I certainly did - who cares? If I make a machine that can do the same job, but may or may not also be able to use the trademarked kwik lok tabs, there's no violation. If it only worked with kwik lok tabs, then you'd have a problem, but only in that you'd have to buy official kwik lok tabs. The machine itself is fine either way.

The biggest problem with general jury duty is it is unbounded. If it was a guaranteed - I go and 8 hours later I'm done, or even in special cases 1 week and I'm done, that would be fine. With today's technology, it would be simple enough to condense down the case to less than 4, 8 or even 40 hours of video testimony (objections and grandstanding lawyers would be erased, for example) so that the jury only sees what all sides agree they should, and blammo, the jury reviews said testimony in the time given, then however long it takes to reach a verdict and done.

Even better, the jury could be selected when the video is done, so the trial could go on as long as the lawyers want it to, but the jury doesn't have to deal with their delays and extension nonsense. Jury duty didn't used to take over 12 people's lives for weeks just because some douche drank and drove and wrecked, killing someone. That kind of thing used to be - was the defendant drunk and did they do 'a'? Yes? Jury - guilty! Not some presentation of 90 days of history of how their parents neglected them, a sibling or spouse abused them, how life was unfair to them, etc etc etc.

But it doesn't stop someone from building a closer machine of their own once the patent has run out. They might even be able to utilize the Kwik-Lok tabs, in addition to other tabs.

You'll note that there has been a dearth on tinfoil hatter jokes since Snowden.

This occurs automatically with small, localized ownership.

Decentralization for wire ownership is the answer. The wires are owned by local municipalities, and ISPs provide services over those wires. With fiber, there's no excuse not to go this route. The feds can tax and provide service to disadvantaged areas much like the Universal Service Fund now, in fact, there would need be little to no change there. Just that the wires belong to the local municipalities, and they cannot sell the property, only maintain and improve it as necessary. Cities, counties, states, etc, can work to improve the infrastructure, but at it's core, it's still locally owned. What else matches this pattern? Roads, railroads, the electrical grid and various pipelines all at least started this way, as does the global internet. So there's no reason this particular component cannot be handled this way at a more local level and finally remove the evil specter of Ma Bell and its wanna be clones.

Running buggy crap on a new OS isn't any better than running dedicated legacy on old hardware/software, IMNSHO. Having rewritten more than one system to migrate from 10+ year old legacy code into something approaching the modern world will make you appreciate modern tools a lot.

But you're right in one thing - I haven't explicitly nailed the reason spreadsheets are terrible - hard links vs relative links, no error checking, link across multiple pages, functions spanning multiple rows/columns/pages for values that seemingly are unrelated, all because last week/month/year/decade that particular page had a number that made sense that particular day but no one since remembers why. the list goes on - spreadsheets are entirely unstructured and unconstrained when it comes to creating "code". That fudge factor that "Joe" threw in for an estimate never got removed, now your investor reported numbers are all skewed by it, but no one knows. etc etc etc.

I guess that's way more than one reason. At least with real code, things are usually more deterministic and easier to unravel.

Not for anything that is repeated over time. I've seen countless spreadsheet "managed" items and the errors that creep in over the months and years is pretty hilarious | scary | useful (for cons) etc. I wouldn't be surprised if a large part of the .com bubble was due to spreadsheet "math".

Why? You could just as easily ask around for anyone with children who had an earlier (or later) abortion and see what response they have. How about asking the men that impregnated them while you're at it. And finally, you can ask yourself the rather more relevant question "why do you hate women"?

Thanks for the funniest thing I'll probably read all day. :)

That depends upon what you're restricting safety to: explosiveness? Harm to humans? Harm to the planet? The line moves with each of those.

And yet, in the next line below carbon fiber is Carbon Toray T1000G at 6370MPa for fibers alone. Then, should you go lower in the chart, you hit 11K+ for carbon variants like nanotubes and graphene. But none of those really matter, because until you place it in a matrix, you won't have anything useful. You'll note the laminate values are much lower. For glass, you don't have that many options better than the standard resin, but for carbon, you can have some interesting materials for matrixes. None of those are listed in the linked chart though. To give you an idea of how much things vary, glance through this randomly chosen report.

It wasn't about "safe" batteries, but rather the fact that we need a sustainable large scale high density battery technology. Lithium is not the answer, because there apparently isn't enough of it to meet the needs of even Tesla in the near term.

Fiberglass is way weaker than carbon. There's a host of better options that are stronger, but maybe not safer for the environment. BTW, fiberglass isn't necessarily safe either. The epoxy is common across a lot of composites, as it merely provides adhesion and a shear matrix.

Solar and electric are the safe alternatives. Anything "gas" is inherently unsafe. But electrics aren't quite there yet. We need new battery technology.