I expect something like a 30 year time from project start to launch. Which is good news - because it gives me time to save the $1,4bn. On the other hand, will septuagenarians be able to go?

I don't know about 'hidden codes' - a few years ago I took my family on an around the world trip, traveling west from Australia via Dubai and London. All our US boarding passes were stamped with big red 'SSS' letters, except for my wife, who has a British passport.

At every security gate my three kids and I got the full treatment of pat-downs and extra screening, even being pulled out of the normal line and taken aside in some cases.

The reason, I supposed, was because we came to the US from Dubai arriving on the east coast of the US, we clearly posed a 'high risk' in the view of US border protection. My wife, being on a British passport, posed no such risk, coming that way from London.

The ever alert US border security did prevent my 8yo son bringing a pair of paper scissors into the country.

my choice - be put in a Schrodinger cell, where I exists in a superposition of alive and dead, as long as no one looks.

Snoo snoo is also a good option.

A neatly overlooked flaw for time travel is that there are 4 dimensions of space/time, and time travel only accounts for moving though one. Say you travel 100 years into the future, relative to your present position in space. Meantime the earth, the solar system and the galaxy has moved on 100 along the other three space dimensions, leaving you alone in cold, deep space.

This makes the assumption that the time travel mechanism also removes inertia, which may not be the case. But is there any reason to think gravity, or any other external force, would be felt by the time traveler? Time travel would require a warp if space/time much greater than the feeble amount of the earths gravity, or the sum for that matter. So if inertia remains the same, then the time travel device is simply going to sail off at a tangent to the earth and the sun in their respective orbits.

For short time jaunts, this probably wont be too much of a problem, assuming there is some method the device can use to travel in space to the future or past location of the earth. But for very long trips, predicting the space location is going to be problematic to say the least. My guess is would require a number of shorter trips, stopping to re-orientate and realign along the way.

I am guessing a lot of the semi-sentience of a TARDIS goes into solving just this problem.

Hey, at least he has come to grips with the digital age.

He must have become progressively handy over the years, since he did it himself and no one gave him a hand. I wonder if we will hand off the project now? I guess if nothing else, he has become more handsome as a result of his efforts.

Many years ago I connected an Internet feed for a private girls school - a very conservative, christian, and very well respected one - in Sydney. During the setup I was talking to the Headmistress about if she had any concerns regarding the content the girls might access. I thought her response was particularly enlightened; her comment was something like 'Whatever you try to restrict will make them want to access it more, which they will do secretly and unguided. If we don't make any restrictions then it will never be a big deal, and anything they feel uncomfortable about they can discuss with their teacher. Good kids will know to do the right thing, and all our girls are good.'

If I had a daughter, I probably would have sent her to that school.

I don't know why it would be so difficult to put a spacecraft in orbit around Mars, or land on the place. I mean, it's not rocket science... hey, wait a minute...

Let's not forget the 'Hammer and the Cross' and the 'Stars and Stripes' series. Both well researched and great alternate history trilogies. Even if he does indulge in a bit of Britt bashing, Stars and Stripes is still one of my favorite Civil War alternate history novels, and as I recall HH was regarded as an authority on that era too.

Very sad to hear this news. He was too one of the authors I most read during my teens. It is clearly time to crack open the yellowing pages of my old paperbacks and give the SSR and Deathworld novels are re-read - possibly the last before they fall apart. Then probably off to Amazon to replace with whatever's available in hard cover. For some reason I would rather pay $50 for hard cover copy of the 'old classics' than $2.50 for the ebook edition.

I don't want to see Jacksons 'interpretation' of Middle Earth. The more I see Jacksons LOTR, the more it irritates me. The parts that follow the book are great, and the casting, effects and cinematography are fantastic. I completely get that things like Tom Bombadil and the scouring of the Shire had to be left out. But it's the things he put in, completely unnecessarily, that cause growing annoyance over time. Dwarf tossing, Orcs swarming like cockroaches, men of Gondor no more than orc fodder. Bah I say.

It's like Jackson thought 'well here's a pretty good book, by a talented writer, but I am more creative, and I can improve the story.'

What a conceited idiot he is.

LOTR was polished and perfected over more than 30 years, by the mind of a shining intellect. LOTR movie is brilliant because of the strength of the story it is based on, and lots and lots of money. LOTR movie totally fails because of what some Kiwi yob with a degree in ego has added to it.

I am very sad to hear he now wants to spread his ruin to other parts of the tale. He is doing the work of Sauron if you ask me.

No pun intended, but Phil Specter knew that 49 years ago. The son 'Da doo Ron Ron' was deliberately made to be the sum of all pop songs, which was the theory behind the Wall of Sound', and IMHO has artistic merit for that point alone.

It depends on the audience. A physics review journal or a medical publication for doctors is going to be very unappealing if it's written in laymans terms. On the other hand magazines like New Scientist and Scientific American do a pretty good job of making scientific news accessible to everyone, and take the effort to explain jargon terms when used.

OTH, IMHO, I LMAO at the irony of where journalism is heading in general. DUCY?

My point was; I would like to be rich enough to give away $500M too.

Many may well consider such acts of philanthropy completely altruistic. Whether you agree with the cause or not, only the most cynical of people would view it as 'marketing' or 'self promotion', and even if it actually is that; so what? The people who will benefit from it wont care - it doesn't matter what the motivation for doing it is, the end result is what is important.

Personally, I think the motivation is truly altruistic and comes from a genuine desire to do good in the world. The point I would make is; anyone 'richer than God' is going to acquire the same philosophy. Why are mega rich people altruistic? Because they can be. When every conceivable want and desire is met, what is left but to be generous to your fellow man?

I for one would welcome the opportunity to do exactly that myself. If only I had some software I could sell to IBM.