How much compute power do these guys have, would it be worthwhile to produce a backplane to run several of them in parallel? What about for redundancy in mission critical applications?

Actually It does take 9 women just 1 month to create 1 baby. In 1 month the baby's DNA is fully fleshed out, so for the 8 other months the mother is just acting as an incubator. The human genome is about 3.2 million base pairs, so 9 women should be able to produce 28.8 billion lines of code in one month.

You must have never dealt with the *nix printing system, it's up for debate wether Linux will printing the fucking thing.

Why do you need genetic diversity? By the time we're ready to send someone we'll have the ability to genetically engineer ideal traits in humans.

Over the course of 30 generations random DNA mutations will naturally propagate through the population, and these random mutations will be more prevalent in space because passengers would be subjected to high levels of radiation. For all intents and purposes you would only need to send enough individuals to perpetuate the population ad infinitum, and the minimum amount for this to happen is 32 people. Genetic evidence suggests that all humans alive today, despite apparent variety, are descended from a very small population, perhaps between 1,000 to 10,000 breeding pairs about 70,000 years ago.

The bottom line is natural selection will inherently diversify the population. Furthermore, you wouldn't randomly pick people to go on an expedition because you don't want that kind of genetic variability. There would be limited ability to manage individuals that are prone to diseases or stupidity, so this would be an exercise in eugenics.

So I ask again, why would you want to introduce random variability into a system that engineers have optimized?

A giant saquioa can sequester over 2000 tons of carbon from the air and live for 2500 years.

If you planted 1 million of these trees you could sequester 2,000,000,000 tons of carbon for 2500 years! If you plant enough of these sequoias you could literally sequester all the United States's excess CO2 for 2500 years.

2500 years is a hell of a long time for us to design and perfect new technologies that can better solve are carbon crisis.

There is one, it's called University of the People. You can get a complete BSCS and $4k. The school is accredited by the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC) Accrediting Commission. They also offer an associate's in computer science for $2k, and the credits will transfer to most institutions.

Someone already posted this, but for some reason it was modded it down. I speculate that the educational industry does want people to know they can get an entire bachelor's degree for just a fraction of the price.

http://uopeople.edu/
http://www.detc.org/

Just run the connection through a sacrificial network switch that can be grounded. Personally I would have a the telco line earth grounded on the outside, connected to a surge suppressor on the inside telco wires, and another surge suppressor on the network side, which is then connected to a sacrificial switch. You can't be too careful with telco lines that are attached to the network, last thing you ever want is for lighting to decide to use your master network switch as it's path to ground, because this will probably blow out every device on the network... I've had it happen, issuance forked out a few hundred thousand to fix everything that got zapped.

Exactly. Full range power supplies should be able to handle a surge if you have it properly connected to a point of use surge suppressor. I have a whole building surge suppressor on the main panel that clamps at 360 volts. Additionally I have point of use surge suppressors that are properly grounded. Typically I'll also run a separate ground, from the breaker panel and connect it to the server rack, then I'll ground the server chassis to the rack, this will let everything float at the same reference voltage. Furthermore, telecommunications lines running into or out of a building should be earth grounded on the outside and also connected to a surge suppressor on the inside of the building that is grounded to the main service panel.

If you build your environment to withstand a lighting strike then you will also be able to withstand a CME.

Nuclear power plants melting down will not be a problem. All of them have generators that can run all of the equipment for over a week. Most plants are design in such a way that the control rods will fall into place in the event of a power loss. However, if the grid got fried they would have to take the plant offline, they would damage the equipment if they ran it without a load attached to discharge the power.

Since a gas station would have gas, all they would need is a generator to keep the station running. Tanker trucks shouldn't be affected by CMEs, so with generators being readily available I don't foresee this as being a significant problem.

What I do foresee is an economic melt down since electronic transactions would grind to a halt. There would be a run on the banks since there is not enough cash reserves on hand, only $1.22 trillion dollars in Federal Reserve notes are in circulation. Businesses would not be able to use their credit accounts or pay employees. We would have to resort to bartering, the economy would collapse, no one would have money to buy gas.

Another problem I see is with the water supply. If a CME fried all the water pumps we would be totally fucked, becuse people begin to die in as little as three days without water. Furthermore, without refrigerators to store food, stoves to cook food, or water to grow crops there would be a massive food shortage.

I think this would make for a good movie, that should raise awareness of the issue.

The developer stole nothing, one element necessary for theft is intentionally depriving the owner of their property and the owner was never deprived of their property. This is conversion

This is ridiculous. He did not deprive the owner of their property, the elements of theft have not been met. This should have been handled as a conversion claim in civil court. What I think is criminal is the corporation using their power to influence the criminal justice system.

Would the flight crew, or even a passenger on the plane, know that the engine has a radio in it? Is it within the realm of possibilities that they took the batteries out of the plane and connected them to the engine's radio to use as a beacon? If the plane crash landed on solid ground, could the emergency radio beacon been destroyed, perhaps due to blast damage? Were any individuals on the plane that had a background in electronics that could MacGyver something up?

Not exactly. They guarantee the safety of a depositor's accounts in member banks up to $250,000 for each deposit ownership category in each insured bank. So if you dump $500k into a CD and the bank goes bust you only get $250k. Credit unions fall under a different program, the NCUA, and are insured up to $250,000. If you have a million dollars, you would be smart to not put all your money in one place.

Can most animals also see infrared light? This may not be commonly known, but we, warm blooded animals, glow. Our body heat cause the emission of photons in the infrared spectrum, this is how forward looking infrared (FLIR) cameras work. Anyways, I was just wondering if animals can see other animals glowing at night.