDot could come up with an article that goes somewhat deeper than this.