... but the proposed gadget will likely make the problem worse

Objects "in orbit" around the Earth are actually falling freely to the Earth. But thanks to the very large horizontal component in their motion, orbiting objects always overshoot the horizon and thus stay in orbit.
Such objects have no "weight", because weight is defined as, F=mg, a force F exerted by an object with mass m in a gravity field g, resting on a surface preventing the object from falling freely.
The mass of an object is thus independent of gravity, but it's "weight" is just an artifact imposed by surface constraints, and can vary greatly.

... (aka www.wattsupwiththat.com) has some comments on the good parts of Obama plan, but has some comments about the bad and ugly parts too:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/25/the-presidents-climate-action-plan-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

... not some paid actors: http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/students/

> ... sad part ...

No need to be sad. Increasing effective aperture size of the telescope increases its resolving power. The imaging element doesn't have to be a single mirror or lens, but can consist of an array of elements scattered over a large area. Tricky part is getting all of the elements in phase agreement. Also doesn't have to be visible light. We are already 'imaging' surfaces of planets with synthetic aperture radar, operating on the same principle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Large_Telescope

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Large_Array

So imagine a much larger optical array network, many miles in diameter, for imaging the surfaces of these exoplanets.

So ex-VicePresident Nixon communicated with a foreign leadership, telling them to wait after his "re-election" and that he would be more 'flexible' in his dealings with them. Hmm, where have we heard that treasonous trash talk before? :-|

> Wikipedia has the name wrong.

No, you are wrong. Bob Bruinga, WB4APR, the inventor of APRS has reverted in the naming convention, and now supports the "_packet_ reporting" moniker because he wants to emphasize that APRS is not just for position reporting. For example, it's extensively used for weather reporting from mostly non-mobile CWOP (Citizen Weather Observers Program) volunteers, who include a lot of non-amateur radio enthusiasts who augment NWS mesolevel forecasts with thousands of home-made stations reporting every ten minutes or so over the Internet. (The ham-radio CWOP volunteers can also report weather via amateur RF frequencies).

Also APRS has been used ("firenet") for reporting brush and forest fires.
http://wa8lmf.net/aprs/get_nws_shapefiles.htm

The first humanoid "words" were probably grunted utterances representing names of other humanoids, animals, places and (eventually) events.

Even so, automatically generating unique labels is no big deal for a computer. Every automatic "builder" program already do this. Except they're usually enumerated (i.e. box1,box2, box3, ..., box999), instead of randomly generated ciphers ("xyzzy" etc). But computers don't do anything randomly, it all has to be programmed by a human.

>> ... thousands of years of _safe_ operation ...
Completely "safe"? Then how do you explain this paragraph about 'decommissioning' the ORNL test MSR from the article you cited?
"After shutdown the salt was believed to be in long-term safe storage, but beginning in the mid-1980s, there was concern that radioactivity was migrating through the system. Sampling in 1994 revealed concentrations of uranium that created a potential for a nuclear criticality accident, as well as a potentially dangerous build-up of fluorine gas —"

You already are paying one very low fee to use the Internet: zero dollars.

What you're paying real dollars for is the right to access the Internet by means of various physical carriers: price to be negotiated between carrier and user.

Peronally I prefer the Asok (Dilbert's intern) sewage activated access. Whereever you have a sewer pipe, then you have turdo-charged access!

:-]

Technology similar to the Omega system is still in operation in Russian, known as "Radiotehnicheskaya Sistema Dal'ney Navigatsii", RSDN-20. In the West it's known by the nickname "Alpha" and is based on a system of three VLF transmitters located in western, middle and eastern Russian. It provides nearly world-wide coverage and is used primarily by the Russian maritime fleet, some using very ancient semi-mechanical receivers still in operation.

http://www.vlf.it/alphatrond/alpha.htm

If you want to see how these Alpha signal look like, take a peak at this Web Softwarre Defined Radio located in the Netherlands, operating in the VLF band. It is picking up 2 of the 3 stations (Krasnodar and Novosibirsk). They look like long Morse dashes around 11 to 15 kHz frequencies.

http://websdr.pa3weg.nl/

Johanus

... which is the layer of the atmosphere, 50km-85km, immediately above the statosphere. This is a very lonely place, the air's too thin to float baloons, airplanes and such, and too thick for orbiting spacecraft. Its major inhabitants are falling meteors and rocket ships enroute to outer spaces. Also hosts the D Layer of the ionosphere (during daylight hours) which tends to absorb radio waves transmitted from the ground.
Convection stops in the stratosphere (because there is no temperature inversion there) so very difficult for gases and vapors rising from the ground to reach this desolate place.
:-)

>> "... and the Player can come up with solutions to problems that the Designer might not have thought of. "

Maybe the world is just a big game and we're the Players. What would happen if we did not play the game the way the Designer wanted it to played?

Gen 6:5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth,
and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Gen 6:6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth,
and it grieved him at his heart.
Gen 6:7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth;
both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air;
for it repenteth me that I have made them.

:-)