What alternatives are there?

Railguns (or any other sort of ground-based propulsion) physically cannot put something into orbit, and practically speaking, they can only provide a moderate boost. You'd still need at least a full rocket stage, possibly two, to actually get to orbit.

Ground-based laser propulsion might work, but it's never been tested at scale. And if there is a catastrophic failure, it will be on the ground-based components, not the vessel. In other words, the big explosion will be on the ground instead of the air.

Air-breathing rockets are even more dangerous than traditional ones, since they spend more time in the atmosphere at extreme speeds and temperatures.

Electric rockets (ion engines of various types) don't have the thrust to break out of Earth's gravity.

Nuclear thermal rockets might work, but they won't be much safer IMO.

The problem ultimately boils down to "it takes too much energy to get to space". You're going from at best 400-something m/s to Mach 20+. That takes a lot of energy, and so we have to use very energetic means to do so.

Oh hey, thanks for updating the one I posted in a past article. I was wondering why it seemed so familiar.

I stopped reading after this because you didn't follow the link or read the text. The DJ paid the same fee you do for a CD. Period. End of story. (S)He may have paid for the PA equipment as well. That has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that someone is using this for entertainment in his place of business as a way to encourage more business.

[Having now taken the moment to read your piss poor analogy, let me throw a more apt one at you]

It's more like if I write a book and then someone creates a movie from that book, should I have a right to proceeds from the movie? According to your analogy, I should just get nothing because the movie studio bought a single copy of my book, even though now, billions could have my story out there and, to many of them, a book that a movie they've seen isn't worth reading, so I shouldn't make money off of them.

I don't for a second believe that the DJ actually paid the fees, in fact, it seems the owner merely assumed (s)he did. And even if (s)he did, (s)he did so for performance within (her/)his own venue, as it's how (her/)his business has to be run. A restaurant owner who ignores this cost of doing business should get sued. The sad part is, it appears that this particular situation only came about because this owner refuses to be educated on his responsibilities and decided that settling didn't make sense. Hell, it seems like he didn't even seek out legal advice.

I've worked in bars in college towns. They never required you sign a contract like that. The contract cannot inherently place the responsibility on you any more than I can have a contract that places the responsibility of my car on the passengers in said car while I drive.

Unfortunately it's the responsibility of the venue to clear those licenses, not the DJ or other musicians. As ASCAP points out on their FAQS:

Some people mistakenly assume that musicians and entertainers must obtain licenses to perform copyrighted music or that businesses where music is performed can shift their responsibility to musicians or entertainers. The law says all who participate in, or are responsible for, performances of music are legally responsible. Since it is the business owner who obtains the ultimate benefit from the performance, it is the business owner who obtains the license. Music license fees are one of the many costs of doing business.

it's not the musicians, it's the business. Same reason (or should be, but often isn't) business owners charge a cover when music is being played in the venue (although, often times said cover is also paid to the musicians themselves).

That's an area devoted to the sales staff and therefore you are not playing music for customers. There are exceptions made for that (see my other post).

Odds are rather good that the DJ did not pay the fee that is associated with entertaining an audience. Most DJs are unaware that's any different from buying the CD itself.

The fact that he probably even advertised (not made clear FTA) that there was a DJ playing makes the restaurant far more culpable as an "entertainment" venue than merely a restaurant. As many other posters have pointed out, this was used as a form of entertainment and should be treated as such. I don't necessarily like the tactics, nor necessarily agree with the sum, but at least, for a change, the musician gets a solid chunk of it.

That's why you get your kitchen staff to wear earplugs and play the music loudly from there. At that point, it's for the staff's enjoyment, and not as an entertainment draw for the restaurant/bar (legally speaking). I don't necessarily agree with the way this one works, but I do see benefits to the fact that the musician is actually make some semblance of money off of these deals, unlike the record labels.

I'm reading the comment your replied again and again. I literally see nothing wrong with it and nothing to prompt such a...harsh response. He's a religious nut. By all means, everything I've ever seen pertaining to him indicates this. I don't understand where your rant is coming from. Even my most adamantly religious friends consider this guy a nut...

Are you saying no to the (are you?) in the previous post? Because, like most native english speakers, I'd pronounce waze like daze, gaze, laze, blaze, haze, etc. Which is homophonic to ways.

I think that their exposing their ignorance: https://technet.microsoft.com/...

I'm actually with this AC. I haven't been on SF in probably 3-4 years. Back then I never had issues and would actually look for stuff on SF. Now I don't have as much downtime for that sort of work/play, so I haven't been on, but I'm about to have significantly more free time soon and thus this is a timely notification to stay away.

I'm confused, are you meaning that creating the power supply would be difficult or the internals of the laptop would be difficult? Because both of those exist already (granted, not necessarily at 100W), as evidence by a few different products. It took a while for USB 3 to come to budget oriented devices as well.

The rest of us frogs are over here, if you haven't heard it yet.