The quality of Slashdot has really gone downhill. Some stuff has happened in optics since the 1800s. It's theoretically possible with metamaterials to make a lens that can resolve features substantially smaller than the diffraction limit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

Theoretically, you can make a lens out of metamaterials that can resolve features smaller than the diffraction limit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

The proposal is to put a small base near a pole, mine water, turn it into fuel, and ship it up to a Langrange point. Outbound ships can refuel on their way to Mars (manned) or elsewhere (robotic). It sounds like a reasonable reason to go to the moon.

There's also some interesting things you could do with science experiments on the moon. Lots of hard vacuum, low gravity and radio silence on the far side.

From your own link, many people who file jointly pay less taxes than filing alone. In certain odd circumstances you can end up paying more if you file jointly, but you have the option of filing separately anyway.

So worst case scenario, you pay the same as single people. Any other scenario, you pay less.

Why? You already get tax breaks. I understand that had a purpose when a wife was a dependent, but why today? Why should the single people pay you to be married, faithfully or not?

I'm sure they've thought of that. This isn't really a new idea, and the use of beamed power engines that switch from using atmosphere to carried fuel isn't new either (you can even use it in Kerbal Space Program with the right mods). The problem is that the molecular mass of air is quite high, and that reduces your specific impulse and thrust for a given power input. So to get the same thrust with air you'd need a bigger transmitter (probably much bigger). With rockets you usually need your highest thrust early on, because you're lifting more fuel, gravity is stronger, and you need to go more or less straight up. Later on you can get by with less thrust. Unfortunately, that's the opposite of what an air/fuel switching beamed power engine provides. You can get around that using a spaceplane design, but you still need to get up to speed and altitude while in range of your ground station... or build more ground stations.

They're probably looking at getting something working first, then building out the infrastructure to do more. That fits in with their plan to make a suborbital ship first: if you go basically straight up you're always in range of a single ground station, but you can't get into orbit.

There was this one pub with a fantastic veggie burger... if you got it with bacon. Other veggie burgers are much less fantastic, even with bacon on them.

You just completely baffled all the Americans.

The retailer is on the hook for physical verification of credit cards anyway.

Other way around. Electronic payments replace cash and cash is used as a backup for electronic. Most of the western world already works that way. This story is about some places in Europe retiring the cash option entirely for some automated vending machines. But those probably won't work so well with the power out anyway.

Actually, that is horrible. There's a reason conquering armies used to literally salt the earth if they really hated you. Plus it eats cars.

This thing's battery life is also specced as "light web browsing." Actually, when they did light web browsing they couldn't get it up to the rated battery life.

If you used it to do actual workstation-y things that would justify that hardware, you get rather less.

An ultra-long run notebook is an interesting idea, but I don't really understand why you'd want a notebook with a gigantic battery and a bunch of high end hardware for doing 3D graphics. Gaming in that coffee shop where you just can't get a plugin? 3D modelling on the beach?

I was searched five times once while changing planes. Two of them were in sight of each other (either end of a hallway). Every time they said it was a "random check."

When I enter the US I generally just raise my hands (that's what the dozen nice men are yelling at me to do) then lie down, hope they know how to not use those guns they're pointing at me, and wait for them to handcuff and carry me off.

No, I'm not kidding. Apparently my name, which is one of the most common in the English world, is shared by someone pretty scary.

My initial reaction was that someone forgot a couple of zeros on that figure. A single airliner costs a few hundred million. If that's the real price it seems like a no brainer to give this thing a try somewhere. Maybe the Japanese will build one.