That, plus the time/effort investment involved in learning a new desktop OS is generally significantly greater than figuring out how to navigate around your phone menus. Most people already "know" windows, and just don't feel like learning another OS.

It doesn't really have anything to do with new technology. It never came true because no one has yet attempted to launch large amounts of stuff into space. We will never have economies of scale in the space launch industry so long as we launch only a tiny amount of stuff into space, and we'll never launch more than a tiny amount of stuff into space so long as every time someone thinks about launching a large amount of stuff, they look at the cost in terms of today's small-scale cost/kg and conclude it's not feasible.

Hemoglobin is not ferromagnetic at all. Ferromagnetism occurs when multiple metal atoms align their magnetic moments in the same direction due to magnetic coupling. The iron in hemoglobin exists as individual iron atoms bound up in a large organic molecule - there aren't any other metal atoms around for it to couple to, so there can be no ferromagnetism.

"Make them self-replicating"??? That's a problem many orders of magnitude more difficult. If we can make tiny robots that can fabricate high-efficiency solar panels, making agriculture easier will be a distant second behind solving our energy problems forever.

I think you need to redo your math. A 500 kg spacecraft sitting 300 meters from a asteroid's center of mass would accelerate it by (6.67*10E-11) * (500)/(300^2) = 3.7*10^-13 m/sec. Over 16 years, that allows you to move an object just 47 km - far, far less than even 1 earth radius. Also, since the acceleration due to gravity doesn't depend on the mass of the object being accelerated, you couldn't move a 1 ton object any faster than a 20 million ton object.

One of your suggestions was to charge her with a crime that does not exist, and your other was to charge her with a crime that she very obviously did not commit. It is at least somewhat plausible that she committed unauthorized computer access.

I never said anything of the kind.

It amuses me that you think you are better qualified that the prosecutor to concoct a charge against her. Contrary to popular rumor, suicide is not a crime. Merely inflicting "emotional damage" does not qualify as assault; you have to make the other person believe that they are in immediate danger of being attacked, which clearly wasn't the case here. The prosecutor was not attempting to "grab headlines" by making it a "cybercrime"; the charge leveled against her was merely the closest thing they could come up with to an actual crime.

The linked article doesn't really communicate the selling point, which is that these reactors are very small; the whole thing fits in a roughly 1 x 2 meter package (larger when you deploy the fold-radiators). It's true that one wouldn't be enough to power a large base, but NASA isn't planning anything like a base with a greenhouse for growing food - these things are basically meant to provide power for the astronaut's lander/trailer when it's dark outside. They just need to run the life support systems and radios.

Ah yes, I too remember being mystified by the "Write a long block of text is cursive, DO NOT PRINT!!!!!" thing on the GRE. The only explanation I can concoct is that they wanted it in case there was some dispute over the identity of the test-taker, in which case they could perhaps do some sort of bullshit "handwriting analysis."

The obvious problem is that there are a LOT of places where people drive where you can't get good GPS signals (it's often impossible to pick up GPS signals in downtown areas with skyscrapers all around, for example). Do their plans include a way to magically make GPS receivers pick up signals where they currently can't?

Also, what's to stop me from simply covering my GPS in grounded foil or something?

The thing is, Madoff's returns weren't that unbelievable. He was careful to always have slightly high-than-normal (but plausible) returns. That's a big part of the reason why so many extremely knowledgeable, competent investors were suckered by him. There were some other firms that very carefully studied his trading strategy so as to try to copy his success, and some of them eventually concluded that he was probably crooked, but it wasn't at all obvious to most people. It's not like he was promising 15% returns/year, or some other outlandish amount that would raise people's suspicions. It was more like everyone else was achieving 5%-6%, and he was claiming 5.5%-6.5%.

...to your laser-blasted skeleton.

She was found to be HGH deficient, but when they started giving it to her there wasn't any response.

The puzzling thing is, she didn't respond to HGH treatment at all - which seems to indicate that whatever is happening, it's more complicated than some pathway that sits above the HGH pathway malfunctioning and so not causing the HGH pathway to trigger on time. If that were the case, then one would expect her body to respond to the HGH when she finally started getting it - but she didn't.

Insensitivity to HGH isn't consistent with the symptoms this girl displays. For one thing, the brain's development shouldn't be affected by any HGH-related problems. People who are HGH-insensitive or HGH-deficient have normal brains in abnormally small bodies. This girl's brain, however, seems to be that of a 1.5 year old. It appears that there is some sort of "higher level" problem that is causing almost all development to proceed slowly, even though her endocrine system is normal.