... Braveheart.

We don't even have a theory that works. We have GR that breaks down as soon as gravity becomes too high, or it becomes too low. It will also not work at too small distances. We have QM which does not work beyond small distances.

Most scientists are not even willing to consider that the theory is broken, but are happy to extrapolate in places where it doesn't go.

There are very few who are even trying to work on a Quantum theory of Gravity. Without which talking about Cosmology and Warp Drives is meaning less.

-anand

I wouldn't have much faith in this, precisely because it would have been done based on Newtonian gravity. It does not take care of the MOND phenomenology. With MOND in the picture things may be totally different.

MOND is an empirical equation which predicts the rotation curves based on the visible mass in Galaxies. It works beautifully at Galactic scales but does not work well at cluster scales.

We know that General Relativity (GR) and Quantum Mechanics (QM) both are mutually incompatible, which indicates that something is wrong in both of them. In addition GR does not work well when we get very high gravitational fields like a black hole. The equations lead to a singularity. It works beautifully when gravity is somewhat lower but doesn't seem to work well below a threshold, which leads us to the prediction of Dark Matter, with really weird properties to account for the lack of observation.

Also GR takes into account only one special constant speed of light or the maximum signal speed. It does not take into account the Planck's Length or the minimal wavelength of the signal. This is probably why it does not work well with QM. The modification due to taking into account the Planck's length may cause MOND we don't know.

-anand

1) A single income tax range applicable on all direct incomes. Specifically profits on investments should not count. Investments actually make money available to the system. No Tax on it will actually help by giving incentive to people to save.
2) A single per person tax deduction depending on the cost of living in an area. This covers poor people.
3) Luxury tax on all products that are more costlier than the bottom say 10% meeting all requirements. This will make richer people pay more taxes, but without any prejudice.

There should possibly be a pollution tax, but that is a subjective quantity and subject to corruption.

-anand

But the biggest problem is going to be finding a course that you can take without colliding with a wart at that speed. It will be difficult to avoid anything at that speed. Also there is the problem of energy. With speed your mass increase too, which requires more energy for the same amount of acceleration. It eventually gets very difficult to accelerate.

I know relativity can forever tie us to this rock. But maybe we could survive on colony sized space ships and mine the planets. I don't know if the nearest star system will be reachable in the very near future.

We will need a laser weapon to vaporize any speck that comes in our way, and hope that there is nothing large on our way.
Space exploration is not easy but I hope that we do it anyway.

First off we will need to fix this dark matter thing. If there is anything wrong with Newtonian equations of gravity at low accelerations (MOND, pioneer anomaly) then we will chart bad courses.

Obama's only been in office since Jan. 20th ... in this time his primary focus has had to be the economic crisis and the wars in the Mid-East.

Bush had a full 8 years to put all of his policies into effect. Do you think it's reasonable that Obama could reverse all of that in such a short time in office? Our new President has been very efficient since taking office and has put many wheels in motion trying to reverse much of the damage that Bush Co. has done to our country. But he can't do it all with a simple stroke of the pen, and he doesn't have the Constitutional authority to just "make it so" with a stroke of his pen for many of the things he'd like to do. His policies must follow the process of law, or he's no better than Bush.

Any objective observer would give Obama very high marks for his first 74 days (as of this writing). Granted he's got many people on the right who will cry foul at many of his moves, and people from the left who are whining that he hasn't given attention to their pet issues, but you have to admit the man has been very busy and very efficient even if you can't agree with what he's done.
It will take time for the 'cultural change' within the government to take hold. Many Bush appointees still hold office, many gov't agencies still have the mindset of the last 8 years and it takes time to enact cultural change within an organization as complex as the US Government.

It's not the time to judge Obama yet, give him time to get his agenda in place. Stay vigilant, yes. Complain that everything hasn't changed yet? C'mon ... be realistic.

Actually google does everything thrice (not unlike the Ramans). And returns the result that reaches it first. So in effect it is even more fault tolerant than the Mainframe. And it does them at different locations not on a single Facility (as opposed to a server or a 1AAA sized Container).

You are underestimating Google.

We'll call it Windows Me 2.0

Please! be accurate. It is printed toilet paper :)

Dint he say that was the ebay posting with a million dollar shipping and a buy it now price of 1000$.

I think the way should be this: Charge those who send sms rather than those who receive. That way, if the spammer is intending to send you spam, first he cant charge your bill and he pays double the charge (charge for sending and charge for you receiving it). So, things will get double costly for him. Second, if you dont like the spam you can delete it anyways. That way the game becomes much more level playing field. The whole notion that someone can send you sms and rake up your bill is something that I hate to accept.

You struck gold on #3. If you don't work at Mozilla Corp, then you have a LONG, HARD road ahead of you to get changes in. Much less an architectural revamp to enhance security and speed.

We should force the spammers to read each and every character/mail of all the spams that they ever mailed. Hopefully, with all the spelling mistakes they make, they will really get frustrated with themselves and commit suicide.