Congratulations on your relatively better energy independance. But alas, I have to correct the article : Fossil fuel *production* (which as far as we know is a biological / geological process) is probably just a few barrels each day (given current reserves and the time it needed to form; conditions favoring formation probably varies with geological epochs). Fossil fuel *extraction* is what the article talks about, and is at an all time high.

You usually don't celebrate that much that your rate of withdrawing funds from your bank account is at record high. Maybe quitting using this euphemism would help a tiny bit getting away from the damaging fossil fuel dependency ...

Can you really predict if it will halt?

You could give the robot a socket to plug in a "motivation" chip that filter what events make it "happy". Then you could of course pull out a small piece of wire from you towel, short the chip and make the robot always happy whatever happends ...

You don't need leaving the one true editor. I think emacs itself actually includes a couple of web browsers ... (granted, as third-party modules)

Obligatory and good overview of all perve^H^Hmutations of [Kk] and [Bb] and friends: http://xkcd.com/394/ :-)

Write a personal mail to your MP:s/senators etc instead. A few polite sentences, asking for restoring copyright to premium creativity instead of greed. If you can, send a paper mail. Some perhaps even answer their office phone. Just remember being nice albeit firm. 30 million unique mails can probably make some impact. At least far more than the original proposal.

Maybe that it doesn't need external power or control. IIRC, the auto-dim welding helmets I know of need an external power source (small solar panel + battery I presume), and dims by applying a current to the glass. I was also going to ask if this could be used for a simpler welding mask, but 30 ms is perhaps too slow for protecting against the lots of UV arc welding produces.

Ignoring the wishful thinking even for the occupants, there is still quite a risk being killed *by* that Volvo. Cars are quite a brutal way of travelling; tons of speeding steel that can make any object or person on the outsite flat by merely a moment of distracted driver.

Keeping human-guided vehicles at a speed safe for everyone (30 km/h perhaps?) and leaving high-speed to rail would be far better (also, the vehicles could be *far* lighter, cheaper and non-energi-guzzling). Yes, current society is quite car-centric, but that doesn't mean motor-cars everywhere is the most optimal choice. Compare this to a microsoft-centric computer market, and what it ought to be ...