Sure, some people will invest in Bitcoins, and other people will invest in racehorses. (I avoid the problem by mining Dogecoins, which are almost totally worthless.) That's missing the point of Bitcoin, which is that it's intended to be a currency for relatively-private transactions.

Unfortunately, the markets that most wanted a currency for relatively-private transactions didn't do as good a job as they should have about being relatively-private on their own end (i.e. Silk Road got busted), but there is still a market for legitimate transactions, as you've pointed out.

What you need is a good voice-only interface for your phone, and if possible in your clean-room environment, some kind of Bluetooth headset. Phone rings, you tell it "answer". If you want to do something, tell Siri or equivalent, and get voice feedback. Not being an iPhone user, I don't know if Siri's good enough. (The Android stuff I've used so far hasn't been, but my car's phone-dialing interface is at least a start.)

Yes, but now we can find out whether we read Slashdot because we are nerds, or we are nerds because we read Slashdot.

Perhaps in some cases it would be possible to detect that both X and Y were being affected by the same noise, implying the existence of some unknown Z?

The standard t-test for detecting an effect is already probabalistic. In science and medicine a 95% confidence value is commonly used, which means a 1/20 of detecting something that isn't there.

Not really, just keep a low profile long enough to make it to Mexico.u.

Yup, and they survived so they said "plausible" but if you read the after notes they both firmly believe they absolutely survived.

If we look at jet aircraft, wear depends on the airframe and the engines, and the airframe seems to be the number of pressurize/depressurize cycles as well as the running hours. Engines get swapped out routinely but when the airframe has enough stress it's time to retire the aircraft lest it suffer catastrophic failure. Rockets are different in scale (much greater stresses) but we can expect the failure points due to age to be those two, with the addition of one main rocket-specific failure point: cryogenic tanks.

How long each will be reliable can be established using ground-based environmental testing. Nobody has the numbers for Falcon 9R yet.

Weight vs. reusable life will become a design decision in rocket design.

I dont drive a super sized hummer, I drive a civic. Operating expenses for a civic are $0.12 (my real expenses as calculated over the past 4 years of ownership I average 44mpg on the highway at 75mph)

$273.60 there and back for 3 people plus all the luggage I can fit in the trunk. That is the real cost and is dead close as I have made this same run 4 times.

The people that actually do the work to make the product that makes the company money... Those people are FAR more important than a manager that manages managers.

CEO/Owner - > department managers. THAT IS ALL THAT IS NEEDED. everyone in between are dead weight parasites.

The two times I used a towncar service it was great. Typically they know the best routes through the city and they pay attention to rider comfort above all else, they do not drive like maniacs and intentionally slow down smoothly. The towncar I used in Chicago 4 years ago did not even have a GPS, he knew the city, something that is rare now.

The Goth community will buy this stuff by the bucket full.

"or focus on rich people who don't want to travel with unprofessionals."

WE have always had that, It's called hiring a town car. In any town you can make a call and hire a personal drive in a nice BMW 5 or 7 series or Lincoln or other luxury car to drive you everywhere you want and be at your beck and call.

And during "peak uber" pricing, it's cheaper to call a town car company and ride in class instead of some fat guys prius.