With patents existing everybody in the world learns to bend over backwards to tie their shoe laces, just to circumvent patents of doing it the "normal" way, bending forward. So you have a lot of crazy things going on in society, all because you have a patent system. There is no monkey see, monkey do, it's no! Bad monkey! Stop imitating! That goes against the very fiber of human nature, humans being the apex, the greatest of great apes.

Just read up on gravitons at wikipedia.

"the graviton is a hypothetical elementary particle... postulated because of the great success of quantum field theory (in particular, the Standard Model) at modeling the behavior of all other known forces of nature...

However, attempts to extend the Standard Model with gravitons have run into serious theoretical difficulties at high energies (processes with energies close to or above the Planck scale) because of infinities arising due to quantum effects (in technical terms, gravitation is nonrenormalizable). On the other hand, the theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics are incompatible at such energies, so from a theoretical point of view the present situation is not tenable. Some proposed models of quantum gravity attempt to address these issues, but these are speculative theories."

There you have it.

The term c appears in electromagnetic space. All the Universe we know is mainly electromagnetic, you and I are chemistry, interactions of atoms through electrons, electromagnetic. So is the light that we see, and all electromagnetic ways to measure time and distance, including atomic clocks up in outer space orbit. However, nonelectromagnetic things may not obey the constant c. One major thing up in the air still is gravity waves, if they exist at all, and what speed they propagate with. The hard nuclear interactions of neutrons/protons, as far as I know have been successfully integrated with quantum-electrodynamics, but gravity interactions are still a dangling sore outside of a grand unified theory of everything we can experimentally observe, as far as I know it's still perplexing and ununderstood, except via some string theory requiring 46 dimensions, 42 of those folded up onto themselves. We don't really like theories of 46 dimensions. "Give me 10 parameters, and I can come up with an equation that fits most of an elephant. Give me 11, and I can fit the tail too" used to say one of my professors.

Einstein's lab was a remote lab across the Atlantic from Switzerland, at Case Western Reserve University, more specifically the Michelson-Morley experiment on a pool of liquid mercury, coming up with the interferometry experimental measurement/conclusion that the Earth is not moving through the aether. Therefore the concept of aether was a superfluous one as far as science and Occam's razor was concerned and was abandoned. Theoretical researchers still ultimately rely on experiment. Michelson Morley did not come up with the theory of relativity, but they did a wonderful job as objective experimental scientists, trying to measure our planet's speed through aether, and "failing" so wonderfully at it. What a waste of money on setting up the whole rig? All that liquid mercury? Not really. Sometimes a failure to obtain a measurement result is the greatest success, and they published their "failure" objectively, without fear. Most of the great scientific advances are in the perplexing details of unexpected, "erroneous" results.

However their result was not totally unexpected, as the Maxwell equations themselves already predicted such a thing, paradoxically, by containing a velocity term c. In the Newton/Galileo worldview, x and dx/dt, position and speed are undetectable, relative (even though Newton did talk about moving through "absolute space" when spinning a bucket of water, but Galileo did not, when telling about the flies not gathering aft in a ship, or his measurements of dropping feathers in a vacuum, or from the leaning tower of Pisa, countering Aristotle's claim that motion, dx/dt is consumed, and correctly ascribing that to friction, to external forces.) Only d2x/dt2, acceleration is revealed by the Universe, as a (inertial) force. Newtons mechanics, his laws, is all about forces, about d2x/dt2. All Einstein did was incorporate the Maxwell equations with this previous idea of Galileo about the relativity of inertial reference frames, that still did check out through the Michelson et.al. experiment, force a system where even with c present there is still inertial relativity and only acceleration manifests itself, and show that the classical Newton/Galileo system was a special limiting case of the old one. It's all really simple if you're willing to give up your prior convictions based on new experimental facts, even if those convictions were related to the most basic of basic things in your image of the world around you, to x and t.

Problem is there are too many investors who are dying to make it big on your piggy back. I personally would like to grow algae, for biofuels, since I read somewhere that they are the fastest growing organism on the planet. Some forms are responsible for most of the nitrogen cycle binding of atmospheric nitrogen, for fertilizers. Some are grown for food, not very tasty. But the word is they are the fastest growing organism, fastest carbon absorption from the atmosphere. That means I haven't personally seen it, or the issues with associated with it, I only read about it. And since the Clinton administration gave up on the whole thing, I might go through the same steps they went through, and realize, aha, that that and that is the reason why it's really not worth it, some ergonomics, or killer efficiency issue. I'm also not a biologist, and don't even want to be, but as a hobby, watching things grow, I might slowly learn some details. Because maybe there is a way to have a really efficient biofuel industry. If not algae, something else? I don't know. I simply don't know.

I'd do it as a play, as a hobby, any of these things, because I'm curious, because I know if if does work it's very important, but sure as hell not gonna jump into debt over it, promising quick wealth left and right, trying to convince some investors that this is the next big thing, and then have them screaming down my back looking for some quarterly profits. And me having to tell them hold on, patience, I'm not even sure it works in the first place, or I don't have an answer yet, may not have one for a decade. If you have money to throw away, you can give it to me, but I can't promise anything, until I'm convinced of anything, or I find anything. You simply can't talk like this as a professional, as an entrepreneur, you're almost obligated to stretch the truth. And then lies turn into greater lies, and you start to believe your own lies, and get totally stressed. The fun is gone. Blind profit mongering, wishful thinking that there were anything there in the first place when there really isn't, when you really really want something, that clouds your vision and objective judgment. Above all one has to be realistic.

Sometimes, if there is a will, there still isn't a way, and recognizing that is important, for the big picture, or each individual steps, and know when to give up, and when to pursue, efficiently. That's efficient home research, based on play, curiosity, that you can't find inside a corporation, where every project has to be funded with a clear expectation of profit $=%margin expected x %chance of success > some threshold, has to be "sold" to upper management in terms of statistical profit probability, with MS Powerpoint presentations that stretch the truth, and leave out important details, (by assuming you know all the relevant details at the outset which is obviously not the case, otherwise it would not be called research,) setting a plan to follow, a project timeline, things to check, a plan that puts blindfolds on you along the way to not notice something, or chase something based on simply your curiosity to understand, because that subbrach has no funds allocated to it, and petitioning for it is too much bother, all the funds are allocated based on the master plan approved by corporate signature, and do you want to restart the whole approval process, possibly screwing yourself out of the funds you already have by putting doubt on what you initially claimed to be so certain of, do you want to shed a light of incompetence on yourself, instead of shutting the hell up and being happy you got funded, that you have a secure job til the project funds run out, and simply stick to the plan and do your job as you're supposed to, instead of wondering off track left and right, and not meeting any deadlines. Are you crazy? Inside corporations we're serious about making money, and we don't just show up to play around, for our mere personal entertainment, or to satisfy our own curiosity, and waste years with playing without ever coming up with anything.

That kind of stuff you have to do at home. Especially when you're not the top expert in a field, and have to walk the same steps that others before you walked, to see for yourself. Repeat basic science, basic things that are technology of the 1750's, or even 1950's. No corporation or reasonable investor is gonna spend money on your personal entertainment to learn such things, and in fact you may be held liable for fraud. But you can spend your own money, and time, for your own personal entertainment. Things like EEG. You have to do it at home, because at work, time is money. At home, you can watch tv, or play in your man-cave/woodshop/garage/lab. At home time is not money, and nothing is urgent, therefore you can relax and enjoy yourself.

My sincere condolences, but as a consolation, you may take comfort in the thought that your cat is still alive and well in an alternate universe.

The balance between individualism and collective equality, in an economic sense, is encoded in the overall tax rate. At 80% tax rate, or even church donation rate, the community/committees decide the course of actions, and there is very little left for individual decision making. If the community sufficiently returns back this money to make its individuals prosper, then they may prosper, but they might easily ignore individuals and their wishes, and instead push their own personal agendas of grandiose egotistical greatness projects. At 2% tax rate on the other hand, individual people vote with their money on the course of economics, but very few grandiose things get ever built, such as a bridge, space station, or an effective military warplane carrier. With too many taxing entities, the intent might be to let people be free, and only ask for 1-2% each, such as local/state/federal/insurance1/insurance2/monthly fee1/monthly fee2/etc, but the overall effect is that we have many committees making many decisions, none of them well funded or powerful enough to make a real difference in building a grandiose thing, and the individual is completely stripped of economic power to vote on what's good or bad in economic production, and has to constantly opt for the cheapest, though economically costly and wasteful choices, wasteful because of improper balance of quality and cost. We're heading toward a point in the USA, where, lacking sufficient credit/bankruptcy statute of limitations expiring every 7 years, where people keep spending virtual money that doesn't really exist, or it's other people's money, so lacking such a source of money, people are forced into making bad economic decisions on having to purchase the lowest possibly quality in everything, including homes, cars, services, just to make ends meet.

In the USA I know I'm worth less than Tiger or Lebron. Not worth as a human being, in the eyes of a law, but worth salary wise. They should get paid more for what they do. And be able to buy whatever they want on it. "Enforcing" economic equality is a difficult issue.

In the United States of America, We The People, believe than all men are created equal, and hold this truth to be self evident.

In the Soviet Union, We The People, went a step further: we guaranteed and enforced it.

Artificial, or just naturally advancing superbug-biology is a serious threat to mankind and all other higher life forms, and could be one of the reasons that we don't see much intelligent life trying to talk to us from outer space. The unity of multicellular lifeforms - together we stand alone we fall - can provide to specialization necessary where braincells get developed, and in exchange for food, they provide the other cells with strategic decisions, such as where to run. And boy, is maintaining a large brain expensive, or what? 1/5th of power consumption in the body is by braincells, when mass is 1/20th only. In any case, you and I are multicellular organisms, and our constituent cells, together, through cooperation, specialization, and code of ethics, seem to be more successful than single celled ones, at survival. But the battle is not final yet, it may just be that lower, disorganized single celled organisms evolve that wipe out all the multicellular ones. Imagine the natural evolution of a virus that figures out a way to attack and destroy all eukaryote cells. Even if it's just a human specific disease. Especially with air travel these days, epidemics can spread very quickly and quarantining is difficult.

The answer to such issues is simple - "Biosphere 2", and similar, fully hermetically isolated biospheres, that have contact with the outside world only through an energy exchange, but no matter exchange. No disease can get in or out. A prime example is space stations. Going to space and successfully living as pockets of fully isolated life is an almost mandatory security issue for mankind and the rest of life, whether it's about a nuclear holocaust, or artificial or natural superbug/epidemic-disease evolution. When you achieve that, then you can say, there, single celled life forms can't build a space station, and put a jungle/biosphere in each of them. Then you can say that the survival guarantee of all life, including single and multicellular, could not have been possible without multicellular, that multicellular is worth it. The issue is divergent evolutions, where each pocket gives you different lifeforms given a few million years, but the danger of extra variety is preferable to almost certain doom.

Also creating pockets of life like this, and sending them off to distant worlds, such as Voyager 1 and 2, may buy enough time so that when AI smarter than us gets developed, and hunts us, they are limited by the speed of light, and can't catch us, or at least we get a century til they catch up with us, and can deliberate in the meantime on whether to program even smarter AI to defend, in those 100 years, at the risk of it hunting us too, but hopefully not. I don't know about you, but having to choose between a scenario where there are no humans left in the universe being destroyed by the AI created by humans, vs. one spacestation making it very far, and escaping by sheer luck, with people living for trillions of years from now, I would prefer the 2nd scenario. It may seem like aggression, aggressive conquering the Universe, by exploration, like Columbus going to the new world, why we can't just stay put where we are and live happily, but it can be done without aggression, especially if the universe is mostly empty of other life, unlike in the case of Columbus.

The Communist's main argument against the "old "exploitative" capitalist system was that social "progress" cannot be halted. Those who stand in the way of progress are antirevolutionary instigators looking to bring back a social system of inequality, are looking to turn back the clock, to reverse history. In communism there is equality, guaranteed and enforced by the state: property accumulation is limited, nobody can own two homes, if you get a new one, must give up the old one. There is a fair rationing of resources, to eliminate hogging of resources by a few, making sure there is supply left for everyone to prosper. Such as how much gas you're allowed to buy a month, and to save gas on a national basis, on Sundays only the even or odd numbered license plate cars are allowed to drive, alternating each weekend. Also random brownouts for random amount of time was a daily "rationing", over-consumption limiting task.

Now there is two sides to every story, and exploitation, property(das kapital, fetishism) and wasteful overconsumption has its sides too, but saying "let's go back to a world where people can own two homes, two cars, and buy as much gas or potatoes as they want to" is like saying let's go back to a world with no patents. Software or otherwise. Where you're free to do whatever the fuck you want! We already do? It's too late? Can't turn back the clock, the natural progress of history? Oh where have I heard that argument before.

Property is a limit. No trespassing here. So is forced equality and non"free"market limits on consumption. No owning two houses or two of anything, per capita. Well, how is freedom maximized? Anything that says "you can't."

Here is my view on patent trolls: You can't do that thing because I invented the technology, and it cost me a lot of money to develop, and you could not have come up with the same thing without copying it from me. What? Give me a break, it's totally retarded, we've been doing this since mid 90's. But did you patent it. No, we just do it. Since when exactly. Since 1996. Well, we have the patent from 1995, so payup. Wait, wait, I made a mistake. We've been doing it from 1994, here is "written", documented proof. Oh, that changes everything. Really? Really?

To me the real worth of patents is free textbook "background of the invention", if it's even written in a half readable form, which, otherwise would be available from standard literature in a world without patents. "Let it be known to the world that I invented..." Shhhh, keep it secret. If I find out, or invent the same thing, I can do it too. The only thing we can't do is "lie", such as saying this item is made by Coca Cola, when it's an off brand Cola. What about the "secret" ingredients that Coca Cola puts in, and patents, and expire in 20 years. Yeah right. Let's give them 5000 years of protection so they tell us the secret. Are you crazy? Let them keep it secret, if anyone else comes up with similar stuff, so what? As long as you don't lie, and once a secret gets out it's public domain, so what? What's wrong with that kind of world? Which is how it used to be in the old days, when iron working was invented. Everybody learned. Or paper making, gunpowder, etc. No patents. Even with patents there are legally allowed "trade secrets", and in fact there are "trade secrets" not fully "disclosed" in patents and happen to be "conveniently" left out, or simply the text written incoherently and boringly enough not to be understood by anyone else than its writer. Policing such an abuse is impossible - only the "inventor" knows he's leaving something crucial out, but you don't know what he knows. How do you catch him or get him on it? Or that the quality of the text is "intentionally" confusing and complicated? You can't. It's a hopeless endeavor. That's why the patent office is backlogged. They can't do their job because it can't be done. I'm willing to say that living in a patent-free world of guilds and guarded trade secrets, and encryption, which is present and available anyway, is not so unthinkable. Patents are not release of secrets anymore, as a main effect on society. Patents are trolling anymore. As in "how can we stop everyone else from doing anything so we can eliminate competition". I say keep your secrets. If it gets out, c'est la vie. You can still do whatever you've been doing the whole time, but you can't raid the whole world and tell them stop! You can't do this, you can't do that, stop doing that, quit scratching your ass that way, or bending over that way, because I "own" the method, the technology. What do you mean? What about freedom? Freedom of expression? Freedom inside your own private home, freedom from abuse from entities of power, such as the government, patent collecting trolling corporations, etc. Which is the way abuses happen all the time, by entities of power. Yes we have to be careful people don't abuse their children inside their private homes, or do something that's a public safety and security issue, but the reasons for most writing most of the amendments were that the abuses by entities of power were much more frequent and prevalent than the sacrifices in public safety and risk of ethical abuses made by allowing the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. amendments to the bill of rights to exist.

Yeah, ultimately nobody on Earth can afford to stay outside the coalition, including every single corporation and every single one of the 6 billion people. Why can't we call the DPL public domain? And then you're automatically in? The DPL is just another superfluous contraption that serves no purpose, other than drain resources out of everyone with no apparent benefit in return, if every single person and corporation has to be part of it. Somebody has to fix the patent system. Its original intent was to remove secrecy and promote innovation, but these days it neither removes secrecy (have you read any recent patents, like post 1990? they don't "teach" like they used to back in 1890"), and retards innovation of others. We might as well be better off going back to full public domain of everything, and keep your secrets. Which you can anyway, patents are an incentive not to, but it seems they cause more harm to society than benefit anymore.

As far as weather goes, every Earth-August there is an asteroid-monsoon season on the Moon, when it rains tiny little rocks. Transparent umbrella technology that lets the sunlight through but bounces the hail coming at you (or your solar panels), with 11 km/s, does that exist? Made of moon-based-materials? You're talking heck of a titanium springs and heavy gauge artillery proof aluminum-oxynitride-like shields. I don't think anything can take 11 km/s, other than an atmosphere that burns it all up. One wonders how come none of the GPS/TV satellites get hit, or the ISS. Is it only a matter of time, or the chances of getting hit by an asteroid are that much smaller than getting hit by lightning down on Earth? Well, if I count the shooting stars, and the number of lightnings, lightnigs do occur more frequently. In fact anyone walking outside in broad dayling in August risks getting killed by a falling asteroid that didn't get sufficiently buned/vaporized by the atmosphere. But the chances are indeed less than getting hit by lightning, at least down on Earth, for the post-combusted, falling all the way to the surface, meteroids..

I think it's safe to say that ball lightning is a phenomenon of the past, and it's very rare anymore, it's no longer being observed at the rate that it has been through the centuries.

A few corrections are due here: PNG is not exactly GNU PNG, but close enough in stance and philosophy to be called sibling-like related. PNG originally stood for "PNG is Not Gif." It is an internet phenomenon, like Linux and most "free" software, it was developed by volunteers in 1995 as soon as the submarine patents on Gif's surfaced, to be a patentless, open and "free" replacement to royalty demaning Gif's. Moreover MS did not "flock" to PNG, they were even a bit sluggish with the adoption. They may in fact have licensed GIF, and simply added PNG support because of the technological superiority to GIF's. Nevertheless the lessons learned in PNG vs. Gif might be interesting in regards to H264. Of course there is a way to mysteriously take out and make disappear all the developers who exhibit volunteering tendencies, and these days, the same PNG vs. GIF might go down differently, with all those freedom-touting voices gone. Lots of people die mysterious deaths, suddenly, unexpectedly and very young. These days.