That link is an interesting read. His back-of-the-envelope calculation normalizes a Boeing 747 to just slightly less efficient than the Grey-Cheeked Thrush: 4.79 watts to 4.5. He's right that no one would want to fly an airliner at 31mph, however 1 or 2 people flapping to work at 31mph could someday be highly attractive over driving a car.

So is it better to wait to the end of the recall period to get more mature software that better debugged? Or would it be the same version as was rushed out at the beginning?

There could also be forcing functions that eliminates "strands" from the "rope" before reproduction...

"National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001 (as enacted into law by Public Law 106-398; 114 Stat. 1654A-38) that, by 2015, one-third of operational ground combat vehicles be unmanned."

I'm guessing they won't all be logistical delivery vehicles.

I think we could use this for more then just sunglasses. What about using it in a high rise building. I'm sure some architect could work having blue windows into the design of the building. Or what about if your office had blue windows during the day to give a nice calming blue tinge to the work environment but at night turned clear to allow a clear view of the city? I could see airlines (Virgin Atlantic specifically) installing these since they already have blue interior lights. What about night time use - does the small amount of UV light given off by a star cause it to appear blue? I think there's more possibilities then just sunglasses or data storage.

We already have a huge network over here called Tigris. It's a locally contracted civilian internet connection that the soldiers can subscribe to for their own private use. They probably didn't want to have a system that contains highly sensitive information called something so similar (if they even considered it). In fact, they probably should have changed it to something completely different.

As a soldier currently in Baghdad and having gone through about 10 RIPs (Relief in Place) in my 13 months here this would be a great benefit. The usual RIP lasts about a week involving the leaving unit showing the new unit's leadership the main areas for a couple days. After those couple of days the new unit takes over and only a select few from the old unit accompanies them. Completely all knowledge from the old unit is lost except that which is important enough to be on the company/battalion level. My platoon alone has taken over roughly 15 AOs (Areas of Operations), just to turn them over a couple weeks later to another unit. To have a tool that shows all the historical data on a platoon (or even squad) level would greatly benefit the incoming units and the local populace. The current system just isn't good enough. It's the equivalent of getting a quick walk through of a house and then trying to determine what parts are in need of fixing.

I'm working a very fast cargo transport UAV for DoD that, after cargo delivery to the soldiers, has enough capacity to hold several people. It will have no pilot or joystick, rather flying blind like a cruise missile to its next waypoint.

Now tell me that if you are combat wounded or reacting to a poisonous snake bite, you'd rather wait for medical treatment via the next piloted lift dispatched once/or if it's safe enough for them? I predict MASH-style evacuations will happen sooner than later.

Ships are but one end-point solution. To experiment first with the spray/seeding concept, there are plenty of fixed (arid islands, reefs, and other out-of-the-way) locations that could receive excessive salt spray to actually prove out the viability of the concept first.

FYI --

1. SSE vectors are 128 bits -- that's two doubles, not eight. [There may be 8 sse registers, but that doesn't mean you can do 8 simultanous sse operations.]
2. It's possible to extend precision using single-single "native pair" arithmetic. There's a paper by Dietz et al on GPGPU.org that discusses this.

This doesn't make GPUs capable of double-precision arithmetic, and doesn't mean they will replace CPUs. But it can be used expand the number of algorithms where the vast "arithmetic density advantage" of GPUs can be applied. Top-end CPUs can do 20-30 single-precision GFLOPS, GPUs have about 10x more GFLOPs in the fragment shader ALUs. That's alot of power if you can figure out how to make it work for your problem.

Suprisingly enough the majority of our new users actualy are these 'snot-nosed newbies'. It seems older people just don't have the drive to learn something new...and probably the fact that they can afford professional software. Building a seperate UI would require a massive undertaking on the part of our few coders, who are already busy enough trying to keep up with today's 3D application needs. Besides, we have a great community who would be willing to help you with any problems you have.