It's my understanding that the variability problem is overstated when wind towers are considered in aggregate.

http://ramblingsdc.net/Austral...

A real leap in battery tech though is always welcome.

US Military could count as it's own country in oil usage. They also do a fair bit with reusable energy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...

And I know several other projects. But for Military readiness, it would be nice if they put a few billion more into supporting something like algae biodiesel or fusion and a few billion less into one more aircraft carrier (correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the current fleet has around 11, more than the rest of the world combined?)

Off the top of my head, America's strategic reserve can cover fuel use for 60 days. However, since the biggest threat to America isn't any type of invasion force (no viable one exists), it would likely be economic and since the days of Hurricane Katrina, we've been shown to be unable to cope with peoples' extended needs.

So the Leadership's strategy should be to wean the country off of it's most dire dependencies. It should almost be the military's strategy as it would only positively effect them, but that runs counter to global force projection and stamping out the latest fires around the world.

I agree with your overall message, but humans being what they are (not always following the rules), another barrier of protection would not hurt imo.

A salute to your friends for me.

Not quite. Just thinking dumb humanoid robots that need a puppetmaster would have a lot of uses.

We have robots for ridding explosive ordinance. Considering the humber of healthcare workers that contracted this disease so far, hopefully some remotely controlled robot doctor/nurses would help further quarantine the situation.

We are far from autonomous humanoid robots, but since this isn't a labor saving measure, it should be much easier, as they are rather more like walking drones, how far is current tech from making this possible?

I think it's actually Obama who's done the most on climate change concretely. He signed into law new fuel economy standards that will double the fuel called me a new vehicles. Elon musk is selling a couple thousand cars a year, well Obama standards will affect millions of cars every year.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/2232...

When posed with the question: Would I prefer 50 politicians like X or businessmen/inventor's like Musk, my answer would be more Musks in the world.

Politicians should be lauded for doing the right thing for PR purposes, but their importance to the overall scheme should not be overhyped in history. Their minds are not the ones that shape the future. They can mandate anything they like, but it's up to engineers and others to actually implement it.

(Also, fuel economy standards are notorious for the loopholes and crooked accounting.)

The research team seeks to actively defeat what Abrash calls âoethe myth of technological innovation,â the idea that just because a technology is possible, it will eventually exist without a concerted effort to develop it.

This rings within my experience of experiencing some projects firsthand just die on the vine because of corporate politics or just typical upper management being risk adverse to something long-term.

There's a common perception of tech being like a river, with it's bends and turns varying but still getting there (out to some utopian ocean destination) but I visualize it flowing the other way, from a ocean of talent to rivers and creeks, etc. Some advances are unavoidable rivers, but there are a lot of unexplored tributaries and creeks along the way that could provide a unique benefit.

This is especially true as society often demands solutions to problems previous tech created, making a unique trajectory through history on research based on a series of reactions rather than intrinsic need. (Think of the history of the rocket and space race).

If the man's account is to be believed, EVEN if he name dropped his employer, it was only in an effort to get fair service from comcast to begin with. And get all the crap charges removed.

And comcast should get bad press for contacting their customer's employer to begin with. Who the hell does that to a customer? Comcast, that's who. Time to go to congress, and get all this cable and telecom monopoly crap gotten rid of.

Well, you can't compare hz between differnt families of chips just like you can't compare RPM between a motorcycle and dump truck to definitely talk about power output.... but it definitely means a lot.

If they could crank CPUs up to 100 Ghz or 1 teraherz, they would because it's easy gains. In F1 race cars they use plastic pistons just to be able to rev it over 18,000 rpm (more than a standard motorcycle).

That's why overclocking still exists. Hz won't mean anything if they ever manage to pull of clockless chips. Considering how much circuitry/transistors are dedicated to timing in a modern CPU, that would be a huge gain. But AFAIK, it's still a pipedream.

And MS will still be behind.

eBay and Paypal are mutually beneficial. Paypal is absolutely reliant on ebay for sheer volume. It's their foundation.

But I just don't think sellers liked being cornered into having to accept PP 99% of the time.

eBay is off it's core market, chasing more lucrative opportunities. Problem is, they don't own that other market (amazon, alibaba), never will, and are pissing off their base with every new change. It's the curse of needing constant growth in our economy.

I have over 50 Crees installed, from the standard 40 & 60 watt (equivalents) to the 100 watt eq, to the 65 and 90 watt eq par bulbs.

From all manner of inside lights to a few all nighter streetlamps.

They're wonderful and none of them blink. Granted, I don't have any of them on dimmers, just straight out on/off switches.

Yeah, um, Apple products have always been plagued with blatant oversights (like the antennas years back). Seems every new generation of iPhone has something wrong with it at the start. A lot of it is extreme attention. The other thing is to never be the first to buy a new product or download a major update.

In case of a phone, let the crowd rush in for a couple months and pick up the one with small hardware revisions in November or January. Same with downloads.

And a different hand than you usually hold it with. Should be good enough if the phone is just randomly lost.

I wonder if you have to use the end of a finger or could use the "print" on the middle or proximal phalanx?

We don't need more rules, more laws, more agents (that cost a shit ton of money at work and in retirement), more jails.

Just banish most taxes, simplify the system to a low rate transaction tax, don't deal with deductions or deciding which charities or legit or not (tax would be too low to matter in individual cases), stop caring if business are on shore or offshore or if couples are married:
http://www.apttax.com/

Of course, by nature, bureacracy always has to build itself up, never deconstruct itself, so don't expect to see it short of in the face of a revolution.