I worked for a company that produced a software-controlled radio base-station. You have to know the secret to these devices: they can't actually cover more than 10 MHz at a time. There is a 10 MHz (or maybe a little better) band-width Yig that can be set in software to any given frequency between say 100 MHz and 6 GHz. This Yig limits sending and receiving channels to within 10 MHz of each other. Since Wifi channels are about 20 MHz each, your use case is not feasible. You could only use one channel at a time.

Now with more Yigs, you can use multiple channels at a time, but you are limited by the hardware. Yigs are very much not cheap, last I knew. A $300 software radio that can compete reasonable well with a Motorolla $5000 radio.... probably isn't running more than 1 Yig.

I was going to challenge your assumptions about the nature of empty space in regards to collisions between large bodies. I was told in school that all matter consists largely of empty space. So I examined the common element iron:

The diameter of the nucleus of an iron atom is 1.26e-8 cm. The standard atomic weight of iron is 55.845 (which is equivalent to 55.845 gm/6.022e23 atoms or 1gm/1.0783e22 atoms). The density of iron at room temperature is 7.874 gm/cm^3. So 1 cubic centimeter of iron weighs 7.874 grams, and contains 8.49e22 atoms. Assuming a cubed nucleus, and ignoring the relatively tiny electrons, each atom has a volume of 2.00e-24. Multiply by the number of atoms above and we should have a volume of 0.17cm^3. Note that a sphere occupies 52% of the volume of its enclosing cube, which would bring the estimate down to 0.089cm^3. So ultimately, solid iron is 9-17% protons and neutrons.

It appears that while matter is more empty space than it is solid, the "emptiness" is only 1 order of magnitude, whereas your example was about 7. I retract any objections.

If you really want to reduce your drain on the power grid, turn off the PC more often. It's cheaper than buying a new PC too. Now before you dismiss my suggestion as a mere straw-man argument, consider this: over the past 100 years human spending on lighting has remained roughly constant. Whenever a newer, cheaper form of lighting is introduced (electric bulb, florescent lighting, etc), what happens is NOT that money is saved, but that the same money is spent on more lighting. That my friend is human nature. A reduction in power consumption will yield more machines in your house turned on more of the time. On average.

Table salt has a 1:1 correlation to sodium chloride. Therefore no additional information is conveyed using the chemical name. While I appreciate your desire to be geeky, may I point out that "table salt" is 33% more efficient at conveying the intended information?

Both Russia and America are part of the same ecosystem; anything devastating enough to affect Russia at any scale would in turn affect us.

Remember that fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself; I bring you...

The Law Which Must Not Be Named

Gas Turbines, and Diesel-Electrics both require oxygen and fuel. As for fuel, a nuclear sub needs to be refueled less often. More importantly, it doesn't breathe air. That means it can run deeper and longer than any other design (pending storing your own oxygen).

DRM will always be an excercise in fail.... at least until human cyborg components are mandatory.

Are you unaware of the signal behavior of a cell phone shortly before it receives a call? I have noticed on several dozen occasions that if a cell phone is located near an unshielded speaker or speaker signal wire (a headphone cable, for instance), the speaker will emit a series of beeps in a particular pattern.

Obviously, the cell phone is inducing current into the wire. The man's behavior is not psychosomatic in nature, necessarily. The cell phone does behave differently when it is negotiating a new call.

As for your tests, I whole-heartedly agree that this would be the best way to prove it. However, finding a scientific method of doing it is somewhat hard to do, since any experiment must be repeatable, and the experiment matter may be hard to find (i.e. is not believed to exist at all by some people). Also, it is hardly humane to conduct experiments on a person who negatively reacts to a cell phone; if he was telling the truth, and the radiation knocked him unconcious, who knows what further radiation might do?

Okay, as they say, blood is thicker than water. As well-meaning as these kind folks on Slashdot are, you and I know that you cannot get out of a support role. In truth, it is a meaningful service you can provide. But, since you're commited, why not examine ways to reduce your problems? Sure, there are lots of software options, but I'm more of a hardware kind of guy. I bought a $100 router with twin hardware firewalls. Even using free ZoneAlarm under Windows XP Professional, I have had zero spyware, malware, viruses, rootkits, etc. In well over a year. That's with four windows XP machines and 3 Ubuntu machines on the network, plus printer, XBOX360, etc. I lock my wireless network to MAC-only and leave it otherwise open and unencrypted.

You raise good points, but let me question one of your assumptions. First lets suppose that we do in fact spend $88 Billion on our military annually. You are right to refer to our military as "a dormant lion of a military that needs nothing more than a twitchy trigger finger on its leash to free an unholy uproar of annihilation and chaos", in fact, most militaries are. If you ever studied the Roman Empire you might remember that the biggest problems in government happened when the the military had nothing to do. If they weren't needed, could you cut military spending? Um... no. Because soldiers like to get paid. If they don't, things like government coups happen. I seriously doubt we are completely immune to this. So, basically, since we have a military, we must maintain it and feed it money so it doesn't turn around and gnaw our faces off.