The point is that by pushing for renewables at the exclusion of nuclear, the tree huggers have successfully kept coal firmly entrenched. Renewables are expensive, and they don't have the energy density of coal, much less Uranium. Without the political and emotional baggage, nuclear could have completely replaced coal decades ago, not "hopefully some time in the next 20 or 30 years, if we're lucky."

A coal plant, working absolutely perfectly according to its design parameters, will cause much more environmental and health damage than even a "catastrophic" nuclear failure. So no, it's not a technical issue. It's an emotional issue. We have all but cut off access to the cheapest, most abundant "green" energy source we have. It's like God handed us a big chunk of nearly-free magical energy and said, "Here, use this." Then Jane Fonda said, "But it's scary!" She's done more harm to the planet over the past 35 years than BP ever did.

Well, if we paid off making a new AI with a massive, hyper-euphoric, temporary endorphine rush, they might want to do quite a bit of it.

Of course, the comet will also start shooting off monster steam blasts, which could easily blast Philae off at escape velocity. The next Twitter update from Philae could be "I'm Lost in Space!"

You're doing it wrong. It's called amnesty now. All you have to do is pledge to vote Democrat, and Obama will send a plane to pick you up.

My anecdotal experience is that sometimes it's a ceramic diode getting hammered by out-of-spec back-voltage and ready to explode, and sometimes it does explode spraying ceramic shards all over the electronics lab. Root causes may include a dodgy transformer (pulled out of an old Hammond organ) with a highly questionable output waveform because you're a broke undergrad and it was cheaper than buying a new one.

This is my new favorite quote.

Please let me know when the TIME CUBE conference is being held. I will definitely attend that one.

Dangit, I clicked on the comments hoping for some good "+5, Funnies" about "Michael Jordan," and all I got was a stupid on-topic, well-researched, and educational comment on what the real Michael Jordan thinks about the challenges of "big data." And the best we could do on the name is "A man of many talents"? That does it. Slashdot is dead. (Netcraft confirms it.)

Copyrights don't apply in this case. Patents might. The Supreme Court has recently been struggling with drawing a line between "abstract ideas" (which are not patent-eligible) and concrete methods (which are patent eligible). In general, you can't patent the math per se, but you can patent (for example) a space craft programmed to perform that particular maneuver. As applied to ship building, if it's sufficiently novel, you may be able to patent a ship having certain hull parameters, but you won't generally get a patent just for "make it BIGGAR!" The patentability will usually lie in your solution to the problems you encountered in the process of making it bigger, which means that if somebody finds a different way to make it bigger, you may not be able to stop them. (This isn't legal advice, of course.)

I call BS. I can buy a brand-spanking-new replacement for literally any part of my Garand except the receiver. In fact, when I bought it, the receiver was probably the only part that was still original. I know for sure that the spiffy walnut stock and Criterion barrel were new off-the-shelf. I can also buy clips, bayonets, ammo pouches, and other accessories on the cheap. I don't personally own a Lee-Enfield, but it's a fairly popular hunting rifle. You can get parts for it. This reeks of a contract for the contract's sake.

I don't know if Boeing patented that method or not, but if they did patent it for the 1969 moon shot, the patent has long since expired. (Yes, I am a patent attorney.)

There's a big difference between Columbus and space exploration. Columbus was going to a place with air, water, and life. It was already self-sustaining. Space is a much harsher mistress than the West Indies.