$200,000 * 1,200 (approx # of 777's built) = $240 Million. Add in the other models of aircraft that make ocean crossings and you can certainly be discussing amounts in the billions.

That episode isn't a refutation, it's just another example of what the writers think would happen. Also, the lore of the episode includes a fairly long divergence period, which you would obviously not have if you're talking about duplicating a bunch of physicists to solve a pressing problem immediately.

Why pin them to DST? Why not pin them to something with astronomical reality, i.e. solar noon.

This is still easily solved without messing with the clocks. You could, for instance, start at 7am, or even 6am!

Personally, I'd prefer that the start times be more spread out, anyway. I think that traffic and traffic frustration are bigger ills than whether it's dark or light when you're sitting in that traffic.

Why not just call it what time it really is and have work start at 8 instead?

The only problem is that there is no evidence that any energy is saved. The only studies I have seen reported have been either inconclusive or show a slight increase in energy usage.

One would assume because slashdot doesn't recognize ·

DST doesn't change the amount of daylight. The earth's orbit and axial tilt change the amount of daylight.

If the problem is that businesses do better when there are more daylight hours after people finish work, that could be solved without having a DST at all - just provide an incentive for employers to change hours or offer flex time to employees.

In fact, I think we would do far more for the economy and the environment by encouraging businesses to stagger hours such that there is no more "rush hour." The time and fuel people waste sitting in traffic could be put to better use doing pretty much anything else.

Have you read Ender's Game?

The writers might think that solved the problem (and there were several transporter duplication episodes....), but I'm not so sure. You'd end up with 100 physicists that all think the same way, so other than getting parallelizable portions of the problem done at the same time, I think it might be the same as one physicist....

Isn't that also the process by which Monsanto created the roundup-ready crops in the first place?

Average. Otherwise I'd never drive faster than I can walk, to minimize the impact of "suddenly appearing" obstacles that I can't avoid hitting.

Fewer characters means they can use a bigger more eye-catching font.

SteamOS handles MS games by streaming them from another machine running Windows...

Genuinely curious here.. what kind of salary range do you think is appropriate for a person to be spending $200+ on CPU alone?